Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Classic episode - What came before the Big Bang?

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Classic episode - What came before the Big Bang? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:04
Speaker 1: What if you thought, as an adult that you've been
0:06
Speaker 1: alive forever and then you discovered no, you actually had
0:09
Speaker 1: a childhood and you were born, and you would want
0:11
Speaker 1: to know all about that.
0:12
Speaker 2: And how you can be surprising.
0:13
Speaker 1: That would be surprising, And actually that's sort of the
0:16
Speaker 1: situation science was in for a long time. Astronomer thought
0:20
Speaker 1: the universe is fixed, it's constant. All the stars are
0:23
Speaker 1: just sort of hanging out there in space, not moving,
0:25
Speaker 1: and they'd been like that forever. Hi, I'm Daniel, is
0:39
Speaker 1: this warn So I'm a particle physicist. I smash protons
0:43
Speaker 1: together at cerned in my day job to try to
0:45
Speaker 1: figure out what is the basic nature of matter?
0:48
Speaker 2: What do you smash as a hobby?
0:49
Speaker 1: Then, yeah, we know. When you're a particle physicist you
0:51
Speaker 1: learn to solve problems by smashing stuff together. So whatever's
0:54
Speaker 1: around me.
0:55
Speaker 2: And I'm a cartoonist and my job is to sit
0:58
Speaker 2: in my pajamas all day and for aw funny things.
1:01
Speaker 1: That's not how you started, right. You didn't grow up
1:03
Speaker 1: thinking I'm going to be a cartoonist.
1:04
Speaker 2: No, I started off as a researcher. I'm an engineer.
1:07
Speaker 2: I studied robotics. I have a PhD in robotics. But
1:10
Speaker 2: somewhere along the line I started drawing comics and that
1:14
Speaker 2: kind of took off for me.
1:15
Speaker 1: And this is our podcast Daniel and Jorge.
1:18
Speaker 2: Explain the Universe. Today. We're going to talk about how
1:22
Speaker 2: it all began.
1:23
Speaker 1: The biggest of questions, the Big Bang.
1:32
Speaker 2: What happened at the very beginning of the universe?
1:36
Speaker 1: What happened before the Big Bang? It's a pretty deep
1:38
Speaker 1: basic question by the origin of our universe. What do
1:41
Speaker 1: you think about it? What do you know about it?
1:43
Speaker 1: What do you imagine might have happened before the start
1:46
Speaker 1: of our universe. We went out and we asked people
1:48
Speaker 1: on the street what they thought happened just before the
1:51
Speaker 1: Big Bang.
1:52
Speaker 2: Well, there was a bunch of particles in the universe
1:55
Speaker 2: and then combined together and poof you created had all
2:01
Speaker 2: the energy of the universe. So then when.
2:06
Speaker 1: It happened, that's how it was all disperse. So most
2:09
Speaker 1: people seem to have some idea that, first of all,
2:12
Speaker 1: the Big Bang is more than just a TV show,
2:14
Speaker 1: right right. The idea for the science came before the
2:17
Speaker 1: TV show.
2:17
Speaker 2: I was kind of relieved to hear that everyone seems
2:20
Speaker 2: to know it's it sort of marks the beginning of
2:22
Speaker 2: the universe.
2:23
Speaker 1: Right, it's a moment of creation or the starting of
2:26
Speaker 1: the clock of the universe. Right, everything came from?
2:28
Speaker 2: But what exactly happened during the Big Bang? And most interestingly,
2:34
Speaker 2: what happened before the Big Bank?
2:37
Speaker 1: Right? And that's fascinating to me. And these are the
2:40
Speaker 1: best questions, the ones that like try to answer the
2:42
Speaker 1: question where did everything come from? It sort of touches
2:45
Speaker 1: on the philosophical like why are we here? If you
2:48
Speaker 1: knew how the Big Bang happened and how the universe
2:50
Speaker 1: was created, you might get some insight into what the
2:53
Speaker 1: purpose of life is or how to live your life
2:55
Speaker 1: or stuff. So to me, these are like really good, deep,
2:57
Speaker 1: basic questions.
3:03
Speaker 2: So we made a list of the four things we
3:05
Speaker 2: think you should know about the Big Bang. The first
3:08
Speaker 2: one is that the entire universe was once really small.
3:14
Speaker 2: Maybe we think, let's talk about that. What do you mean?
3:17
Speaker 1: Maybe, Well, it's an interesting question. We know that the
3:19
Speaker 1: universe had a beginning, right, And how do we know that?
