EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,037 words- 0:00 – 15:00
That's very cool. …
- BCBrian Cox
That's very cool.
- JRJoe Rogan
Three, two, one. Yeah, a guy named, uh... Well, it's, it's online Twitter ha- or his, uh, Instagram handle is TGTstudios. And he makes these... I actually had one made for Elon. Elon Musk loved it too, so we made him one with... He made one with, like, this very beautiful red wood.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And those are... What are those things made out of, Jamie? The... Some diodes or something?
- BCBrian Cox
Nixie tubes is what it's called.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nixie tubes. He has to-
- BCBrian Cox
It's like valves, right? They're old...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BCBrian Cox
... valve technology.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, he has to get them from Russia.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, uh... He has them delivered over from Russia, so they might have, like, listening devices implanted in them as well.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
So, Brian, good to see you, man.
- BCBrian Cox
Great to be back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, great to have you back.
- BCBrian Cox
Girl, these shoes.
- JRJoe Rogan
So tell me about this tour that you're doing.
- BCBrian Cox
It's a, it's a, a world tour.
- JRJoe Rogan
Try to keep this sucker like a fist from my face.
- BCBrian Cox
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There you go.
- BCBrian Cox
How's that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, perfect.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. So world tour, starts next week in, um, the UK, and then we go everywhere from the South Island in New Zealand all the way to the Arctic Circle, to Svalbard, which is north, th- the furthest north that you can go on a (laughs) commercial aircraft.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BCBrian Cox
In the middle, we're in the States for a month, in, uh, mainly May. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's about cosmology and about the questions that cosmology raises. So if you're interested in the science of how did the universe begin, even questions of what may have been there. Is the universe eternal? Is there such a thing as before the Big Bang? What is the future of the universe? How does complexity emerge spontaneously in a universe? I mean, we sort of take it for granted that we, we... There's a big bang, and it's all hot, and there's just this kind of hot glow of stuff. And out of that, spontaneously, in 13.8 billion years, you get something like the Earth with a civilization and life on it. So how does that... Do we know anything about that? I mean, we do. I'm asking the question rhetorically. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
We know quite a lot about it. So it's, it's really about showing the size and scale of the universe, but addressing those questions I think everybody has about what does it, what does it mean to be human? This tiny little finite life that we lead in a possibly infinite universe, how do you make sense of that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's incredibly exciting to me that th- there's a giant audience for this, and that wha- what Neil deGrasse Tyson had been doing and what a, a lot of public touring intellectuals are doing now, they're doing these giant theaters. And these people are coming out to see these shows, and we're realizing that there's... I mean, I hate to use the term market for this, but there's a demand for this, and there's a lot of people who are incredibly fascinated by this.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Okay. …
- BCBrian Cox
it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BCBrian Cox
But you can think of two, like this tabletop, and that's all right. We just forget the other one for now. And so you know what flat is on this table. I mean, you could define it. So you could say, for example, that if I draw a triangle on the top of the table, then all the angles add up to 180 degrees. So that actually defines flat. If you did that on the surface of the Earth with a big triangle, then the angles wouldn't add up to 180 degrees. Um, or you could draw a circle and say, "What's pi?" So pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. That's only true on a flat surface. It's different if the surface is curved. So you can define flatness.
- JRJoe Rogan
So when you're... but when you're saying flatness, how, what is the height and what is the width? Like if you're, you've been talking about it as if it's a table, there must be some sort of a... there's a dimension to it, correct?
