Joe Rogan Experience #2217 - Brian Cox

Guest 3 0:00 (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!

Host 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Guest 3 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night! All day. (rock music plays) All right. Brian Cox. Good to see you, sir.

Host 0:14 Good to see you again.

Guest 3 0:15 How's, uh, things in the world of the discovery of the universe? Any-

Host 0:19 Exciting-

Guest 3 0:20 Yes, very.

Host 0:21 ... I would say. I, I've been doing some work on black holes recently, which I hadn't started last time I saw you, actually. So I got interested in it. And the, the amount of the progress that's been made in trying to understand how they work, and, and a question that was posed by Stephen Hawking a long time ago, really 1970s, early 1980s, which is, "What happens to stuff that falls in?" The simplest question you could possibly ask.

Guest 3 0:48 Right.

Host 0:49 There's progress being made on that now, which I think is profound and exciting.

Guest 3 0:54 How is the progress being made? Like how, how do we... how do we study a black hole?

Host 1:00 I mean, it's mainly theoretical. Although, um, we, we have now got photographs of them. So we have two photographs, which are radio telescope photographs.

Guest 3 1:09 Right.

Host 1:09 One of the, the one in the center of our galaxy, which is a, a little one. It's called Sagittarius A*. A lit- it's a s- it's a little super massive black hole. So it's about six million times the mass of the sun-

Guest 3 1:21 (laughs)

Host 1:21 ... which makes it a little super massive.

Guest 3 1:23 (laughs)

Host 1:24 And then there's another one. The first photo that was taken, it's a collaboration called Event Horizon, and they took a photo of one in the galaxy M87, 55 million light years away. That thing is around six billion times the mass of the sun. Can you imagine that? 6,000 million times more massive than our sun.

Guest 3 1:41 Is that the largest black hole we've ever discovered?

Host 1:43 No. There, there are bigger ones than that, but that's the... (laughs) The, the, that, that's the scale of them. It's a biggish one, that.

Guest 3 1:48 Oh.

Host 1:49 But if you think about it... I mean, so there's a number, it's called the, the Schwarzschild radius of the thing. So if you, if you took our sun, which you can fit a million Earths inside, and collapsed it down to make a black hole, it would form a black hole when it shrunk within a radius of three, three kilometers, about two miles. So you've got to take this thing, which is-

Guest 3 2:09 Wow.

Host 2:09 ... well, I have to convert from kilometers to miles, don't I? But it's about-

Guest 3 2:12 That's okay. Seven hundred... Seven hundred thousand kilometers. So it's about five, five- 500,000 miles radius or something like that, the sun. So it's a... You squash it down till it's about two miles, and then that would form a black hole. Wow.

Host 2:24 The... Six billion times the mass of the sun means you multiply that by six billion. So these things, the, the so-called Schwarzschild radius is, I don't know, larger than our solar system basically.

Guest 3 2:38 Oh my God.

Host 2:38 This thing that, that sits in, in a galaxy. So we've got these two photographs of it.

Guest 3 2:42 Larger than our solar system?

Host 2:43 Yeah, the Event... Right. (laughs) The, the... There's... You, you... so it's, it's, it's a big structure.

Guest 3 2:49 Ah.

Host 2:50 That's, um... That's... Now, that's a Chandra X-ray image of...

Guest 3 2:55 I was like-

Host 2:55 There it is. That's it. So, so the, uh... That one there, that's the M87 black hole. So what, what you're seeing there is the emission from the material that's swirling around it. It's called the accretion disk. So you have material that's orbiting very fast, emitting a lot of radiation, and that's what you see. It's, it's a flat disk, by the way. So y- you think, think Saturn's rings. So this material is very flat. But what you're seeing in that photograph is the light rays being bent around the black hole from that flat disk. So that was a prediction, uh, from Einstein's theory basically. He published it in 1915. And you can predict that that's one... what one should look like. And then just about... What was that? Four years ago now, maybe five years ago, for the first time in history we get an image of one, and it looks like the prediction.

Guest 3 3:44 Wow.

Host 3:44 So it's a remarkable thing.

Guest 3 3:45 How phenomenal is that?

Host 3:47 Yeah. So we've got... We've had those two photographs. The other thing we've had is so-called gravitational wave detections. So these are colliding black holes, and they collide and merge together. And obviously that's quite a violent event in the universe. And so that, that event... that, that process ripples space time. So it sends ripples out in the fabric of the universe, space and time. And actually Kip Thorne, who's a... I, I, I've spoken to him several times. He's one of the greats, right? Won the Nobel Prize for this. And he calls it a storm in time. So you get a time storm. So really we're, we're to think... As we speak now there will be these very tiny ripples from violent cosmic events passing through this room, and they're changing the rate that time passes. So they... (laughs) as, as they go through. And we can detect that now. So we have detectors that can pick that up. And so we've seen those collisions as well.

Guest 3 4:41 So these collisions, how far away?

Host 4:44 Oh, millions of light years away. The, the-

Guest 3 4:46 And they're affecting what's happening in this room right now?

Host 4:48 Yeah, to a tiny extent. So there's an ex- there's an experiment called LIGO, which is the, uh... What does it stand for? Something like gravitational interferometer... I can't remember exactly what the, the word... (laughs) But there's... So basically it's, uh, laser beams. And there's one in Washington State north of Seattle and one in Louisiana. And they're, they're kind of laser beams, four-kilometer-long laser beams at right angles. And they can detect these very tiny shifts in the... Effectively, you could say, the length of a laser beam. It's a bit more fiddly and complicated. But it, it essentially measures this... the, the, the distortion in space time caused by-

Guest 3 5:26 Whoa.

Host 5:26 ... these ripples. And it's, it's way less than the diameter of an atomic nucleus by the way. Way less. These little sort of-

Guest 3 5:32 Oh my God.

Host 5:34 And, and so we've, we've started to... We've observed many of those collisions. There it is. There's LIGO.

Guest 3 5:40 Wow.

Host 5:40 So it's just basically two laser beams now, but with these ultra-high precision thing. And so we've got data now of the collision of black holes and that... those event horizon pictures with radio telescopes. So that, that's part of it. But the main bit has been theoretical advances in understanding exactly...... it, in a sense, it was what's wrong with Stephen Hawking's calculation, which is a weird thing to say sometimes because people think Stephen Hawking, su-

Guest 2 6:07 Right.

Host 6:07 ... sure, he didn't get his math wrong. But he did, actually, (laughs) in his calcul-... So what he calculated back in 1973, 1974 is that a black hole... So y- y- we picture this thing from which nothing can escape, even light. So when you go in, you're gone, basically. What he calculated is that even though these things are just a distortion in space and time... That's, that's the description of them, so it's almost as if there's nothing there apart from a distortion in space and time. He calculated that they glow, so they have a temperature. So they, they emit radiation. It's called Hawking radiation. And so important was that discovery that if you go to Westminster Abbey in London, look on the floor of the abbey on his memorial stone, and he's in there next to Newton and Shakespeare and all these people (laughs) and he's there. And chiseled in stone on the floor of Westminster Abbey is his equation for the temperature of a black hole. So it was this tremendously important discovery. So he disco- he, he discovers these things glow and he calculates how they glow. They're very low temperature, but they emit things, which means that they shrink because they're, they're emitting stuff.

Guest 2 7:18 Mm-hmm.

Host 7:18 And so they're shrinking. So that means they have a lifetime. So first of all, one day, they'll be gone. So that means that you have to address this question of what happened to all the stuff that fell in. And his calculations said that there's no record at all of anything that fell in, in all this radiation that's come off the black hole. So it's e-... purely information-less radiation. So what that means is that black holes destroy information according to that calculation. And that's a big deal because nowhere else in all of physics does anything erase information from the universe. So it's really true that if I got this, this notepad and pen, right, and I, I wrote some things on it and then I set fire to this (laughs) even, just incinerated it, put it in a nuclear explosion, whatever, in principle, according to all the laws of nature that we know, if you collected everything that came off, all the radiation, all the bits of ashes and things, and you could just measure it all, then just in principle, the idea is you could reconstruct the information. So it'll get scrambled up and thrown out into... Uh, in some practice, you can't do it, but in, just in principle, the laws of nature say that information is not destroyed, it's just scrambled up in a way that you can't reconstruct, right? But this calculation that Stephen did said there is no information in that radiation at all. Zero. Uh, just nothing. So it seemed that uniquely in the universe, black holes erase information.

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Host 10:56 So, so really, in bits. I mean, the idea is... And it's, um, I should say it's very much in principle, this. I know no one thinks in practice you could reconstruct what I wrote down on this if you set fire (laughs) to it. But in principle-

Guest 2 11:07 Well, maybe some time in the future.

Host 11:08 Yeah.

Guest 2 11:08 Maybe a million years from now.

Host 11:09 Yeah, in principle, y- y- you could just collect everything.

Guest 2 11:11 Well-

Host 11:12 Then somewhere in that, in that, in that... All that radiation and ashes and light that's come off the thing is the information. It's, it's there, so you could reconstruct the book or what I wrote on this page, in principle. But the thing about Stephen's calculation was that even in principle, it said there is no information. And by the way, the... It's kind of easy to see why actually, because this radiation, this Hawking radiation that comes off the black hole,

Host 11:42 it's coming from the horizon of the black hole. So I should say what the horizon is, maybe. So it's...

