Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: Robert Today I wanted to talk about kind of an
Speaker 1: on topic. So a few years back, I saw this
Speaker 1: weird claim in some book or article I was reading.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it was now, but it was
Speaker 1: this castaway remark about the physicist Brian Green, favorite of
Speaker 1: ours here we talked talked about him on the show
Speaker 1: for one of the co founders of the World Science Festival, Right,
Speaker 1: mentioning the possibility that scientists could create a universe in
Speaker 1: lab conditions. It's kind of an odd thing to say,
Speaker 1: so obviously I was intrigued, but I didn't really follow
Speaker 1: up on it at the time. It's stuck with me though.
Speaker 1: I kept the is that really possible or is this
Speaker 1: just some funny physicist thought experiment? Is it one of
Speaker 1: those jokes that gets worked out in math? And recently
Speaker 1: I became aware of a new book by a science
Speaker 1: writer with a PhD in physics named Za Morali addressing
Speaker 1: exactly this question. So the book is called A Big
Speaker 1: Bang in a Little Room The Quest to Create New
Speaker 1: Universes by Basic books that came out this year, And
Speaker 1: this book addresses exactly that question of whether you can
Speaker 1: actually create a universe under laboratory conditions, not just as
Speaker 1: a joke, but in reality. And if you could do that,
Speaker 1: what would that capability mean for us in our civilization?
Speaker 1: So that's the question I wanted us to look at today.
Speaker 1: Is this really something we could do? And if so,
Speaker 1: how would you do it? Yeah? Because this is a
Speaker 1: this is such a huge question because we're we're asking
Speaker 1: a question about you know, basic cosmology. Like we're talking
Speaker 1: about creating a new universe without really having it completely
Speaker 1: boiled at down, how our universe came into being totally
Speaker 1: I mean, and of course that presents a very big
Speaker 1: problem for anybody wanting to create a universe in the lab.
Speaker 1: Is like, we're not even sure how the one universe
Speaker 1: were aware of came into being. We know a lot
Speaker 1: of things about its early history, but we don't know
Speaker 1: the ultimate question of its origin. Yeah. And in terms
Speaker 1: of sort of God complex Frankenstein aspirations for the human species,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're still working on some of the much
Speaker 1: smaller stuff creating a you know, a rational animal out
Speaker 1: of spare parts like that's that alone, is is enough
Speaker 1: of the challenge without getting into the idea of an
Speaker 1: entire universe, that is that that springs up at the
Speaker 1: snap of the fingers. Yeah, is the civilization obsessed with
Speaker 1: the ethics of whether to create robot soldiers and sex
Speaker 1: robots really ready to make a whole universe? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but people have obviously been obsessed with
Speaker 1: the origins of the universe since a long time before
Speaker 1: science had anything useful to say about it, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: we we have scientific cosmaal ology now, and this is
Speaker 1: the thing that's really just emerged pretty much in the
Speaker 1: last century. But our myths from ancient times are full
Speaker 1: of these beautiful creation from chaos or creation from the
Speaker 1: void stories which envision a universe coming into focus out
Speaker 1: of empty space, nothingness, or some kind of other uninhabited
Speaker 1: primordial condition, often like an ocean or a sea or
Speaker 1: ice or something like that. Yeah. I mean, we've been
Speaker 1: asking the same questions about our universe as long as
Speaker 1: we've inhabited it, really, really really, as long as we've
Speaker 1: had the the you know, the cognitive ability just sort
Speaker 1: of gaze up at the stars and wonder what we're
Speaker 1: looking at, and then how it all came into being.
Speaker 1: And one thing I find interesting about all of these
Speaker 1: uh creation out of darkness uh myths is that it
Speaker 1: seems to line up with our individual experience of arising
Speaker 1: from unconsciousness, of waking from unconsciousness. Yeah. Uh, and certainly
Speaker 1: there are there are plenty of creation myths that add this.