- BCBrian Cox
Oh, yeah. There's a third dimension of space.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
Uh, but the i- the same applies. It's just a generalization of geometry then. (laughs) So you, you can pi- the, the point is we can picture it in two dimensions. But you can, you can draw... Y- you can quite literally, you could imagine sending light beams out. And we do this measurement actually. We can look at the, the, the dist- the most distant light we can see, which is something called the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is... If you, if you imagine looking out... If you look at the Andromeda galaxy, which we can see with the naked eye here in LA, you can see that. It's the most distant object you can see with the naked eye, and it's about two, two million light years away or so, which means the light took two million years to get to us. So it's a long way away, but it's very big. So y- as you look further out into the universe to more and more distant galaxies, you're looking further back in time 'cause you look at something that's a billion light years away, then the light took a billion years to get to us. So you see it as it was a billion years in the past. And we can actually look so far out that we can see almost back to 13.8 billion years ago, which is very close to the Big Bang. So we can look to light that began its journey before there were galaxies, and that's the, the oldest light in the universe, which is, by the way, one of the, one of the pieces of evidence when people say, "I don't believe in the Big Bang." The answer is, "Well, you can see it." (laughs) "So, you know, it's just there." You can see it. We have pictures of it. Um, that light, it turns out that there are sort of structures or ripples in that light, um, which we can use as a ruler. So quite literally, as a, as a ruler on the sky. And then because that light's been traveling through the universe, we can see how that rule has been distorted as, as, as the light has traveled through space. And so we can infer whether space is flat or curved or how it warps, if you like, just from that measurement.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is-
- BCBrian Cox
It's a beautiful measurement.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it possible that in the future we'll be able to see past 13.8 billion years?
- BCBrian Cox
Not with light.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not with light.
- BCBrian Cox
Because what... The, the picture is that before... It, it's actually was released 380,000 years after the Big Bang. It's a very precise number. You might say, "How do you know that?" Well, before that time, the universe was so hot that atoms couldn't form. So you had a soup of electrically charged particles. It was just too hot for electrons to go into orbit around nuclei. So the universe was opaque to light. So you just couldn't... It was like one... almost like a big glowing star, if you like.And then when it was expanding, it cooled past the point where the atoms could form. And at that point, it becomes transparent, really almost instantly in a cosmic time scale. And so the light could then travel in straight lines through the universe, and we can see that light. So we see the light from that time, but further back than that, it's opaque, so you can't see past that with light. But you can, potentially, with gravitational waves, which is this measurement that got the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago, the LIGO experiment here in the United States. And that se- looks for ripples in the fabric of space and time. And in principle, if we had a big enough detector, you could see the ripples from the Big Bang. So you could in- you could take an image of the Big Bang in gravitational waves, which would be ... But you need a enormous sort of space-based detector that we're not gonna build any time soon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, obviously, this is all through equipment and technology that's been invented over the last few hundred years-
- BCBrian Cox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and perfected. Is it possible that things could get better, and you could get, uh, some, some ability to detect things, even in a, a far more distant way?
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah, I mean, the, I think gravitational waves are, are incredible. I mean, Einstein predicted them in 1915. N- never thought they'd be detected-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BCBrian Cox
... because you need such a hyper ... You need lasers, for ... Didn't have lasers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
But the thing, LIGO, this experiment, which is half in, uh, near Seattle in Washington State and half in Louisiana, so they've got two detectors. And they're basically sort of, uh, I don't know, three-mile-long laser beams, um, that just sit and measure the sort of stretching and squashing of space as the ripples in the fabric of the universe go through. And, and what they've been observing, uh, collisions of black holes. So you can imagine-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BCBrian Cox
... how extreme ... Like, a colliding black holes is an incredibly extreme event, so it shakes the fabric of the universe, and the ripples come across the universe. And these laser beams, which are just basically rulers, can detect it. They just sort of ring almost, like, you know, just vibrate as the ripples go through, in space and time. Kip Thorne, who got the Nobel Prize, uh, last year for this, he's one of the greatest living physicists, hi- I once heard him describe it as a storm in time. So you've got this, a time storm. It's a beautiful image. (laughs) But-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- BCBrian Cox
So that technology's incredible, 'cause it, it, the change in length, is I can't remember the exact number, but it's way, way, way less than the diameter of an atomic nucleus, so the change in, in length of the beams. It's tiny measurement, but we can do it.
- JRJoe Rogan
So this ti- a collision of black holes, the idea that you can detect that-
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that ...
