EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,072 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (drumbeats)
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Thank you very much for coming, man. And, um, thank you for bringing all this cool stuff. What is this, uh, old-timey telescope?
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs) All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that one of the ones the sailors used to use?
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs) That's, that's my spyglass. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- BKBrian Keating
This is exactly a spyglass. This thing is actually one of the most important inventions ever made, and it really is the reason I'm probably sitting here with you. Uh, it's, it's the actual tool, not this one, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BKBrian Keating
... the telescope was really the machine that changed the world the most. And what's so cool about it, it, it acted like a lever that moved the earth from being the center of the universe back in Galileo's time.
- JRJoe Rogan
What year did they invent it?
- BKBrian Keating
The telescope was invented around the early 1600s, and there's a popular misconception that Galileo invented it, but he, he didn't. He actually perfected it. So he took it from, like, you know, zero to one, basically. He took the, this spyglass, which was really never ... It's, it's amazing. People were using eyeglasses for many years, and nobody ever thought to go take one lens, take another lens, and go like this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
No one had ever done that. There was a guy, van Leeuwenhoek, and, um, and, uh, this guy Hans Lippershey, they had been making glass, and they were experts at making glass in the Netherlands. But Galileo heard about that, and the original devices that they were making could magnify things two or three times at most. But Galileo realized, "Hey, I can improve this, and then do, you know, what mankind has always dreamt of doing, use it to make money and (laughs) use it for military purposes." Because with a telescope, you could see a ship in the Venetian lagoon a day or two out before it would come on shore and you could see it from the ground.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
So the distance back then was stealth technology. This took away the stealth. It'd be like turning off the B-2's, you know, ability to have stealth. So he improved it so much, it was just inarguable this would change the world.
- JRJoe Rogan
So when was the eyeglass invented?
- BKBrian Keating
Eyeglass was invented ... You know, it's kinda, it's kinda cool. The eyeglass was invented in, um, probably the late 1500s, these lenses.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
Glass used to be total crap. It would be like looking through a piece of ice today. These lenses are super clear and super clean, you know, modern lenses. This isn't a great telescope, but it's illustrative, and we can use it to do things. But what's so interesting to me, just like a quirk of history, is when, um, when these lenses were invented, before then, you didn't ... I, I don't know what your vision is, but mine's about 20/20. It's getting worse with (laughs) as I get older, obviously.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BKBrian Keating
But before then, there were no standards for how good a person's eyesight was until they had, say, the Gutenberg Bible was published. So in the, in the 1400s and 1500s, the first movable fixed type where you had a calibrated standard, where you knew how big the type font was. And you could say, "Well, Joe can only see something at five feet away that Brian can see at 10 feet away," or something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
So then they realized, "Hey, I can't see what Brian can see," or, "I can't see what Joe can see. I need some kind of augmentation." And they would put lenses on. So that was in the, in the r- original direction from, directly from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
... the Gutenberg Bible to glasses. And then what's so funny is the glasses then led to making a telescope. And then the telescope led to the earth being moved away from being the center of the universe, which the Gutenberg Bible (laughs) , you know, in some connotations, suggested that we were. So there's a direct line from the Gutenberg Bible to the glasses to the telescope to then now religion is not so centralized in the age of scientific reason.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. So when they first started using telescopes, what kind of power are we talking about? Like, when Galileo improved upon it, you said it was, like, zero to one.
- BKBrian Keating
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, like, uh, how many m- levels of magnification?
- BKBrian Keating
So a good telescope that you can get, I always joke, you know, I'm not a doctor, but ... I'm not a real doctor, but, uh, but the only prescription Dr. Keating makes is that you should buy your kid a telescope. And actually, the reason I said this is the reason I'm probably sitting here with you, is because I became a scientist, uh, thanks to getting a telescope at about age 12. And you can actually see something. I know you've been to, like, uh, the Keck Observatory, Mount Keck.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Wow. …
- BKBrian Keating
and his group, and detectors by my friend Suzanne Stags at Princeton. And they are going ... This is going to be the world's most sensitive and the world's highest operating observatory when we start taking data with it next year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
This is ... But you see it's reflective. It's supported from the bottom. You could not do this with lenses.
- JRJoe Rogan
And a project like this, at this magnitude, how many years does it take to construct something like this?
- BKBrian Keating
With or without COVID is the question.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Oh, okay, yeah.