3:21
Speaker 1: We know that because things are expanding, things are moving
3:24
Speaker 1: away from each other. Okay, that was the major discovery.
3:26
Speaker 1: Like one hundred years ago, people looked out in the
3:28
Speaker 1: stars and discovered that they're all moving away from us.
3:31
Speaker 2: Okay, so like we thought everything would still like we
3:34
Speaker 2: were frozen in a gel or something. The stars were
3:36
Speaker 2: just like they're sitting there, yeah, generally speaking, But then
3:40
Speaker 2: they discovered that they actually things are moving away from
3:43
Speaker 2: each other.
3:43
Speaker 1: That's right, And everything is moving away from us, and
3:46
Speaker 1: everything is moving away from everything else. They just looked
3:48
Speaker 1: at stars, and you can measure how fast a star
3:51
Speaker 1: is moving relative to us by seeing how its light
3:54
Speaker 1: is stretched or shrunk, depending on whether it's moving away
3:57
Speaker 1: from us or towards us, like a Doppler.
3:59
Speaker 2: Shift, Like the highway patrol measuring your speed, you can
4:03
Speaker 2: sort of you can tell how fast you're going.
4:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
4:06
Speaker 2: It's not like they looked at the starts and said,
4:07
Speaker 2: oh now it's do one's over there. It must have moved.
4:10
Speaker 2: It's like it's some other information right, right.
4:12
Speaker 1: So they looked out there and they measured all this
4:13
Speaker 1: stuff and they said, whoa, everything's stretching out and moving
4:16
Speaker 1: away from each other. So then the very natural consequences
4:19
Speaker 1: to say, well, run that backwards. What does that mean?
4:22
Speaker 1: It means things might have been smaller and more dense,
4:25
Speaker 1: and maybe even come from a little spot.
4:27
Speaker 2: Like if you hit the rewind bun, if you see
4:29
Speaker 2: things make getting bigger. Now, if you hit the rewind bun,
4:32
Speaker 2: wow for a while, what happens exactly?
4:35
Speaker 1: And those are the mental games people were playing. And
4:37
Speaker 1: actually the phrase big bang was a joke that people
4:40
Speaker 1: made up to mock that idea. They're like, look, how
4:42
Speaker 1: ridiculous this idea is.
4:44
Speaker 2: It is kind of a silly sounding name, right.
4:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was whimsical. It was. It was like a
4:47
Speaker 1: Donald Trump insult, you know, for somebody else's.
4:50
Speaker 2: Big le bang.
4:51
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, the big Bang.
4:54
Speaker 2: Well, if you were like a respectable scientist today and
4:56
Speaker 2: you had to name this event, you wouldn't call it
5:00
Speaker 2: bank or do you think that it was a good name?
5:02
Speaker 1: Oh man, if I was on a marketing committee, discover
5:06
Speaker 1: the new name for it, the moment of creation. Now,
5:10
Speaker 1: I think big Bang is actually pretty good, you know, Yeah,
5:12
Speaker 1: you got your alliteration. It's short, it's pithy, you know,
5:16
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty well done. I think that's probably why
5:18
Speaker 1: it survived so.
5:19
Speaker 2: Long, because everyone wants the universe to start with the bank, right,
5:24
Speaker 2: that's right. So you play back the movie of the
5:26
Speaker 2: Universe and it tells us that everything was once much
5:31
Speaker 2: closer together, and then much much closer, and then much
5:34
Speaker 2: much closer, and if you keep thinking about it, things
5:38
Speaker 2: may have been really really really close together.
5:40
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, they just keep extrapolating down to a point.
5:43
Speaker 1: And around the same time, Einstein came up with all
5:46
Speaker 1: of his ideas of general relativity and thinking about gravity
5:49
Speaker 1: and how the universe works, and people were playing with
5:51
Speaker 1: those equations and discovering that those equations actually predicted that
5:55
Speaker 1: the universe could start from a point. They were consistent
5:57
Speaker 1: with Einstein's ideas of gravity. What do you mean It
6:00
Speaker 1: was consistent, meaning that you can construct a universe that
6:05
Speaker 1: starts from a point and then it blows up and expands.
6:08
Speaker 1: And that totally makes sense from an Einstein gravity point
6:11
Speaker 1: of view, like it follows the rules.
6:14
Speaker 2: It's allowed, okay, meaning that nothing weird happens, like you
6:19
Speaker 2: can cram that much stuff into such a small.
