Joe Rogan Experience #2023 - Brian Keating

1. 0:00 – 2:06

   A spyglass that changed the world: telescopes and the end of Earth-centered cosmos

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (drumbeats)

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      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?

   3. BKBrian Keating0:17

      (laughs) All right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Is that one of the ones the sailors used to use?

   5. BKBrian Keating0:19

      (laughs) That's, that's my spyglass. Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      Ah.

   7. BKBrian Keating0:21

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:36

      Right.

   9. BKBrian Keating0:36

      ... 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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:50

       What year did they invent it?

   11. BKBrian Keating0:51

       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.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       Mm-hmm.

   13. BKBrian Keating1:16

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:54

       Hmm.

   15. BKBrian Keating1:54

       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.

2. 2:06 – 3:39

   From Gutenberg to glasses to Galileo: a chain reaction in scientific perception

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:06

      So when was the eyeglass invented?

   2. BKBrian Keating2:09

      Eyeglass was invented ... You know, it's kinda, it's kinda cool. The eyeglass was invented in, um, probably the late 1500s, these lenses.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:17

      Wow.

   4. BKBrian Keating2:17

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:41

      Yeah.

   6. BKBrian Keating2:42

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:03

      Hmm.

   8. BKBrian Keating3:04

      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-

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:15

      Wow.

   10. BKBrian Keating3:15

       ... 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.

3. 3:39 – 5:53

   Galileo’s 20x telescope: craters, imperfections, and the birth of modern observation

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:39

      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.

   2. BKBrian Keating3:48

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:48

      Like, like, uh, how many m- levels of magnification?

   4. BKBrian Keating3:51

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:12

      Mm-hmm.

   6. BKBrian Keating4:12

      And you've seen the night sky from there, and that is wonderful. But every single thing that Galileo saw with his 20 power telescope, which is not that much-

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:20

      Not much at all.

   8. BKBrian Keating4:21

      You can, you can get one of those, you know, on my website. No, I'm just kidding (laughs) .

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:24

      But that was a big improvement.

   10. BKBrian Keating4:26

       That was a huge improvement.

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:26

       Massive improvement.

   12. BKBrian Keating4:27

       'Cause now you could see there were craters on the moon.

   13. JRJoe Rogan4:29

       Hmm.

   14. BKBrian Keating4:30

       Now you could see there were mountains on the moon. The moon wasn't this perfect, crystalline sphere that the Bible and the ancients had talked about. It had flaws, imperfections. It looked like it had oceans. That's why they're called mare, mare seas, the Sea of Tranquility.

   15. JRJoe Rogan4:43

       You know what really bummed me out?

   16. BKBrian Keating4:44

       What was that?

   17. JRJoe Rogan4:44

       When Samsung, when they got exposed for their digital zoom for the moon.

   18. BKBrian Keating4:49

       (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan4:49

       That bummed me out. I thought I was taking a real picture of the moon.

   20. BKBrian Keating4:52

       (laughs) That's right.

   21. JRJoe Rogan4:52

       I was like, "This is amazing."

   22. BKBrian Keating4:53

       There's the flag.

   23. JRJoe Rogan4:54

       "Look what my phone can do."

   24. BKBrian Keating4:55

       There's the flag. Yeah. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:55

       "It looks so clear."

   26. BKBrian Keating4:57

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:57

       Like, "How do they do that?" And then someone took a photo of a blurry photo of a moon on a screen and it did it to that.

   28. BKBrian Keating5:06

       Yeah. Exactly.

   29. JRJoe Rogan5:07

       So it, it cleared up the image. It's-

   30. BKBrian Keating5:09

       It ruined the illusion.
4. 5:53 – 7:48

   Stopping down and optical quality: why ‘bigger’ isn’t always better

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:53

      And what was the very best telescope that he created as he made them better?

   2. BKBrian Keating5:58

      He, it, it only went up to about 20 times because that-

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:00

      Mm-hmm.

   4. BKBrian Keating6:01

      ... that, um, the ability to grind glass was always the limiting factor. He understood the mathematics of it, which was also part, like, well, how is what's called lens equation, how does that work? How does light get refracted and focused and in so doing, bend and magnify light? And so, he understood it mathematically and could prove it. But he also did something really cool, which people don't appreciate. Uh, the lens in this telescope, I don't know, should I show it? Jim, tell me if it's okay. Um, the lens in the telescope is actually bigger than this brass piece that surrounds it, okay? Um, what Gal- and that owes to Galileo's, um, activity. So, what Galileo realized is sometimes you don't want to use everything that you have. Sometimes you wanna do what's called stopping down. So, you have, you know, for aperture stops in photography?