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. They, the, the, there were ... I s- the paper, the first paper they published, there are two black holes, and they were about 30 times the mass of the sun each, and they were orbiting each other and spiraling in towards each other. And, uh, they accelerated. At one point, they were approaching each other at one-third the speed of light, and they accelerated to two-thirds the speed of light in a tenth of a second and then hit each other. And the explosion, the energy release, was ... I think I'm right, it was something like 50 times the energy release that the power of all the stars in the observable universe glowing, and it was something like 50 times that amount of energy for a tiny fraction of a second.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whew.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Oh. …
- BCBrian Cox
the idea was about 100 years to get there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- BCBrian Cox
So it's going, you know, four light years or so in 100 years, so whatever that in terms of-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you would have to essentially do what they did in, like, the Ridley Scott Alien film and put people into some sort of a hyper sleep-
- BCBrian Cox
Oh, yeah, a robot probably. It wou- ... It wouldn't be a crew. It prob-
- JRJoe Rogan
It wouldn't be possible for w- ... A crew?
- BCBrian Cox
Well, it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you'd have to freeze 'em?
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. That's always... Th- You know, whenever you talk to engineers, you had Elon on, didn't you? It's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BCBrian Cox
Engineers always say, "You know, if physicists go, 'Well, it's possible in principle,' so over to you."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BCBrian Cox
You know? (laughs) "You, you do it now. There, there are no laws of physics that tell us-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
... we can't do it, so we just do it."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
But, you know, it's... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a weird relationship-
- BCBrian Cox
It's... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... between the physics, physicists and the engineers.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BCBrian Cox
But, but yeah. I- in principle, you're right. I- if you can send a little robot spaceship there, you can send a, a crewed spaceship there.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm, uh, uh, of the opinion as time goes on and augmented and virtual reality gets better and better that, uh, it doesn't really totally make sense, unless we're talking about colonizing some place, to send biological life to another planet. And if we can send some probe that doesn't have to worry about the, you know, the biology being affected by radiation or by the speed of travel or even-
- BCBrian Cox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... by food, we can send something out there and almost be there by v- virtue of, you know, f- goggles, virtual reality goggles-
- BCBrian Cox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or, or something else.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. Uh, you hear that in science, uh, at the moment, space science, we have this debate a lot actually because, of course, um, space probes like Curiosity that's on Mars at the moment, that's really cheap, uh, compared to sending people to Mars. And so quite often the scientists who want to find out about the worlds will say, "Well, we should spend it on robots. We shouldn't spend it on people." I think crewed space exploration is in s- in some ways, I mean, it's clearly true at the moment that humans can do more than robots, so we can explore the place better.
- JRJoe Rogan
For now.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. Well, I mean,…
- JRJoe Rogan
let it, let the, you know, let the story play out and, and-
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. Well, I mean, Sunshine was, um... You know, the pre- the premise is, is silly. I mean, it's, the premise is the sun is dying and we're gonna go and fix it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (laughs)
- BCBrian Cox
So both of those things... It fails on its first line-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right, right.
- BCBrian Cox
... in, in terms of realism. But the idea is that it's not about that. It's about, um, it's about the, it's about the sun as a god in some ways, so it's about our response to the power of nature. And it's about deifying this thing and worshiping it and how ultimately you go mad. If you remember the film, there's Pinbacker, who's the first captain that went to the... Captain, the first mission to go and restart the sun, which is the mad bit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BCBrian Cox
But then became a religious fundamentalist, essentially, and then decided... It's a fascinating idea that he decides that to bring meaning to his life, he will become the last, last man, the last human. And so he wants to be the last, he wants the sun to die, and he wants it to take humanity with it. And he decides to make that happen, so he stays there waiting for the second ship.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BCBrian Cox
And I like those ideas that, you know, that what, what's your reaction to the power of nature? And this happens in... It's one of the things I do in my shows, I'm not being a commercial person, I've just thought of it. (laughs) One of the great things about cosmology is that it is terrifying in the, in the truest sense of the word. I mean, we talked a bit about the size and scale of the universe and black holes colliding and those things. You know, it is very frightening, but also the, I think the, the act of trying to understand our place in nature and the size and scale of the universe and our, our, you know, tiny presence within it is valuable. It's a, it's a... So that you can be terrified, but also inspired and interested. And it's part of... If you want to find... If you wanna ask questions about what it means to be human and means to be alive, then I think you find the answers in confronting that reality, which is that we live in a terrifyingly vast universe of pow- powers in the universe that we cannot comprehend, as you said. But that, tha- that's what you've got to face, because that's reality, so you can't hide your head in the sand and just duck it. And it sends some, it can send some people crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm sure. And it is really interesting that we need that suspension of disbelief in order to sort of make a film on space. You, you, you almost have to, like, go, "Well, this isn't really how it'd be, but this is how you have to make it in order to fit it into a two-hour movie."