6:21
Speaker 1: Space according to Einstein. All right, what is he know?
6:25
Speaker 1: Which is pretty well accepted as a smart guy, he
6:28
Speaker 1: knows what he's talking about. But you know, there are
6:30
Speaker 1: some issues there. The original idea was the Big Bang,
6:34
Speaker 1: was this really dense hot blob of stuff and then
6:37
Speaker 1: it blew up and expanded into things we know. And
6:40
Speaker 1: you know, that was a weird idea for a long time,
6:42
Speaker 1: and people didn't believe it for a long time. It
6:44
Speaker 1: was in the sixties that they finally found the first
6:47
Speaker 1: like concrete piece of evidence that maybe the Big Bang
6:49
Speaker 1: had happened, right, And that's when they discovered the thing
6:53
Speaker 1: called the cosmic microwave background radiation.
6:56
Speaker 2: So it was weird to think about so much stuff
6:58
Speaker 2: and matter and stars being cramped to small space.
7:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it meant the universe wasn't always this dark
7:05
Speaker 1: and cold and empty place that we know today. It
7:08
Speaker 1: was like a hot, dense blob like the center of
7:10
Speaker 1: the sun.
7:11
Speaker 2: It's a hot mess.
7:12
Speaker 1: It was a hot mess exactly. The universe was not
7:15
Speaker 1: well organized when it was young.
7:18
Speaker 2: So yeah, so they said, okay, now, but now they
7:22
Speaker 2: saw something like you called the cosmic microwave background radiation
7:26
Speaker 2: that said, yes, that's a clear indication things were a
7:29
Speaker 2: hot mess before.
7:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, if things were really hot and dense
7:33
Speaker 1: a long time ago, then they should have given off
7:35
Speaker 1: this special kind of light and we should still be
7:37
Speaker 1: able to see it today. And they went out and
7:39
Speaker 1: they found it.
7:40
Speaker 2: You can see it like you.
7:42
Speaker 1: Can see it if you have a special radio telescope.
7:45
Speaker 1: And some guys built a fancy radio telescope. They weren't
7:47
Speaker 1: even actually looking for this background radiation and they just
7:50
Speaker 1: had a hiss in their telescope. They had this noise
7:54
Speaker 1: in their telescope. And coincidentally, some people a couple of
7:58
Speaker 1: years earlier had predicted, oh, if you this kind of telescope,
8:00
Speaker 1: you'll and the big bang happened. You'll hear this hiss
8:03
Speaker 1: and they turn on their telescope. They heard this hiss
8:05
Speaker 1: and they're like, what is this. We can't get rid
8:06
Speaker 1: of this noise. And then two years later they won
8:08
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize.
8:09
Speaker 2: That's a great discovery. It's a pretty you're going to
8:12
Speaker 2: get fired. But then they're like, oh, that mistake you made.
8:15
Speaker 2: It's the discovery of the universe.
8:18
Speaker 1: That's right.
8:18
Speaker 2: So that's the big bang. It's everything was once really
8:21
Speaker 2: small and then it's just kind of exploded out into
8:24
Speaker 2: what we have today.
8:25
Speaker 1: That's right. That's the whole idea, is that the universe
8:28
Speaker 1: has a beginning and then it expanded into what we
8:30
Speaker 1: know today. And that was the sort of first idea
8:33
Speaker 1: of the Big Bang, like maybe everything came from a
8:36
Speaker 1: point and people, a lot of people, when they think
8:39
Speaker 1: about the Big Bang, they think about the universe starting
8:41
Speaker 1: in a singularity, meaning a bunch of stuff in zero volume.
8:45
Speaker 2: All of it on top of each other, in the
8:47
Speaker 2: same zero space exactly.
8:50
Speaker 1: And it's mind blowing to imagine, Like, take the Sun
8:53
Speaker 1: and cram it down into the amount of space you
8:56
Speaker 1: have for a grain of sand, hard to imagine, right now,
8:59
Speaker 1: make it even small. Now add every other star in
9:02
Speaker 1: the universe on top of it. It's like your brain, right, Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: it's it's not really the same thing. It's just all
9:10
Speaker 1: the energy, all the energy density that we currently have
9:14
Speaker 1: in the universe was crammed into that tiny little space
9:17
Speaker 1: that was sort of the early idea. And you can
9:19
Speaker 1: imagine like a big empty universe of space with a
9:23
Speaker 1: tiny dot of matter in it, And of course that
9:26
Speaker 1: engenders a lot of questions like where did that tiny
9:28
Speaker 1: dot a matter come from? Right? Was there only one?