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. BKBrian Keating6:43

      So, when, when you stop down something, it does something really important. It reduces what are called systematic effects. Aberrations, unwanted effects. So, instead of maximizing it, say, "Oh, I got the biggest telescope," which is why now astronomers fight about, "My telescope is bigger than yours." He said, "No, no, no. You wanna stop it down, and that will actually improve the quality." And you can actually see this with your own fingers. So, take, take your fingers out, Joe.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:07

      Okay.

   8. BKBrian Keating7:07

      Look at some light source. Look at these stars above us.

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:09

      Okay.

   10. BKBrian Keating7:09

       Make a tiny little triangle with your fingers, um, with your two fingers and your thumb.

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:14

       Okay.

   12. BKBrian Keating7:14

       And then go around, like, one of the stars up there, and you can actually see it. Pinch it down to almost a point, and you can almost see that it will magnify a tiny, tiny bit. Uh, do you get that effect? It's very subtle. Uh, but you're actually reducing some of the rays outside of your peripheral vision essentially-

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:33

       Hmm.

   14. BKBrian Keating7:34

       ... um, that would otherwise come in if you have any, like, cataracts or anything like that.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:37

       Mm-hmm.

   16. BKBrian Keating7:37

       So, what Galileo said is, "No, don't use everything you have. Actually stop it down. Make it smaller. Make it seem less efficient, but it'll actually improve the quality, not the quantity, tremendously."

5. 7:48 – 13:01

   Refractors vs. reflectors: Newton’s mirror breakthrough and modern observatories

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:48

      And when did they first start getting them to the point where you get telescopes like the Keck Observatory? When did that-

   2. BKBrian Keating7:55

      Oh, yeah. That was, um, so the, so the, the Keck Observatory and the modern telescopes that we use today are not this type of telescope. This is called a refracting telescope, and it uses lenses. The lenses change the speed of light inside of the medium, and that causes light waves at different angles to travel through different thicknesses and travel slower, and that causes them to converge or diverge as necessary. Nowadays, that, so this telescope was invented by this guy, Hans Lippershey, uh, and perfected by Galileo. Isaac Newton came along almost 100 years later. Actually, he was born when Galileo died, uh, in, in 1642. And he invented not a refracting telescope, but a reflecting telescope of the type that the Keck Telescopes you've seen are. These are telescopes that use mirrors, like, to focus the light. They can be made much bigger. They can be made much more clearer because you don't need glass. You just need a highly reflective media. And crucially, they can be supported behind them. So, the, well, I mean t- imagine if you made the biggest telescope of this kind. You know, kinda cheap, right? So, I only brought, you know, a small phone I could put on it. Actually, TSA almost confiscated this today. They were like, "What the hell is this thing?"

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:04

      What?

   4. BKBrian Keating9:04

      Yeah, they almost said to me-

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:06

      They don't know what a telescope is?

   6. BKBrian Keating9:06

      They, they were like, "What is this? Are you gonna use it as a weapon?" Um, but they can only be made 30 times the diameter of this telescope, of this little tiny thing.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:15

      Really?

   8. BKBrian Keating9:15

      The biggest refracting telescope.

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:17

      So, those ones that look like a, a garbage can in people's backyards.

   10. BKBrian Keating9:21

       Uh, those are reflecting telescopes.

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:23

       Oh, okay.

   12. BKBrian Keating9:23

       The biggest refracting telescope is in Yerkes Observatory outside of Chicago or Wisconsin, southern Wisconsin. And it is only 39 inches across.

   13. JRJoe Rogan9:31

       Hmm.

   14. BKBrian Keating9:31

       So, what happens is imagine you have a piece of glass, uh, over time. The glass will start to-

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:37

       Is that it right there?

   16. BKBrian Keating9:38

       That's it. Perfect.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:38

       Oh, that's pretty good.

   18. BKBrian Keating9:40

       Wow.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:40

       Powerful, Jimmy.

   20. BKBrian Keating9:40

       I heard Jamie's good. Wow. That was amazing.

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:42

       He's the best.