- BKBrian Keating
So we started in 2016. Um, my friend, uh, uh, David Spergel, uh, who's now the president of the Simons Foundation and is leading NASA's UAP task force, so I hope we can talk about that at some point.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs) Uh, so D- David's, like, one of the greatest mentors I've ever had. Uh, but he and I and, and, and others, Adrian Lee at Berkeley, we decided, oh, we wanna build the world's most capable astronomical observatory, and w- uh, happened to be very close and connected to James Simons. Hi- his, um, original job was math professor at the State University of New York called Stony Brook, and he hired my father, my late father, and which, uh, maybe we'll talk about later. Uh, and they were best friends for a long time. (clears throat) And then, uh, j- uh, Jim Simons went on to become one of the most successful hedge fund managers. He quit being a math professor and said, "I'm gonna start trading futures and commodities." Back in the early '70s, nobody did this. And he developed algorithms that, to this day, still return over 30% a year on your investments.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BKBrian Keating
So Jim is, I think, the 26th richest man in, in the, in the world. He's dedicated his fortune to two things. One, fighting autism 'cause it's, uh, it's extremely close to his heart. And two, to, um, to solving basic physics problems in science and math and chemistry and computer science. So he's not doing pr- applied stuff, he's not trying to make technology, he's not trying to make a better iPhone or something like that. He's dedicated purely to making advances in pure science with no application. So this experiment was started ... We pitched it to him, David Spergel and I and, and Mark Devlin and Suzanne Stags and Adrian Lee. We pitched it to him in 20- uh, 2016. And we got funding for it around that time.... and since then, we've had COVID, we've had tremendous numbers of, of, you know, strikes and things going on in Chile. And don't forget, Chile is in the Southern hemisphere. So when we had, like, our first wave of COVID, like, they got their first wave six months later because it was out of phase with our seasons.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
It was a nightmare. And we can't just say to my graduate student, "Hey, come back in two years when the pandemic's ... Or come back when there's a vaccine, or do whatever you want."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BKBrian Keating
Um, we instead said, "No, you," we kept, we kept it going, and the foundation kept paying us, and we kept it going. So now, we just ... Yesterday, my colleague, Adrian Lee, uh, deployed the first receiver along with Nikolettzki, who's a professor right up the street here at UT Austin. They deployed this telescope camera, and we're about to start taking data for the first time in, in our project's history.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow, that's very exciting.
- BKBrian Keating
It is. It's, it's insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
And how much more capable is the ... Is it more capable, but is it also the position that it's in, in terms of the alt- altitude that it's at?
- BKBrian Keating
It's ... It's a lot of those things. So the altitude is 17,200 feet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- BKBrian Keating
So when you're up there, you need oxygen. Like, when you were up at Mauna Kea, I've been there a few times, like, I get out of breath if I walk up a flight of stairs at Mauna Kea.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
Um, when I'm at the, uh, at the site in Chile, I get out of breath walking down a flight of stairs. Like, I'm not in the best shape.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
But ...
- JRJoe Rogan
17,000 feet?
- BKBrian Keating
17,200, yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
It's, it's, it's like being on the surface of Mars. You would love it because the, the, the ... First of all, the people there are incredible. They've been doing astronomy since, you know, a thousand year ... Before our country was even founded. There were people in the Inca societies, the ancient Incas, they were studying their interpretation of the cosmos. That flows through all to today, where they have prioritized astronomy as central to Chile's GDP.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- 30:00 – 45:00
How good are the…
- BKBrian Keating
obscure the, you know, the planets. Light pollution does not make impossible ... I'm not advocating for light pollution, but I'm just saying, right here in the middle of Austin or in the middle of San Diego, I can see the exact same things that caused Galileo to realize that the sun is the center of the solar system using scientific reasoning and evidence, based on observation.
- JRJoe Rogan
How good are the telescopes? Like say if you wanted to look at Jupiter, how much can you see?
- BKBrian Keating
You can, you can see a lot. What you can see-
- JRJoe Rogan
You can see the shape?