9:32
Speaker 1: How was it created? Right?
9:33
Speaker 2: But before we keep going, let's take a short break. Well,
9:47
Speaker 2: so that's the Big Bang, and so the next thing
9:49
Speaker 2: people should know is that the Big Bang happened about
9:52
Speaker 2: fourteen billion years ago billion with a b billion years ago. Yeah,
9:57
Speaker 2: and I can't even remember what I did this morning
10:00
Speaker 2: fourteen minutes ago. That's how old the universe is from
10:04
Speaker 2: that moment of the Big Bang.
10:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the universe has been around since the Big
10:09
Speaker 1: Bang about fourteen billion years and you know, for scale,
10:12
Speaker 1: the Earth has been around about four and a half
10:13
Speaker 1: billion years. That's when our solar system was formed.
10:16
Speaker 2: Right, Well, how do you how do we know how
10:18
Speaker 2: old the universe is? Like, yeah, like how can you tell?
10:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we are seeing it expand and so the
10:24
Speaker 1: simplest way is to just extrapolate back, say how fast
10:27
Speaker 1: is it expanding? And extrapolate that expansion back until the
10:30
Speaker 1: zero point.
10:31
Speaker 2: So like if you look at the furthest stars, you
10:34
Speaker 2: see you know how fast we're going? You can just
10:36
Speaker 2: like hit the rewind button. Yeah, it would take about
10:40
Speaker 2: fourteen billion years for it to connect to everything else.
10:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're pretty sure that something happened fourteen billion
10:47
Speaker 1: years ago. This expansion of space happened fourteen billion years ago.
10:51
Speaker 1: But these days scientists are a little fuzzier on what
10:54
Speaker 1: exactly the Big Bang was. So idea zero was a
10:58
Speaker 1: tiny dot with all the matter it explodes into the universe.
11:02
Speaker 1: Problems with this idea are one that you can't really
11:06
Speaker 1: have tiny dots of infinite density.
11:08
Speaker 2: So Einstein told me before you could.
11:10
Speaker 1: Well, that was Einstein's idea, and the idea is consistent
11:13
Speaker 1: with Einstein's gravity. But Einstein's theories of gravity don't account
11:17
Speaker 1: for quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics something they came after Einstein
11:21
Speaker 1: he was never really very comfortable with. And quantum mechanics
11:25
Speaker 1: is a whole, big, long story. But the thing we
11:27
Speaker 1: need to understand is that it says you can't have
11:29
Speaker 1: things that are super duper tiny. There might be a
11:31
Speaker 1: smallest space, there might be the smallest distance.
11:34
Speaker 2: Get fuzzy. Yeah, like at some point you can't get unfuzzier.
11:38
Speaker 1: That's right, exactly, there's a basic unit of fuzziness. Like
11:41
Speaker 1: imagine space being pixelated, right, Like you can't talk about
11:45
Speaker 1: something smaller than one pixel. So we think that quantum
11:48
Speaker 1: mechanics is probably correct. And if you big pixel, the
11:52
Speaker 1: big pixel, that's right, the first pixel of the universe.
11:55
Speaker 1: So we think if you try to follow Einstein extrapolate
11:59
Speaker 1: the universe down to a point, general relativity probably works.
12:02
Speaker 1: But we think it probably breaks when you get down
12:05
Speaker 1: to really really tiny distances and really heavy stuff. But
12:09
Speaker 1: nobody's ever seen that happen. You have to look inside
12:11
Speaker 1: a black hole or go back in time and see
12:13
Speaker 1: the Big Bang. But these days we have a slightly
12:16
Speaker 1: fuzzier version of the idea of the Big Bang. Rather
12:18
Speaker 1: than a point of matter that then explodes into space,
12:22
Speaker 1: we think of the universe as being created as a
12:24
Speaker 1: blob of space.
12:25
Speaker 2: And matter, and then all of space and matter. Yeah,
12:29
Speaker 2: so like it's like a blob of space.
12:32
Speaker 1: Like a tiny universe with not much space. So instead
12:36
Speaker 1: of an infinite universe with a tiny blob of matter
12:38
Speaker 1: in it, now imagine a tiny piece of space filled
12:41
Speaker 1: with energy and.