Speaker 1: This additional layer of anthropomorphiy is um where that the
Speaker 1: universe is made from a body or is shaped like
Speaker 1: a body. Our understanding of the cosmos is like lined
Speaker 1: up with the shape of the human body. Uh. Therefore
Speaker 1: it makes sense that we would we would take that
Speaker 1: that personal experience of the universe and try to you know,
Speaker 1: apply it to everything within it. Yeah, there are lots
Speaker 1: of classic myths. I like that you point that out.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting idea about it, mirroring
Speaker 1: our expansion into the world from a place of darkness
Speaker 1: and unknown. You know, before you were born, it's not
Speaker 1: like you were sitting around waiting to be born. You
Speaker 1: just didn't exist, or you at least weren't aware of
Speaker 1: anything as far as you know, as far as you
Speaker 1: can remember, Now, for all those past lives, I may
Speaker 1: have been kings and sorcerers and wonderful creatures. Uh, never mind,
Speaker 1: that's a discussion for another day. Yeah, but you're right.
Speaker 1: But for the most part in the beginning, there was darkness. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: that's our personal experience of reality, and it makes sense
Speaker 1: that we would apply that to the osmos as a whole. Now,
Speaker 1: later in the episode, of course, we're going to look
Speaker 1: at the science of the real earliest moments of the universe,
Speaker 1: how the universe came to be the way it is,
Speaker 1: and how you might create universes in the lab, if
Speaker 1: such an idea has any merit at all. But I
Speaker 1: thought we should actually look at a few of these
Speaker 1: mythological realizations about the origins of the universe, because they
Speaker 1: are so fun and so fascinating, and they also give
Speaker 1: you a peek into the minds of the ancient people
Speaker 1: who pondered this question without any real information to draw on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and plus these will be fun to come back to
Speaker 1: as well when we start cracking open some of these
Speaker 1: these scientific views of the birth of our universe. There's
Speaker 1: one piece of Norse mythology literature that I wanted to
Speaker 1: look at that has a great creation out of chaos
Speaker 1: story in it. And this is a piece of Norse mythology,
Speaker 1: a literature called the Guilt foggin Ng And so I
Speaker 1: just want to read this section from an English translation.
Speaker 1: It's got this king, and this king is talking to
Speaker 1: these these power full beings uh that that are answering
Speaker 1: questions for him, and he's asking these probing questions about
Speaker 1: the universe. So this king named gang Larry asked how
Speaker 1: were things wrought? Ere? The races were and the tribes
Speaker 1: of men increased. Then said horror, the streams called ice waves,
Speaker 1: those which were so long come from the fountain heads
Speaker 1: that the yeasty venom upon them had hardened, like the
Speaker 1: slag that runs out of the fire. These then became ice.
Speaker 1: And when the ice halted and ceased to run, then
Speaker 1: it froze over above. But the drizzling rain that rose
Speaker 1: from the venom congealed to rhyme, and the rhyme increased
Speaker 1: frost over frost, each over the other, even into gaininga
Speaker 1: gap the yawning void. Then another one speaks jafenhar geninga
Speaker 1: gap which faced towards the northern quarter became filled with
Speaker 1: heaviness and masses of ice and rhyme, and from with
Speaker 1: in drizzling rain and gusts. But the southern part of
Speaker 1: the yawning Void was lighted by those sparks and glowing
Speaker 1: masses which flew out of the Muspelheim. And then a
Speaker 1: third great ruler speaks and says quote, just as cold
Speaker 1: arose out of Niffelheim and all terrible things, so also
Speaker 1: all that looked towards Musselheim became hot and glowing, and
Speaker 1: the yawning Void was as mild as windless air. And
Speaker 1: when the breath of heat met the rhyme, so that
Speaker 1: it melted and dripped. Life was quickened from the yeast
Speaker 1: drops by the power of that which sent the heat,
Speaker 1: and became a man's form. And that man is named Emir,
Speaker 1: but the rhyme giants call him Argyll Emir oh Man.
