Latest / Ridiculous History / Jorge Cham Teaches Us The Universe: Big Bangs and Quantum Hangs

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Jorge Cham Teaches Us The Universe: Big Bangs and Quantum Hangs · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
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  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
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  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Rock.
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  Speaker 1: We've got someone throwing up some hands there in celebration.
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  Speaker 1: You were Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen, and we
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  Speaker 1: are please this punch over the Moon to have a
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  Speaker 1: very special episode today. Noel, we are exploring some heady
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  Speaker 1: concepts that no offense to us. We're not qualified to
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  Speaker 1: explore on.
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  Speaker 2: Our own Well sure when I qualified to explore much
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  Speaker 2: on our own weekend by Yeah, today we're talking about
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  Speaker 2: one of our favorite topics, which is mind science of
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  Speaker 2: the mind or brain science or mind science of the brand.
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  Speaker 3: I know there's a band called mind.
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  Speaker 2: Science of the Mind, and I just always thought that
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  Speaker 2: was fun and a nice catch all for these types
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  Speaker 2: of explorations.
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  Speaker 3: But it's true.
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  Speaker 2: We're joined by our buddy or hey cham from Science
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  Speaker 2: Stuff of Science Stuff, Fame of Daniel and universe, and
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  Speaker 2: he's coming to us from the void, the emptiness that
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  Speaker 2: is the origin of all.
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  Speaker 3: Things in the universe. Yeah, we're gonna.
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  Speaker 1: Talk about Hello, Hello, or hey, thank you for joining us.
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  Speaker 3: How are we feeling today?
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  Speaker 4: Oh, I'm feeling pretty good. It looks like I'm in
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  Speaker 4: a black hole, but that's just mind recording booth.
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  Speaker 1: With a soud proofing now, or hey, you are a polymath.
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  Speaker 1: We were talking earlier, not too long ago, when we
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  Speaker 1: were asking you to hang out with us on air.
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  Speaker 1: I just want to give your bona fides for the audience.
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  Speaker 1: I'll keep it brief so it's not, you know, too
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  Speaker 1: embarrassing or anything. But you have to be away for this,
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  Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians, our pale. Jorge doctor cham is not
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  Speaker 1: only the creator of the fantastic web comic strip Piled
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  Speaker 1: Higher and Deeper short name PhD Comics, but is also
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  Speaker 1: a PhD grad from Stanford University has published multiple books.
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  Speaker 1: You've worked with in PR You created the PBS Kids
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  Speaker 1: series Eleanor Wonders Why. Most recently, you have masterminded the
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  Speaker 1: new podcast Science Stuff, which ask deep questions in a
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  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that amazes me the
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  Speaker 1: most personally about it is how you are able to
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  Speaker 1: take very complex concepts and break them down into an approachable,
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  Speaker 1: understandable way, which is really we always say it right
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  Speaker 1: in science. That's the hallmark of that's the hallmark really
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  Speaker 1: knowing what you're talking about, being able to elegantly explain it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's a super fun show. Signce stuff.
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  Speaker 4: We just try to make science fun and accessible.
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  Speaker 3: You know.
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  Speaker 4: We start with very interesting and fascinating questions that you know,
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  Speaker 4: we think everyone wants to know the answer. Do you
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  Speaker 4: like is your dog lying to you?
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  Speaker 3: Yes? Really definitely? Is? That's right?
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  Speaker 4: That's right? It might be pet dependent or questions like
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  Speaker 4: do you really have to wait thirty minutes after eating
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  Speaker 4: to go swimming? You know, I think we all need
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  Speaker 4: to know.
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  Speaker 3: That yes, yeah, do you have pets?
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  Speaker 4: Do I have pets?
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  Speaker 3: Sort of?
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  Speaker 4: I have kids? Does that count? Oh wait, I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 4: I forgot. I'm also true?
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  Speaker 3: Also true. Well, you know it's funny.
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  Speaker 2: We we actually come from a similar background that we
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  Speaker 2: didn't go to Stanford uh and we are not PhDs,
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  Speaker 2: but we did come from the stuff world of Internet
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  Speaker 2: explaining edutainment as we like to call it, the house
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  Speaker 2: stuff works family of you know, articles and podcasts that
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  Speaker 2: are other podcast stuff that I want you to know
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  Speaker 2: is one of and ridiculous history really is spiritually is
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  Speaker 2: kind of like a continuation of that.
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  Speaker 3: Whole sort of de mystification through exploration, you.
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  Speaker 2: Know in podcast form, and you know, science stuff is
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  Speaker 2: absolutely a continuation of that de mystification exploration.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, on this podcast as well.
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  Speaker 1: Now or hey, as we're as we're diving into some
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  Speaker 1: of these big questions history of brain science, the history
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  Speaker 1: of the the Big Bang theory not the TV show
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  Speaker 1: and other heady concepts, could you tell us a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about your your own origin story in your words,
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  Speaker 1: because I think it's something that would be quite amazing
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  Speaker 1: for our audience.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, sure, what's the ridiculous history of forehead champ?
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  Speaker 3: Here we go.
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  Speaker 4: So I was born and raised in Panama. Actually my
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  Speaker 4: grandparents were from China, but they emigrated there. My parents
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  Speaker 4: were born there. They worked for the Panama Canal. I
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  Speaker 4: worked there one summer. Superb Yeah, okay, actually it was
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  Speaker 4: really bored. I worked in like the AC, like the HVAC,
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  Speaker 4: you know, design department.
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  Speaker 3: I feel like they probably do need a lot of
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  Speaker 3: air con.
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  Speaker 4: They did, that's right, it is critical to keeping us cool.
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  Speaker 4: But yeah, then I came to the US. I went
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  Speaker 4: to actually Georgia, tig to study engineering which is near
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  Speaker 4: where you all are. And then I went and then
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  Speaker 4: I decided I wanted to study robotics. I was like,
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  Speaker 4: wait a minute, you can get a job making robots.