Guest 2 11:48 Okay.

Host 11:48 If you l- remember I said that the, the sun, if you squashed it down within three kilometers of radius, you, you, you'd, you'd get this kind of distortion in space and time from which if you went in-... across this region, three kilometers, you went inside it, you couldn't get out. So that's called the event horizon. So you wouldn't notice if you fell through the, the horizon of the black hole in a, in the Milky Way galaxy, if you went into that one. You, we could be falling through that horizon now in this room and we wouldn't notice anything, except that we couldn't get out again. And, and ultimately, in a few hours in, in that case, w- time would end for us. So we just go... you go to the end of time. We could talk about that. I got... there's a picture of that, maybe I should talk about. (laughs) This is getting quite complicated already, isn't it? So we wouldn't know, but let's- We didn't, we didn't start in a relaxing way, did we? I don't know. (laughs) That's fine. No need to. Uh, no need to. Let's get right into it. (laughs) So, we wouldn't notice... (laughs) Not for the big black holes. So, so yeah, so these supermassive black holes, you, you, we could fall across this horizon. It's just like being in empty space for us. Uh, so we'd just... we'd, w- we would just be talking now and we could've been talking on the outside of the horizon. And by the time I finished the sentence, we could be on the inside of the horizon, inside the black hole. And according to Einstein's theory at least, which is the theory that predicted them initially, we could just do that. We could just go in and we wouldn't notice for a bit. The, the thing we would notice ultimately is you go inexorably, w- you, nothing you can do, you go to this thing called the singularity once you've crossed the horizon. And you are going to that thing. And then the question arises, what is that thing? And one answer is we don't know. But in Einstein's theory, it's the end of time. So it's, it... one way of picturing what's happened here, it's so distorted, this space and time, by the collapse of a star or the collapse of loads of stuff to make these big supermassive black holes, we don't quite know how they form actually, but it's collapsing stuff. So it distorts space and time so much that in a, in a real sense, they kind of flip over. They, they get mixed up. And so this, this singularity, which you might have thought of as the point to which this thing collapsed, this infinitely dense point you might think, but actually it's more correctly to be seen as the end of time, 'cause everything's gotten mixed up. So you go to the end of time and it's just like saying, eh, the, the... why can't I escape that thing? It's like, why can't we escape tomorrow? Right? So we are going to tomorrow. Right. And if I said to you, let's run away from tomorrow, you'd go, uh... (laughs) I can't run away from tomorrow. So, so- Is, is it the end of time because all information is being erased so there's nothing? Yeah. I mean, if you- Is that the idea? If you draw the thing, you can draw a map of it and it just... literally time ends accor-... just purely, in Einstein's theory, this is 1915 this theory- Wow. ... general relativity, you just get a line there, a line that says there's no future beyond this line. It just stops. (laughs) Okay. So, I mean, admittedly that's not... we, we think it's... there's more, a lot more to it than that, but- It's just we haven't figured the rest of it out yet? Well, that's the thing. So we're starting to get hints about what might happen, which is- Wow. ... which is leading us... so to, to backtrack a bit, why, why does this calculation Stephen did, why has it got no informat-... why does it say there's no information in this radiation? The thing is, it's coming from the horizon. So it's all... one... there's loads of ways to think about it, but o- one way is that th- this, this weird place, this point of no return in space that you can fall through, but it's a point of no return, it sort of shakes, it almost disrupts the vacuum of space and sort of almost shakes particles out of the vacuum. That's one way of thinking about it. But this radiation is coming from the vacuum, it's coming from empty space. Whereas if you think about the thing that I throw in, if I throw this, this notepad into the thing, then that goes to the singularity. It's got nothing to do... the radiation's got nothing to do with this thing. This thing's not... this thing is not set on fire or something like that. It's, it's gone to the end of time and just whatever's happened to it has happened to it. So, so this radiation's got nothing to do with ev- anything that falls in, at first sight at least. And so that was the paradox. It's called the black hole information paradox. It's like it... one way to put it is the laws of nature that we use to calculate what happens tell us that information is never destroyed. And when you calculate what happens, it tells us that information is destroyed. So that's why everyone got interested in it (laughs) in the '80s, 'cause it's interesting. So when,

Host 16:51 when we're looking at the structure of the universe, o- o- obviously there's so much still to learn just about what's out there, you know, but what role do we think... like what is the... is there a purpose, is that the right term, like for a black hole? Like what, what... obviously we know... is it still the, the... do they still believe that in the center of every galaxy there's a supermassive black hole that's, what is it, one half of 1% of the mass of the galaxy? Is that what it is? Yeah, something like... yeah. And, and that's... there's occasionally a galaxy, I think one was discovered where we said maybe we can't see evidence of a black hole, but I think- Oh, really? Yeah. I... but, yeah- So- ... there probably is one. I, I think it's- What do you think that thing's doing there? Like what is that? What's the pro- what is the struc-... the structure is so insanely complex and so immense and you see these things everywhere. And so what purpose do you think they serve in the universe? So (laughs) I mean- Is that a right... it might not even be the right term. Well, so I think we don't... I think I'm right in saying we don't fully understand why all galaxies, as you said-... maybe there's an exception, but w- m- all galaxies have a black hole, a super massive black hole in the center. It's obviously got something to do with the way they form. And one of the purposes, by the way, of the James Webb Space Telescope is to try to look at the formation of the first galaxies. So, that's what, one of the reasons that telescope is up there. So, so w- it's, it's cutting edge research. We're trying to understand how the galaxies form. But I, I, clearly, you're right, that there, it has something to do with the way the galaxies form-

18:32 And it's-

18:32 ... in the early universe.

18:33 ... pulling in stars.

18:35 Well, they, they, they do pull in material.

18:39 Right.

18:39 But they, i- if you've got stuff orbiting around them, it stays orbiting around it.

18:44 Oh.

18:44 So, the, the, the way we first detected the one in the Milky Way, before we could, w- p- 'cause that image is very new that we have of it, is it's the stars orbiting it very close to it, and they're called the S stars, that whiz around in these orbits very close to the black hole. So, so if you just-

19:00 Imagine that view.

19:00 ... orbiting around a thing, you go-

19:01 Imagine that view.

19:02 Yeah, 'cause you don't-

19:03 You think it's weird to look at the moon? Imagine if there was a super massive black hole above our head.

19:07 It'd be so cool.

19:08 (laughs) It would be so cool.

19:08 I, I'd love to see one. I, I don't even-

19:10 Well, the moon's so cool. Uh, the eclipse was wild. We had the eclipse here in Texas.

19:15 Did you see it?

19:15 Oh, yeah. It was incredible. It's so strange. The whole day turns into night, all the birds stop chirping, and you're like staring up at this perfect eclipse. It was incredible.

19:25 D- did you get this? 'Cause I, I saw one in India, and I got this feeling that I was l- living on a ball of rock.

19:33 Right.

19:33 Because, uh, and it must have been, just 'cause the night just falls.

19:36 Right.

19:37 And suddenly you see the universe comes much more quickly.

19:41 I went to the Keck Observatory once in Hawaii. I've been a few times, but one time I went on the perfect night with no moon, and it was sensational.

19:50 Yeah.

19:50 It was the most incr- ... It was such a vivid image of the inc- entire Milky Way, and ev- the enti- every inch of the sky was covered in stars.

20:00 Yeah.

20:00 It was so phenomenal, and it made me a little upset, because I was like, this is above our head every day, and this would radically shape the way human beings feel about our place in the universe.

20:11 Yeah.

20:12 It would, it, it would greatly expand the curiosity of young people-

20:16 Yeah.

20:16 ... to, to explore space. So many more people would get involved in astrophysics, so many more people would get involved in just the exploration of the known universe, 'cause it's so majestic. And instead we have, like our screen is off. It's like that. It's like that screen. That's what we see because of light pollution.

20:33 Yeah.

20:33 That should be remedied.

20:35 Yeah.

20:35 Like w- that is, that is n- an- that's not a good trade-off. Like w- lights are wonderful, but it seems to me like there, hey, there's gotta be a way to do this where you don't ruin the view of space.

20:46 Yeah. Because uh, uh, y- y- you know, these questions we have about our place, and, and as you said, it can be easy to be myopic, can't it? Y- y- you just said-

20:56 Yes.

20:56 ... if you look at our screens, we, it is, it's Earth that we think about at most.

21:00 Right.

21:00 And most of us don't even think about Earth. You think about your country or your city or your town.

21:05 Or your neighborhood.

21:06 So even, yeah, you can think about the Earth. But you're right. I- if you know when you look at that arc of stars, and as you said, when you see it in a, on a, in a truly dark sky, it's powerful.

21:16 Yeah. It's incredible.

21:17 400 Billion suns, give or take.

21:20 (sighs)

21:20 400,000 million suns.

21:22 That's just words.

21:23 Most... Oh, yeah, it's an almost picture.

21:24 You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's insane. Your, your brain doesn't even process that. Like, like, I could repeat that. If someone says, "How many suns?" "Oh, 400 billion." I don't know what that means.

21:32 No. (laughs)

21:33 That's, that's-

21:34 (laughs) It's-

21:35 ... so abstract.

