Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What everyone misunderstands about the Universe

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What everyone misunderstands about the Universe · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So the goal of physics is to understand the universe.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: And on one hand, you could say we've been making
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: great progress. Look how far we have come. On the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: other hand, you could say, look at all the mistakes
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: we've made. Every idea we've had about the universe has
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: been proven wrong, except for the current idea, which we're
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: also pretty sure is wrong. We just can't prove it yet.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I've always wanted to understand the big
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: picture of the universe. Frankly, I'm amazed that we can
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: understand any of it at all. And the history of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: humanity is of misunderstandings, of making mistakes and fixing them
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: in a way that we hope bends gently towards the truth.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: But as our ideas get more and more accurate, they
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: also get harder and harder to understand. From the ancient
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: myths about the way the universe worked to the crazy
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: predictions of general relativity, today's ideas are pretty hard to
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: wrap your brain around. And I find what I'm interacting
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: with folks in the general public and listeners of this podcast,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: most of the questions and most of the misconceptions people
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: have when they write to me are about topics in cosmology.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: How big is the universe? Where was the Big Bang?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: How can we actually know the universe has a size
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: or an age, or all of these things. There are
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: quite a few ideas that are out there about how
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the universe works that are not really quite right, but
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: yet are often repeated in popular science presentations. And so
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: today on the podcast, I want to talk about why
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: everyone misunderstands cosmology. And I'm not just talking about everyday
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: people out there, I mean scientists. We've basically been misunderstanding
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the universe as long as there have been people. And
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to help me break this down, I have a fun
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: guest and the author of a new book exploring the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: history of cosmology from our first early mistakes and bad
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: ideas to our current probably wrong theories about how the
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: universe works. Okay, well, then it's my pleasure to introduce
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: to the podcast Zach Wiersmith. Zach is most well known
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: for being married to Kelly, the famous guest host of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: this podcast. Zach, thanks very much for joining us today.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Just to be clear, I'm more famous,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: You're just being funny.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. Zach is also the author of SMBC, a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: hilarious webcomic that has no set characters or themes, but
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: just folks pun at thinkers in physics that can math philosophy. Basically,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Zach's job is to troll nerds everywhere. Together with Kelly,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: he's the author of Suonish, a book that tells us
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: why future technology will mostly be disappointing, and they have
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: a new book coming out this fall called A City
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: on Mars, which is all about how living in space
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: will be dangerous and uncomfortable. You guys are really optimist,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: aren't you.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, Well we are the gatekeepers of the truth.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: And this is not Zach and Kelly's first experience on podcasts.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Zach also did a podcast which ended in twenty fourteen,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: which was called The Wiener Smith Weekly. Is that right?
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: The Weekly Wiener Smith released once every ten years.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's a coincidence that twenty fourteen is
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the year you ended your podcast and also the year
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: podcasts took off.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: The coincidence is that my first child was born that year.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's hertful, but Zach is not here today to
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: talk about either. Those books or his podcast. He's here
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: today to talk about something else entirely. Zach has a
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: new book coming out on cosmology. Zach tell us the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: title of your new book.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: The Universe a Bridged beyond the point of usefulness.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So why did you write this book, Zach? What inspired
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: you to abridge the entire universe?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I actually have a whole series of books that
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: are not useful. It's a funny story, actually, So I
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: released a book of religion related comics, and kind of
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: as a joke, I abridged the whole Bible. The goal
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: was to do every book of the Bible in one sentence.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I got it down to like one to three sentences
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: per book of the Bible. The New Testament is much
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: more funny with short, clipped sentences because there are a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: lot of letters. But that book, which was originally a gimmick,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: like outsold the book. It was meant to be a
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: gimmick for by like ten to one, and so I thought,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I like money, and also this is fun. So I
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: did one that was abridging all of science, and then
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: one that was less popular but nearer and dear to
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: my heart, which was a bridging all of Shakespeare's sonnets,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: and the newest one is abridging all of the universe,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: and strictly speaking, it's more like abridging cosmology and its history.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: But I'm going with the what's this sort of special
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: mental challenge that comes in abridging in like boiling something
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: down to its essentials? You learn anything by a bridging
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the Bible and Shakespeare that you applied to the universe.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to be honest, for me, it's really fun. So,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: as you mentioned, like one of my hats is as
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: a researcher, which means, you know, just when you research
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: for a book, you become a very boring person who
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: reads very boring books that nobody else is reading because
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: you're trying to get a job done. And I try
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: to take the same approach to the extent I can
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: to these mini books. I mean, you know, I can't
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: spend a years on a single one, but I do
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: try to read like the actual literature, and I talk
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: to people like you who actually know what they're talking about,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: because there's obviously no chance I'm going to like learn
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the deep math in a short period of time, and
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: then I try to get to where I understand it,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: and then can tell jokes about it, because it's very
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: hard to tell jokes about something that you don't at
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: least more or less understand, which is interesting, by the way,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I have this theory that everyone, instead of doing a thesis,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: people should just like do a fifteen minute joke set
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: on it to actually prove they know what they're talking about.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: So there are much of play is where on stuff
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: in retrospect, it's fairly basic where I thought I knew
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: sort of what the deal was, and then as I'm
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: writing and I'm like, I don't feel like I understand
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: this at the level I need to to explain it
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: to somebody else. And so the result of that was,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of talking to you and other cosmologists,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: and then also just you know, doing reading. I've you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: cosmology text, I'm trying to understand something like one of
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: the really hard things to understand a lot of this
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: is like why a particular finding was really important because
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: often it like interfaces with like cultural stuff.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's really fascinating to try to boil down
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the whole history of cosmology because the approach you've taken
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: is not just like here's everything we understand today. But
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: here's how all of the ideas have developed. Here's like
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: what the original wrong ideas were, and then the later
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: wrong ideas, and now our latest probably wrong ideas. I
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: think that's a really fascinating approach, because, as you say,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: at each moment we think maybe we've understood the universe,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and then later that's all thrown in the try.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's also interesting, at least for the way
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: my brain works, to go through the history of what
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: was thought, because it often makes much more clear why
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: we think something now. So you may have had this
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: experience when you're like explaining something from cosmology to someone
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and they're like, but that's crazy. That doesn't make any
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: sense to me, And you're like, well, won, you should
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: have heard what we believed before. But two like, however
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: weird it is. We have all these weird threads, and
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: this is the idea that pulls them together. My sense
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: is a lot of people when they first hear about
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: dark matter just like, oh, it's just illuminate luminiferous ether
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: all over again. And these physicists, you know, but then
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: when you get into it, you're like, oh, but there's
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: you know, of course, you know, anybody could be wrong
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: about anything, but there's actually there's pretty good evidence of
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: it being a very robust concept. For me, I feel
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: like I had this kind of vague idea about dark
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: matter and not that I have like a deep, like
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: mathematical sense of it now, but I have a much
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: better picture on like why we need this and what's
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: neat is that does kind of proceed out cause it
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: proceeds out like in this kind of fairly neat historical fashion,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: where like each each discovery kind of leads to a
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: whole new set of problems, and so like for me,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: at least chronologically, you're telling the story of the things
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: that we're thought in different time. Gives you a much
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: better sense of where we are now and how we
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: you know, how we got there.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of like a meta story. I mean,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I think of each kind of science as a story.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: We're telling a story about the universe. Here's how it works.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It does this, it swishes that way, it expands the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: other way, and now we're telling like the meta story
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: of how that story has evolved. And I think that's
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: really cool, and especially for this topic, you know, the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: whole universe, the cosmology. This really is fascinating to go
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: deep into history because it's an ancient question, right, Like
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: literally the question that people asked thirty five thousand years
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: ago or maybe even one hundred thousand years ago as
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: they're looking me up into the night sky are the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: same questions we're asking, like what's out there? And how
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: does that all work? And what does that mean for
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: how we're going to live our lives? And whether or
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: not I should bank that person on the head with
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: a rock to get their stuff right. Basic questions with
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out the answer to you.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know what's cool about that too,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: is you know I had this. This is something that
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: I felt very strongly when we were researching the history
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: of space travel, which is like, it's amazing the cadence
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: once you get to the twentieth century, like that, that
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: to me was one of the most astonishing things because
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like you go from this world where
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: it's not clear that even like like nebulae or galaxies,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: and then suddenly the universe is gigantic. So it's amazing
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: that a person like if you talk to a farmer
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: in like eighteen hundred, you know they certainly know more
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: than like a farmer from like three thousand BC. But
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: there's sort of universe. Isn't that much different, you know,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: in terms of its scope? And then all of a sudden,
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: like very quickly, it's not only gigantic but kind of alien,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: kind of like bizarre. That for me was astonishing, like
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: like just during like a thirty year period, how much
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: how much like it must have been a very strange
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: time to be an astronomer.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: It's a strange time to be a human because each
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of these discoveries changes essentially the universe that we think
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: we live in, which changes the context of our whole lives.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: You know, we're important and we're in the center of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the universe. Nope, we're a tiny speck of dust in
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a vast universe. Right, So go ahead, bonk that guy
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: with a rock. Nothing really matters, you know, but let's
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: take it one step at a time, let's go all
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the way back. I love that in your book you
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: really started from the very basics of cosmology, which really
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: has its roots in like mythology. You know, before we
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: had like sensible ways to develop knowledge, people just told
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: stories about what they saw in the sky. Tell us
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit about that how far back did you
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: do your research? Did you learn to read like ancient
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: clay tablets?