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  Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, sign me up.
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  Speaker 2: If I could just interject really quickly, I'd love to
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  Speaker 2: get your hot take on the state of robotics and
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  Speaker 2: specifically some pretty funny pr let's say kerfuffles involving Elon
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  Speaker 2: Musk's company, and like robots that are supposed to be
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  Speaker 2: sentient and self propelled but are actually being remote controlled
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  Speaker 2: by interns from other rooms.
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  Speaker 3: Any thoughts on.
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  Speaker 4: That, poor he Yeah, I think we're all doomed. Friends,
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  Speaker 4: these are the ones pulling the strings. Robots look pretty
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  Speaker 4: pretty amazing. I have to say, I didn't think we
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  Speaker 4: get there so quickly. You know, It's part of the
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  Speaker 4: reason I kind of changed fields. But yeah, it's pretty
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  Speaker 4: amazing what they can do now and how they can
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  Speaker 4: basically move with humans around the world.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I guess what I was getting at those is,
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  Speaker 2: you know, they are definitely mechanically amazing, but I don't
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  Speaker 2: know that they're fully there yet in terms of you know,
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  Speaker 2: the singularity and all of that, because you know, Elon's
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  Speaker 2: having them kind of serve drinks as bartenders with the
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  Speaker 2: impression that they're actually doing all of this on their own.
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  Speaker 2: But then there are actually folks like remote controlling piloting
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  Speaker 2: them from other places. And I just don't think that's
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  Speaker 2: it's a funny.
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  Speaker 4: I think it might be a little over hype right now,
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  Speaker 4: but I think we're almost there, you know, Like just
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  Speaker 4: imagine taking all that AI that's happening online and then
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  Speaker 4: putting it on a robot, and you're gonna have robots
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  Speaker 4: drawing us as studio ghibli in.
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  Speaker 1: Like a week probably, yes, And then they'll also be
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  Speaker 1: able to set up on you know, the boardwalk of
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  Speaker 1: your local tourist attraction New age. Right now, what we're
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  Speaker 1: talking we're talking about how I'd love that you mentioned there, Orge,
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  Speaker 1: that these breakthroughs and innovations arrived much more quickly than
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  Speaker 1: previous scientific consensus had concluded. When we tell the story
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  Speaker 1: of robots, Noelt's see if I can pull off this segue.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about a culmination of a vast, vast chasm
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  Speaker 1: of history, and it's fascinating to me, and I think
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  Speaker 1: to all of us that human beings are now creating
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  Speaker 1: technology that arguably human beings themselves don't fully understand. And
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  Speaker 1: that question only becomes more interesting when we think about
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  Speaker 1: the origin story, not just of you, Orgey, not just
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  Speaker 1: of our silly little show, but the origin of what
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  Speaker 1: we call the universe. And I must confess not being
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  Speaker 1: the brightest crayon in the box, I have often been
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  Speaker 1: amazed by how how much scientific rigor goes into understanding
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  Speaker 1: the history of the universe until you get to a
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  Speaker 1: certain point, and some of the smartest people in the
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  Speaker 1: world will say, yeah at one point, and then the universe,
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  Speaker 1: so what is.
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  Speaker 3: The Big Bang?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? The Big Bang is this theory that like everything
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  Speaker 4: that you see in the universe right now, like all
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  Speaker 4: the stars and planets and galaxies, everything out there, and
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  Speaker 4: all the stuff that you can't even see or field,
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  Speaker 4: all that, at some point about fourteen billion years ago,
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  Speaker 4: was crammed into a space smaller than a pinhead. So
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  Speaker 4: imagine all those trillions of stars out there crammed the
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  Speaker 4: small space like that, and actually should be smaller, but
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  Speaker 4: a pinnate is usually the smallest thing people can imagine.
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  Speaker 4: And then at fourteen billion years ago, it all just
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  Speaker 4: kind of suddenly expanded and exploded out into the universe
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  Speaker 4: we see today. That's the basic gist of it.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, now, cool, got it?
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  Speaker 2: Sorry, I got some questions, just.
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  Speaker 3: A couple of.
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  Speaker 2: How they get everything so small, How they get everything
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  Speaker 2: so small and then then became regular sized or like
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  Speaker 2: way bigger than regular size. I don't understand. I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 2: my pen sized brain cannot.
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  Speaker 1: This is a This is currently the most widely still
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  Speaker 1: accepted theory right now. How did people begin sort of
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  Speaker 1: coalescing and agree on this? Is there a pivotal moment
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  Speaker 1: where someone particular academic or something found irrefutable proof of
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  Speaker 1: the Big Bang? Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a super fascinating story. It involves like Einstein
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  Speaker 4: being sketchy with this math. It involves people discovering things
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  Speaker 4: through pigeonproof. It's really kind of an interesting story.
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  Speaker 3: We're in.
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  Speaker 4: Pigeon poop. Yeah, yeah, that usually gets people going there.
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  Speaker 4: But you know, like if you think about like hundreds
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  Speaker 4: of years ago or even before, like the nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 4: when you look down into the night sky, you just
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  Speaker 4: see stars, right, You just pinpoint to stars, and you
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  Speaker 4: actually don't see that many, and they're all pretty static, right,
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  Speaker 4: Like they're not moving like the Earth moves, and so
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  Speaker 4: they move them the sky. But you know, a year
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  Speaker 4: after year you look at these stars and they're basically
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  Speaker 4: the same, like the constellations are still the same. So
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  Speaker 4: I think mostly for the throughout of human history, people thought, oh,
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  Speaker 4: the universe is just the way it is, and maybe
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  Speaker 4: it's always been like that, or maybe it got created
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  Speaker 4: in a snap by some deity, but it's not really changing,
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  Speaker 4: and it's kind of like that's all you can see
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  Speaker 4: a few stars, so maybe that's the whole universe, right,
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  Speaker 4: because like if the universe was had more stars, we
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  Speaker 4: would see them, right yeah. And so that's what mostly
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  Speaker 4: people thought. But then one interesting one, it was moment.