   22. BKBrian Keating9:42

       Um, so that's Yerkes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:43

       Look at that. So-

   24. BKBrian Keating9:44

       So, that's-

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:44

       That-

   26. BKBrian Keating9:44

       ... puny compared to what you've seen in the Keck Observatory.

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:47

       Mm-hmm.

   28. BKBrian Keating9:47

       Those are 10 meters across, 10 times that diameter.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:51

       Interesting. And then what kind of power does that one have?

   30. BKBrian Keating9:54

       So, you couldn't get a telescope that has arbitrary power. The power is not the important thing. The, the, what, what's important is how clear and high quality the image can be.
6. 13:01 – 20:13

   Building the Simons Observatory in Chile: altitude, logistics, and sensitivity

   1. BKBrian Keating13:01

      That's a million miles away from the Earth. But that's built with m- reflecting technology. So when you see a mirror, mirrors reflect colors without i- independently. It doesn't change the color. You don't see, "Well, I look different if I'm in a red light versus a blue light." They have no chromatic aberration. They also can be supported from behind. With our Simons Observatory, which, which, um, working with some amazing scientists around the world ... This is a sticker for you.

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:25

      Oh.

   3. BKBrian Keating13:26

      Uh, so this is in Chile. This is currently the world's highest operating astronomical observatory.

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:30

      Mm.

   5. BKBrian Keating13:30

      It's at 5,200 meters, 17,200 feet above sea level. And the telescope that's pictured there, uh, is the, uh, six-meter diameter, we call it the large aperture telescope, that my friend Mark Devlin, uh, y-

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:43

      Is this the VLT one that I keep hearing about?

   7. BKBrian Keating13:45

      No, this is the Simons. This is just the ... called the Simons Observatory. So when or- our mutual friend Eric Weinstain was on last time, he talked a lot about this man James Simons, uh, who, uh, organized and ran the math department at, uh, at the State University of New York in Santa Barbara. But he's become a ... He was one of the most successful hedge fund managers in the world. So this is the p- a precursor observatory. This is led by my friends, uh, Suzanne Stags and Mark Devlin, uh, at, uh, Princeton, uh, Penn, re- irrespectively (laughs) . Not, not respectively, but the other way around. Uh, and then the Simons Observatory on the left, if you go over just a tiny bit, Jamie. Yeah, there it is. So there, if you click on the Wikipedia there, there it is. Those are two reflecting enormous six-meter diameter mirrors. What happens is light comes in from above, from the cosmos, reflects off the one that's tilted at a 45-degree angle here, bounces up to the other one on the left. Then that shoots across here. Actually, let me try this. I'm, I'm a professor, Joe, so, uh, this won't show up on the screen. But then it goes across (clears throat) and it goes into that white little chamber over there.

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BKBrian Keating14:50

      That white chamber, like, I could sit on your back and we would have plenty of room inside there. That's six ... That's, uh, over six and a half feet across.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:58

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BKBrian Keating14:58

       This is also built by Mark Devlin 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.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:11

       Wow.

   13. BKBrian Keating15:11

       This is ... But you see it's reflective. It's supported from the bottom. You could not do this with lenses.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:15

       And a project like this, at this magnitude, how many years does it take to construct something like this?

   15. BKBrian Keating15:20

       With or without COVID is the question.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:22

       (laughs) Oh, okay, yeah.

   17. BKBrian Keating15:23

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:34

       Oh, yeah.

   19. BKBrian Keating15:35

       (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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:23

       (laughs)

   21. BKBrian Keating16:23

       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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:19

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BKBrian Keating17:19

       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."

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:27

       Right.

   25. BKBrian Keating17:27

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:46

       Wow, that's very exciting.

   27. BKBrian Keating17:48

       It is. It's, it's insane.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:49

       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?

   29. BKBrian Keating17:57

       It's ... It's a lot of those things. So the altitude is 17,200 feet.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:01

       Oh.
7. 20:13 – 21:28

   Light pollution and the lost night sky: what ancient observers saw (and we don’t)

   1. JRJoe Rogan20:13

      The ... I've never been able to recreate my experience the first time I went to the Keck Observatory.