21:36 And, and most of them, I think, pro- the, the best guess would be all of them have planets, so pretty much. So, you're talking about trillions of planets.

Host 21:45 Now we're getting into my subjects. What d- what is your take on all this UAP disclosure stuff? Do you give it any mind at all, or are you busy with like real stuff?

21:53 No, I mean, the thing is, there's a thing called the Fermi Paradox.

21:56 Yes.

21:57 Which I think we talked about before on the show.

21:59 Yes. Yes.

21:59 Which is, and the paradox is that if, if we haven't seen it, let's assume we haven't seen any evidence of anything. That's a paradox, because as I said, there are, we now know, we didn't when Fermi first posed it, by the way. We now know there are so many planets out there. So, let's say trillions of planets in the Milky Way. Milky Way's been there for over 13 billion years, pretty much the age of the universe. So, if there's no one else out there, then the question is why? Because there's been so much time and so many places for civilizations to become space-faring civilizations.

22:33 Right.

22:34 As, as, as, as Elon talks about, multi-planetary civilization. W- we're very close to becoming a multi-planetary civilization. And once you have become a multi-planetary and multi-stellar civilization, if you become that, you're immortal, basically, essentially.

22:51 Hmm. Right.

22:51 So, the question is, the paradox is, why does it appear nobody has done that? So, the first thing to say is, I, I would not be surprised, right? If a UFO landed here now in the parking lot, I'd actually, not only would I not be surprised, I'd be relieved, actually.

23:07 (laughs)

23:07 Because I'd be like, "Ah, this is good," 'cause it'd be a weight off my shoulders, 'cause I'm worried-

23:13 Right, that we're the only ones.

23:14 ... that w- we're the only ones, and that-

23:14 That's a terrifying scenario.

23:16 And we're gonna make a mess of it.

23:17 Yeah.

23:17 And so I, I'm worried that we could talk about that.

23:19 But isn't it bizarre? Like, the, one of the things that's fascinating about looking into the night sky is 'cause it's so humbling, 'cause it's so immense, it kind of puts everything into perspective, and it just gives you this like different view of the world. So, the universe is so vast and so spectacular. Why is it so important that we exist? To us, it's so important that we exist. And if we make a mess of this and we wind up dying, the universe is so big. If we were the only intelligent life in the universe and it didn't matter, we blew ourselves up, like w- i- it's just a weird aberration that's attached to a survival instinct.

23:54 So-

23:54 Like s-

23:55 ... we're a weird biological aberration. So, so the, i- if you th- think about it, let's assume, so we di- we didn't finish the UAP thing, so-

24:05 Yeah, we'll get there.

24:05 So, I was just saying, yeah, so-

24:06 We'll circle around.

24:07 So, I don't know about that, but anyway, let's assume, just for the purposes of this, that we're the only ones in, in, in our galaxy, let's say.

24:13 Yeah. Okay.

Host 24:14 Then I would argue...... that. So, there's a question I ask in, in these live shows that I do. I start with a question which is kind of a joke in a way, which is, what does it mean to live a finite fragile life in an infinite eternal universe? Which is a good question, right? That's what you're asking.

Guest 3 24:30 Yeah. That's sort of the question.

Host 24:30 What does it mean to live (inaudible) ?

Guest 3 24:32 Right.

Host 24:32 The, the first thing to say is meaning, right? What does it mean? Mea- that, that doesn't sound like a scientific concept in a way. Meaning, right?

Guest 3 24:40 Right.

Host 24:41 I would argue that whatever it is, it self-evidently exists because the universe means something to us. I would argue that it's a property of complex biological systems. So whatever it is, it's something that emerges, in this case, from human brains. It self-evidently exists. We, we, e- everyone who's listening to this knows that the, the world means something to them. So I would argue that if this planet is the only planet in our galaxy where complex biological systems exist, right, at, at our level, then it follows, it's the only place where meaning currently exists in a galaxy of 400 billion suns. And therefore, I would argue just for that very basic point that we have a tremendous responsibility in some sense. Because if I, I... By the way, I gave a talk, a little video thing at the, one of the climate summit, the COP Climate Summit in Glasgow in, in the UK a few years ago. And they asked me to do a little video, uh, to the world leaders, and I think they thought I'd say, you know, "Welcome to Glasgow. Have a nice meeting." But I, I made this little argument as fast as I could. I said, "It's possible, at least, that this is the only place where complex biology has emerged in, in our galaxy. If that's true, this is the only island of meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns, and you are responsible for it because you are the world leaders. Therefore, if you destroy it through deliberate action or inaction, then each of you would be personally responsible for destroying meaning in a galaxy of 400 billion suns potentially forever. Now go and discuss that," (laughs) was my intro to Glasgow.

Guest 3 26:18 (laughs)

Host 26:18 Now, and we can all argue, 'cause people will be listening to this going, "This is nonsense, how can it be." We, we can all argue about whether that's true. Uh, w- what I would say is, given the... As f- as far as I'm aware, we don't have any good evidence to the contrary, that... which goes back to your previous question, it's a reasonable working assumption. So why don't we just operate on that basis? And then, you know, it... Yeah, if someone lands tomorrow, as I said-

Guest 3 26:44 Right.

Host 26:44 ... I'd be very delighted because then what I just said would be false, and we could relax a bit and go, "It doesn't really matter if we destroy ourselves to some extent." (laughs)

Guest 3 26:52 Mm-hmm.

Host 26:52 But s- so I think it, it, it's worth taking seriously the idea that civilizations are very rare. Now... And by the way, I used to say, so I... probably last time I was on actually, I used to say that in, in the far future, then the complex life will cease to exist. So it probably doesn't matter on a global scale, but it matters locally because of this idea that meaning emerges from complex biological systems. So if you don't care about that, what do you care about? But actually, I read a book. Have you had David Deutsch on the show? David Deutsch is a really interesting physicist.

Guest 3 27:28 I don't believe I have.

Host 27:29 He's one of the, um-

Guest 3 27:30 No.

Host 27:30 ... founders of quantum computing and, and so-

Guest 3 27:32 Okay.

Host 27:32 ... he's a big figure in quantum computing, in particular. He's a great thinker. And he th- he... I was reading some stuff he wrote recently, and he pointed out that it's not necessarily true that life is temporary because you could imagine a situation, as you go into the far future. Let's imagine that we continue for a million years or a billion years as a civilization. Imagine what we could do. It is possible that life can get so advanced in the universe that it can start to manipulate the universe itself. So... Or at least stars. You could ima- he said you could imagine, for example, just imagine-

Guest 3 28:12 Hmm.

Host 28:12 ... really wild speculation. But imagine life gets so advanced that it can start to change the destiny of a star. Maybe it could start to add material into the star or something-

Guest 3 28:23 Right.

Host 28:23 ... you know, whatever. So I... We, we don't know how to do that or if it's possible, but imagine it could. Then the evolution of stars would... life would matter in the sense that it could start to change the way that the universe behaves on a large scale in the future. And so it's... And it reminded me, actually. There's another great book by John Barrow and Frank Tipler called The Anthropic Cosmological Principle from the 1980s. It's one of my favorite books actually. And I remembered it. And in there, they speculate about this life in the far, far future. And if it became powerful enough to manipulate the whole universe or the observable universe.

Guest 3 29:00 Mm-hmm.

Host 29:01 Then suddenly-

Guest 3 29:02 It's gone.

Host 29:02 ... you can't make predictions about the far future-

Guest 3 29:05 Yeah.

Host 29:05 ... un- unless you consider the possible impact of life on the universe. And, and whilst this is... I should say it's wi- wildly speculative, but it's actually logically, it's quite an interesting point. So, so I kind of disagree with myself a few years ago, where I would have said that life is extremely valuable because it brings meaning to the universe, but temporarily. And so it, it, it bring these brief like flickering candles of meaning, and then they go out again. But it, but it's, it's worth considering it might not necessarily be true, that. If y- if you really think... I mean, just to say, I mean, it s- it must sound to many people listening just nonsense, right? Science fiction. But if you think our civilization has been around for, what, 10,000 years at best really, g- give or take. And in that time, we've sent stuff out of the solar system. We've... Al- although we don't yet, we're way away from being able to manipulate stars, we can manipulate planets. So we, we are changing the way this planet operates. Life has changed it. The, the oxygen in the atmosphere before we appeared, the oxygen in the atmosphere is a products of life. So life already we know changes planets. And so that, that specu- I like that speculation that possi- just possibly-... it's not just a temporary little phenomena that flickers in and out and then disappears again. It could drop a, a real bearing on the future of the universe.

Host 30:31 And you could also make the argument that intelligent life might be the universe's way to force change, that intelligent life seems to inevit- ... Like, intelligence itself m- must come out of curiosity, because otherwise there's no reason to seek information. So intelligent life consistently seeks information and then it constantly demands innovation. Like, intelligent life is not satisfied with the iPhone 14, it wants the 15, it wants the 16, it wants to keep going-

30:56 (laughs)

30:56 ... forever and ever and ever. Well, if you scale that up, you get this current dilemma that we're in, which is artificial intelligence, and the concept of sentient artificial intelligence, and then quantum computing. And you get, you get insane amounts of computing power powered by nuclear reactors that are essentially a life form. Well, if that thing says, "You guys are doing it all wrong, I got a better way," and it starts making better versions-

31:19 (laughs)

31:19 ... of itself 'cause it's sentient, if you scale up a thousand years from now, you could imagine it becoming God. The ... Like, a godlike property. Like, an unstoppable force that has access to every element in known space.