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  Speaker 4: One interesting moment was in the nineteen ten when Einstein
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  Speaker 4: was like working out how gravity works, how physics works,
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  Speaker 4: and he sort of came out with this theory about
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  Speaker 4: the whole universe called general relativity, and the theory kind
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  Speaker 4: of told him something weird, which is that the universe
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  Speaker 4: should be either shrinking or expanding. Those were kind of
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  Speaker 4: the two options. And he's like, whoaha, whoa, that's that's crazy.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, Einstein, but even for me, that's crazy. Either
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  Speaker 4: or right, yeah, or kind yeah, basically that's what the
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  Speaker 4: math kind of told him. And you know, he looked
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  Speaker 4: out at the sky and he thought, we're not shrinking,
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  Speaker 4: we're not expanding. Something weater. So there's something famous called
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  Speaker 4: the Einstein fudge factor. So like he just like added
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  Speaker 4: a number at the end of the equation to make
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  Speaker 4: it seem like the universe was not changing at all.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, God, isn't that kind of bad science?
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  Speaker 2: Like isn't that sort of like an example of someone
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  Speaker 2: having a pre conceived idea about something and just sort
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  Speaker 2: of being like, nah.
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  Speaker 3: No, let's just fix it so that this is the
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  Speaker 3: result that we get.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's not great. It doesn't look good on Einstein,
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  Speaker 4: And later on in his life he basically called it
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  Speaker 4: like the biggest blunder of his life, of his career.
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  Speaker 4: So he added this fudge factor. And then in nineteen
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  Speaker 4: twenty four, people kind of figured out that the universe
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  Speaker 4: was bigger than it seemed. So like when you look
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  Speaker 4: at into the nice Guy, you see stars, but you
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  Speaker 4: also see these kind of like fuzzy things. They look
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  Speaker 4: like little cotton balls, and people that just thought like, oh,
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  Speaker 4: those are like gas clouds, right, Like there's just like
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  Speaker 4: little fuzzy things in the universe. But then someone called
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  Speaker 4: Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, basically
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  Speaker 4: figured out that these things are not fuzzy clouds of gas.
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  Speaker 4: There are actually galaxies, and so there's this guy is
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  Speaker 4: just full of these galaxies. So basically our universe went
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  Speaker 4: from like we're like about the size of the Milky
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  Speaker 4: Way to like, we're trillions of times bigger than that.
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  Speaker 2: And think if it is like being able to zoom
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  Speaker 2: in and zoom in and zoom in, and every time
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  Speaker 2: you zoom there's another layer with more stuff and more stuff.
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  Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, Yeah, it kind of blew people's mind. And
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  Speaker 4: that's that's.
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  Speaker 1: The observable universe, right, which we'll come to find. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: could you tell us a little bit about because I
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  Speaker 1: think it's a phrase that can be misleading to a
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  Speaker 1: lot of lay folk. You hear the phrase observable universe
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  Speaker 1: and you automatically think, yeah, man, I got up earlier today.
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  Speaker 1: I observed all kinds of stuff there. So what is
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  Speaker 1: the observable universe? Why is that an important concept?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, Basically it turns out that the universe is
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  Speaker 4: so big we can't see all of it yet, like
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  Speaker 4: there are parts of the universe that are so far
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  Speaker 4: away that we haven't been able to see them. A
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  Speaker 4: because the light light has a speed it and b
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  Speaker 4: because the universe is not infinitely old. We figured out
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  Speaker 4: that the universe is fourteen billion years old, so basically
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  Speaker 4: we can only see things that have been able to
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  Speaker 4: get to us in those fourteen billion years.
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  Speaker 2: Because if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at a cool
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  Speaker 2: little pictogramograph of the Big Bang expansion, and it's sort
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  Speaker 2: of a timeline as well, because it's sort of this
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  Speaker 2: cone shaped whether they'm on one end, they sort of
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  Speaker 2: tapers into like this flat circle. And the first stars
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  Speaker 2: are calculated to have formed four hundred million years ago,
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  Speaker 2: and those are the ones that were like, those are
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  Speaker 2: the ones that we are like seeing or those are
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  Speaker 2: the ones that we have not seen yet. I'm just like,
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  Speaker 2: because it is a time travel equation as well, right,
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  Speaker 2: because of the way light works.
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  Speaker 3: So I'm just trying to wrap my head around there.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So stars are being made all the
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  Speaker 4: time in the universe, and then they have been been
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  Speaker 4: made all throughout the history of the universe, and stars
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  Speaker 4: also die have been dying throughout the universe of stars explode,
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  Speaker 4: some of them just kind of taper on and simmer
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  Speaker 4: for a long time. So the stars you're seeing, they
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  Speaker 4: could have been born, Like, if they're close to us,
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  Speaker 4: they were probably born recently. If they were really far away,
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  Speaker 4: they were probably born a long time ago.
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  Speaker 3: That's kind of cool.
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  Speaker 1: It's it's one of my favorite things to think about
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  Speaker 1: whenever I can get away from the light pollution so
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  Speaker 1: abiquitous in in you know, various human cities. Uh, I
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  Speaker 1: don't know the answers that I think you have explained
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  Speaker 1: it in the best way.
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  Speaker 3: I have heard. Sorry, Carl communications on this one.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how
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  Speaker 2: the concept of dark energy plays into this. I've always
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  Speaker 2: been fascinated with dark matter and dark energy. But isn't
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  Speaker 2: that that's a force that aids or in some way
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  Speaker 2: has contributed to this whole expansion.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah proposition, Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, Well, probably the best thing we know about
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  Speaker 4: dark energy is that it has a cool name, and
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  Speaker 4: then and that's about it. It's actually related to the
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  Speaker 4: Big Bang as well. So kind of picking up the
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  Speaker 4: story in the nineteenineteen twenty nine, Hubble not only discovered
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  Speaker 4: that those fuzzy things were galaxies. He also discovered that
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  Speaker 4: they were moving away from us. So, you know, like
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  Speaker 4: if you've heard of the Doppler shift, the fact like
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  Speaker 4: kind of what cops used to measure your velocity when
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: you're speeding down the highway. Obviously always within the speed limit,
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  Speaker 4: but that's how measure your.