   2. BKBrian Keating20:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan20:18

      Um, but it was ... We just caught lightning in a bottle, and I remember when we were driving up there. We, we had been staying on, on the big island, and we, we stayed on the big island specifically because I wanted to go to the observatory. I was like, "I, I just wanna see it. I keep hearing that it's insane." And wh- ... As we were driving up the mountain, it was cloudy. I was like, "Oh, this sucks. We got a cloudy day. Gah, oh well." You know, "We'll go up there anyway, and we'll see what it's like and look at their telescopes and all that jazz." But then you drove through the clouds. So the ... It was so high up there that you passed through the clouds-

   4. BKBrian Keating20:52

      That's right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan20:52

      ... and then it was just crystal clear, and I swear it changed my life. Like, just looking at it that way, I, I don't think ... I knew ... Everyone knows that we're in space.

   6. BKBrian Keating21:03

      That's right.

   7. JRJoe Rogan21:03

      But you don't see it that way all the time.

   8. BKBrian Keating21:07

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan21:07

      Because I just don't think it's possible unless you live in some very rural area and catch-

   10. BKBrian Keating21:11

       Well, you mentioned this. You said, like-

   11. JRJoe Rogan21:12

       Yeah.

   12. BKBrian Keating21:12

       ... "It's a tragedy that we suffer from light pollution."

   13. JRJoe Rogan21:15

       Yeah.

   14. BKBrian Keating21:15

       So much so, you said, that, "We don't even know what we don't see."

   15. JRJoe Rogan21:18

       Yeah, we don't. We have no, uh, understanding of what's above us and that the ancients used to see every single day.

   16. BKBrian Keating21:25

       Absolutely.

   17. JRJoe Rogan21:26

       That's what they saw every night.

8. 21:28 – 30:21

   Milky Way in optical vs. microwave: dust lanes, Magellanic Clouds, and Inca ‘dark constellations’

   1. BKBrian Keating21:28

      So much so that ... This is a beautiful picture that Jamie's showing. This is the ALMA. This is c- ... It stands for Atacama, which is the desert that we're in. It's the driest desert on Earth. It's the highest desert on Earth because it's, you know, 5,000 meters, 17,000 feet, in the Andes Mountains. Um, and this picture is showing these, this band that's arcing overhead. That's the Milky Way galaxy. I'm a professional astronomer, Joe. When I go down there, I can't recognize the constellations that I know and I've known since I was 12 years old, because there's no contra- ... Like, every star just is, like, blowing you away-

   2. JRJoe Rogan22:00

      Mm.

   3. BKBrian Keating22:00

      ... and it's just magnified so much by the clarity and the distance and the remove from light pollution. It is a toxic f- ... You know, it's, it is preventing our children from-

   4. JRJoe Rogan22:10

      Yeah.

   5. BKBrian Keating22:10

      ... really understanding what the ancients knew. But the, the great thing about that shot, Jamie, if we could keep it up for just a second longer. So you see on the left, there are these two smudges there?

   6. JRJoe Rogan22:18

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BKBrian Keating22:19

      Those, you can barely see from, from Hawaii. I don't know if you guys saw them. Those are called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Those are satellite galaxies of the Milky Way galaxy.

   8. JRJoe Rogan22:29

      Whoa.

   9. BKBrian Keating22:29

      We're in the Milky Way galaxy. We're in this disc, and what, what I brought here, this is a representation of the cosmic microwave background. This was made by, uh, my friends, uh, Lyman Page and, and David Spergel and others on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. This is God's view of the cosmos, if you will. So this is what you'd see if you were sensitive to microwave vision instead of optical light. So microwaves are longer than infrared light. They're a longer wavelength than, um, uh ... Uh, they're shorter than we- radio waves, and they're longer than infrared light, much longer than visible light. These, this would be your microwave constellations.In other words, if you could see, these are unchanging, fixed patterns on the sky that are only visible to microwave instruments. This satellite made this image. Running across here, this orange band around it, is the Milky Way, but as seen in microwaves. So you just saw it in- s- as seen in optical. So the Milky Way emits at all frequencies. You can't get rid of it, because we're inside the galaxy. So this ... Uh, as I say, this is as if God is, like, looking down. We're actually at the center of this ball here, and we're looking out of that galaxy, uh, out towards the galaxy. But we're on one of the arms of the spiral galaxy. Yeah, there's one of the globes, and there's a little telescope. Someone's horning into my racket there, little planet factory. Watch yourself.