31:35 Uh, I'm, I'm really interested in these kind of arguments. You, you put it really well, actually, be-

31:39 It's fascinating, right? Because it scales up-

31:41 ... 'cause it really is.

31:41 ... if you go from ... Look, just in the time that human ... Like, in the 4 billion years, which is a blip in the universe, right? And I wanted to ask you about that too. We'll get to that, the, the actual ... The James Webb Telescope's-

31:52 Mm-hmm.

31:52 ... latest, uh ... But if ... Just take that. Okay, life has been around for what? 4 billion years?

31:57 Yeah.

31:57 That's not that long. So 4 billion years, we've gone some single-celled organisms to the James Webb Telescope.

32:04 Hm.

32:04 We've gone to ... We have Starlink, we have electric cars. It's like bananas.

32:09 Yeah.

32:09 You could imagine, if we had another 10 billion years to exist.

32:13 Uh, well, exactly. And this is the point that David Deutsch made in the, in the book I've just been reading, and, and John Barry and Frank Tipler made before that. That y- i- it ... Although it sounds insane-

32:24 Right.

32:25 ... th- as you said, uh, and, and that 4 billion years, there's a lot to say about that, by the way, because for, for 3 billion-plus years of that, on this planet, it was just single cells. And so, uh, so it's only in the last, let's say, a billion years, but actually a bit less, that we've had multicellular organisms. So three quarters of it, of the time, were just single-celled things.

32:46 That's even crazier.

32:47 So wh- which is one of the reasons that many people think civilizations might be rare, because i- if you just t- ... The only evidence we have is this planet.

32:56 Right.

32:57 And the evidence on this planet is that single-celled life is, is sort of the way that things are for most, most of the history. And then, so it seems like a, a, a f- ... An accident, in a way, that happened late on in the history of life on Earth-

33:11 (laughs)

33:11 ... that produced multicellular life. And, and now, whether ... Is that typical? W- we don't know. Maybe it was ... Took a longer time here than it m- might do somewhere else. But if it's typical, I mean, 4 billion years, you said it, it's not a long time, it is a third of the age of the universe. So here, it took-

33:28 When you put it that way, it's a long time. (laughs)

33:29 ... a thir- one-third of the age of the universe to go from the origin of life to a civilization.

33:34 Mm-hmm.

33:35 And, and so what was required here on Earth was that that br- unbroken chain of life remained unbroken for a third of the age of the universe in a violent universe. I mean, we ... You know, we, we know there are impacts from space. Many stars are significantly more active than the sun. So the sun's kind of a, quite a boring little star that just ticks along. It's very nice to us. Uh, we're also on the edge of the galaxy, by the way. We're not close in. If you go into this region where that black hole is, there are a lot of stars around. There are supernova explosions and all sorts of stuff going on, so it's violent in there. So maybe you can only get unbroken chains of life for billions of years on the outskirts of a galaxy, so there are fewer stars and planets out there, and maybe even then you need to be fortunate. But-

34:23 Well, also, we ... Aren't we very unusual in the size of our moon and the distance?

34:27 There's the ... The moon, the ... It, it is big, and so it stabilizes the-

34:31 Yeah.

34:31 ... Earth's spin, so the spin axis. Mars, I think, if I'm right, uh, I think the spin axis has wobbled around by something like 60 degrees or something-

34:40 Ugh.

34:40 ... over its history. Could you imagine that? Imagine Earth was ... The, the, the pole was wobbling around and everything-

34:46 Oh.

34:46 ... was falling over. You wouldn't imagine that complex life like us would emerge on a planet like that.

34:50 Right, it would be too difficult to survive, forget about innovate.

34:54 Yeah.

34:54 So if y- if you think about the idea that these complex ... I- it seems like one thing you can be sure of in the observable world is that things get more complex or they adapt to their environment, and if you have a bunch of these intelligent apes that are competing g- globally with the most significant technology in the world, uh, you could see how that ... You could see how that would be just a property of the universe, potentially. Uh, although we haven't discovered it yet, like, this is why we're so curious about alien life, not just because of the possibilities of all the stars, but because we kind of see what would happen with us if we keep going.

35:36 Yeah.

35:37 You know? It just ... It ... That might be just what the universe does. The m- that the universe creates intelligent people that create artificial intelligence that becomes far superior and literally is a part of the whole process of creating the universe itself.

35:51 Yeah, an evolutionary biologist would say the counterargument is that what life does, what evolution does, is produce organisms that are well-fitted to their environment, right?

36:02 Right.

36:03 And so they, they fit niches in the environment. But there's no drive to complexity. There, there's no law that says that the more complex you are, the more likely you are to survive and flourish. And the, the, the example of life on Earth probably backs that up. So if you talk about three-

36:19 Biologically.

36:19 Three ... Yeah, three billion years of single cells. What that means is that the single-celled organisms were just doing very well.

36:26 Right.

36:26 And so it's not obvious, it's not a given, that just because you suddenly get more complicated, you're better than the single-celled things.

36:33 Right, so there could be l- Uh, uh, existing. ... planets where life never evolves past single cells, but that life exists.

36:39 Yeah, and Earth was ... Earth was almost that.

36:41 Right.

36:41 So you go back 1 billion years from now, and Earth was that planet-So, the interesting things that happened, photosynthesis, complex biochemistry. But as far as we can tell, nothing more complex than a single cell.

36:56 Hmm.

36:57 So, that's most of the history of life on Earth. So, that might suggest that that's the way that things are usually.

37:03 And that this is an aberration?

37:05 Yeah. And again, to emphasize, we don't know.

37:08 Right.

37:09 But we've got one example. The other observation, though, it goes back to your first question, it is true that we do look, uh, sort of systematically for- for signals or evidence of- of civilizations out there. There's the Breakthrough Listen project, and there's the SETI visit going.

37:26 Mm-hmm.

37:26 So, we do. Uh, and we haven't seen anything, I would say. Um, so, and I know that if you go onto the web and things, and the internet, people say, "We have, we've seen stuff," and I've seen stuff. But- but the, just the basic point-

37:41 Yeah.

37:41 ... as- as- as far as I know, scientifically speaking, we haven't seen anything, uh, at all compelling.

37:47 No. I agree with that.

37:48 But basically nothing.

37:49 Basically nothing.

37:50 And- and so, eh- eh, astronomers have a name for it. They call it the Great Silence. The Great Silence. And- and it's a tremendous mystery, as I said earlier. But it does seem that the universe is quiet, as far as we can tell.

38:03 Is it possible that we're looking for something that is not applicable to this particular type of civilization?

38:10 Yeah, there are different ... There ... So, the count- counterarguments, when we say we've seen nothing, therefore, as far as we can tell, there's nothing out there, you could say, well, um, what if the civilization that ev- evolved is far ahead of us? What if the space probes are the size of an iPhone? (laughs)

38:29 Right.

38:29 Well, that's kind of a reasonable thing to say, actually.

38:32 Sure.

38:32 Because, why would you not? If you can build a little thing-

38:34 Right.

38:35 ... th- that, it's easier to send around the galaxy than a big thing.

38:37 Yeah.

38:38 So, why would you not? As you said, these hyper ultra intelligent quantum computers, why would they not be tiny?

38:44 Right.

38:44 So, you could say that. See, you could say, well, that maybe they are. Maybe they're all over the solar system, but they're the size of phones and we wouldn't have seen them.

38:51 Hmm.

38:51 And that's so ... Yeah. (laughs) Okay.

38:53 Yeah.

38:54 You would have to concede that. So- so, we're- we're- we're just saying that the way that we've looked for signatu- energy signatures, for example, of civilizations, we tend to look for big things, 'cause that's all we can see. And we don't see any big things. We don't see any big structures, we don't see any evidence of spacecraft and all that kind of stuff. But, I- I could make an argument that, well, why would, why would the spacecraft be big?

39:17 Right.

39:18 Um, because as you said, it's another thing you said, actually. It's interesting that we're at the, on the verge now of- of creating things, artificially intelligent things, eh, eh, which are smarter than us. So, I think everyone agrees that we're on the verge of doing that, r- artificial general intelligence. Some people might think it's further away than others. Yeah, you've probably had people on the show who said it's 5 years away or 2 years away or 50 years away. But it's probably not 10,000 years away, right?

39:47 Right.

39:47 So, that, which is the blink of an eye. Once you've done that, and once you've, once you've got those things, I find it hard to believe that if we get that far as a civilization, we won't begin to send those things out to the planets, and ultimately to the stars. So, we'll begin that process, if we survive long enough.

40:07 Sure.

40:08 And it shouldn't be too much longer. Might be 100 years, might be 10,000 years, but, you know, we- we should do it. So, it- it- it becomes a powerful question. So, why does it appear that nobody's done that? A- and my guess, in the absence of other evidence, would be biology. It's just that maybe the number of places where biology becomes complex enough to do that-

40:32 Hmm.