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I wish, I wish I had the kind of time
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: to do that. No, I got like books of creation
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: myths and selected a few that like seemed to lend
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: themselves to making jokes. The joke for me was like,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: you know what, what we always do, of course, and
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: so the deal in science is you have a theory
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: and then you assess how it interfaces with the fact.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: So the fun part was to kind of be like,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: how would you rule out this theory from ancient Babylon
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: using modern cosmology, which is kind of fun. Like there's
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: a joke about how like in the innumatt Elish, there's
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: this idea the goddess Tiamat was split in half and
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: half of us stretched into the heavens, and that that
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: is the heavens.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: You know, backup, tell us what this document is. You
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: referenced it, but it's not something I'm familiar with.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Holy documents from the ancient Near East, you know, where
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: were the cradle of civilization?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Can I say, by the way, what's what's kind of
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: it's kind of fascinating to me anyway, Like like why
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: do humans bother with stories like this?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? So there's stories like that
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: you read in like religious or like you know, oral
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: history traditions that do seem to really clearly have like
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: a political or social organizational purpose. And maybe in some
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: of these cases with these foundation myths, what's going on
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: as they're saying like we're a special group or something.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: But a lot of them just seem weird, you know,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: like do you know what I mean? Just like there's
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: the other one I mentioned, well, the three I mentioned
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: is this one from ancient Babylon or ancient Near East,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: and one from ancient China, although China is very old,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: so it's kind of like the middle of China. And
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: then like like of course one about the Bible and
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: what's fastly like the one in China is just about
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: like this is this story about a giant who just
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: sort of carves up the universe. Still there's like still
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: there's a sky and the ground, and then he dies.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: And then a theme that I think is in a
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: number of other creation myths, parts of like this initial
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: being become the pieces of the universe, and so there's
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: there's at least not a kind of obvious, and therefore
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: here's how you should live your life, or and therefore
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the guy with the tall hat is in charge, you know.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And so it's just kind of fascy that we like.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: But every culture does this, every culture. I mean, maybe
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: there's some exception somewhere, but it seems to be a
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: normal thing to just speculate on how things started. And
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I don't have like a sort of good theory about
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: why we do this.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it tells us something about why these
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: questions are important. But I think cosmology as mythology sort
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: of tells us about the way we do science. Also,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I think in the end, it's all stories. Like the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: scientific answers we have now are still stories. I mean,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: they're supported with evidence and they're backed by mathematics, and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: they're told in a different language, but still their stories.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, I think maybe it tells us
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: just about the way we think as like rational creatures
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: looking for cause and effect, you know, as a human
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: being living in the world, you're trying to understand, like
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I was hungry today, Why I wasn't hungry? Oh I
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: didn't eat Okay, there's a story, you know, It's just
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: sort of like maybe part of the way our brains
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: work and the reason that we use cause and effect
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: is a way to explain the whole universe, you know,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: just that we are storytellers. But it's fascinating also to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: me what those various stories tell us about the people
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: and the sort of the tools they have to tell
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: those stories. Like we know that the ancient Greeks told
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a story about the structure of the cosmos, and their
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: story was like very geometric, right, They had euclid, They
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: had geometry like build deeply into their brains, and so
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: they thought about, you know, the Earth is the center
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of the cosmos and things are moving around them and
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: everything is embedded in spheres. But if I read like
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: ancient Chinese texts about this, you know, the Chinese didn't
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: have the same sort of advanced sense of geometry, but
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: they were still studying the stars. They like looked at
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: the stars and they used you know, algebra and like
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: arithmetic to study these patterns. They just didn't think about
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: it in the same sort of geometric way, which is
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: sort of blows my mind.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I have thought about that way. But
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: of course, you know, a lot of ancient Greek traditions
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: have that like you better know your geometry because it's
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: a it's it's important to philosophy. Yeah. Yeah, it was
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Plato's academy who had a sign that said something along
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: the lines of like, you know, don't enter here unless
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: you know. I think it was geometry. I might have
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: that wrong. Yeah, that's what I hadn't thought of it
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that way. Yeah, Like they come up with this, like
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: you know, neat spherical universe, and then you know, like
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: like thousands of years later, people are still talking about
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: platonic solids and the sort of thing as aspects of
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the universe.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. I was reading an analysis of ancient Chinese
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: cosmology actually, and they were talking about how it's sort
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: of weird that the Chinese never really applied geometry to
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: their system. Like the Chinese picture of the cosmos is
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: like a flat disc of an Earth surrounded by like
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: a half bowl of a sky, and this sort of
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: makes sense to them in terms of their equations. They
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: can like predict eclipses and stuff, but doesn't sort of
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: like come together in your mind, like if the sun
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: goes below the earth disc, then like everything in the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: sky should be shaded. Then why is like the moon
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: ever bright? You know, it's just sort of like just
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: does it make sense from a very basic geometrical standpoint,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And there are some evidence in writing or people like
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: trying to put this together and be like, hm, just
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. I don't know, and they just sort
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of move on.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: I wonder what some of this stuff what's going on?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Is like, it's very easy as a modern person to
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: be like, well, obviously the utility of this stuff is
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: just knowing how the universe works. But to a person
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: of a particular point in the past, it's the utility
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: is so I can do astrology or I can yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: you know, some of the things, it's not really relevant
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: if it's quite accurate in that particular sense.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And of course, the Greeks famously got a bunch of
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: stuff wrong, right. Part of the story we're telling today
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: is how everybody got everything wrong for so long. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: so you tell this story in your book about why
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the Greek settled on a cosmos with the Earth is
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: at the center rather than the Sun at the center,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: and it's all about parallax. Do you want to tell
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that story?