   10. JRJoe Rogan23:41

       (laughs)

   11. BKBrian Keating23:41

       Watch yourself. I got the little telescopes and the microwave b- beach ball. Um, so that's what the galaxy looks like. And what is all that schmutz? What is all that blue stuff? Like, I don't see that when you're in Mauna Kea, right? You ... That, that is dust. That's dust in the Milky Way galaxy.

   12. JRJoe Rogan23:58

       Put that back up, please.

   13. BKBrian Keating23:59

       Yeah. So actually, if you, if you go back, Jamie, to the ALMA picture that you, uh, you showed just a second ago, the Incas were a really fascinating culture and astronomically speaking. Uh, we look at the stars like ... I don't know how many constellations you can recognize.

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:18

       There it is.

   15. BKBrian Keating24:19

       Uh, but, but the Incas, they didn't use our constellations obviously. They didn't, like, say-

   16. JRJoe Rogan24:23

       The Big Dipper.

   17. BKBrian Keating24:24

       Yeah, the Big Dipper-

   18. JRJoe Rogan24:25

       Right.

   19. BKBrian Keating24:25

       ... or anything like that. But they instead focused on those dark blotches. Those dark blotches are not regions representing the absence of stars. Those dark blotches are obscured. There are billions of stars there, but they're obscured by clouds of dust, basically like smoke, particles of carbon, of silicon, metals. I'm gonna show you in just a bit. They pollute, and they obscure and o- make opaque the stars behind them. So the Incas could see this much more clear. We can't see these from where we are in the Northern hemisphere, but the Incas could see it. So they made their constellations shapes that they saw in those dark, dusty globules.

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:08

       Mm-hmm.

   21. BKBrian Keating25:09

       So if you were born back then ... Let's see, you just had your birthday, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:12

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BKBrian Keating25:13

       Um, so you were born back then, August 11?

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:16

       11, yeah. Yeah.

   25. BKBrian Keating25:17

       So you're born in August. Um, I forget. What, what's your, what's your sign? A Libra?

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:21

       Leo.

   27. BKBrian Keating25:21

       Leo, okay. So instead of being a Leo, they would represent you by what constellation, what dust blob there was, and they had names for it. There was a Toad. There was a Llama. My favorite one, Joe, there was a constellation called the Umbilical Cord of the Llama.

   28. JRJoe Rogan25:37

       Whoa.

   29. BKBrian Keating25:38

       Can you imagine going to a bar, to The Mothership?

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:41

       (laughs)
9. 30:21 – 33:18

   Jupiter’s moons and Galileo’s sketches: evidence that not everything orbits Earth

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:21

      How good are the telescopes? Like say if you wanted to look at Jupiter, how much can you see?

   2. BKBrian Keating30:25

      You can, you can see a lot. What you can see-

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      You can see the shape?

   4. BKBrian Keating30:27

      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?

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:31

      No.

   6. BKBrian Keating30:32

      So I, I love etymology, and stop me if I'm nerding out too much, but planet means wanderer in Greek.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:37

      Oh.

   8. BKBrian Keating30:37

      Wanderer. What is it wandering against? The fixed stars.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      Oh.

   10. BKBrian Keating30:40

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       Mm-hmm.

   12. BKBrian Keating30:48

       It's not an insult. It just means non-Jew. It just means nation.

   13. JRJoe Rogan30:51

       Right.

   14. BKBrian Keating30:51

       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)

   15. JRJoe Rogan30:58

       Right.

   16. BKBrian Keating30:58

       Why are you making up names for ... They should make names for you, right?

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:00

       Right.

   18. BKBrian Keating31:00

       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?

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Mm-hmm.

   20. BKBrian Keating32:23

       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.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:48

       Mm.

   22. BKBrian Keating32:48

       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

10. 33:18 – 58:40

    Longitude, clocks, and Galileo’s proto–VR helmet: measuring time at sea

    1. BKBrian Keating33:18

       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)

    2. JRJoe Rogan33:34

       They had sundials, right?

    3. BKBrian Keating33:36

       They couldn't measure time. They had sundials, but what are you gonna do at night? (laughs)

    4. JRJoe Rogan33:37

       When, when was the first clock?

    5. BKBrian Keating33:39

       So Galileo tried to invent the first clock.

    6. JRJoe Rogan33:41

       Really?

    7. BKBrian Keating33:41

       It was actually part of what th- ... a precursor to the Nobel Prize. It was something called the Longitude Prize.

    8. JRJoe Rogan33:46

       Oh.