12:42
Speaker 2: Matter, Okay, and what's outside of that we have.
12:45
Speaker 1: No idea, Like seriously, we can't even imagine inconceivable, right,
12:50
Speaker 1: But we do know that space can be variable in size,
12:53
Speaker 1: space can expand, and these days we have a more
12:55
Speaker 1: modern idea of the Big Bang as that expansion of
12:58
Speaker 1: that space.
13:00
Speaker 2: It might kind of like a bubble, Like a bubble
13:02
Speaker 2: that's a space and then there's stuff in the bubble.
13:05
Speaker 2: So you're saying both those things blew up exactly.
13:09
Speaker 1: And this is the more modern idea that space itself
13:12
Speaker 1: can expand. And so if you're out there thinking, what
13:14
Speaker 1: is he talking about? How can space expand what is
13:16
Speaker 1: it expanding into? Everything has to be in something, right,
13:20
Speaker 1: And the answer is, we don't know. We think used
13:23
Speaker 1: to think of space as just like emptiness, and we
13:25
Speaker 1: can go a whole episode about just what space is,
13:27
Speaker 1: and I think we really will, so keep listening. But
13:31
Speaker 1: these days we think of space as a thing because
13:33
Speaker 1: it can span, it can bend, and it can ripple,
13:35
Speaker 1: so we know it has all these properties. So it
13:37
Speaker 1: might be that this bubble of space in the early
13:40
Speaker 1: universe was in some sort of super meta deep space
13:43
Speaker 1: that we have never really discovered, or nothing. It could
13:46
Speaker 1: be that it doesn't have to hang in something else,
13:49
Speaker 1: it's just the edge.
13:50
Speaker 2: But space itself was smaller that that much.
13:53
Speaker 1: We know. Space was small.
13:54
Speaker 2: Space was smaller, and the stuff in it was crammed
13:58
Speaker 2: in really really small, that's right. And then about fourteen
14:01
Speaker 2: billion years ago, for some reason do we know why,
14:04
Speaker 2: and we don't know why, it decided it didn't want
14:06
Speaker 2: to be that small anymore.
14:07
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, And that was the moment that space
14:10
Speaker 1: was created, and then it expanded like crazy, it's something
14:13
Speaker 1: we call inflation. Inflation is not you know why your
14:17
Speaker 1: money doesn't work as well every year? I mean that
14:19
Speaker 1: is inflation. But there's and I don't know why do
14:22
Speaker 1: we do this? In science? We take an idea, a
14:24
Speaker 1: word that everybody uses to mean one thing, right, we
14:27
Speaker 1: just like use that same word to mean something totally different.
14:30
Speaker 2: But it fits what it describes it. The universe inflated
14:34
Speaker 2: like a balloon, like a bowl, right.
14:36
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, it's a good descriptive name from that sense.
14:38
Speaker 1: So the universe inflated, that whole balloon inflated, and everything
14:42
Speaker 1: inside it got stretched. And the amount of stretching that
14:45
Speaker 1: happened is crazy. It's like the universe expanded in space
14:48
Speaker 1: by a factor ten to the thirty. That's ten with
14:51
Speaker 1: thirty zeros on it, some crazy huge number, and it
14:55
Speaker 1: did it in this really small amount of time ten
14:57
Speaker 1: to the minus thirty. So that's zero with thirty zeros
15:01
Speaker 1: after the decimal plays and then a one. So this
15:04
Speaker 1: incredible expansion, a huge expansion of space of ten to
15:07
Speaker 1: the thirty and this tiny amount of time ten to
15:10
Speaker 1: the minus thirty. It's hard to really even fathom.
15:13
Speaker 2: It wasn't a rush to get big.
15:14
Speaker 1: Yes, and it's still getting bigger today. And the other
15:17
Speaker 1: thing that's important to understand is that space didn't get
15:20
Speaker 1: created like on the outside of the universe. It's not
15:22
Speaker 1: like they made more room, it's stuff. The space inside
15:26
Speaker 1: of the universe stretched and kind was created, so like
15:29
Speaker 1: between two particles you had a certain amount of space,
15:31
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you had extra space between particles.
15:34
Speaker 1: So everything, Yeah, everything's getting stretched out from the inside
15:38
Speaker 1: also not just from the outside, and that's also continuing
15:41
Speaker 1: to happen, like the expansion of the universe today. The
15:44
Speaker 1: in fact the universe is getting bigger and bigger is
15:46
Speaker 1: happening all around us, more space being created.