- BKBrian Keating
You can see the shape, that it's, that it's a planet. Do, do you know what that word planet means or where it derives from?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- BKBrian Keating
So I, I love etymology, and stop me if I'm nerding out too much, but planet means wanderer in Greek.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- BKBrian Keating
Wanderer. What is it wandering against? The fixed stars.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- BKBrian Keating
So the thing ... The fact that you have names for things ... You know, I always, I always think it's funny. Like, I'm Jewish, and we have a name for people that aren't Jewish, goyim.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
It's not an insult. It just means non-Jew. It just means nation.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BKBrian Keating
Actually, Israel is a goy, which is a nation. But we ha- ... Like, but we're 0.2% of the world's population. Like, what the hell? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BKBrian Keating
Why are you making up names for ... They should make names for you, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BKBrian Keating
Uh, but we, we have names as astronomers. There's only, there were only five things they could see that would move in, in space, and those were the, the planets from Mercury, Venus. Obviously they could see Mars and Jupiter and Saturn. But they couldn't see anything else, so they named those things the wanderers, and they wandered against the fixed stars. Now we know the stars do move, and, and actually the whole galaxy moves. And potentially, we'll get to this maybe later, you know, maybe the universe in some sense could be said to uh, be moving, uh, in, in, in a vaster landscape called the multiverse, which, uh, we can get to at, at a certain point. But uh, but the planets, you can see them. But what's so important is what Galileo saw. Jamie, if you could show, this would be amazing. Galileo in the, in the uh winter of 1610 in, uh, northern Italy where he was living, he used a telescope not, not any better than this. In fact, this might be better because the glass is better, even though it's a Chinese piece of junk, you know, that I bought on, on uh eBay. But um, he mapped ... He was able to measure Jupiter and see it. And, and hopefully we can see it on the screen. And he saw it as a disc. So if you, if you wanna see planets, you can differentiate them right now by the fact that they do not scintillate. They do not sparkle. They do not twinkle-twinkle like stars do. Because they're extended objects that we can actually, uh, n- see through the same and different parts of the atmospheric column. That's what causes scintillation. You know, in like a sniper rifle?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
They correct for it. They use a d- it's called adaptive optics. That's to avoid like the thermal radiation from the Earth. Like if you're shooting something or ... an elk or whatever at great distance, there is thermal radiation close to the ground and then the air is l- mu- is much cooler. And so you get these boundary layers of the atmosphere that causes differential refraction, which changes the color and the position of where the deer is, and that's not good, right? So they have to correct for that using what's called adaptive optics.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- BKBrian Keating
Anyway. Um, but the, the same phenomena happens for the planets. They're so big, they're so close to us. They're not bigger than the stars. Stars are massively bigger than any of our planets, including Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system. But because uh, they're close to us, they don't appear to be points. And only points will twinkle. So if you wanna identify a star versus a plane (laughs) versus a planet, the planet will be the thing that doesn't move and doesn't twinkle. That's called scintillation. They do not scintillate the same way that stars do. So what uh, what Galileo did in January of 1610 is he made a series of observations of the planet Jupiter. He knew exactly where it was. He also invented the tripod. He was the first person that uh ... These things that we just take for granted. Like Joe, do you know that they didn't have clocks back then? There was no clock. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They had sundials, right?
- BKBrian Keating
They couldn't measure time. They had sundials, but what are you gonna do at night? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
When, when was the first clock?
- BKBrian Keating
So Galileo tried to invent the first clock.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- BKBrian Keating
It was actually part of what th- ... a precursor to the Nobel Prize. It was something called the Longitude Prize.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Well, isn't that the…
- BKBrian Keating
you know, peasants, why does it begin with the creation of the world, of the universe? Isn't that weird? Like, shouldn't it be like, "Uh, there's something really delicious that you're gonna wanna eat. It's called a pig. Um, you know, don't eat." Like, why doesn't it start with that? Why does it start with the origin of the universe?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, isn't that the ultimate question that man would have?
- BKBrian Keating
Um, I, I, I think you're right. I think another way to interpret it is if God created the universe, then it's kinda like he has title to everything, right? He-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- BKBrian Keating
... then could make a claim that, "Look, there's no God above me." And think about the milieu he was o- ... Uh, he bli- ... Uh, uh, the Hebrew Bible came about in. Um, it was, uh, pantheistic. It was in direct contradistinction to the other great religion of the time, which was, uh, you know, Necropolism, which was basically Egypt. E- Egypt was, um, was a culture fixated on death, the pyramids, giant tombs. They had mummification to preserve you into the afterlife. Um, they named everything after themselves. They had statues. Their, their Bible was called The Book of the Dead, uh, in other words, the, the ... you know, in contradistinction to the Jewish, you know, Bible. The Torah is like The Book of Life, we call it. So, um, so Judaism is operating under that, where there were gods and the gods were within nature and they controlled man. The Hebrew Bible was meant to s- show that, no, God is above nature and controls nature. Therefore, the sun, the ... Everything was weird that the sun is created on the fourth day. In the, in the Genesis description, the sun doesn't come about until the fourth day.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- BKBrian Keating
What's a day?
- JRJoe Rogan
What's first?
- BKBrian Keating
Right. (laughs) That'd be, uh, let there be light.
- JRJoe Rogan
Let there be light from what?
- BKBrian Keating
From, uh, this creation ex nihilo. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Right, right? You know?
- BKBrian Keating
The multiverse. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, if it's not from the sun, there is no light.