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  Speaker 2: So you can also hear it in an audio form
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  Speaker 2: as sound source moves away from you, it is interpreted
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  Speaker 2: as almost like a pitched kind of envelope, like it
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  Speaker 2: sort of changes in pitch as it moves away, which
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  Speaker 2: I believe is an oral representation of the Doppler.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, that is exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Is this related to what's called wretch?
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  Speaker 4: Exactly, That's what it is.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So like you know, like when an ambulance is driving
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  Speaker 4: towards you, it kind of sounds like higher pitch, but
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  Speaker 4: it's a move that's a mooves passed you away from you.
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  Speaker 4: It sounds a little bit lower woo woo woo. The
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  Speaker 4: same thing is happening with light because light kind of
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  Speaker 4: behaves like a wave, and so you can tell from
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  Speaker 4: the redshift of the light of galaxies that they're moving
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  Speaker 4: away from us.
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  Speaker 1: That is both fascinating and frightening for some reason I
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  Speaker 1: cannot I cannot yet articulate.
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  Speaker 3: In this language.
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  Speaker 1: So the universe is running away from us. Anybody with
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: abandonment issues just think about that.
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  Speaker 3: True?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and how does this affect us in a
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  Speaker 2: functional way? Like it's super interesting and knowing about all
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  Speaker 2: this history, but is this something that that is there
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  Speaker 2: is sort of an actionable you know, effects in our
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  Speaker 2: in our daily lives kinda.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, So, so how they measure the galaxies are all
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  Speaker 4: moving away from everything's moving away from each other, but
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  Speaker 4: from our perspective, it looks like it's moving away from us.
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  Speaker 4: And so that's how they extrapolated the Big Bang. Basically,
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  Speaker 4: like if everything's moving apart, if you just run the
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  Speaker 4: clock back, that means everything at some point was really
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: scrunched together. And that's kind of the Big Bang. And
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: that's kind of what dark energy is, which is that
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: A little bit later, or actually kind of recently, they
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: found that the galaxies they are not just moving away
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: from us, They're getting faster and faster. It's like they're
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: not just moving away from us. It's like they're hitting
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: the pedal to the medal, trying to get away from us.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: As fast as possible.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Wow, well we've all seen Earth.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: We can't play, you know, we will see what's going on.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I'd have to imagine that has to do with some
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: sort of like exponential curve perhaps, or just some the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: way things sort of like over time, you know, kind
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: of the curve sort of becomes steeper. And I don't
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: know me trying to put it in. I'm a sound guy,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: so maybe I'm thinking of it in those terms. But
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: can you explain a little bit about why non occurs?
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: The soul's speeding up?
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so the universe is expanding faster and faster and
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: nobody knows why. And that big question mark about why.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: That's what scientists call dark energy, because you're like, you
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: need something to be pressing the pedal on these galaxies,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: something's like, you know, pushing them away and the and
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: so you need some kind of force, some kind of energy,
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: and so they don't know what it is, so they
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: just call it dark energy.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: So if the if the world's brightest minds, the eggheads
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and the boffins, if they're like police investigators on the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: case of universe expansion, they've got this big board right
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: with their suspects. You know, there's there's a little thumbnail
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: picture of gravity there pictures a strong weak nuclear force.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: They've got this one picture that's just a question mark
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and they wrote dark energy.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Basically, well they call it dark because you can't
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: see it, and it's an energy because it's like causing acceleration,
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: it's causing things to move. Uh, And it's kind of
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: really relevant to us because we since we don't know
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: what it is, we don't know what it's going to
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: do in the future. So like in the future, dark
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: energy might be like, oh, you know what I'm done,
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna stop accelerating the universe, in which case then
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: gravity might take over the whole universe and then scrunches
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: down back into a little tiny spot fun like at
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: the Big Bang.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh no, reverse Big Bang. Yeah.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: They called it the Big Crunch, very imagination, a big crunch.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Not to be confused with the serial brand.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: That's that must be the h that must be what
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: gave me that terrifying, inexplicable sense of unease.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: So you don't know what it's going to do, yeah,
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: nor when right or when. Yeah, it might be tomorrow,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: it might be in the trillion years, and nobody knows.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, everybody be nice to your friends. Just
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: in case.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about this guy,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: George I believe. I'm sorry, I'm maybe over on saying
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: his name, but it's my understanding that his paper is
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: what kind of solidified some of the first discussions of
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang theory that were then kind of accepted.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sort of. So like if we go back
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: to the point where we didn't know what those fuzzy
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: things in this guy were, So we could see these
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: fuzzy things in the sky, and we could tell that
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: they were red shifted. So like they because they were
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: moving away from us. The light kind of gets slower
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: and so it turns red. When light gets slower, it
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: turns red, and so they, like we could tell these
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: things were red shifted and so moving away from us.
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: And so he was a guy who kind of floated
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: the idea that maybe means things are moving away from
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: us and maybe means things are expanding.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And to date, when we're talking about concepts like this, right,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: we are able to gather a lot of data.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: We are able.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: To draw or construct our most reasonable national theories about it.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: But as anybody reading pop science in the news today
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: or throughout history knows there for one person that makes
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: an agreed upon, you know, going theory, there are easily
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a rogues gallery of dozens of other people who come
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: up and say, yeah, but what if I had another idea?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: So I would love to hear just from your expertise,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: would love to hear some of your favorite alternative explanations
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: for the universe, because I know, you know, science stuff
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: has been talking about black holes quite recently. One of
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: one theory that I think came back into resurgence quite
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: recently was a group of scientists Now I'll have to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: find their names who proposed that proposed an old theory
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that the universe was not created by a big bang,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: but instead dwells within somehow within a super massive black hole.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: What are you?