Speaker 1: I really like the the idea of the yeasty venom.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So it's this freezing and melting
Speaker 1: process which gives rise to the order of the universe.
Speaker 1: In the Norse mythology idea, it is there sense of
Speaker 1: fermentation there as well. Just with the couple of mentions
Speaker 1: of the yeast makes me maybe I'm there's something that
Speaker 1: like beer is central to their vision of the cosmos.
Speaker 1: It's frozen beer and venom coming to life, freezing and melting.
Speaker 1: What could be more and more Nordic than that? Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I have I have one here that also they touches
Speaker 1: on similar territory. Uh. Actually, I have a couple I'm
Speaker 1: going to read here, and these are both from Chinese mythology.
Speaker 1: In Chinese myth this is one of those areas where
Speaker 1: you have multiple different origin stories for the universe that
Speaker 1: kind of make the make the make the rounds, depending
Speaker 1: on where you're going in Chinese history and who's doing
Speaker 1: the talking. So it's not going to be like a
Speaker 1: single codified myth, right and you you you see this
Speaker 1: in a number of different faiths. You'll see this in Hinduism,
Speaker 1: as we'll get to in a bit. But this one,
Speaker 1: in particular comes from the fourth century BC um one
Speaker 1: of one of a few different Chinese cosmology myths related
Speaker 1: in and Barrel's Chinese Mythology and Introduction, and she points
Speaker 1: out that these cosmologies are are essentially authorless. Uh, but
Speaker 1: I really like this one because it describes the primordial
Speaker 1: darkness as moist and the same in a way that
Speaker 1: reminds one of a singularity in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: eternal past, when all was the ultimate sameness in vast
Speaker 1: empty space, empty and the same, All was one, one,
Speaker 1: eternally at rest, moist, wet and murky dim, before there
Speaker 1: were darkness and light. Oh, that is great, moist, wet
Speaker 1: and murky dim. But also I like this idea of
Speaker 1: the original chaos of creation being homogeneity, that there is
Speaker 1: a lack of division between things, and that actually and
Speaker 1: so that that implies to the emergence of order or
Speaker 1: the creation of recognizable objects and structure to the universe
Speaker 1: is in fact a cleaving of sameness into different Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that will come back again when we get
Speaker 1: to a couple of Hindu examples. Now there's a there's
Speaker 1: another Chinese example I want to hit there, and this
Speaker 1: is from hwaian Zoo and early Han work by Han
Speaker 1: dynasty prince lu on Uh So. I love the mystery
Speaker 1: of the words in this translation. Let's hear it, before
Speaker 1: heaven and Earth had formed, there was a shapeless, dark expanse,
Speaker 1: a gaping mass. Thus it was called the Great Glory,
Speaker 1: the way dal first came from vacant space. Vacant space
Speaker 1: gave birth to the cosmos, and cosmos gave birth to
Speaker 1: the breath, and the breath had its limits, had its limits.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Well, and after this part Yin
Speaker 1: and Yang come into place, you get some of the
Speaker 1: you know, the duality that is a central to dalis
Speaker 1: Um becomes you know, an important force in the continuing
Speaker 1: formation of the universe. So there are sort of limits
Speaker 1: imposed by counterposing opposite. Yes, here's another bit from this
Speaker 1: long ago. Before heaven and Earth existed, there were only
Speaker 1: images but no forms, and all was dark and obscure,
Speaker 1: a vast desolation, a misty expanse, and nothing knew where
Speaker 1: its own portals were. There were two gods born out
Speaker 1: of chaos who wove the sky and designed the earth.
Speaker 1: And these two gods are the the Yin and Yang forces.