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well it's just it's funny. You know I
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: should say this is all like I don't want to
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: be able to get the impression that it's too in
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: depth in this book. It's a joke book. But so,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: like you know, if you're just sitting here on the
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: surface of the earthing, you don't have a really good telescope.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: The stars don't parallax, which makes perfect sense if the
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Earth is just in the middle end immobile, and doesn't
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: make sense if the Earth is moving around the Sun.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: But of course, you know, the truth is they do parallax.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: It's just that they're so far away. We don't find
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: this out till I forget. Who's the first person observes that?
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Would that be like eighteenth century? It's it's in the
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: book somewhere.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like almost the eighteenth century before we can
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: actually see the stars.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Wiggling right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like it's actually
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: quite reasonable, so to speak. It's like, why don't they
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: do this? So I do talk about how there is
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: a guy named Aristarchus of Samas who actually got pretty
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: close to the mark, though I think you always want
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: to be careful with this. I mean, I kind of
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: tell this as a joke because, like you know, it's
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: a little dangerous to be like, well, Democratus was right,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: and it's like about Adams, you know, but you get
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: to be a little careful because it was like, well
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: it was he right for the right reasons, you know,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: and or more to the point, it's like if everybody's
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: got a theory, you can always look back and be like, ah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: this one person got right, you know. But indeed there
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: was a guy named Aristarkus iss same Us who said,
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: you know, the sun's in the middle of the Earth,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: goes around it, and even suggested the Earth was tilted
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: on its axis, which is pretty darn cool. But of
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: course that theory can't explain a bunch of stuff that
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the Aristotle theory does explain, like like the star's parallax.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And then there are these, you know, other ideas about
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: like if Earth is zooming around, why don't I, like
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: you feel the normal effects I would feel if I
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: was like zooming around to us now as a mine field.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: That's not very intuitive, but it would make perfect sense
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: right back then. I suppose that that, like why why
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: don't I feel the wind blowing on my face? Why
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: why woun't I drop something? Does it just goes straight
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: down if I'm like going around this racetrack. You know,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: so there are actually good, good arguments for Aristotle's position
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: over against Aristarchus's. So, I mean, I do kind of
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: tell this as a joke, like why didn't we listen
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: to Aristarkis? But you know, of course it's a dangerous
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: thing to reason backwards from history and try to find
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the one crazy guy who happened to be right.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You've got enough crazy Greeks with enough typewriters, and
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: one of them is going to bang out a theory
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: of the universe that looks pretty good in hindsight.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, exactly.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But I love this argument of the Greeks. They're like, well,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: if the Earth is moving, then we should be able
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: to tell, And you're right. They're more sophisticated than just
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: like I should feel the breeze or we should all
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: fall off the earth. They came up with a really
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: clever strategy to tell if the Earth was moving, like
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: let's look at the stars and see if they're wiggling.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And they were totally right. Their mistake though, was that
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: they thought the stars were close by. They thought the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: stars were like not really that far away. And so
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: they should be wiggling a lot, and that was the
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: one mistake they made. If they had known the stars
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were so distant, they might have figured this all out earlier.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Right, And it makes sense because it's like stars are
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: really far away like distances, you know, like not that
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: we encountered distance like this in normal life. But it's
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: like a little less crazy for Ustna because we're just
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: used to it, right, but like insane, like impossible. I
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: thinking about how you would have to express these numbers
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: before you had Arabic numerals, So it's not surprising there
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: for them that was unintuitive.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: All right, So I can't wait to dig into more
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: ways that we got cosmology wrong. But first let's take
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, we're back, and we're talking to
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Zach Wienersmith, who's written a joke book about cosmology, making
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: fun of everybody else's clever ideas about the universe. Zach,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: do you feel like that's your role in modern nerd
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: dumb is just to make fun of ideas?
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Uh? To the extent. That's a fun job. Yeah, I
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: like that job.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: That's you guys over there work really hard. I'm just
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: gonna sit here and make potshots at you.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Oh no, absolutely, you know, look, this is all about me.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just I'm just enjoying myself, especially making
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: fun of chemists. Chemists. It's just really, it's just really satisfying.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Oh you gotta be careful. I made some comments about
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: chemistry on this podcast, and I got some emails.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you, Oh boy, then they're dangerous too.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: They know how to blow stuff up.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: My son was taking high school chemistry last year and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: he asked me for help and I couldn't help it.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: And then I got frustrated. And I remember being frustrated
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: by high school chemistry and expressed my frustration on the
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: podcast towards the whole field of chemistry, which of course
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: for which I have nothing but very deep respect. I
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: was reminded of the reasons for that.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, well you know what. Here's the thing about chemistry.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I'll absorb the emails on this, which is that like
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: in biology, you're just like, okay, nothing makes any sense.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: It's all specific every time you look at one thing.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: And in physics you're like, oh it all, it all.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: There's like two equations you just have to reply them.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: But in chemistry, it's like it is this unholy hybrid
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: where there are almost rules. Did I ever tell you
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: I was? This is ages ago I was in I
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: were talking to a chemistry professor and she had this
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: story about they couldn't get enough tas, so they brought
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: in a physics TA figuring like, well, teach chemistry. And
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I guess, like me, but you or I would have
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: done which is he was? The story I was told
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: was that he began with the shorting gear equation.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: In principle, you can derive all of chemistry from that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Just it's an exercise for the student.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: No, I get it. But you know, also modern science
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: has many, many different layers. We don't just do particle
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: physics for everything. Right, you can't get the price of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: sneakers using string theory, you know, there are other useful
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: kinds of science right there for sure? All right, So,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: but today we are talking about how cosmologists have always
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: gotten it all wrong. And we talked about how the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Greeks got it wrong, and the sort of ancient picture
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of the Earth at the center of the universe was wrong.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about how we figured that out and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: sort of like the steps along the way, because I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: think often that just sort of gets YadA YadA over
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: you know, Galileo telescopes. Therefore, we figured that out. But
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of interesting steps and like different paths
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: people were taking at the time to get there.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, this was maybe the most interesting part
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: of the book. At least it didn't involved modern cosmology,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: which was like, so you know, the story that I
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: think I was told was one you go to Claudias
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Ptolemy and like everybody who does now outmude a science,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: he's like treated as being kind of silly because he
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: has his epicycle model, which you just be clear, just
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it's it's it's Aristotle's you know, spheres
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: within spheres model, but with these little modifications to make
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the planets behave, and it's is quite a good model,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: and it rains for you know, over a thousand years.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Right, and let's be clear, it really works, right, It
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: like actually matches what we see people laugh at, like oh,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: cycle circles within circles, ha ha, but like this thing
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: really worked, It really works.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I always want to say that The funny thing is,
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I mean there's stuff like this right now where we like,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: so you know, famously relativity matters for like timekeeping on satellites.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: But I could be wrong, but I assume the satellites
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: don't put in like relativity equations. They just tick back
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: one second or something, you know, like and it's a
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: perfectly good way to model the system. And it's likewise
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: with epicycles. The main problem with epicycles is I understan
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: and it is just that like, well, one, of course
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: they don't actually exist, that's a non trip, but like.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: That's a detail.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: But beyond that, it's also just like it's not very
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: satisfying as a kind of scientific theory to say, like
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: each planet has its own thing and that's just the deal.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: That maybe it makes more sense in a world where
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: you're imagining like this is all like set up by
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: a deity who did it a certain way or something,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: you know, and they just made the planets this way.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: But anyway, so and the next issue except this blew
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: my mind. I'm sure cosmologists all know this, but so
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: you know, the story that gets told is Copernicus writes
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: his famous book Dies in fifteen forty three. It gets published,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: and it proves that the sun is in the middle
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: and you're all done. But the amazing thing is Copernicus
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: actually preserved epicycles for a different reason, which was that
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: he thought he was still kind of in this zone