15:50
Speaker 2: The third thing we should talk about today is that
15:53
Speaker 2: we don't know what happened before the Big Bang, like
15:56
Speaker 2: before this little bubble blew up, what happened before.
16:00
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take a quick break.
16:14
Speaker 1: This is like totally territory for speculation and philosophy. We
16:19
Speaker 1: have pretty good theories about what happened during the Big Bang,
16:22
Speaker 1: this idea of the inflation. We even have some experimental
16:25
Speaker 1: evidence to back it up, and it's pretty solid theory
16:28
Speaker 1: these days that inflation happened, But.
16:30
Speaker 2: What do you mean experimental? Like, we can't measure the
16:32
Speaker 2: Big Bang, can we?
16:33
Speaker 1: Right, So we can't go back in time and see it, right,
16:36
Speaker 1: But we can do things like detectives do after a murder,
16:38
Speaker 1: and we can look for clues and say, are the
16:40
Speaker 1: clues that we see in the universe today consistent with
16:43
Speaker 1: this story or with that other story?
16:45
Speaker 2: Right?
16:45
Speaker 1: So we can sift through the clues from the Big
16:47
Speaker 1: Bang and say, it looks like the universe was created,
16:50
Speaker 1: and if inflation happened, it probably created these ripples in
16:53
Speaker 1: that plasma, and we can see those ripples in the
16:55
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background radiation. It's really an incredible golden age
16:59
Speaker 1: of cosmology that doing all this really precision work to
17:01
Speaker 1: understand exactly what happened and what we know.
17:04
Speaker 2: So, but we can only see up to a certain
17:06
Speaker 2: points only before that is just the speculation.
17:09
Speaker 1: Before that, it's just speculation. So one popular idea is
17:13
Speaker 1: that there's this kind of matter called inflationary matter or infltons,
17:17
Speaker 1: and it has some weird gravitational properties, and those gravitational
17:21
Speaker 1: properties cause inflation.
17:23
Speaker 2: Like suddenly they came into being inside of this hot
17:25
Speaker 2: mess and it's like we need to get out of here.
17:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this never ending loop of questions. Right, So
17:32
Speaker 1: you say, well, the Big Bang was inflation. What caused
17:35
Speaker 1: inflation inflationary matter? Well, what created inflationary matter? It's like
17:38
Speaker 1: dot dot dot. You could just keep asking that question forever,
17:43
Speaker 1: and I think we will be asking that question forever.
17:45
Speaker 1: We will always be pushing back and trying to understand,
17:47
Speaker 1: and until we get back to negative infinity in time,
17:49
Speaker 1: we're never going to have like a solid answer. But
17:52
Speaker 1: that's part of the fun, right, It's not like it's
17:54
Speaker 1: the journey as much as the destination.
17:56
Speaker 2: But there's some cool ideas there about what happened before
17:59
Speaker 2: that point, right.
18:00
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, Like maybe the whole universe was filled
18:04
Speaker 1: with inflationary matter and in some places it decayed into
18:08
Speaker 1: normal matter and then inflation happened. And if that's the case,
18:12
Speaker 1: then you have like our universe is one spot inside
18:15
Speaker 1: some huge mega universe of inflationary matter, and maybe at
18:20
Speaker 1: other points in the in that mega universe there are
18:24
Speaker 1: also other dots that turned into what we call pocket universes.
18:28
Speaker 2: Like the zs of the the face of the of
18:31
Speaker 2: the mega universe.
18:32
Speaker 1: Mega zits on the mega universe.
18:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's maybe maybe, like our universe is just
18:38
Speaker 2: like a little bubble in a big sea of other bubbles.
18:40
Speaker 1: That's right, exactly.
18:41
Speaker 2: That's one idea.
18:42
Speaker 1: That's one idea, and we have no way to really
18:45
Speaker 1: to test that idea. Is the problem because there's no
18:48
Speaker 1: way for us to ever reach those other bubbles. Because
18:52
Speaker 1: if that's the case, if that's really the reality of our,
18:55
Speaker 1: of our, of the situation of nature, it means that
18:57
Speaker 1: inflation is still happening because that inflationary matter is still
19:01
Speaker 1: constantly expanding. So those other universes, those other bubbles are
19:05
Speaker 1: getting pushed away from us much much faster than the speed.
19:08
Speaker 2: Of light, because we'll never hang out.