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: What are your Some of your favorite alternative theories bonus
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: points were crazy?
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think that ranks up pretty high. So
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: we recently did an episode on scigence stuff about what
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: could be inside of a black hole and we had
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: we had five theories and this was number five, like
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: like the most craziest one, and the is that you know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: if you take a black hole and you throw two
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: rocks into it, Like you throw a rock in one
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: direction and a rock in the other direction. They're both
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: going to fall down to the center, but near the
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: center of the black hole, those rocks are going to
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: be moving so much that one of them is actually
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: going to kind of curve around the center of the
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: black hole inside of what's called the singularity and actually
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: hit the other rock that you threw in that was
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: going the other way. Because everything gets warped inside of
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: a black hole down to a point. So those two
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: rocks are going to hit each other, and they're going
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: to hit each other with so much energy that it's
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: going to have the same or more energy than what
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: was at the Big Bang. And so scientists think like, oh, whoa,
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: So these are just two rocks hitting each other inside
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: of a black hole, and it's probably happening all the
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: time in every black hole that we know out there,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: and it's energy as big as a Big Bang. Maybe
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: that's how our universe started, Like our universe could just
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: be two rocks hitting each other inside of a black hole,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: and that's where that's that's where we are right now,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: and inside of our universe you can have more black
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: holes with more universes and instead of those universes, you
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: can have more black holes with more universes inside of them.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Not to get too like sci fi about it, I guess,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: but given that potential for all of these infinite you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: other universes, doesn't it seem a little bit kind of
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know, self centered to think that this is
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: the only universe that supports life and that this is
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: the only universe that has like, you know, stuff going
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: for it. Always kind of had a hard time accepting that. Like,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I believe in extraterrestrials and not
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: much more of an atheist and agnostic than any kind
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: of religious person, but I have a hard time believing
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: that this is all there is, given these infinite possibilities. Yeah.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's not even getting into like the multiverse,
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: which is like this, yeah, his ex version of multiple universe.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: This is like the actual just in our universe, there
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: could be other universes and other people in those as well,
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: a world.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: In a grain of sands, right, as they used to say,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: this is okay, this is fascinating. First off, again, not
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: being an expert, I love the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: vibe of explaining the universe as two rocks bumped together
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and then everything happens. This, also, I think, leads us
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to a fantastic and natural segue on something that has
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: been an area of fascination for ourselves and a lot
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: of our audience members for a long time, quantum physics.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: We've been circulating this clip from a fantastic professor named
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Rama Murty Shenkar, and he had this line where he's
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: speaking with his students and it's the day they start
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: studying quantum physics, and he says, here's my goal. Right now,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I'm the only one who doesn't understand quantum mechanics. In
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: about seven days, all of you will also be unable
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to understand quantum mechanics.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: The famous physicist Richard Feinman is famously quoted as saying, like,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: quantum physics basically, like, not even the smartest people in
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: the world really understand it.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess that's what I was getting at
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: in terms of, you know, there comes this crossover point
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: where you have to accept the things that you don't
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: know and Ben and I have often talked about, is
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that the point where things become in the realm of
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: spirituality or in the realm of magic or all of that.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: You know, it just seems like.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: There has to be room for the things we don't know,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: and what is the scientific communities perspective on that. The
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: guy that I mentioned earlier, this dude La maitre Belgian
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: astronomer or cosmologist. Rather, he was also deeply religious person
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: and you know, had a lot to do with talking
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: about this Big Bang theory stuff, but also kind of
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: looked at it in a way that reconciled it with
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: the creation of the universe, like in a religious sense.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I just wonder what your thoughts are around around that
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: and where those worlds meet and if there's room for
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: these worlds to coexist.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well well I should I say, well, I
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: should sort of clarify so people don't understand quantum mechanics
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: because it's like it's based on math that's very unintuitive
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: to us, Like we're not trained, like our brains get
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: involved to really kind of have an intuitive feel for
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: like things that are random and things that are in
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: two places at the same time, or they have probability
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: of being at the same place at the same time
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: in this universe. And so most of what people know
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: about quantum physics comes from experiments. So like, if you
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: run experiments, this is what the universe tells you. That's
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: how things are. And so when people say they don't
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: understand it, it's like people are saying, like, well, it's
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: crazy that it is that way, but that's you know,
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: if you poke at the universe, that's what it shows
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: you how it is. And so it's experimentally based. This
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: is what I wanted to just clarify. But yeah, I
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: think science is very clear, and scientists are very good
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: at saying only things or believing in things, only in
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: things that they know they can prove with experiment. Yeah.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've often I try to condense that thought down,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: often by explain it this way. Science attempts to answer
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: how thing occurs, right, and spirituality metaphysics, who could call it,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: attempts to address why that occurs. So the how and
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the why can sometimes seem quite separated. And then when
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you get to the bleeding edges of physics and our understanding,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the two things get weirdly combined, you know. And I've
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: do it since we'd audio podcast, I'm doing little hand gestures.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that just the last thing on
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: this la maitre dudes and just fascinating to me. I
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: want to dig more into him. He had this to
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: say about exactly what you're talking about. As far as
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I can see, such a theory, talking about Big Bang
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: the materialist free to deny any transcendental being. For the believer,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: it removes any attempt at familiarity with God. It is
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: The beginning of the universe. I just think that's a
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: badass quote.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely things that are
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: beyond what scientists can say or even understand, and and
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: there are things that may possibly never be able to
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: be understood by scientists. But until then, you know, we
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: just gotta use our best approach to understanding the world,
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: which is science. It's better than making things, so it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Is, no doubt it is.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: It's it's that even if you add a little bit
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of fudge.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: To your equation, Yeah, yeah, it happens, you know. It happens.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: We're just humans.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: I love these It happens while.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: We're on much happens.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Or a could you tell us about the history of
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: quantum physics. We know that there's something afoot right with
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the double slit experiment. The other the other concept and
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: popular culture would be like Schrodinger's cat. For instance, when
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: did people really start clocking onto this idea of quantum
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: physics and later quantum mechanics, Like was there was there
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a light bulb moment? Was there like one guy or
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: one person who stood up and said, eureka, I'm in
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: two places at once.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what's rarely like one guy or girl? You know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: it's usually a group of people. But what's fascinating about
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: quantum physics is it all? It also happened within the
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: same like ten years, ten, fifteen, twenty years at the
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: beginning of the nineteenth century. So the way I think
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: of physics is like think of coke, Coca Cola coke. Right,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: there's classic coke and then there's New Coke. I guess
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: if you're old enough to remember new Cooke of Coke
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: zero didn't. New coke didn't do super super well. People
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: love Coke zero. I think that's better. Okay, there's classic coke,
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: there's a coke zero, and so classic coke is what
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: people call classical physics, like think of Newton and f
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: eicals Ma, And the best analogy is to think of
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: like a old table, like how the billiard balls knock
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: on each other, how they bounce each is how you
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: can like aim one and hit one at an angle
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: and know that which angle they're both gonna come off from.