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: of perfection, like the space still has to be perfect,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: and so these objects in space move in perfect circles.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: They go around the sum, but in perfect circles, and
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: that creates problems because you don't get these funny little
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: behaviors of the planets. They're not moving in ellipses, and
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: so that just totally blew my mind because you know,
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I think we'll make a version of this over and over,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: which is that like I was talking to call you
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: about this the other day. It's like you hear these
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: stories when you're a student that there was a decisive
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: experiment or thought that just changed things instantly, and it
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: turns out there's a lot more vibes to it, and
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: old theories die hard because like the old theory wouldn't
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: have been there in the first place if it wasn't
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: pretty good. So that was fascinating to me. And then
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the next thing along those lines, which which blew my
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: mind again was was you get to Ticobrahe and I
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: had thought he had just another Sun centered model, but
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: he didn't he actually had the Earth at the center.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: What he did instead, And this is the kind of
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: thing where I think I would ask your audience to
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: sort of close their eyes and visualize this, because it
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: takes a second if you don't like have a picture
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: in front of you, which is what he thought. What
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: ticobrahe thought, is there's Earth in the middle, and then
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: if you can imagine it far out, you got the
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Sun going around the Earth, and then around the Sun
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: are the other space objects, the other planets, which is
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: kind of amazing.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: It's genius. Is genius when like, let's keep the Earth
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: at the center while solving the problems of the data.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: That's what I love it. And you can almost if
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: you want to be sort of generous, you could kind
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: of think about it as sort of trying to bring
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: together these two ideas, one of which is like, what
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: is the data telling us? And one of which is
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: like this idea we want to hold on to of
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: a kind of like Earth centered cosmos. And I think
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: you can argue there are tensions. You know, you don't
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: want to stretch the analogy too ver. You can talk
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: about there's certain tensions in modern cosmology, Like you know,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: my understanding is the reason and I won't get too
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: far ahead of this, but like there's a question about
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: like why is there more matter than antimatter? And part
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: of why that's even a question is just like, well,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: I do think you could argue that part of why
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: it's a question is that physicists kind of like balance,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: or at least they'd like there to be an explanation
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: for why there isn't a balance between things. And what's
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: interesting is it's not quite the same as saying there
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: should be perfect spheres or you know that there should
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: be in the center. But there are kind of vibes
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: about these things about like what what is attractive to us.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: But what's also funny though, is that bra Hey like
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: by trying to kind of you know, do both sides,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: ends up creating this kind of unholy hybrid that's just
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: just just not on.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I think it was more of a holy hybrid, right,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: he wanted to at the center, right.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was amazing to me. And then and
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: that ties into like the thing I think it really
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: was interesting to me That gets into how we tell
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: these stories, which is so there's a story that iray
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: are being told to me. And then I looked it
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: up and I found it in other places, so it's
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: not just me misremembering, which is that it goes something
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: like this is Galileo points his telescope at the sky,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: which of course he actually did, uh, and he sees
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: that Venus has phases and that tells him that Venus
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: must go around the sun. And I had actually written
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: this into the book. Maybe it was one of the
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: drafts reat I remember I was rereading it and I was like,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: it struck me. I was like, wait a minute, Like
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: I can think of other ways Vias could have phases,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: at least in the narrow sense of like part of
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: its light and part of it's dark, and this happens
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: in a cyclical pattern, and in fact, like that's not
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: even precluded by the Ptolemy model. It's just you know,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: because because you know, even if like the sun is
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: just like the third object out, it's going to be
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: in a different relation to us visa v Venus on
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: a repeating basis, so there should be something like phases.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: And so my understanding, I got way too into this
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: before I had to like give up and then get
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: back to Uh, just like writing the one sentence I needed.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But it's like, it's not the venus has phases, although
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: that's part of it has phases, and also the phases
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: coincide with it, like getting bigger and smaller in our
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: field of view in a certain way that is very
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: hard to salvage in a ptolemy model maybe possible, I
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: don't know, but which makes perfect sense if you put
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: the sun in the middle.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how this reveals how much work
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: is involved in making jokes about science. You know, as
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: a fellow like jokey science book author, You're right, you
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: had to really know your stuff to make a joke,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and you could end up reading like a whole book
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: to support one sentence.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: I no, No, it's totally like that. Yeah. I think
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: what it is is, in order to tell a joke,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: you have to be like a little bit of a snot,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: you know, and you can't do that convincing landless. I mean,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I don't want to treat like I'm like a deep
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: expert in cosmology, but but my view, I was talking
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: to Ron Aberminsky as a sociologists about this, who also
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: writes pop science, and he says, you know, it's almost
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: verbatim the way I like to say, which was that
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: you like to at least be like two steps ahead
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: of what you're saying. You always know a little bit
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: more than what you're saying. Then you feel comfortable saying it.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: When you're not there, you start to feel a little
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: like you're not at leisure to make this joke because
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: your joke might reveal you as an idiot, and so
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: that you know, that's why you end up like reading
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: with this. I mean, you know it's a popside thing.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: I'm sure I blew it on something, but like I
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: you know, I did a like you look at these
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: diagrams and you're like, I must be misvisualizing this, Like
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: why can't Venus have phases? And by the way, in
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: the Brahe model, you can really get those phases right
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: because it really is going around the sun, you know.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So just to clarify for our listeners in case
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: they don't have this picture in their mind, you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about is like how much of Venus
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you can see, how much is illuminated by the sun.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: And it's very easy to imagine in a sun centered
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: solar system that as Venus moves around the Sun either
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: all of it is lit up. Like, if Venus is
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the Sun than the Earth,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: then all of Venus that we can see is lit up.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And if Venus is on the same side as the
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Sun as Us, then the side of Venus is lit up,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: it is pointing away from us, and we're only seeing
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Venus is like dark backside. So in this sun centered system, right,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you see like huge phases of Venus the same way
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: you do of the Moon. But in the Ptolemaic system, right,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: if Venus is going around the Earth and the Sun
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: is also going around the Earth, then you're absolutely right,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: there are still phases there. They're not the same kind
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of phases and they have different patterns than the phases
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: in like our system, but you do still see phases.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: So the simple story that people often tell that like
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: phases of Venus proves that the Sun is at the center,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: You're right, it's not accurate. You can have phases and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: actually have the Earth at the center of the system.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating, it's totally fascinating. And related to that, what's
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: right that was amazing to me is the story about
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: part of another thing. Is he just looks at the moon,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: and of course, you know, anyone who's looked at the
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: moon with a telescope, even a crimey one, even in binoculars,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: you can see that there's lumps on it. You know,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: there's there's peaks and valleys and stuff. And what's interesting
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: is to a modern person it's kind of like, well,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I don't it's hard to imagine why that matters at
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: all to any of the pictures of about like where
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: things are. But Mind's saying is that was very important
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: because it's like, if you're existing in this paradigm where
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: these are sort of the divine sphears and then you see,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: oh my god, it's got lumps on it, just like
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: the home planet, you know that that was actually a
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: big shift. But what's interesting about that is that, you know,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure I'm being unfair to this complex history,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: but it seems like like there's some deep level on
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: which what's going on is like kind of vibes based, right,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: and especially me when I say it's like there's this
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: never definitive experiment. It's actually like three or four things
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: where you're like, you know, we could salvage the old model,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: but the amount of stuff you'd have to say just
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: happen to go right is getting bigger and bigger, and
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: whereas if we switch to this you know Kepler model
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: with these nice little laws and the sound of the middle,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: like the math is very simple and we don't have
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: to do anything that feels ad hoc or at least
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I guess not too much, but that it explains to
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: you also why this stuff is such a process, and