19:11
Speaker 1: You can't send a message to there, you can't ever
19:13
Speaker 1: see it, you can't ever go there. And scientifically that's
19:16
Speaker 1: a big problem, not because I really want to go
19:18
Speaker 1: to the beaches in some other bubble universe, but because
19:21
Speaker 1: if you want to prove that it's true, you have
19:24
Speaker 1: to do an experiment, you have to find some evidence,
19:26
Speaker 1: you have to do you have to have a theory
19:28
Speaker 1: that can be confirmed. If you have a theory that
19:31
Speaker 1: predicts something you can never test, then it's not really
19:33
Speaker 1: a scientific theory or a useful one. It's it's like
19:37
Speaker 1: saying to guess. Yeah, it's a guess.
19:40
Speaker 2: And that's one theory. May were a bubble in a
19:43
Speaker 2: sea of other universes. What's another idea for what happened
19:46
Speaker 2: before the Big Bang?
19:47
Speaker 1: Well, another idea is that maybe there's a cycle, right,
19:50
Speaker 1: maybe the Big Bang was caused by a big crunch, right.
19:55
Speaker 1: And to understand that, you have to think about sort
19:57
Speaker 1: of the future first, Like, so the Big Bang happened,
19:59
Speaker 1: every thing expands out, and then one question is like
20:03
Speaker 1: are things going to keep expanding? We don't really know,
20:06
Speaker 1: But one possibility is they keep expanding forever and the
20:08
Speaker 1: universe just sort of drifts out into this endlessly cold, boring,
20:14
Speaker 1: bland situation. But another possibility is that it slows down, stops,
20:18
Speaker 1: and then falls back in right, Everything rushes back and
20:21
Speaker 1: gravity pulls everything back into it to recreate that hot mess. Yeah, deflation, Well,
20:28
Speaker 1: I think you.
20:28
Speaker 2: Just can I go back and change it to my son's.
20:31
Speaker 1: Name, olivation. The deflation theory would say that the universe
20:40
Speaker 1: comes back, falls.
20:41
Speaker 2: And then collapses back into a little hot mess again.
20:44
Speaker 1: A little hot mess. It's like recovering your youth. Right,
20:47
Speaker 1: It's like a middle aged crisis or.
20:48
Speaker 2: Whatever, and then it just bounces back again.
20:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that would be a cycle. So a big crunch,
20:53
Speaker 1: big bang, big crunch, big bang. That could be.
20:56
Speaker 2: Big bang us, big crunch, big bang again.
21:00
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody else, somebody else, better looking versions of us, Yeah.
21:03
Speaker 2: Impossible, impossibly. Yeah. So that's then another idea is that
21:08
Speaker 2: would happen before is like more and more universes.
21:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's something nice about that because it explains
21:15
Speaker 1: both that our universe had a beginning and it also
21:18
Speaker 1: gives you an explanation for what happened all the way
21:21
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of time because it returns to
21:23
Speaker 1: the possibility of the universe is infinitely old, right, because
21:27
Speaker 1: that could have been happening forever. It allows you to
21:29
Speaker 1: have the sort of finite length of time for our
21:32
Speaker 1: universe without limiting you to finiteness for the whole universe,
21:36
Speaker 1: sort of.
21:36
Speaker 2: Like this, right, time could be infinite, but space could
21:40
Speaker 2: be finite.
21:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, And that brings us to the
21:45
Speaker 1: last crazy idea, which is maybe there was nothing before
21:48
Speaker 1: the Big Bang.
21:50
Speaker 2: I mean nothing time.
21:52
Speaker 1: Not even time, right, we think space was created in
21:55
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, and space has expanded and all that stuff, and.
21:58
Speaker 2: So so there could have no time, no space before.
22:02
Speaker 1: No space, and no time, right, And it's hard to
22:05
Speaker 1: even wrap your mind around what that is. I mean,
22:07
Speaker 1: we have a hard time imagining, like, what will happen
22:09
Speaker 1: after we die? Well, the universe continue without us right now,
22:12
Speaker 1: trying to imagine the universe without space and time? What
22:15
Speaker 1: does that even mean? And you have to think also
22:17
Speaker 1: about what time is itself, Like, what does it mean
22:20
Speaker 1: for there to not be time? Right, there's no time
22:23
Speaker 1: in which there's no time. There's no time for that
22:24
Speaker 1: to happen, right, And a lot of people think about
22:28
Speaker 1: time as sort of the organizing principle of the universe.