    9. BKBrian Keating33:46

       They offered a prize. I don't know if you've ever done any boating or whatever. But when you're out on the ocean, it's extremely hard to determine what your longitude is. It's easy to find your latitude. You just look for Polaris, the North Star. You measure your elevation, and that's gonna complement where you are latitudinally on the, on the um, uh, axis going from South Pole to North Pole on the Earth. But it was impossible to tell where you are east to west from the prime meridian unless you had a or- accurate way of measuring time. So Galileo, um, was, was one of the first people to try to compete to win this prize, which was worth, you know, like $1 million back then in those da- days. And he uh, tried a couple different ways to invent timepieces, but the one that he tried to settle on was this use of the planet Jupiter's moons. Jupiter has four moons. (laughs)

    10. JRJoe Rogan34:35

        (laughs)

    11. BKBrian Keating34:36

        I came for that look, Joe. I came for that.

    12. JRJoe Rogan34:38

        Wow.

    13. BKBrian Keating34:38

        Look, it was just ... I finally-

    14. JRJoe Rogan34:39

        You got-

    15. BKBrian Keating34:39

        Th- I can die happy, right? (laughs) I got the look.

    16. JRJoe Rogan34:41

        Wow.

    17. BKBrian Keating34:41

        Jupiter has four moons, and you can see them with this telescope. And I'm gonna give this as a gift to you for your birthday.

    18. JRJoe Rogan34:46

        That little tiny one?

    19. BKBrian Keating34:47

        You could see it, yeah. If you know ... If Jupiter's out and you know where to look and you kinda use a little bit of creative-

    20. JRJoe Rogan34:51

        How many much power is that one?

    21. BKBrian Keating34:52

        This one, this one's about 12, 15 power.

    22. JRJoe Rogan34:55

        So you could do it with 15 binoculars?

    23. BKBrian Keating34:57

        Yep. Easily, yeah. You'll see ... What you'll see, uh-

    24. JRJoe Rogan35:00

        On a tripod?

    25. BKBrian Keating35:00

        ... these four moons. But I wonder if um, if Jamie, if you could find-

    26. JRJoe Rogan35:04

        I'm trying to find something. Uh, it wasn't great, so I-

    27. BKBrian Keating35:06

        If, if you look up, um, uh, Starry Messenger. Starry Messenger Galileo sketch Jupiter. So what Galileo did is he turned the telescope to the moon for the ... in 1609, and then 1610 ... There they are, Jamie, on the right with those stars.

    28. JRJoe Rogan35:26

        Look at that i- illustration of Galileo.

    29. BKBrian Keating35:28

        That's his handwritten. And I've seen ... A friend of mine owns this copy, a first edition of these books. And you're looking at it, and actually it's-

    30. JRJoe Rogan35:35

        A first edition? The actual-
11. 58:40 – 1:07:03

    Calibration and contamination: supplements, doping tests, and weight cutting as measurement games

    1. BKBrian Keating58:40

       But, so all this really is bringing up a notion of what's called calibration. So I'm an experimental physicist. The hardest thing about doing a measurement for me is not, like, knowing what I measure. It's knowing how I screwed up the measurement. It's like, "What went wrong? How do I know?" Like you said, "How do I know what the base level zero point is of this measurement?"

    2. JRJoe Rogan58:56

       Right.

    3. BKBrian Keating58:56

       "What's the calibration?" When you buy this cup of coffee, when you buy the Black Rifle or the AMED or whatever, how do you know you're getting exactly what they say? It's just printed on there, right?

    4. JRJoe Rogan59:05

       Right.

    5. BKBrian Keating59:05

       So I'm, I'm, I'll ask you. You're one of the owners, right? So, like, how do you ensure that? Like, how do you ... Have you ever thought about that? Like, do you go in and count all the items in the house?

    6. JRJoe Rogan59:11

       No, we had i- issues with that in the past-

    7. BKBrian Keating59:13

       Yeah. How so?

    8. JRJoe Rogan59:13

       ... when we first started the company. Well, we, we were getting stuff made-... in these, uh, places that do supplements. And so, we were third-party testing our stuff and finding things in our supplements that weren't supposed to be in there, like different vitamins. Like, "Why is that in there?" And in trace amounts. And it turns out it's contamination.

    9. BKBrian Keating59:30

       That's right.