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: how like you know, the simple story won't do because
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: actually the work is quite meticulous. I feel like it's
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: very easy as a modern person just sort of be like,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: you know, well just like run the video back of
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: like how you know how Venus looks in the sky,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: but you can't do that. You cannot even take a photograph,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: of course. It's just astonishing the people were even able
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: to work this out to me, like just kind of
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: like you you imagine Kepler just kind of like looking
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: at tables and somehow these ideas are and instead it's
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: it's incredible.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: It tells you why geometry was so powerful, right, Like
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: it helps you import into your mind this sort of
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: three D picture of what's happening, rather than just like
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: looking at lists of numbers, which is really hard to visualize,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and to me, the answer to the question of like
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: what's out there, the answer to that is a geometrical answer.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: It's this is here and that's there, and this is
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: the relationship between them. But I think partially that's just
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: because we're all, you know, thinking the Greek way, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: if you know, the Chinese cosmology had taken over the planet,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: we might all think about things more arithmetically and more algebraically.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine. I think like the way the
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Greeks thought has influenced the way everybody thinks so deeply
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: that it's hard to really step out of that and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: think about things in a different way.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. It's just two to me, like because
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Colon X, we have to get to Newton, which is
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: like there's this repeated figure. I think it's science that
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: it's the Newton figure. Who's the person who comes along
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: and you're trying to told this story that as if
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: they sort of like called the lightning down with the
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: theory fully formed, but actually like perhaps be more accurate
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: to say, like there's a lot of information already. And
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: they were the ones who said, here's the grand synthesis
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and so that's passing to me because like, I, you know,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: just just just reading about Newton, who who I think,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you know, there's at least the stories that get told
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: about him, I would say more accurate. At least that's
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: my impression. But coming along and like, part of why
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Newton's theory is so powerful is you have a kind
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: of like simple theory about like you know, how like
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: a baseball. Well, he wouldn't have a baseball, but like
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: how a rock behaves in your hand, and you can
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: use like the same math and it just pops out
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: all this stuff, including Kepler stuff, which is just you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: so amazing. And by the way, my favorite detail about
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: that too is this story that like that like I
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: was telling this my daughter and you just got a
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: fit of the giggles of like Newton having basically worked
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: out how the universe works and being like I'm just
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: gonna sit on that, like it. It's so different from
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: modern science. I don't know, maybe there's someone like that
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: monitor So there's probably someone out there is like the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: modern Newton who just like unified everything a couple of
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: years ago, and it's just waiting for Edmund Halley, the
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: equivalent to be like, you know that just that really
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: feels publishable to me.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine, especially at Cambridge, you know, which
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I think has basically been a shark tank for centuries. Right,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I don't understand that, right, you didn't get on that.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: It is fascinating, But I liked your point earlier about
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: how old theories die hard, and that a lot of
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: what we do in science is vibes based. And we'll
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: get into it later, but there's a lot of just
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: sort of like preference for different kinds of theories about
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the universe. You know, we have this thing we call
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: like the cosmological principle the universe should be the same everywhere,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and like why do we think that, Well, because it
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: would be pretty cool if it was true, and we
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: haven't proven it wrong, so let's hang on to it
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: as long as we can, right, Yeah.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: I was talking a little Sean Carol about this, about
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: this idea that like, you know, there's this debate we'll
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: get to it in a minute, about like which shape
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: is the universe, But he was pointing out like, well,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: you know, you could just ditch the cosmological principle and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: then all sorts of things open up, and it's like,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: but we don't want to do that, and we'll get
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: to that. I guess we should stay on track.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: All right, so let's take another break before we come
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: back and consider ditching some fundamental ideas in modern cosmology.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back, and we're talking to Zach Wiersmith
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: about why ancient scientists have gotten it wrong and why
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: modern scientists are probably also going to be made fun
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: of in future joke books about the universe.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're up to Newton. And then, of course,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you know, Newton like reigns supreme at least over cosmology
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: for a long time. So my understanding is Newton we
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: could say he solved the universe, and of course he
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: you know, he has the equations for gravity at least
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: in the in the relevant regimes. But my understanding is
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: he believed the rest of the universe was like infinite
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: with like randomly distributed stars, so as we would say
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: it today. And so this creates problems, right, So the
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: famous one is Olver's paradox, which is this, if there's
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: all these stars in the universe has been around forever,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: how come I can't find my keys when I go
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: outside at night? Because it's dark. Shouldn't there be light everywhere?
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: And there's all this other stuff like, you know, people
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: this time can see nebulae, but they don't really know
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: what they are, you know, and they you know, can see,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: you know what we come eventually to know our galaxy
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: is just like ours, but they don't know what they are.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: And this to me is like this incredible period of history.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: When we're talking about the nineteenth century, we're not talking
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: about that long ago, right, Like we're talking about like
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: two grandma's ago, right, like really not that long ago.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: What a unit of time, that's.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, speak people from that time lived in a
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: much smaller universe in their perception, And I guess you
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: would you would say the big figure in working this
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: out is Henrietta Swan Levitt, who figures out a way
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: to like objectively measure the distance of certain objects in
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: space and help settle this idea that in fact, yeah,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: those stars are really really really really far away, and
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: then that leads to you know, all sorts of cool,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: cool analysis. There's actually I think I don't even know
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I had this in the draft, I say you, but
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: I edited this version. So there's a story I was
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: telling that I think is slightly wrong, which is that
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Hubble looks up and sees red shifting and then concludes
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: the universes expanding. But it's actually a little more complicated.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, again like this is a joke book.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I don't get too into it. But there's this guy
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: named has the best name ever. It sounds like an
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: alias Vesto Melvin Slipher if I'm pronouncing it right. My
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: understanding is he is an American astronomer. He is the
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: first to say to note the red shift, although I
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: believe he was first using it to say that, like
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: the galaxies are spinning, but he notes this red shift,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: and he starts like looking at galaxies and there's this
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: weird thing which is not all but most of the
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: galaxies are red shifting. But just the important thing is
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: that the galaxies are mostly moving away, which is, you know,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: you would you would think naively that it should be random, right,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: There's just a bunch of stuff floating around in space,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: and it's just kind of random. And the story I
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: think I was told, in the story I was I
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: was planning to tell, was just like, well, Hubble comes along,
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: says red shifting, and therefore the universe expanding, right, because
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: that explains what everything's moving away from us. But what
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: actually happens is Hubble says, so red shifting is already
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: very well known by the time Hubble is making this
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: big contribution, which is this equation that says the distance
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: of the galaxy is proportional to its velocity. That is,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: the farther away the galaxy is the faster it's running
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: away from us, which is super duper weird, right. I
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: mean this I think about this too, is like, so
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: it's not just that during this period the universe got
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: a lot bigger, it's they also got a lot weirder, right,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: I mean I feel like, like all these cosmologies we've
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: talked about so far, like you could explain to one
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: pretty easily. You can draw a picture and be like
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: it's like this, you know, and people basically get it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: But then you say everything in space is moving away
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: from us at the same time, almost everything. That's bizarre,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: and especially if, of course you don't want to conclude
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: and now we know better why, but you don't want
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: to conclude that it's because we're special, because that's proven
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: to be historically dangerous. But that's very unintuitive, right, and
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: then it's more inintuitive, like why should farther away stuff
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: be expanding away? And it turns out there's there's a
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: very clear explanation. But that like is getting into this
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: part of history where cosmology just is not something that's
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: intuitive to people anymore, which is that space itself is
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: a stuff that's expanding, and so there's just more of
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the stuff between us in a distant galaxy than a
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: close one. You know. The classic metaphor, which tell me
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: if you don't like the classic metaphor is the raisin
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: bred one. You know this one?