- BKBrian Keating
That's right. Oh, there is-
- JRJoe Rogan
So what planets are we talking about?
- BKBrian Keating
Exactly, right. So but getting back to your, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BKBrian Keating
... original question, Galileo was very religious.
- JRJoe Rogan
But where does it say in the Bible that the Earth is the center of everything?
- BKBrian Keating
It's, it's very interesting. Um, what, what ended up happening was the reason it was dangerous for him, and he was accused of apostasy, was because he was claiming against the doctrine of effect- effectively of Aristotle ... And actually Stephen Meyer taught this to me in a conference that, um, I went to with him last year, uh, in just a conversation. I always wondered, why is it that the, um, Catholic Church, Cath- Catholicism branch of Christianity came from Ju- Judaism, right? I mean, uh, the origin of they accept the Hebrew Bible, right? So, um, why is it that, um, a sect of, of the, uh, or say the scientific and, and technological elite of the Catholic Church, why did they wanna support a doctrine which really traced itself back to Aristotle, right? The Aristole- Aristotelian notion was that everything was centered on the Earth. Uh, like, there's nothing in the Bible that says the Earth is the center of the solar system, or it doesn't say that. But Aristotle made such logical sense to the Christians, to the early Christians and later to the Catholic Church, that they basically sanctified and made Aristotle effectively into a saint.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
And so therefore, it was blasphemy...... for Galileo to contradict Aristotle.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. That's incredible.
- BKBrian Keating
It's really strange because, you know, um, Aristotle was a, was a pagan, right? He was pantheistic, which is the... The number one law of the Ten Commandments, right, is "I am the Lord, you shall have no other gods before me," meaning that Judaism came to destroy pantheism and to accept monotheism and establish it throughout the world. And now three billion people are affiliated with it in some way, right? So that was its key enemy. And so if you... Uh, we didn't have a sun god. That's why if God creates the sun, God, Hashem, or you know, the God of Allah or whatever, that is more powerful than the sun. So it supersedes it. God controls the sun to do things for us and the moon to do things for us, uh, for our benefit, not for us to worship.
- JRJoe Rogan
That is crazy.
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Questioning Aristotle became blasphemy and that's, that's the idea of the geocentric universe.
- BKBrian Keating
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. That's amazing. That's really amazing.
- 1:00:00 – 1:08:33
(laughs) …
- JRJoe Rogan
in them?"
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"And you look jacked as fuck."
- BKBrian Keating
All right, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, bro. (laughs)
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Settle down, sir.
- BKBrian Keating
But the thing is, does... Do steroids work if you're not, like, uh, going to the gym? I mean, you could, you could-
- JRJoe Rogan
No. No, th- they do not.
- BKBrian Keating
... can't do it, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
But for athletes, they have a significant advantage in they allow you to recover much quicker.
- BKBrian Keating
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, it's, um... There's certain sports... Well, if you call bodybuilding a sport, right?
- BKBrian Keating
Yeah, it's... I believe definitely.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's impossible. It's impossible without steroids.
- BKBrian Keating
Some of these guys are just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that you cannot get-
- BKBrian Keating
... insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to that size. You don't get to Ronnie Coleman size. You don't get to, like, Dorian Yates size. You don't get there without steroids.
- BKBrian Keating
My mother-in-law size. My mother-in-law, uh, um, tragically she lost her, um, what would've been my, my oldest brother-in-law, um, when he was about 16 years old, my wife's oldest brother. And, uh, she dedicated her life to just, like, just being the best person she could be. And she entered, she built her body up, my mother-in-law, Allison. I'm, like, emotional thinking about her 'cause I love her so much. Uh, and she, she built her body, and she did this as, like, a Jewish grandmother, you know, basically. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- BKBrian Keating
And she's totally ripped. I mean, she's still in great shape, but this is like 10 or 15 years ago.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BKBrian Keating
Maybe 20 years ago. And I used to joke when I was dating my wife, Sarah. I was like, "You know, normally you take a girl out, you're not scared of her father." Like, I'm terrified of your mother. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BKBrian Keating
"She'll kick my ass." But, like, she never used steroids. I mean, she's, you know... That's not her way anyway. But you, you can get cut, I think. You can get, like, low body fat without taking illegal stuff probably, but you probably can't get the musculature is what you're saying.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, you can get very big without taking steroids. There's a lot of people that are massive without taking steroids. There's a lot of people that have fantastic genetics. There's a lot of people that have just thick, heavy builds.
- BKBrian Keating
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, it's natural.
- BKBrian Keating
Yeah.
Episode duration: 3:30:16
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