    10. JRJoe Rogan59:31

        And that's a lot of, uh, athletes actually get popped from, um, small levels of steroids-

    11. BKBrian Keating59:37

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JRJoe Rogan59:37

        ... that are in, you know, like protein powders and creatines-

    13. BKBrian Keating59:40

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JRJoe Rogan59:40

        ... and things that they buy from, you know, kinda shady organizations.

    15. BKBrian Keating59:43

        Yeah, my man, Fernando Tatis, he got, he got nailed for that last year, right?

    16. JRJoe Rogan59:47

        What does he do?

    17. BKBrian Keating59:48

        Oh, he's a San Diego Padres.

    18. JRJoe Rogan59:50

        Oh.

    19. BKBrian Keating59:50

        He's the ri- right fielder now. He's their...

    20. JRJoe Rogan59:51

        Well, there's a lot of claims that people get popped-

    21. BKBrian Keating59:53

        I know. (laughs)

    22. JRJoe Rogan59:53

        ... for that and they, they...

    23. BKBrian Keating59:54

        (laughs)

    24. JRJoe Rogan59:55

        They just go, "Oh, you got..." Like Canelo said he had tainted meat from tacos.

    25. BKBrian Keating59:58

        (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan59:58

        "Oh, they just happen to have steroids in them?"

    27. BKBrian Keating1:00:01

        (laughs)

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:00:01

        "And you look jacked as fuck."

    29. BKBrian Keating1:00:02

        All right, exactly.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:00:02

        Okay, bro. (laughs)
12. 1:07:03 – 1:22:44

    Nobel Prize as an idol: imposter syndrome from Newton to Einstein to modern winners

    1. BKBrian Keating1:07:03

       But I thought about in the context of the Nobel Prize, you know, it's like how, how many scientists, you know, have, have these things? 'Cause what are these, Joe? These are... We call them... Like, we, we don't think about idol worship. Like, have you ever been tempted-

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:07:15

       Mm-hmm.

    3. BKBrian Keating1:07:15

       ... to bow down to an idol, Joe? I mean, I actually-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:18

       Not recently.

    5. BKBrian Keating1:07:18

       No. And, uh, we have different idols, right?

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:07:20

       Right.

    7. BKBrian Keating1:07:20

       There's different things that we aspire to. Uh, but, but even people that aren't, like, in the religious sect, that do- think of themselves as atheists, let alone agnostic or whatever, but atheists, they, they all have religions.

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:07:31

       Right.

    9. BKBrian Keating1:07:31

       And, and I think for some of these guys, yeah, I mean, if it's sacrificing your lifespan, your health span, whatever Peter Attia would talk about, what, what is, you know, what's it worth?

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:07:41

        Right.

    11. BKBrian Keating1:07:41

        I mean, is that high worth it, like, to be champion for a day?

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:07:45

        Right.

    13. BKBrian Keating1:07:45

        Like, do you... Can you name, like, a Olympic sprinter from the 1980s, you know, besides, like, FloJo? (laughs) I mean, there are a couple, but I don't think she said that she would trade it. But, I mean, it's so transitory and it's so, it's so applicable only to the small cadre of people within your technical network.

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:08:01

        Right.

    15. BKBrian Keating1:08:01

        Your neck, like the noble... Like, you can't probably name more than... You've had a couple Nobel Prize winners on the show, the Sir Roger Pen-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:08:07

        Mm-hmm.

    17. BKBrian Keating1:08:07

        But can you name more? No, because you're not... I can name every one of them just like I could name this one.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:08:10

        I could name pen rows.

    19. BKBrian Keating1:08:12

        That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You know one bit, but you're also-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:08:14

        Mm-hmm.

    21. BKBrian Keating1:08:14

        ... amongst the very few people that get to interview people-

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:08:16

        Right.

    23. BKBrian Keating1:08:16

        ... like him on a daily basis.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:08:18

        Yeah. It's a, it's a god to them.

    25. BKBrian Keating1:08:19

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:08:20

        It's, uh, it's this-

    27. BKBrian Keating1:08:22

        Look at this.

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:08:22

        ... thing that very few people achieve. Well-

    29. BKBrian Keating1:08:24

        So when you get this, when you win a... I mean, I haven't won a Nobel Prize. I mean, my book is called Losing the Nobel Prize, my first book. And, uh, spoiler alert, you know, I didn't win the Nobel Prize. But, um, this-

Episode duration: 3:30:16