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I love that metaphor. Yeah, that one works really well.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a nice one. I mean, you know,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the way where it breaks down to me is like
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: when you're trying to get the big bang out of it,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: you're like, I guess that the raisins are getting close
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: to each other until you have some sort of ultra
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: deaths raisiny something, you know, and like the bread has
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: gone away or I don't.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Know, it changes phase into a raisin plasma.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: It's right, this is a paper. This is a paper.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: But we'll get to that in a second. But yeah,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: like what I love about the razin bread example, is
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: just like, so the idea is that you know, I
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: guess raisins would be sunding like the galaxies, and the
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: bread dough is space. And when you bake the raisin bread,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: it's not just that the raisins pull apart from each other.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: It's that the ones that are initially apart from each
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: other get farther faster because the dough is expanding and
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: there's just more dough in there to expand. And that's
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: where it gets really neat and even more attitude because
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: you're like, this is Einstein's general relativity, that space time.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: You know, space is not the stage where stuff happens.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Space is the stuff. Space time is the stuff. It's
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: the raisin bread. And to me that it's just such
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: a fascinating little amment. All this happens in like a
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: twenty year period. It's just absolutely incredible. It's like unfathomable
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: to me, like in this era where like all sorts
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: of cool results come out all the time now, but
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: it's not like that, it's not like the holy universe.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Your conception is blown away and again makes this kind
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: of phase shift, so to speak, from like you know,
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: vast but intuitive to hard to understand, at least for
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: most of us.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: You've been around general activity so long, maybe it makes
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: perfect sense to you all the time, but for the
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: rest of us, it's like, we got to think about it.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: No, it definitely doesn't. And I think you're right that
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: we transitioned from a universe that like kind of we
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: could tell a story about to universe where people are like, hmm,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: that sounds really math he it doesn't mean it makes
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: sense to me without a lot of math. I think
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: that's really fascinating. And it's also a really interesting story
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: there about like how even Einstein came to reconcile the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: universe the structure he had built this general relativity with
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: what he was seeing. Because he was missing part of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the piece, right, he wasn't really able to tell the
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: story in the right way, you know, to sort of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: connect the dots. When Einstein was developing his theory of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: general relativity, people thought the universe was static, right, People
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: thought the universe was a certain way and it was
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: the most natural idea was it had always been that way, right,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: that there was no beginning to time at all, because
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: that would be weird. You'd have to explain it. That
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: was like the vibe at the time. So then Einstein's like, well,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: in my theory of general relativity, if we have a
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: static universe with a bunch of like galaxies out there,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: they should get pulled towards each other. There's like gravity
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: pulling stuff towards each other. Why isn't the universe collapsing?
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: So he added this fudge factor right to like balance
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: up against that, which, if you look at it is
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: like kind of a terrible theory, Like it's really pretty
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: ugly because it requires this like cosmological constant to push
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: out on the universe in exactly the same amount that
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: everything's pulling in. It's like super finely balanced, which these
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: days people would have rejected that paper. They're like, that
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: is a terrible idea. You have this huge coincidence in
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: your universe. So then Hubble's like, well, actually the universe
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: is expanding, right, And so then we're like, hm, well
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that's interesting, you know, why would he be expanding that much?
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And so Einstein's look, well, maybe it's expanding, but it's decelerating.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Maybe everything is still collapsing, but it's still expanding. It's
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: like expanding now, but expanding slower and slow or due
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: to that gravity, right, So Einstein still didn't really have
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: a grip on what was happening, and it took a
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: while before you know, we discovered the universes expanding and accelerating.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: They had to like reinject this Einstein cosmological constant to
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: explain what we were seeing. So you're right, And I
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: think that the current explanations of this stuff have led
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to really pretty deep misunderstandings of
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: how this stuff all works. You know. I want to
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: talk about sort of like the misconceptions of modern pop cosmology,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: because I think you ran into some of these when
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: in writing your book, and I think like one of
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the big ones is this idea of the raisin bread
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: like and the origin of the universe. I think a
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: lot of people have in their minds this concept that
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang was like a tiny dot, the universe
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: was an atom, and then it exploded through space and
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: filled everything out. I hear that all over the place,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: people ask me, like, where was that dot? Where was
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: the center of the universe? Can we see it?
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: It's like a really common misconception. You must have run
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: across this also in your.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Research yeah, I mean, like I'm sure I was guilty
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: of that. I had to update my understanding, and I
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: was trying to I was actually talking to Eugene Limb
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: about this, which is like, as you say, there's this
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: idea that the universe starts infinitely small as like whatever
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: that even means, right, and that's something else we should
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: gonna do. Is this idea of infinitely this or that
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: as being a real thing? But like, yeah, I was
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: trying to figure where does this idea come from? So
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: going through this from a chronological perspective, which I like,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: this kind of what we said so far with Hubble
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: and Einstein te's up why you think there might be
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: something called a big what we now call a big bang, right,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Because if you have this universe that's expanding and it's
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: a like glob of space time, as I say in
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: my vastly oversimplified way, well, if you rewind the tape,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: then you get to an earlier state where it's like
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: everything is very tight, right, or comparatively tight. It's kind
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: of intuitive to maybe say, well, like in the extreme,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: it gets to a single point. But my understanding is Lemaitre,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: who's the guy who's who's fame for proposing this didn't
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: believe that himself. He used the term primeval atom. But
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: my understanding is he meant at him is something like
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: fund metal, not as the size of an atom, And
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: so I don't know that's where it comes from. There's
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: probably some historiography out there of like how this idea
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: seemed into the public consciousness, But yeah, I found almost
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: everybody thinks big Bang means there was this tiny atom,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: and the word singularity gets used, I think, to mean
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: infinitely tiny or something.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Also because we use singularity to mean infinitely tiny when
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: we talk about like a black hole, right, we say
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: there's a singularity the center infinite density, a lot of
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: stuff trapped up in one point in space. And we
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: can talk about a singularity for the Big Bang. It's
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: just that it's a singularity sort of in time rather
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: than in space, rather than having all the seven universe
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: in one location. We have a moment in the universe
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: where everything was super duper crazy dense, right, And that's
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the singularity we're talking about, which is similar mathematically but
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: conceptually sort of very very different because you're talking about
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the whole universe. And I remember the first moment I
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: understood this, it was like a big bang going off
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: in my brain because what it means is the big
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: bang was not somewhere, was everywhere everywhere. Yeah, much bigger
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: bang than anybody ever thought of.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Is it's not so much weirder, right, Uh, Like I
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, maybe it's again we're getting back
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: to the vibes. But to me, it's somehow like more
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: intuitive that you started this tiny point where something happened
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: and then it all expands out. But the idea that like, no,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: it happened everywhere at the same time. I don't know
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: what to do with that, Like, my brain just doesn't
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: work on that.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: On other hand, it sort of makes more sense than
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: having one place be special, Right. Wouldn't it be weird
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: if the big bang was here and not there, because
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: then you could ask, like, well, why was it here?
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: What's different about this point in space? And there you go.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: You break the cosmological principle that says everything is the same.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, but maybe this will get us to the
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: sort of the whole steady state stuff is there is
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: this weird thing where it just seems to be that
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: for some people, the idea of an eternal universe is
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: just more sensible than the idea of a starting point universe.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: And I don't personally have a good feel for why one,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: like do you have it like do you have a
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: gut reaction like like exeparate from what you know is
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: true or think to be true? Like what like do
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: you have a gut reaction about what is more satisfying
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: to me?