40:33 ... uh, is- is on average, one, maybe on average, zero per galaxy, right? (laughs)

40:40 Right.

40:40 Maybe just civilizations are very, very, very rare in the universe. Maybe that's an answer. But that- that's a guess.

40:47 My- my always, my question is always, when it gets to artificial intelligence, when, if we do create some sort of super intelligent sentient life, it's not going to have any motivations. And you could say, well, if you program it to have the motivations, but it becomes sentient, it recognizes the illogical programming, it's gonna reject it. We've already seen evidence of that. We've already seen evidence of artificial intelligence they use now, like, giving a time limit to solve a problem, doesn't like the time limit, it gives itself more time. Like, it'll-

41:17 (laughs)

41:18 It's like, they're maneuvering and thinking, right? So, I assume that they would do that. So, why would they wanna explore? What it- what ... Isn't curiosity a part of what it means to be a biological thing, that has to worry about instincts? You have to, you have human reward systems, you wanna breed, you wanna take care of your DNA, you wanna protect your community. Look at these biological things that are from us being intelligent animals. If we transcend that, or if life transcends that to the point, whatever we wanna call this intelligence that's in a digital form, that's far superior to our intelligence, what motivations would it have? It's not greedy, it doesn't have lust, it doesn't have the desire to control resources. It might have, like, some sort of a mandate to stay functional.

42:05 Mm-hmm.

42:05 But other than that, what's it gonna do? Or why would it do anything? And that might be ultimately where we go to. This idea that everything has to be, keep progress, we have to build bigger skyscrapers, that might be stupid. That might be nonsense.

42:18 (laughs)

42:18 And intelligence might find a way to exist in a- a much more static state, where it doesn't have any desire to s- expand.

42:28 There's a lot of, there's a lot of points in there. (laughs) And it's ... So, y- y- you're right. You, what you're arguing, I- I suppose, is whether intelligence is integral to the structure, the biological structure-

42:42 Yes. Yes.

42:43 ... or whether it is a- a separate thing that ... And I think-So, again, I think the answer is it's, it's not known. You could argue either way. But the counterargument would be the, the brain, the, these things are just computers, ultimately. There's nothing magical in there, there's nothing. The, it is connected to a body, and so there are these sensations, but it doesn't seem, to me, impossible that a, a, a, a silicon-based life form, or whatever it is, does ... I- obviously it has sensors, it has access to the environment, it, it exists, it thinks. I, I don't see any fundamental difference between an intelligence in, uh, b- based on silicon, let's say, or a quantum computer, or whatever th- it is, and, and this intelligence here. Th- so, I, I know that many researchers in this area do say that, that, that the, the ... it's not a brain in ... They call it a brain in a jar, don't they? And say, well that's not ...

43:42 Right.

43:42 It needs to be connected to all this. This is part of our intelligence. And that's surely true as well.

43:47 Sure.

43:48 So, it's, it's a very good question, but y- I suppose if you say ... I- it's not obvious to me that a different kind of intelligence i- in a different structure, running on a computer or whatever it is, would necessarily have different motivations to us. I mean, you could equally well argue that these motivations to survive, and curiosity, uh, and, and tho- those ideas, the, the, the desire to explore, you, you could t- you could argue those are fundamental properties of intelligence and not of biology.

44:21 But aren't ...

44:21 I, I don't know, man.

44:22 Isn't an intelligence that's motivated by a finite life in a vulnerable physical frame? 'Cause we, we're constantly like ... and most innovation relies upon, uh, quicker, safer transportation, more secure buildings, uh, you know ...

44:35 Yeah. (laughs)

44:35 ... things along those lines. And then computers that help you do your job better, and actually could do things that you can't do.

44:40 Right.

44:41 And that's ... This is ... A lot of it is based on this other weird thing we do, where we wanna control resources. And we wanna figure out reasons why these people are bad, so we can go and take their stuff, and then enter troops and dig the oil, or whatever you have to do. Look, we're constantly in this battle for resources that, if you take it back to tribal times, it's like a natural human instinct. Like, we had to protect the food sources, we had to fight off the conquering tribes, you had to protect your DNA line. All these things are why we became innovative.

45:11 Mm-hmm.

45:12 We had a motivation to stay alive, and to thrive. And then there's bastardizations of those motivations, like the stock market, where things get we- and you're just competing over numbers. It gets really weird.

45:22 Mm-hmm.

45:22 But it's basically this desire to compete with the DNA that's around you. Once we're not biological anymore, like, what would be the motivation? And would we not just exist, like in the most peaceful, zen, Buddhist way possible? Which is what everybody who's like a spiritual person, who meditates all the time, that's what you strive for.

45:42 Yeah.

45:42 You strive for this complete abandonment of self, this complete emptiness and one with the universe. If we could just exist like that, why would we need to go to space?

45:53 It's, it's a wonderful argument, isn't it? That our humanity, so the ... 'Cause part of the thing that you described, th- this, this desire to create things and build things and explore and expand i- is, is almost the definition of being human, isn't it?

46:08 Yes.

46:09 And so, th- the idea that if you remove all threat and you essentially become immortal-

46:14 Yes.

46:15 ... then, w- you're almost saying, "What's the point?" It's my T-shirt.

46:19 Yeah.

46:19 It's the existence. What does it matter, right?

46:21 (laughs)

46:21 And, by the way, that's a ... This T-shirt, which I- I gotta say was designed by a friend of mine, Peter Saville, who's a great designer, who designed the Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures album cover, amongst other things.

46:30 Oh, wow. That's cool.

46:31 And this is, this is a Joy Divi- it's a Joy Division legend.

46:33 That's great. Is that available on your website or anything?

46:34 It probably is, but I'm not gonna do that-

46:36 Okay. (laughs)

46:36 ... 'cause it's vulgar, isn't it? It's vulgar.

46:37 It's ... No, no, no, it's cool. I wanna buy one.

46:39 He ma-

46:39 That's why I ask.

46:39 Yeah, he made it for a ... We did these gigs, I talk about it, and later called Symphonic Horizons, which were the, uh, uh, shows with cosmology but also symphony orchestra. And he was exploring these issues, actually.

46:49 Mm-hmm.

46:50 But most of the music was Strauss' Zarathustra.

46:52 Oh, wow.

46:52 Which is based on Nietzsche's book, per- so it's, it's kind of e- e- e- exploring these questions, actually, of what's the point of existence.

47:01 Right.

47:01 And, uh, uh, I do have some sympathy with the idea that p- a, a great deal of our humanity comes from our fragility.

47:09 Mm-hmm.

47:09 And, and so your question, I think, is fascinating. What happens when you become godlike? You said it earlier.

47:14 Right.

47:14 If, if you acquire so much knowledge that you're essentially a god by any description, and so much power-

47:22 Yeah.

47:22 ... and you become effectively immortal, which is what our descendants in the far future could be-

47:27 Right.

47:27 ... as you said, these AI descendants, what's the point of living?

47:31 Not just effectively immortal, but aren't we looking at the universe itself in the f- we're looking at it through the framing of, uh, a biological primate that's trying to figure it out?

47:43 Yeah.

47:43 If they understand the universe completely, and they understand everything about it and they exist inside of it, there would really be no desire to travel. There'd be no desire to explore what you already understand about everything, and you probably have access to e- every single aspect of what subatomic particles are actually doing when we're studying them. We're like, "What's goin' ..." They would ... If you're infinitely more intelligent than we are, if you scale it from now to quantum computing, sentience, artificial intelligence, and you give us a thousand years without getting hit by an asteroid, or technology gets to the point-

48:19 (laughs)

48:19 ... where it can protect against super volcanoes and there's no natural disruptions, and then they've completely eliminated violence on Earth, they've completely eliminated all the terrible primate genetic instincts ...... you could make a reasonable argument there's no reason to travel. Or, if you do travel, we might be confused and thinking that our physical form is the only way consciousness can reach specific destinations.

48:46 Yeah.

48:46 There might be a way that they're traveling without actually being here and observing this. And just, I would imagine, you, if you watch chimps in the jungle and then all of a sudden they started to figure out bombs, you'd be like, "Okay-"

49:00 (laughs)

49:00 "... we might, (laughs) we might wanna go tell these chimps not to fucking blow each other up." I mean, it's an absurd premise, but if a chimp figured out a nuclear bomb, I think we'd step in. I think we'd say, "Hey, hey, hey. Hey, dude. No."

49:13 Take that. Take that off here.

49:14 "You're gonna kill, you're gonna kill everything."

49:15 And put it in its place.

49:16 Now, if you're infinite and... Like, we're not that removed from chimps. What do we share, like, 98% of their DNA?

49:22 Yeah.

49:23 And we're only removed from them by, what, a few million years from a, a, a nearest cousin? That's not that long, right? So you could imagine something that's infinitely more intelligent looking at us exactly the way we'd look at a chimp with a nuclear bomb. Like, "Hey." And which, you know, my, my club is called the Comedy Mothership and we designed it, it's all UFO-themed, and the rooms are Fat Man and Little Boy.

49:48 Yeah.

49:48 And the reason why I named it that, because that was the beginning of all the UFO sightings in the country.

49:54 Yeah.

49:54 Like, those bombs sorta set off the alarm for the universe. "Uh-oh, the monkeys have a bomb."