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. And then, and then the film, as with Sunshine, becomes about... Then you can have the film about something else.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BCBrian Cox
'Cause it's not really about that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Well, did you like Event Horizon?
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah, I did actually. I thought that was quite a cool film.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was fun, right? It's ridiculous, but-
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I haven't seen it for years.
- BCBrian Cox
... but fun. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I always wanted to ask about their, their concept of propulsion, that you, uh, that almost like space would be flat and you would fold space over and you would intersect those two points and you would be able to travel vast distances-
- BCBrian Cox
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... instantaneously, right? And I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it, I'm sure. But is that a, a concept that people have actually considered?
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah, you can... In, in general relativity... So, so Einstein's... I should say what it is. Uh, Einstein's theory of general relativity is our best theory of space and time. And so it really is... As we've talked about before, it's you imagine space and time as a sheet. Just imagine it as a thing, sort of a, a literally a sheet surface. And all the theory says is that if you put matter and/or energy into that, then it curves it and distorts it and it can stretch it and make it shrink.And so it's the response of space and time to matter and energy. So if you, if you... The- the simplest version would be the- the sun. So you put the- a big spherical ball of stuff in there, and it- it warps space and time such that the nice straight lines, something just traveling, minding its own business through that warped space, turns into an orbit.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's why you can actually-
- BCBrian Cox
And that-
- JRJoe Rogan
... kind of see things that are behind the sun?
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BCBrian Cox
So light bends around the sun-
- 1:00:00 – 1:13:52
Hmm. Right. …
- BCBrian Cox
the counter argument you could, you could advance would be, there's only one way to do life-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Right.
- BCBrian Cox
... so you could say that actually given... Because the laws of physics and chemistry are the same everywhere, so maybe it's, maybe DNA wi- th- is the only way to do it, so that's the way it gets done. So you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is why they're so similar to us.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. See-
- JRJoe Rogan
Although so alien as well.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. They're, they're not though. You know, that's the thing about an octo- (laughs) that's why I'm surprised about it, because they're not that alien. They- they're very similar.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, they are in their abilities. I mean, their ability to transform their out- outer texture and their color inst- almost instantaneously.
- BCBrian Cox
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, they have incredible camouflage abilities that really don't exist-
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the mam- mammalian world.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah. But on a cellular level, you look at an octopus cell in a, under a microscope and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
... between an octopus cell and a human cell.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the only way that that would make sense is if all life comes from basically the same kind of building blocks and just varies depending upon the conditions and where it takes place?
- BCBrian Cox
I'm, I'm guessing, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BCBrian Cox
... yes, that, that, that must be the, uh, the only way you could sustain that, given that they're so similar to us, because they really are biochemically.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BCBrian Cox
... is that? That's the only way it can be done, given the, given the building block, the toolkit, the laws of nature, and the, the elements and so on that we have in our universe.
- JRJoe Rogan
We have so many different life forms on our planet, but if we found anything that's remotely similar to what we have here on Earth on another planet, it would be such an incredible discovery.
- BCBrian Cox
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, if we sa- if we found a frog on the moon, I mean-
- BCBrian Cox
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... the, the world would stop, right?
- BCBrian Cox
I'd be very surprised if we found a frog on the moon. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? But also, I mean, if we found anything anywhere that is any, in any way similar-
- BCBrian Cox
Well, th-
- JRJoe Rogan
... An insect on Mars.
Episode duration: 2:34:53
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