Losing The Nobel Prize | Dr Brian Keating

(wind blowing) Hi, friends. My guest this week is Professor Brian Keating and he almost won the Nobel Prize, and today we're going to find out just what it feels like to lose it. Uh, it's a really cool story. He set up the BICEP2 telescope in Antarctica, and it looked like him and his colleagues had made a unique discovery, and there was a rollercoaster of what actually happened and some disputes about the data and what it showed. There's politics from the Nobel Prize Association, and I didn't understand what it was or how it works, how it's chosen, and what the processes and the heritage of this particular organization are, but we're gonna find all of that out today. It's a very interesting story, albeit at the expense of Professor Keating. Uh, but if you enjoy this episode, go back and check out the ones with Sabine Hossenfelder and Professor Adam Frank. They're both fantastic physicists, and they have a lot to add to this discussion about the politics of science. Obviously, if you love the episode, please share it. It makes me very happy, but for now let's welcome Professor Keating. Oh yeah, P.S., I've started to shorten down the intros to these podcasts because I respect your time and I found myself skipping through a lot of the introductions to podcasts that I listen to as well. In future, I'm going to endeavor to keep them around about one minute. I think this should be enough time to tell you about the guest and inform you of any upcoming announcements which are important, but if you feel like you need to know more, or less, if you want me to chop it down even further and just say, "Hi, friends," then let me know @chriswillex on all social media.

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Professor Brian Keating, how are you today?

I'm fantastic, Chris. Thanks for having me on.

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. So, what are we gonna learn about today?

Well, you know, I kinda sought out your podcast, so I don't know how usual that is, but I heard my friend, uh, Mario Livio on your show about two months ago, a month and-a-half ago, and the interview that you did was, uh, was phenomenal, and of course he's such an engaging and erudite fellow that I felt like it would be a good opportunity for me to share some of the ideas that I've been thinking about in my work as a cosmologist. As I point out, I don't do hair and nails, but I- I am a cos-

(laughs) Cosmetologist. (laughs)

(laughs) Though a lot of people think I- I do until they meet me. Nor do I tell horoscopes but, uh, but in- instead what I look for is really the earliest evidence for the beginning of the universe, and what I thought is so interesting about the perspective that colleagues such as myself can provide in contradistinction to those of, you know, these erudite, brilliant folks you've had on like Mario, um, is that I'm an experimentalist. So an experimentalist as a- as a cosmologist, it doesn't mean that we build universes. Uh, I've got a healthy ego, but not quite that healthy, um, and to think that I could actually build the universe, but instead we build telescopes that will allow us hopefully to reveal the earliest, uh, evidence for what's known as the Big Bang, and how we came to know what the universe is comprised of, uh, along the way may hopefully be revealed through the types of telescopes that myself and my colleagues built. Uh, and this is very different from those of the professions, you know, as practiced by, uh, your- your, you know, late countrymen and my distant late colleague, uh, Stephen Hawking or- or, uh, Sir Roger Penrose who recently visited me in San Diego and, uh, was part of our podcast that we run for the Arthur C. Clarke Center here in San Diego. And that was- uh, that is, you know, to study the universe from a purely theoretical point of view is absolutely necessary, and I always say, you know, some of my best friends are theoretical physicists. But- but in reality we- we have, uh, learned much more about the universe, uh, from people that build instruments, whether it be Galileo or Newton or, you know, people that- that, uh, are connected deeply to instrumentation because there are very few theories in the world. If you think about it there, philosophically, there can only be so many different descriptions of how the- the actual world works, many fewer than how possible worlds could work, and I'll give you one example and maybe we'll talk about that at greater length today. Uh, for- uh, for those in the audience who may have heard of something called the multiverse, uh, this is a very controversial subject within physics and even philosophy and it really revolves around the notion of whether our universe is alone, whether ours is the only universe both that exists now or may have ever existed or may- will ever exist in the distant future. And that's quite an astounding thing to think about. Uh, it's motivated in some sense from the thought of people like Copernicus and Galileo who showed the Earth as just but one of many planets in the solar system. Uh, now we know there's but one of... The Milky Way is but one of many galaxies in the universe. So perhaps it's- m- it's natural to think maybe we're just the- not just the only universe in what's called the multiverse. So these are the kind of things we study but- uh, but in- in contrast to many other, you know, kind of more popular, maybe much smarter, uh, bet- better speakers than I- my- than I am, but, uh, these- these folks that, uh, study things from a purely theoretical perspective. It's just a different perspective I thought it would be great for your audience to get a taste of.