49:59 (laughs)

50:00 (laughs)

50:00 You know, I mean, I, I thought this a while ago. I remembered I was talking to someone and, and they said, "Yeah, I'm not worried about this. I'm not worried about the fact that AI could become more intelligent than us. What is it gonna be like when we're not the smartest things on the planet?"

50:14 Right.

50:14 "Which might be just a few years from now."

50:15 Yeah.

50:16 And I, I, again, I might be quite relieved 'cause I, I'm not sure they could fuck it up-

50:23 (laughs)

50:23 ... at the level-

50:24 Right.

50:24 ... that we're fucking it up. You know, so it's, uh, I don't know.

50:27 You would have to give it legitimate sentience. Like, it would have to be completely independent from any ideology. And it would have to look at things completely objectively. Co- But imagine-

50:36 Mmm.

50:36 ... government that is run that way. Like, really run in a way where there is an actual distribution of resources for all the human beings on the planet so poverty has instantaneously eradicated.

50:49 (laughs)

50:49 You give electricity and clean water to everyone on Earth immediately. Immediately we figure out how to distribute healthy food. Immediately all the toxins and preservatives that have been giving people cancer, immediately they're removed from the human diet. They c- immediately makes sure that we have no polluting of rivers, that we're not draining all the fish out of the ocean, immediately change all of the treaties about nuclear weapons. All the nuclear weapons gotta go. Every c- th- this AI government-

51:20 Well, I imagine they would s-

51:20 ... just runs over everything.

51:22 I imagine they'd say that immediately.

51:24 No more dictators. Yeah.

51:24 You know, no, y- y- you're not having that.

51:24 No more dictators. Cut the shit with the dictator.

51:27 (laughs)

51:27 We're just gonna let human beings exist in harmony, guided by this super intelligent god-like thing that we've created out of silicon.

51:35 Yeah, I, honestly, I've had the same thought. And thought, "Wha- How do-"

51:38 That's the utopian view.

51:40 Yeah. And so, I have thought, "How could it be worse?"

51:43 The problem is-

51:43 "In fact, it could be significantly better." Yeah. (laughs)

51:46 ... AI gets fucked with by people, right? And the AI we've seen so far has all the greasy fingerprints of human emotion and illogical th- Like, when Google released their A-, their AI, they asked them to m- to d- show photographs, create images, rather, of Nazi soldiers. So they did a diverse group of Nazi soldiers, including an African American woman, an Asian woman-

52:10 (laughs)

52:10 ... a Native American woman with braids was a Nazi. The whole, it's, it's so nuts 'cause it's like, okay-

52:17 (laughs)

52:19 ... somebody fucked with this. This doesn't make any sense. This is...

52:22 (laughs)

52:22 You can't, you can't do that because if you, if you get a virus, an illogical virus, that some way or another gets into AI and it's unchecked, if AI isn't completely logical and objective and, and sentient and, and basing it just entirely on what's best for the human race, then you just have a superpower that you have control over. And then you can decide, like, no more abortions. You can decide exactly-

52:48 Well, and as you, and as you said, what, the, the definition of what is best is a, is a moral-

52:52 Yes.

52:53 ... decision-

52:53 Yes.

52:54 ... that, that we, we make.

52:55 But you can make some distinctions in terms of, like, allocation of resources. Like, you could make some g- if, if I was a superintelligence and I looked at Earth, I would, I'd say, "Listen, a lot of people are not gonna like this, but there's a reality. There's a, the reason why you're worried about the border 'cause people are sneaking in is because other parts of the world are fucking terrible. So that needs to be cleaned up. That needs to be fixed. We need to figure out how to raise... Instead of spending money on blowing people up, let's spend all this money to raise up all of civilization so there's no more third world."

53:31 Well, that's one of the arguments. Have you, um, ever spoke to Robert Zubrin, who I know wrote these wonderful books, um, called, uh, about colonizing space? Um, and, and so he's a fascinating character. And I, I spoke to him once and he made this very simple argument that, as you said, one of the problems we have is competition for resources. And, of course, we're, the competition for, for resources is now so extreme that it's not only wars that it creates and always has, but it's also, of course, we damage the planet if we over, over-exploit the resources and so on, right?

54:02 Yes.

54:02 So you've got this problem about resources. And he's right. He would say this is the number one motivation for going up because there are, in fact, infinite resources-

54:11 Mmm.

54:11 ... out there.

54:12 Right.

54:12 And so you begin, once you begin to have access to the asteroids and access to Mars and beyond, you, you i- i- in, you can imagine a world where you alleviate that pressure and the resources used-

54:24 And ladies, I wanna tell you, there's a planet out there bigger than Earth that's all diamonds.

54:30 There are diamond planets? (laughs) There are, oh, there, there's unlimited-

54:33 Isn't that insane?

54:34 ... nature's imagination far exceeds our own.

54:36 But that would ex- isn't it, like, several times larger than Earth-

54:39 Yeah.

54:39 ... and it's an entire diamond?

54:40 Yeah. And we think, I think it's Neptune or Uranus that has-

54:44 No. (laughs)

54:44 ... we think has diamonds in it, so...

54:45 Oh my goodness.

54:47 So, yeah. So-

54:47 And diamonds are only valuable because we decide they're valuable.

54:50 Yeah. I mean-

54:50 The, the, you know, it's kind of-

54:51 They could make-

54:52 ... De Beers people are brilliant. They, they, like, lock them all up. They're like, "Oh, this is really hard to get."

54:55 They're good for drill bits-

54:56 Yeah.

54:56 ... as well. But we can make them for drill bits, right?

54:58 But this is the interesting thing. You can make them for jewelry as well, but some women don't want them.

55:03 Don't want the artificially constructed ones?

55:04 No, they want the real ones.

55:06 The real ones.

55:06 They want the ones that came out of the earth only.

55:07 That's the way that we value things. Gold.

55:09 Yes.

55:09 Gold is another example, right? It's valuable because there isn't very much of it.

55:12 Right. There's so f- little of it, it's like a football field, right?

55:16 Yeah.

55:16 A football field of gold in the whole world.

55:18 You know, by the way, that we, we were talking about the gravitational wave detectors earlier, and the collision between black holes that we detect with them. We also detected a collision between neutron stars using the gravitational wave detector.

55:31 Oh.

55:31 And we pointed optical telescopes at that collision and saw the signature of gold being manufactured. And it was always, it was always a question. We used to just think, "Well, it comes from supernova explosions." But, but it, it also seems now that it comes from the collision between neutron stars. So one of the reasons that it's very rare is because it takes rare processes in the universe to actually make it, which makes it all the more wonderful when you think about it.

55:58 Wow.

55:58 If you look at the gold, your wedding ring or your watch or whatever it is, that, that, some of those, uh, uh, nuclei, some of those elements clearly came from the collision between neutron stars at some point-

56:10 Wow.

56:10 ... before our solar system was formed.

56:12 Wow.

56:12 Which is, makes it more wonderful.

56:14 Well, every human being is a carbon-based life form, and carbon comes from-

56:18 And carbon stars. Yeah. As Carl Sagan said, "Star stuff."

56:22 That's the craziest thing ever. Like, you need a star to blow up to make a person in the first place.

56:25 It's a remarkable thing. I wanted to go back to something you said, actually, about the... I, I've been thinking about this, uh, this, this, what you said, this godlike intelligence-

56:34 Yes.

56:34 ... that we might create. And, uh, and kind of what's the point? What would be the point of existence if you were s- if you were immortal and you knew everything? Wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be-

56:47 I don't know about that.

56:47 ... incredibly dull? Like, you, you, I mean-

56:50 Peop-

56:50 Well, you said it's almost like a meditative state.

56:52 Yeah.

56:52 So we strive for this, this peace, you know, essentially. But what do-

56:57 Well, maybe we're thinking of it as dull because we don't have access to the information. Like, we, we have a very limited amount of senses. We have hearing and sight and taste and touch. And, you know, it's very limited, right? Why would we assume that that is the only way to perceive things? If you could become infinitely intelligent, you could legitimately perceive neutrinos, you know?

57:23 (laughs) Yeah.

57:24 Right? Like, if we have this thing that detects the ripples from black holes colliding, that might be a feature of a future human body, if we have an unbelievable capacity for information because it's artificially created. So we get over this biological limitation of long-scale evolution, like a really good... Like, the human brain doubled over two million years, and it's the biggest mystery in the entire fossil record. They're like, "What happened?" All these theories. But that's a long fucking time. In two million years of technology, we could become God, or a godlike being.

57:57 Yeah.

57:57 A thing that... But it might be how the universe creates itself. The universe might facilitate that through these biological beings fighting over resources and territory, which ultimately leads to innovation, which ultimately leads to cities and agriculture, which ultimately leads to safety, which l- leads to schools, and people start sharing information. You get curious people that figure things out, and you have to battle ideologies along the way, which makes you work harder. You know, we all look back. "Well, look what they did to Galileo." And everybody has these... uh, you can't, you can't-

58:27 (laughs)

58:28 Science has to advance. And this-

58:30 Yeah.