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: The universe with no beginning is more satisfying because it
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a special moment in time, just like I
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: don't like a special point in space. A special moment
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: in time needs an explanation, whereas an eternal universe much
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: it just kind of always was.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: You see the probat is I this is just like
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: being a weird human. But you're just like my instant
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: thought is like, well what started at this eternal universe?
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: And you're like, oh no, wait, I can't ask that
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's like defining their grounds of debates, so your
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: question is no longer valid.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: This is why I really like going chronologically because you
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: now understand, like we even had like start talking about
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang because it follows very natural, like once
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: you have Einstein and Hubble, it makes sense to have
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: this this next idea, and then once you have this
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: next idea, you can start asking questions about like what
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: the universe was like. And so there's this big debate,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: of course in the mid twentieth century, which is, well,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: do we have a big bang cosmology or is it
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: this this eternal model called the steady state model, which
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: and then then the sort of avatar of this movement,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: the famous person, and it is Fred Hoyle. You know,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: so he has this idea you have this eternal universe,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: and he has this thing called the creation field, which
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: is constantly adding matter to keep things in balance, they
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: you know, to maintain density throughout the universe. Right, then
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: you get this question like, well, you know, but both
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: these theories could explain this expanding universe we have. It's
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: just working in a different way. And this is where
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: it gets in issuing, because you're back to having these
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: two models that really say something very different. You know.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: It's like it's funny because you can you can sort
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: of like finish newt and be like, okay, we basically
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: got it with Einstein. But there's actually this giant question
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: which is eternal versus not eternal, which is like massive,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: So for me, like I will admit, like I'm a nerd.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I knew about like a lot of this stuff, but
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: I hadn't sort of worked out how all the pieces
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: fit together. And you're back to one of these like
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: at least to some degree, you know, vibes plus data
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: situations where you have its alpha and gammau and beta
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: gets slipped in for a joke. You know this idea
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: that like, well, if we assume the Big Bang model
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: is true, that is a you know, not that there
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: was a tiny point, that there was just a very hot,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: dense beginning. Then we know stuff about how particles worganismsuf
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: about how matter it works, and we can say, well,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: what you would you expect the universe to be like
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: later if it started like this? And it turns out
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: you can you can make predictions about kind of like
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like roughly what elemental makeup should you see? And they
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: come up with these ratios and it turns out they're
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: they're pretty good ratios. And what was interesting for me
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: is something like that you're like, okay, but that doesn't
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: disprove steady state, right, but it at least says like
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: steady state requires more special pleading now, right, Because it
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: requires you to say the creation field that the oil
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: is positing happens to create with the same signature you
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: would expect from the bang model, which is because again
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: we're back to the like, well, you're you're you're comparing
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: two models. You know, the other model can basically do
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: whatever you want it to do. It just you know,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: requires ever more special pleading. And that's what for me.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: So I'd known about the cosmic microwative background, I think
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: I hadn't understood more deeply why it mattered, and so
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: I had to talk to a lot of people, including you.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: And then the way I understand it now and correct
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: me if I'm wrong, is, or at least the way
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the story I tell is that you know, you have
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: this background level of radiation, and it just the background
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: level of radiation has certain qualities that are exactly what
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: you predict under a big bang model. And so essentially
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: what you're saying is, of course, you know the steady
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: state model, where stuff is constantly being created, it could
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: be creating radiation too, and there's no reason that you
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: know couldn't create it just the right temperature and everything
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: and and just the right spectrum. But now you're to
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: be the steady state guy, you have to say, like, well,
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: I can handle all of the Big Bang results by
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: just saying that's how my system does it. You know,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: I didn't predict any of it, but it's just how
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: my system does it too, which is a really hard
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: line to toe in science, you know.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: It is, especially because the Big Bang model predicts the
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: cosmic background radiation, which is really powerful.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so both sides can make predictions. It just turns
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: out that the prediction is like, you know, require you
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: you know, like like confirm one model and the other model.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: You know, like ptolemy could could be made to accommodation
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: all sorts of things, but would require you to make
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: a Rube gold brig machine, you know, of like special
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: stuff that happens for no reason, which to me is
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: just sort of fascinating because you know, a story will
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: be told that's just something like discussing microwave background. Therefore
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang is true. And I feel like I
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: had heard this and repeated it and didn't have this
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: deeper sense of like, well, it's about like what model
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: can better predict this? This thing we find when we
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: look around.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: It's also really interesting what we mean by the Big
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Bang is true. And it turns out that what you
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: mean by the Big Bang depends on if you're like
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: an educated person out there reading pop sigh about the
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: origins of the universe, or if you're like a researcher
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and modeling this stuff, because there is a big difference.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: A lot of people, when I say the Big Bang,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: they're thinking about that singularity. They're thinking about the moment
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: of creation of the universe, this first initial brilliant flash
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: of light. Right. But when modern physics talks about the
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Big Bang, that's not what they're talking about at all.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: They like, fast forward past that part. They say, well,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that part's a huge question mark. We don't know how
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: anything got started. We don't know if there was a singularity,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: if there's quantum gravity, you don't know if there's an
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: infloton field. It just basically shrug and they say, but
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: somehow we got to a very hot and dense universe.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Not infinitely dense, right, just some very very hot and dense,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: like the hottest and densest universe that we could describe
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: with our theories. From that point forward, we know how
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: things work, and we can model things forward. We can
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: predict the cosmic microwave, background radiation, the structure of the universe,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and everything is like high precision science before that moment,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: huge question mark. Now general relativity, you know, predicts a
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: singularity there, but nobody really believes that, right, No actual
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: physicist out there thinks that really happened in our universe.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: They just think, well, we haven't figured that out yet.