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: That's like classical physics, and that's kind of how the
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: whole world around this to our eyes and ears works,
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: Like if I throw a ball at you, you're gonna
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: basically know where it's gonna go and you're gonna be
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: able to catch it right. And so that's classical physics,
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: very pretty simple stuff. But around the beginning of the
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: nineteenth century, the physicists started kind of looking closer at
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: things and noticing weird things, like they notice that the energy,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: like the light that comes from something that's hot, it's
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: kind of weird, like there's some weird things about it.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: They notice that like if you shine a light on
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: some metals, electrons will kind of pop off, but only
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: like it's certain frequencies of light or certain settings of light,
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: or it's not proportional to how much light you shine
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: on it, and so there are all these like weird
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: things at the microscopic level. So the thing about quantum
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: physics is that it really only sort of applies to
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: things at the quant the really really tiny like atomic
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: or close to atomic sizes. That's when you really see
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the weird quantum stuff. Like in our everyday lies, we're
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: not gonna like your cat is not gonna be in
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: two places at the same time, if it's a live
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: or it's dead. It's one of those two things. But
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: if you get down to like atoms and you like
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: you ask, like, is where is this atom? You're gonna
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: get some weird answers like sometimes the atom is here,
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: but then you measure it a little bit later on
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: it's over there. And sometimes you measured a little bit
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: before where you thought it would be, but no, it's
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: over here. And that's when you get these weird quantum effects.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: Reality seems negotiable. That's spooky, uh, because that's what we
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: call it, right, spooky Actually.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: Is this is this where quantum entanglement comes in. Forgive
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: me if I'm jumping the shark here.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when people talk about like quantum physics,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: they usually mean like a couple of like two or
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: three weird things of how things behave. One of them
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: is this idea that like things can be in two
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: places at the same time, or they can be up
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: and down at the same time. A quantum entangum quantum
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: entanglement is another one where like if you have two
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: fuzzy things, they can sort of and make them interact.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: Now they're sort of coupled in this weird thing where
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: like if you take one cat that's maybe a labor
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: dead and another cat's maybe a labor dead, and you
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: have him interact, now you have like four possibilities, like
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: both cats could be delave, if both cats could be dead,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: and so things just get kind of like complicated, and
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: all those possibilities are now happening at the same time.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: So this is.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: This is something that for a lot of people might
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: be dismissed as an academic truth. There's a series of observations.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: You might read this in the paper or I guess
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: see it online or on your phone now, and then
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: you say, Okay, that's cool, but how does that apply
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: to me? And it feels like, the most immediate answer
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: to that now would be the ongoing breakthroughs in what
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: we call quantum computers. Could you tell us a little
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: bit about what a quantum computer is, or what quantum
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: computing is, how it differs from you know, the machines
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: we're using to record this episode.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: Today, right right, Well, bet let me tell you something amazing,
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: which is that every computer is quantum.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Oh man, what this has to do with the processing power? Right?
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Basically, so the way microchips were sort of invented,
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: you know, we're talking about transistors in like silicone chips
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: and all that, that was all due to quantum physics.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: So some dudes in Bill Labs back in the fifties
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: sixty seventies they're like, oh, there's this thing called quantum physics.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: I wonder what we can do with that. And then
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: they thought, well, maybe we can make tiny little transistors
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: the size of several atoms. And that is the only
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: reason that we have iPhones and Internet and that we're
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: talking and people are listening to us right now.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, guys, we're quantum. We just went quantum
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: of this episode. We have quantum left.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: It's true. We quantum left the shark.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: But when people talk about quantum computing, isn't that sort
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: of a stand in that maybe is a little bit
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: of a misnomer, but about just more and more exponentially
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: powerful processors.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I said, every computer is quantum, but
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: quantum computers are a different kind of computers that are
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: also quantum. But so it's a computer in which the
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: circuits are so so small that they're actually down like
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: at the single atom, single electron, or single sort of
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: quantum particle level. And so it turns out that when
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: you make a circuit with quantum particles, then you can
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: do quantum maths like you can do the math that
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: happens in the quantum universe, the quantum world, and that
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: math is really good at solving certain things. So it's
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: not probably not good for like video calling or listening
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: to podcasts, but it's like super incredibly good at, for example,
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: like breaking passwords cryptograph.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Because it can do it can just run so many
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: patterns like to the point where it'll it'll it'll more
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: or less process of elimination down to the correct solution
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: because of how quickly it can run all of these
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: you know scenarios.