58:30 ... along with materialism... So materialism is a primary driver. Everybody wants the newest, latest, greatest thing. You could have a car from 2007, and it's great. It's indistinguishable from a car today in most ways. It's just a car. But you're like, "Oh, they got the new one. Oh, that's the new Lexus? Look at that. Oh, four-wheel steering." (laughs)

58:53 (laughs)

58:53 You know what I mean? You would want constantly new stuff.

58:56 Yeah.

58:56 We wanna keep up with the Joneses, you know? I'm the biggest dummy in the world. I got a new iPhone. It's act- it has actually better. It's got a few features. One of the things that's very fascinating is, I was in the mountains last week. You can text message people with no one around you, no signal, no... And I mean woods forever.

59:15 Yeah.

59:15 And if you hold your phone in a particular part of the sky, it'll tell you which way to scan it.

59:20 There's this satellite, and it can be useful.

59:20 And the satellite allows you to iMessage back and forth with people.

59:23 Yeah.

59:24 Totally, like, you are 5G everywhere.

59:27 (laughs)

59:27 You could... It's crazy. And the-

59:29 So you've already achieved nirvana, then. You don't need to go any further.

59:32 It's fascinating.

59:33 That's-

59:33 It's so fascinating to me.

59:35 But, but I-

59:35 I'm, I'm so enamored by it.

59:37 I would argue... I, I, I think... Imagine that you had access to, as you said, essentially infinite knowledge.

59:45 Yes.

59:45 Imagine you were one of these beings-

59:46 And infinite senses.

59:47 ... uh, in the, in the future, maybe the things that we created-

59:51 Right.

59:51 ... that, that essentially know almost everything there is to know, in some sense.

59:57 Right.

59:57 I think that they would feel there was no point in existing at all. 'Cause I-

1:00:03 But why... Don't... Isn't that a human thing, this idea of a point? Like, I make this argument with people. Pe- th- there's, uh, a Buddhist concept that you... I think it's Buddhism, or some strains of Buddhism, where you, you live your life over and over and over and over again until you get it right.

1:00:20 Hmm.

1:00:20 Until every time something comes up, you make the right decision, you achieve enlightenment. You do it over. And I said that to someone, and they were horrified. They're like, "Oh my God, could you imagine living life over again, starting off as a baby, going through high school again? Oh, I couldn't do it."

1:00:37 (laughs)

1:00:37 I'm like, "But you did it, and you're alive now." Like, I really enjoy life. I have great friends. I have a great family. I have a fantastic job. I live in a great place. Like, if I had to keep doing this forever, why would that be horrible? I like doing it every day. Why would I not like doing it? I don't understand. Like, I don't understand this idea that if something is infinite and it goes on for an ever... that's terrifying. Whereas if it's existing right now, right now, you're, I know you're gonna get tired, and I know you're gonna go to bed, I know you're gonna get hungry, I know you're gonna eat, but you're just existing.... it's, it's this state of existence that varies depending on emotions and mood and stress levels and environment, but it's just existence.

1:01:18 But s-

1:01:18 If existence was eternal, and it just kept going on and on, why would that be terrifying for you when you're enjoying it now?

1:01:24 But if you think about some of the things that make us... The, the most important things that make us human.

1:01:30 Uh-huh.

1:01:30 So one of them would be hope, for example.

1:01:34 Right.

1:01:34 Hope for the future. Or indeed, fear, or th- those emotions that are connected with not knowing.

1:01:42 Right.

1:01:42 Not knowing what's around the next corner. As you said, even exploration.

1:01:45 Right.

1:01:46 The, uh... So if you remove that, if, if you remove any sense of not knowing what the future will be, you do remove hope as well as fear. So you could argue that some of the best... Th- the essence of being human, some of the things that we value the most-

1:02:05 Right.

1:02:05 ... and make us most valuable in, in the universe, in this sense, some of those things come from incomplete knowledge. I mean, surely hope does.

1:02:13 Sure.

1:02:13 How could you have hope and excitement about what's gonna happen tomorrow if you know what's gonna happen tomorrow?

1:02:18 But don't you think that that just-

1:02:19 It might be a miserable existence.

1:02:20 ... motivates improvement, that all that hope just motivates you to do better and get better? And do, don't you think that may be a feature of a biological organism?

1:02:27 But it's, it's like you said, it's like you said, when you, when you, when you were growing up, you said, like, uh, you know when you were in high school or when you were young, Christmas, for example.

1:02:33 Right.

1:02:33 You know when you're... Christmas Eve.

1:02:35 Yeah.

1:02:35 And you go, "What am I gonna get tomorrow?"

1:02:36 Yeah.

1:02:36 What... It's one of the most wonderful feelings, isn't it? One of the most wonderful... Like, ah-

1:02:40 Yes.

1:02:40 ... in the presence of those. You unwrap them.

1:02:41 That's incredible.

1:02:43 Y- none of that would exist-

1:02:45 Right.

1:02:45 ... if you were one of these super beings. So, so I think that maybe one of the-

1:02:50 Right, but why... But that's just for us.

1:02:51 ... most vital components.

1:02:52 It's just for us that it appears magical. Uh, when you're comparing that to black holes colliding, like, is it really so important what you got for Christmas?

1:03:04 Well-

1:03:05 I- it, it's b- but it's us, it's our biological needs, our needs for, uh, our needs for... To be shown that we're loved, we got a good toy. We n- our excitement about something that we've wanted that was inaccessible, you know, some- something that you were hoping for for Christmas and you got it, like m- a video game console. Oh.

1:03:25 (laughs) Yeah, but is it purely biolo-

1:03:26 When you finally got it.

1:03:27 I think what I'm getting to, is it purely biological?

1:03:30 It's us.

1:03:30 This is a great conversation, by the way. I never thought about this, but-

1:03:32 But it's, but it's only us.

1:03:33 ... or is it-

1:03:33 Like-

1:03:34 Or is it a p- just a prophecy of intelligence? Uh, does it... I mean, you're arguing, and it's a good argument, that, that many of these desires come from our biological fragility.

1:03:45 Yes.

1:03:46 A- and, and also the fragility of our planet-

1:03:48 Yes.

1:03:48 ... uh, as you said. Um, but i- it could be that this, these ideas of, of meaning, of, of, of what, what it means to exist, of what is the point of existence, maybe that's a general prophecy of any intelligent system.

1:04:05 Well, it seems like it's imperative for survival. You have to have a reason to do it. It would be baked into the code if you wanted this thing to keep going. Otherwise, why wouldn't it just stick with, you know, as soon as you figured out running water and electricity and how to ship food, why would, why would you keep going?

1:04:24 Is there, is there such a thing as contentment, though, um, for anyone? I mean, d-

1:04:30 It's possible.

1:04:31 ... uh-

1:04:31 It's possible to ach- I mean, that's what Buddhists strive for. That's what all that meditation is, uh, the abandonment of all material possessions.

1:04:37 But it might, it might be horrendous, though, to get to that position.

1:04:40 I think it would be horrendous. I don't wanna abandon everything and no more sex and-

1:04:44 (laughs)

1:04:44 ... you can't have a glass of wine. That seems crazy.

1:04:45 You just sit there and, and... So that's what I... I'm kind of interested that God, a godlike being might be so bored and so devoid of all excitement because those things like hope and curiosity... You know, curiosity-

1:05:02 But isn't-

1:05:02 Curiosity is one of the most foundational things, one of the most incredible... We, we both share that idea.

1:05:06 For us, yes, for us, yes.

1:05:07 So if you know so much-

1:05:09 Right.

1:05:10 ... maybe th- y- what, what happens in a world where cu- your curiosity is not there? You don't, you've got nothing to be curious about.

1:05:17 But isn't-

1:05:17 You n- Wouldn't that be horrendous?

1:05:19 But we keep coming back to this. Isn't this a property of what i- it means to be a f- finite lifespan, a finite life form that exists on a volatile planet, that this hope and w- to survi- but if that is bypassed, why do we need to be anxious all the time? Why do we need to have hope? Why wouldn't we have a complete bliss, a complete connection to everything?

1:05:41 Y- you linked, you linked, uh, hope to anxiety. Is that, is that right? Do, do-

1:05:46 I hope it works out.

1:05:47 D- but it's like-

1:05:48 I hope, I hope.

1:05:49 But, but I was using it-

1:05:50 And you, and you're fighting, you're fighting the anxiety by, uh, having a p- an optimistic outlook.

1:05:54 But I think-

1:05:54 I have hope.

1:05:55 I think I was using it in a different way, though. I was imagining hope as like, uh, I don't know, excitement for what's beyond the horizon.

1:06:04 Sure.

1:06:05 So, so not, not driven... Thi- this actually gets to the heart of what I think a scientist is, by the way, the difference between not only a scientist, but let's say a... What, what is a scientist? Uh, uh, or somebody just researching anything, really, someone who creates things. They're, they're people who like to stand on the edge of the known, so they, they find it exhilarating but interesting... Almost in the context we're talking, it's almost the, uh, one of the driving... One of the things that drives our existence-

1:06:33 Yes.

1:06:33 ... is this stand on the edge of the known and peer into the unknown with, with excitement and curiosity because-

1:06:40 Mm-hmm.

1:06:40 ... because you can go over the horizon.

1:06:42 Yes.

1:06:42 And, and so that, that's the sense in which I'm using these terms. I, I'm saying that's fund- one of the fundamentally most valuable things of being human-

1:06:51 Yes.