22:32
Speaker 1: Maybe you've heard of the second law thromo dynamics that
22:34
Speaker 1: tells us that entropy is always increasing in the universe,
22:38
Speaker 1: and so they.
22:38
Speaker 2: Imagine things are getting messier, things are getting messier and
22:41
Speaker 2: forward in time, that's right, getting more.
22:43
Speaker 1: And more spread out forward in time. And so some
22:47
Speaker 1: people think that that is time. The time is measured
22:49
Speaker 1: by entropy and created by entropy, and that before the
22:52
Speaker 1: Big Bang, if there was if there was nothing, no space,
22:56
Speaker 1: then there was no time. And that sounds like an
22:59
Speaker 1: odd eye idea, but in other ways we're very familiar
23:02
Speaker 1: with it. Like you know, if you stand on the
23:04
Speaker 1: north pole and you ask which way is north, well,
23:07
Speaker 1: there is nothing north in the north. You blew us up.
23:15
Speaker 1: I'm going to write to Stephen Hawking and tell think
23:19
Speaker 1: that's actually his His phrase is, you know, maybe there's
23:21
Speaker 1: no north of north north.
23:22
Speaker 2: There's no before yeah, zero time.
23:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. Because if you're standing on a sphere and you're
23:27
Speaker 1: the north pole of it, there's nowhere to go, nowhere
23:30
Speaker 1: to go, there's no more northiness.
23:31
Speaker 2: There's no north pole. Can the tape ends when you
23:34
Speaker 2: try to rewind it more?
23:35
Speaker 1: That's right, and that's something we're comfortable with. We're accepting
23:38
Speaker 1: the fact that a sphere has like a limit and edge,
23:40
Speaker 1: and it's reasonable for that for there be nothing beyond it.
23:44
Speaker 1: But when we think of time, we tend to think
23:45
Speaker 1: of in a line, and so we want there to
23:48
Speaker 1: be something before it, or at least for there to
23:50
Speaker 1: be a reason why it's started here and not somewhere
23:52
Speaker 1: else or some other other you know, time or it's
23:56
Speaker 1: a very natural, I think idea to have intuitively, to
24:00
Speaker 1: think that something should have been before then. But it
24:02
Speaker 1: could be that there was nothing that the things were
24:05
Speaker 1: created at that moment and there was nothing before the.
24:07
Speaker 2: Here and then we came. Yeah, we dropped the mic.
24:11
Speaker 1: We came, We made this podcast, and that's a summary
24:13
Speaker 1: of all the whole universe in a nutshell. And you know,
24:19
Speaker 1: any of those theories. First of all, those are very
24:21
Speaker 1: difficult to test, and it's hard to imagine how we'll
24:24
Speaker 1: ever know. Right, it might be that there aren't any
24:27
Speaker 1: clues in the rubble of the universe to tell us
24:31
Speaker 1: which one is, which one is, which there might be,
24:33
Speaker 1: Although I'd like to have faith in future scientists coming
24:36
Speaker 1: up with clever ideas for ways to test these theories,
24:39
Speaker 1: which right now seem impossible to test. But in the
24:42
Speaker 1: future people can.
24:43
Speaker 2: Everybody able to see beyond the Big Bang?
24:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe maybe they'll find some evidence in the current
24:50
Speaker 1: rubble that tells them, oh, is this or is that?
24:51
Speaker 1: Or is the other thing? But even if you get there,
24:54
Speaker 1: imagine having an answer to one of these questions.
24:57
Speaker 2: Right, what do you think knowing what happened before the
24:59
Speaker 2: Big Bang would tell you like, how would how would
25:02
Speaker 2: it change your life?
25:03
Speaker 1: I think it would change everybody's life. I think it's
25:05
Speaker 1: the kind of knowledge that would filter into like the
25:09
Speaker 1: global consciousness. Think about like how quantum mechanics has changed
25:12
Speaker 1: the way people think about things. But there's randomness in
25:15
Speaker 1: the universe, right, The universe is not following a fixed
25:18
Speaker 1: set of rules, but that those rules have fuzz in them.
25:21
Speaker 2: You think it's changed the global consciousness.
25:24
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and not just in New ag people who you know,
25:28
Speaker 1: but in everybody thinking about the universes being a little
25:31
Speaker 1: different from what they imagined. Do you have a question
25:39
Speaker 1: you wish we would cover. We'd love to hear from you.
25:41
Speaker 1: You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
25:44
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or email us at
25:47
Speaker 1: Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com.