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: Right, exactly right. Like, if I wanted to guess your
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: password right now using like an iMac or a computer,
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: I would probably have to program the computer to like
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: guess every number from here to ten trillion, and that
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: would just take a really really long time. But like
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: a quantum computer, because it can do quantum math, it can,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: like you said, kind of feel things out all in parallel,
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: and once you do the math and the quantum kind
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: of notation, then like the answer kind of like bubbles
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: up to the surface and then you sort of get
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: your your password almost right away.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: That's wild.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Cryptography is one of the one of the big applications
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people talk about, right, breaking codes, encryption, decryption.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: What are some other potential uses of this this kind
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: of new gen of computing.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now that's about it. That's what that we know
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: of that we know of so so like we just
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: happened to randomly in the nineties, some computer scientists was like,
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: you know what, this breaking of password is really hard,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: but maybe we can use quantum computer. Then you figured
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: out that you can use quantum mass to break that problem.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: Now scientists think that there may be other problems like that,
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: like who knows, like you know, you know, finding the
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: nearest habitable planet maybe could be solved by a quantum
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: computer faster or something like that. You know, I'm totally
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: making that up. But the idea is that there might
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: be like big, big problems out there that we don't
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: know about yet that quantum computers are really good at solving.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: And the other thing that people say quantum computers are
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: good for is just simulating physical nature, you know, because
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: the world is quantum once you get down to Adams,
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: and so you kind of need a quantum computer to
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: be able to simulate that better.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating because then that implies that humanity has created
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: or discovered a thing that can potentially solve problems. Humanity
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: has not yet figured out how to ask. Yeah, exactly right, Okay,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that's that's why that that leads us to another thing
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: where we're gonna have to I think, no, we're gonna
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: have to hang out with Jorge more often on the
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: show if you'll have us Whorge.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah for sure.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: And also I was gonna just really quickly last thing
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: about the quantum computing stuff as pertains to another show
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: that Ben and I do together that I think you'd
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: also be a great guest on for this topic. Specifically,
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: stuff they don't want you to know is is that
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: there seems to be a sense that the escalation of
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: quantum computers and their ability to do these things could
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: potentially lead to a future where you can't have a
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: secret password anymore. It's just like that is passe at
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: this point because there is no security because of how
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: powerful these machines are.
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: And just by the fact that they exist.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: Right, Like think of your bank accounts that that's anyone
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: can get it into that. Even if you have like
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: cryptocurrency like bitcoin or dougecoin, the fund of computers could
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: break that up and basically that would all be meaningless.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: So what's the solution.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: There is this like nuclear power type stuff where you
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: have to keep it under wraps, where you got to.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Decide who gets it. Like it's just I don't know.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: It's scary when you talk about I.
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: Think everyone has to walk around naked. That's the only
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: solution is no more secrets. Okay, fair, no more secrets.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: See Atlanta Police Department.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: I'm not a criminal. I'm ahead of the curve.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: No fully on board. I think there's a lot more
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: to discuss here. We had some other topics that we
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: were considering, but I think there was just so much
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: here in Big Bang and quantum physics and now into
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: quantum computing that we may well just book a part
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: two for this soon down the road and explore some
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: of these other topics that we had, like the history
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: of neuroscience.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: For brain science. We were talking about this, and this
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: feels like a natural I mean, the scary way to
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: get into it for us would be to immediately ask
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you or hey, will will human civilization arrive at a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: point where without using the word AI, which I find problematic,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: will human civilization arrive at a point where one could
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: create something as complex and as recognizable in function as
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: an organic human brain?
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Is that?
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Like, is that where we're headed?
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: That might be where we're at right now.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: No.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: So the crazy thing is that a lot of these
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: AI models that people use every day, they're super creative
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: about like how how big they are or how complex
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: they are. Like if you try to find out like
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: how many notes, which is kind of like the basic
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: unit in an AI neural network, Like how many notes
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: is Chad GPT four have or five Chad Chad GIPT
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: five or any like nobody will tell you because they're
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: all you know, trade secrets, and so some estimates out
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: there are that these might be getting close or at
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: least kind of like in the same order of magnitude
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: or getting there to like how many neurons you have
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: in your brain or how many connections you have in
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: your brain, and so, like, you know, we were not
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: too frustry to do later. You're both talking to an
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: AI right now. I am an AI.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: It's getting creepily, I mean, speaking of exponential you know improvement.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Remember when AI slop was just so obvious and was
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: like pixelated and weirdly stretched and just bizarro, and it
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: just seemed like kind of like a novelty, right yeah,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: But now it's just it's too good and I don't
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: particularly like it. And also I was seeing that some
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: of the most popular pieces of content now on the
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: internet are AI generated are you know, machine learning generated.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: That's problematic in and of itself, and it's like, you know,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: we struggle with this whole idea of like we don't
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: want to be luddites and get left behind or be
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: old man screaming at cloud. But it does feel like
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: there's a real inflection point where you can't turn the
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: clock back anymore, and it's not a good thing. I
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: certainly think that there is excellent, positive, life, world changing
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: uses for these kinds of things, but it seems like
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: corporations just trot this stuff out without really thinking about
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: the knock on effects.
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: They don't. I don't think they do it all. They're just
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: rushing to be the first. And I think we are
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: definitely an inflection point, as you mentioned, like there's things
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: are definitely different now. But I kind of think that.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: This was only a handful of years ago.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: No, it was Will Smith eating a bowl of spaghetti,
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: you know, and it looked like absolute pixelated garbage. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: now you can make stuff that looks like the news.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: It's pristine. Sorry interrupt It blows my mind.