1:06:52 ... that there's a, there's, there is an edge of the known.

1:06:54 Yes.

1:06:55 And so I would find it, I think, more terrifying to imagine that there was no edge of the known.

1:07:02 Mm-hmm.

1:07:02 That everything was known. Then I would think existence is pointless. I wouldn't, I wouldn't th- I personally would not find that... I wouldn't think I'd achieved nirvana then.

1:07:11 Well, that's-

1:07:11 I would think I'd, I'd got no... There's no point, I would, I would imagine.

1:07:14 It's because you're existing within the framework of being a human being.And if we transcend the framework of being a human being, all these things we will come to realize, all these emotions and all these desires and need, are just to motivate our survival. If we've gotten past that and we don't have a need for hope and c- ... we don't have curiosity because we have infinite information, we're not the same thing anymore. So, all the things that motivate you and I, they make us fascinated by this d- ... I was so excited to talk to you today. I'm like, "Brian Cox is gonna be here?"

1:07:50 (laughs)

1:07:50 "We're gonna have fun." Like, "This is gonna be great. I'm gonna learn some stuff." That all that innate curiosity that we have that's so rewarding as a human being is a part of being a human being. And we think of it as being the only way to have meaning and happiness.

1:08:06 Yeah.

1:08:06 The only way.

1:08:07 Mm-hmm.

1:08:07 But that's because of the framework of being a human being.

1:08:10 Yeah.

1:08:10 If we transcend the existence that we, we, we're all confined to, this temporary life form, "Oh, check my heart rate, like, make sure I get electrolytes," you know, we try s- ... keep-

1:08:21 Yeah.

1:08:21 ... the body alive. If we transcend that completely, there's no need for all those things that are rewarding. We'll have a different kind of reward. We'll have a reward of infinite connection.

1:08:35 I think we're trying to imagine what it's like to be God, aren't we?

1:08:39 Yes, that's exactly what we're doing.

1:08:41 And that's c- (laughs)

1:08:41 That's exactly what we're doing.

1:08:41 That's quite hard-

1:08:42 I have been-

1:08:43 ... I think.

1:08:44 ... uh, thinking about this a lot, and I found out that somebody had already beat me to it, but the idea that the universe itself is God, that if th- ... if you wanted something that creates, uh, this is not to diminish any of the stories of the Bible because I think a lot of those stories are p- ... these are ways that people tried to find meaning and probably had some, like, baked-in truths about being a human being and life and the existence. And, but that in compare ... just the things that are miracles on Earth, like a person coming back to life, i- i- it's nothing in compared to a stellar nursery. It's, uh, it's, it's like the, the scope of the universe itself, the real stuff that we can see that is absolutely the creator of everything, whether or not God created the universe, maybe, m- maybe God created us, maybe the Bible's true, but whatever was done here is like a small bodega in comparison to some enormous fa- ... like the Gigafactory that makes Teslas. Like, there's a so much larger scale that absolutely created everything, not only did it absolutely create everything, we know the process. We know how it happened. We know how stars are formed. We know how planets exist. We know how gravity is affecting the planets around. We know so much about all this. We know so much about the process of going from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms and photosynthesis existing and that fungus exists in a completely different way. We know so much about all the things that absolutely came out of the universe itself. Why not assume the universe is God?

1:10:22 I mean, it is in some technical sense.

1:10:24 It has to be.

1:10:24 As you said, it is.

1:10:25 It's everything. The universe-

1:10:26 It is the-

1:10:26 ... is everything.

1:10:27 Yeah, it-

1:10:27 Including God.

1:10:28 I- Well-

1:10:28 If God is a real thing.

1:10:30 ... if you define God as the creator-

1:10:32 Yes.

Host 1:10:32 ... then you're right. From, from some point that we don't understand, by the way, we d- ... the, the Big Bang, we don't even understand whether that was the origin of the universe, by the way. We understand that something interesting happened-

1:10:43 What is Roger Penrose's pr- ... he has-

1:10:45 He has a infinite cyclical universe.

1:10:47 Yes.

1:10:48 And he's trying to answer questions about the very special state of the early universe and why it was the way that it was. 'Cause-

1:10:56 So, his model is an infinite contraction and expansion?

1:11:00 It doesn't recontract. See, it kind of ... it's called a, what's it called, conformal cosmology or cyclical conformal cosmology or something. So, it's essentially the ... and, and I don't fully understand it, and I have asked him about it, uh, with some colleagues actually. We haven't ... none of us understand-

1:11:16 If you can't understand it, we're fucked. (laughs)

1:11:18 ... what he was talk- ... no, no. No, I don't think many of us understand what he-

1:11:21 (laughs)

1:11:22 Roger, uh, I mean, Roger Penrose is one of the greats, right?

1:11:24 Yeah.

1:11:24 So you listen to him and take him very seriously. But I've, I haven't met anyone who quite understands what he, what he's talking about in that.

1:11:31 (laughs)

1:11:31 But, um, but it's, it's ... it doesn't recontract. It's not one of those models where the universe expands and then s- ... and then recontracts and, and bounces like that. It's not one of those. It's somehow, he argues that when you get to what we usually call the heat death of the universe, where even the black holes have evaporated away, you have conditions that begin to look perhaps like an origin of the universe again. And, and I can't really fully explain it because I don't really understand what he's trying to say, right? And I'm- Wow. ... I'm ... so-

1:12:06 So, it's not a, a contraction. It's an infinite expansion?

1:12:09 It's... yeah.

1:12:10 And then some sort of a metamorphosis?

1:12:12 Yeah, it kinda looks like ... conformal means there are no, um, sort of distances or time measurements or anything in the universe. It kind of loses all sense of scale. And then you could, you could reimagine that as looking somewhat like the beginning. It, it's something like that that he has in mind, but I really couldn't explain to you. I don't understand what, what he's, what he's proposing.

1:12:38 Wow.

1:12:38 Yeah. So, it ... but it, what it does tell you is that we don't know why or, or how the universe got into this state that we call the Big Bang. So, we don't, we don't know whether the universe existed before that. We have theories that it did, theories called inflation, which are very popular theories. You'll find them in all the textbooks, which say that before the universe was hot and dense, which we used to call the Big Bang, space and time is still there and the universe is expanding extremely fast, which is ca- ... it's called inflation. And then that period draws to a close, and that expansion sort of slows down and almost collapses and changes. And the energy that was driving the expansion gets sort of dumped into space and changes and ultimately makes the particles out of which we are made. So that, that's, that's actually the standard model of cosmology now. So, so we do have an idea that-... we, we, we redefine the big bang as the hot big bang, and it's not the origin of the universe in time. It's the end of inflation.

1:13:43 Oh, boy.

1:13:44 And, and then you get the question, what is inflation? Did, did, did that have a beginning? And the answer is that in Einstein's theory alone, then yes. And Roger Penrose, actually, and Stephen Hawking proved this a long time ago, that just given Einstein's theory, you have this singularity, just like ... Kind of like the black hole singularity, but at the beginning of time. But we do know that when you put quantum mechanics in and add that in, then it gets messy and we don't really know what that means. And so Stephen Hawking had a thing called the no boundary proposal. There's all sorts. Uh, basically, the point is we don't know. So we don't know whether the universe had a beginning in time, I would say is the, is the correct statement as we are at the moment. It's p- part of the reason why, by the way, getting back to the black holes, they're important and interesting, because the study of black holes and this idea of information and how does it get out, that's leading us to suspect that space and time themselves are not fundamental, but they emerge from something else. So just in the way that we've been talking about consciousness emerging from this physical structure in our heads, so we don't know how it emerges. It's a very strange thing, but it, but it emerges from this collection of atoms, right? Uh, in, in a particular pattern. Well, we think now, from the study of black holes, that space and time emerge from something else, which is kind of ... The one way to describe it is just a quantum theory. So it's, uh, in quantum computing terms, it would be just qubits. So a network of qubits entangled together, just like a quantum computer. Out of that, we suspect that space and time might emerge. So surely, we have to understand that process, and we don't really fully understand that, but we have glimpses of it in much more detail to start talking about the origin of time. 'Cause in order to talk about the origin of time, you have to know what it is.

1:15:40 (laughs)

1:15:41 And we don't actually know what it is, which is, you know ... And that's kind of ... Uh, when you say that, it sounds bizarre, doesn't it? Well, how can you not know what time is? I think Einstein once said that it is the thing that you measure on a watch. But he said that as kind of, uh, almost a joke, because he, you assume in Einstein's theory, there's a thing that the watch measures. But what actually it is at the deepest level is a good question. So, but it's funny. It's interesting that study of black holes is forcing us towards these theories. It's not that we had the theory of space and time emerging from something and found ... And decided we could check it by thinking about black holes. It's come the other way round, really. Um, so, so it's, it's interesting. But that, that almost makes the universe look, in some ways, like a, a giant quantum computer, which is not to say that we live in a simulation (laughs) , right? Before you ask.

1:16:37 (laughs)

1:16:37 Uh, but, but it just looks like ... There's a description of the universe that looks like a quantum computer type description. Now, that doesn't have the concept of space or time in it.

1:16:49 Is it possible that that is what it is, and that the