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: So this is huge distinction between like what people imagine
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang is and what it is in like
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: actual science.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So one of the really things related to that,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: I'd love to hear your reaction to this is like
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: what seemed to me to be going on is a
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: scientist will say, we get an infinite quantity in this place.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: But what they're they mean is that like the equations
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: we have with a theory we have here produces an infinity.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean they believe there's an actual infinite
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: something or other. But I feel like it often gets
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: reported in the press as, oh, there was an infinity thing,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: whatever that means, And so to speak, what the scientist
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: is saying is we have a problem, and what the
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: public is hearing is there were infinity.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: To me, it's like a segfault. Right, you run your
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: computer and the program crashes. You're not like, well, that's
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: what it predicted. It predicted the universe is going to crash.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, your program didn't work. That's what it means. Yeah,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: you've got a bug somewhere. Man.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really weird. I think part of what's going on.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: I'm totally speculated here, but I think part of what's
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: going on is just because it's cosmology, and so you're
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: dealing with these things already giant and unintuitive, and so
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: I think if you're like a casual reporter who hasn't
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: gotten too much into it, you just you just hear
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: like it's infinitely dense, and you don't want to say, like,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: according to an equation, which is probably missing something, it's
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: certainly missing something. There's an infinity here, you know, which
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: to me that was fascinating too, because there's just again,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: there's this sort of between I mean, I think this
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: is a common thing. When you explore a field, the
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: thing that's being debated, it's almost always miles away from
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: what the public thinks the debate is.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are also these really fun moments in
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: science where physicists are like, well, the equations say this,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: but that's ridiculous. It definitely doesn't happen. And then it
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: turns out it kind of does.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: That's a good one.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Pot like black holes. People are like black holes. Nah,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: there's no way the universe lets that happen. Okay, it
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: turns out and black holes are kind of a big deal.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's an interesting point.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically, never listen to us. We don't know
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about, even when we're saying whether we
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: know what we're talking about.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right, right. So then that leads to
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: the part that for me was the hardest thing to write.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: And so I'm going I'm going to lean on you
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: as I go through this to correct me if I
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: say anything wrong, because this is for me, the most
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: unintuitive thing, which is one of the big questions, is
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: the shape of the universe. And actually, for me, part
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: of what was tough is understanding why we even care
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: about the shape of the universe.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Well, well, okay, so kind a visual person an economy
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: not worry about sheets.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Come on, what I do perspective drawings. I don't wonder
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: about whether the unice is positively curved or not. You know,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I guess, I guess if the scale was big enough,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: i'd have to mess with my lines. But no, But
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: it's like, I mean, obviously it's an aesthetically interesting question, right,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: And there are lots of questions in cosmology where like,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: obviously it's not going to make your car run faster
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: or put more food on the table. But it's just
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: like aesthetically attractive as a question, right. But so to speak,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: that leaves open, like, you know, a huge number of
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: questions you could be asking, So why are some sort
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: of like more aesthetically interesting so well for your for
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: your audience. So this question is like the universe can
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: be curved in different ways that depend on how much
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: stuff is in the universe. And it took me a while, frankly,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: to even get there with that. And I think I
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: actually think in retrospect, part of what was tough for
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: me about understanding this question, and you you helped talk
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: me through this as a couple other people, is this
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Like often when people talk about this casually, what they
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: depict is something like the universe could be a big
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: flat sheet, it could be a the surface of the sphere. Yeah,
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: it could be a big flat sheet, could be the
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: surface of a sphere, or be a saddle. I'm positive
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: I've heard people say this and just sort of go
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: on as if like and just as an audience member
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: who is not a physicist, I mean, like I'm substantially
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: nerdier than the average pop science consumer, but like this
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: is deep math stuff and so like to me, I'm
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: just like, this just does nothing for me. I have
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: no idea what it would mean. And then worse of course,
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: as you help me understand, it's like, you know, we
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: can say fear, but actually we're really just saying positively curved.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: And so it turns out there's like an infinity of shapes,
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: many of which are quite weird, that could be positively curved.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: And that's actually true for all these models, like the
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: sheep can can loop back in on itself and do
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy stuff. Well I shouldn't say loop, see,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: I gotta be careful with the words I use. But anyway,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: like so, so these shapes that get presented to you
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: in a pop setting or I would say misleading, I
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: think they confused me because I started understand well, like,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: why can't one to do the other and like, what
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: would it sort of feel like to be in one
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: of these universes? And I think that's just that's that's
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: just unintuitive, Like that's just that's too much for a human.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: We're just little things. But as like why why why?
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Why is this question interesting other than again the pure esthetics.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: And that's where the history gets really interesting because it
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: turns out, you know, the spoiler that observations seem to
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: suggest we're in a flat universe. Flat flat again, like
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: being not the preferred term. I forget. We would say, like,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: I know, you say positively curve of negatively curved. What
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: you say, I guess, I guess it's okay to say.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Flat, Yeah, zero curvature and flat zero coverature.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: There we go, yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So we're in
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: this flat universe. And why that is interesting is that
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: it's surprising because it's sort of like you're balanced on
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: a needle point. Why aren't we often this one direction
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: of somewhere in positive curvature or somewhere in negative curvature.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: We're in a flat sense. In other words, at least
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: as I understanding. It's an interesting question because the answer
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: is a weird one, and that's just that that's where
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: to me it gets fascinating. I mean, I'm sure like
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: like to especially to a cosmologists, the shape of the
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: universe is just a per se interesting question. But for me,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: it was interesting to know this kind of like chronological
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: story about like it shouldn't be flat right like like
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: like it's kind of like the red shift, like it
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be mostly red shifts, Like something is wrong with
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: how I'm understanding the universe that I think it shouldn't
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: be flat. And then it becomes really cool, and that's
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: what really leads ever deeper in the confusing universe, which
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: it gets to inflation, which was perhaps the second most
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: confusing thing. It took me a really long time to
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: even kind of feel like I understand inflation, which maybe
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: if I if I have, I like done a good
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: enough job of basically saying what the point is.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so you've explained like why it's weird
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: that we have a flat universe. But to me, it's
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: not weird to wonder about the shape of the universe.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: It's like wondering where it all came from. What is
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: the age in the universe. It's one of those basic
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: questions like if I was granted a visit to the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: oracle and I can ask five questions about the universe,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: like that would be on there, you know, I just
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: really I want to know our context, Like what is
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: this place? It's in the same category as like does
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: the Earth go around the sun? You know this basic
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: facts about the nature of our existence to me are important.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what it would be your number one?
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: What would be my number one?
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: You get five questions, you're like, your top.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: I think my first question would be does the universe
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: have a beginning? You know? And if so, what was it?
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Because if there is a creation, then that creation tells
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: you a lot about like the context of our lives.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And if there wasn't, I'm like, wow, Yeah, I mean
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: I say that that's more of my preferred answer, But
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: I'll admit it's also kind of hard to digest an
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: eternal universe. That is pretty hard to fit into your
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: tiny little non eternal brain.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Seven extent I wondered this, n like, why
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: why the shape question is interesting to you is because
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: it would sort the shape question would unleash a lot
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: of other answers. Is that is that sort of how
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: you think about that question? Like would be cool to
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: know the answer because of the sort of cascade of stuff,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: or is it just like it would be cool to
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: know this thing because it's fundamental?
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: To me, it burns that there are facts about the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: universe that exists that are out there that we do
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: not know. So yeah, that really that really chaps my
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: hide that we just do not know. You know, there's
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: so much about the universe, these facts that just exist
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: out there that we don't know. You know, maybe aliens
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: have figured it all out and they know and they
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: would tell us and we just haven't even met them yet.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: To me, that's endlessly frustrating.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been visualizing all the cosmologists like just walking
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: around angrily all the time.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: So what do people go with? They want to buy
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: the universe a Bridge Beyond Usefulness and also your new
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: book with Kelly.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: The Universe of Bridge Beyond the Usefulness is available on Kickstarter.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: You'll just Google a search Kickstarter for it, so you
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: can buy it through the Kickstarter with a City on Mars,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: but a City on Mars is also available for pre order.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: I find bookstores everywhere if you do not wish to
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: order from one of the giant conglomerates. If you go
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: to a cityommrs dot com, then you can get other
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: options like Powells and indie books and cool stuff like that.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Or you can just go to your beloved local bookstore.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: That's the best option of all awesome.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Well, I recommend everybody out there get zach book on
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the Universe, A Bridge, and also Zach and Kelly's book
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: A City on Mars. I've read both of them and
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: they're both a lot of fun and I learned a
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: lot before I let you have one more question for you,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Why do cartoonists want to write books about cosmology?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: That's a good question. I know. I'll give you a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: theory that has no basis or I couldn't possibly substantiate it.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: But like web cartoonists, early web cartoonists are like high
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: percentage dork quads, right, and so now now that all
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: of us are getting to the phase of our lives
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: where we have to do more things, we are all
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: like turning to our dork passions. That is my theory.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: This is a surprisingly high number of physics dropouts in
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: the early cartooning community, so it was it was entirely
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: predictable from the late nineties that this would happen.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Well, then, I'm really glad that the want to be
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: physicists inside all those cartoonists is getting to finally explore
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: that passion. Yes, all right, well, thanks very much Zach
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: for joining us today, and everybody go out there and
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: check out zach book and Zach and Kelly's new book,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: A City on Mars. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.