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: It's totally mind blowing. Yeah, But I think back to
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: the time when photoshop became popular. M remember that, like
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: before you could trust a photograph with a photograph, but
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: at some point it's like, no, you can't trust any
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: photograph at all. I think it's just going to be
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: the same for like video now, and you can't really
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: trust any video that you see out there.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Well, it could go wrong. Well, and like with photoshop,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: you know you have experts.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: As it got better and better, who can be like, okay,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: these are the red flags, these are the things to
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: look for it. So you know this photoshop and there
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: certainly still are big signs of AI AI generated stuff,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: But as it gets better and better, those signs are
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: going to be fewer and fewer and harder and harder
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: to see. And you really are going to require experts
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: or we've even talked about on stuff that I want
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: you to know how there would need to be some
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: validation form like of of footage, some sort of watermark
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: or something to show that this was captured in real
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: life through a telephone photo device, through a photographic device.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to come down to trust, like who
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: do you whose camera do you trust that was not
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: tempered with AI? You know, whose motivation you feel is good?
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: And that gets even trickier because then when we were
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: forced to resort to trust, which can sometimes be a
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: subjective exercise, or force this uh to to resort to
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: trusts as a currency or authenticator, then we we re
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: enter the world of absolute wing nuts. It makes me
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: remember when we were working previously on some of the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: most popular conspiracy theories in Western culture, one of which
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: being landed on the moon. Right, that old, that old
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: workhorse gets trotted out all the time. I was talking
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: with people who were Noel and our pal Matt. We're
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: talking with people who would genuinely bring up trust, and
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: they would say, well, have you met any astronauts?
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: And we have.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I met some astronauts there, yeah, yeah,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: and that they said, well do you trust what was
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: your vibe check on those astronauts?
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, they're kind of busy. And that's extra
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: tough though, Ben, isn't it?
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: As trust has just eroded so far in terms of
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: trust of the media, in terms of trust of literally
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: what is before your very eyes. So these two things
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: do not, unfortunately align particularly well do that.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: And we're still arguing if the Earth is round? There
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: are people guys who are convinced shut.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: Out Bob right right, airplanes and the night sky. Have
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: you ever met an astronaut? They're the only ones you
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: could see it. Did you trust them?
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: But this is this is where we get to, uh,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: maybe if we want to put a potter on it,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: we could say I love your point there, Orge, about
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: how this feels like a new iteration of similar inflection points,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And no, I think you've nailed the perfect phrase for that.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Here's hoping humanity can address these same breakthroughs, the way
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that civilization was able to soldier through and adapt to
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: previous huge game changers. It all goes down to brain science.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: And we don't want to put you on the spot, Orge,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: but we'd love to have you back on a future
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: episode where we can we can learn from you about
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the very strange historical saga of humans attempting to study themselves.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Two questions, First, are you okay with that? Would you
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: like to hang out with us?
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: Absolutely? Does this super fun?
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: Awesome? Yes? Okay, great?
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: That would have been an awkward day, yeah, if you
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: were if you were too busy.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: Second, w I know?
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Secondly, one of our ending questions here, just as a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: tease for the wild history ridiculous, dare I say at
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: times a brain science? What's what are your favorite brain
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: science like anecdotes or maybe quack science in that pursuit.
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there's a lot. I've read a book with
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: a neuroscientist about just the whole brain, the history of
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: the brain, what we know about the brain. You know,
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: one of the most fascinating stories we have on there
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: is the story of someone called patient HM, Henry Moulayson.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: And basically have you seen the movie Memento, which was
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: Christopher Nolan's basically first breakout movie. This guy who could
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: only remember thirty seconds at a time, Like, that's real,
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: Like that's something that happens out to some people out
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: there in the world, And it's actually something that happened
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: to someone named Henry Moullayson a while a little while ago,
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: and he was basically test subject for the rest of
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: his life. And that's uh, and through him is how
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: we know a lot about how our memory works. Like
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: before we didn't know think that there were things like
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: you know, mortar memory, short term memory, long term memory, uh,
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: different kinds of memories and where they were in the brain.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: But thanks to like basically the momental guy, we kind
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: of figure all all of that out. And it's fascinating
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: to see like what he could remember and what he
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: couldn't remember.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: Amazing lots of perfect ties.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: For the next episode where we have you back, where
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: we talk more about the history of brain science, and
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: I do just want to point out really quickly, to
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: circle back to something that was said quite a while ago.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Max pointed out in the chat here that we do
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: on Ridiculous History have multiple episodes about bird poop, not
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: just one.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: We went didn't get to the bird poop.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got Uh that's gonna sound weird
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: out of context, but yeah, Noel, you're correct.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: We went through a burth phace. Oh my gosh. So hey,
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: where can folks find your work?
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: We know we have science stuff still, episodes of Daniel
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: and Jorhicks for the Universe. You're a published author on
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: many fronts of polymaths, has been put it, but give
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: us the scoop. Where can ridiculous historians out there check
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: out your work?
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah? The best way to find me is just search
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: for science stuff. One word on your iHeartRadio app or
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: wherever you're listening to this, and please describe. We tackle
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: super fun, super fascinating questions. We talk to experts, and
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: we keep in light and fun and easy to understand.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: So that's my thing. And then if you're interested in
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: some of my science work, I do have several books published.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: There's one about kind of what we don't know? About
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: the universe. There's one about the brain and what we
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: don't know about the Brain. And I also have a
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: series of kids books called Oliver's Great Big Universe. But
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: please check out Science Stuff That's wow a.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: Question about it.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: It is a classic how stuff works style science exploration
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: and Jorge is a.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Ace science communicator.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: So we can't thank you enough for hanging out with
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: us today on Ridiculous System.
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: This is super fun. It was ridiculously fun.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: YEA glad to hear you know what that's that's our
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: ultro do. I think it must be what a ride?
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: Can't wait for Part two?
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Big big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed this track.
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: Oh Yes, and.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Huge thanks to Jonathan strick Land aka the quist Or
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: A J. Bahamas Jacob's aka the Puzzler Big Oh.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine you know how fun it would be
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: to get Bahamas and Jorge.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: In a room together. Unbelievable. I think a singularity would occur.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Time space as we know it would break down, but
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: like in the most fun way.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Imaginable and big big thanks to the Rude Dudes a
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coat
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: and Noel Big thanks to.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: You, man on you as well. Let's see you next time, folks.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.