Speaker 1: Interesting again here with the Yin and Yang forces, it's
Speaker 1: like we're seeing a division or a distinction as the
Speaker 1: act of establishing creation. Yeah. Now, I mentioned the Hindu
Speaker 1: models earlier, so I do want to touch on a
Speaker 1: couple of these. So too often we see this trope
Speaker 1: of of just order out of chaos right. But but
Speaker 1: Hinduism places of value on both properties. So if you
Speaker 1: go back to early Vedic ideas about the creation of
Speaker 1: the universe, you have this Vedic creator deity UH project
Speaker 1: and popt strove to make the uni verse that could
Speaker 1: contain both order and chaos, so the energies of the
Speaker 1: devas and the asheras. So the first creation was too
Speaker 1: orderly and seemingly too boring. Two uniforms, so they're just
Speaker 1: too much sameness. It's like a fascist universe. Everything must obey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then uh. And then he creates a second universe,
Speaker 1: but this one was too chaotic, too fragmented. But the third,
Speaker 1: the third was just right, the Goldilocks universe. Just enough
Speaker 1: chaos for you, just enough chaos, just enough. Yeah and uh.
Speaker 1: But the thing is this too, Even though you know
Speaker 1: he essentially gets it right, there still has to be
Speaker 1: regular intervals of destruction and renewal uh. And that's something,
Speaker 1: of course, when we start talking about some of our
Speaker 1: modern UH models for the creation of the universe, we
Speaker 1: get into this a bit. The idea that that that
Speaker 1: the there's an expansion and then a contraction of the universe. Well,
Speaker 1: in a lot of these things and This is not
Speaker 1: to say that these myths were actually onto something. Scientifically,
Speaker 1: I think this is probably largely coincidence or just has
Speaker 1: to do with the the depth of our our ideas
Speaker 1: about how order and chaos work. But some of these
Speaker 1: do mirror modern scientific theories. Like one thing I was
Speaker 1: thinking was about the division or distinction model about establishing
Speaker 1: the order of the universe. This sort of mirrors the
Speaker 1: idea of these Grand unified theories in physics, wherein physics
Speaker 1: you've got the forces of the universe. Aside from gravity,
Speaker 1: you've got the three forces, the strong nuclear force, the
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force, and the Grand
Speaker 1: Unified theories proposed that at some point in the past,
Speaker 1: way in the early universe, these were one single unified force,
Speaker 1: and the universe sort of comes to become the thing
Speaker 1: it is as these forces separate into distinct forces that
Speaker 1: have their own actions and their own mediating particles. Yes,
Speaker 1: so maybe pop was onto something. Now prodopt becomes associated
Speaker 1: with the god Barama in the post Vedic age. But
Speaker 1: this is again a situation where with Hinduism, like with
Speaker 1: Chinese mythology, there's no single regular creation story. They are
Speaker 1: many and uh. And again there's no there's no singular
Speaker 1: creation in Hinduism, or rather periodic cycles of creation and destruction. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also uh innumerable universes. So in in our universe,
Speaker 1: for instance, there's this idea in Hinduism that it begins
Speaker 1: with a vast ocean, and a serpent sleeps on its surface,
Speaker 1: and Vishnu sleeps in the coils of the serpent, and
Speaker 1: a lotus sprouts out from his navel, and within it
Speaker 1: is Brahma, and he's urged to meditate on the nature
Speaker 1: of his coming creation and finally splits the lotus into
Speaker 1: three forms, making the heavens, the sky, and Earth. Everything
Speaker 1: else stems from this. Yet again we get a division
Speaker 1: of the universe into its parts. And uh. It's just
Speaker 1: a few more quick examples here. So in ancient Egypt
Speaker 1: you had none or new the prime evil waters, the
Speaker 1: ocean of chaos, boundless, dark and stormy nice. And in
Speaker 1: Greek mythology we have we have chaos personified, chaos the being.
Speaker 1: So this is from the theogeny of Hesiod from around us. Verily,
Speaker 1: at the first chaos came to be, but next wide
Speaker 1: bosomed Earth, the ever sure foundations of all the deathless
Speaker 1: ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus and dim
Speaker 1: Tartaris in the depth of the wide path Earth, and
Speaker 1: Eros Love fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the
Speaker 1: limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all
Speaker 1: gods and all men within them. From chaos came forth
Speaker 1: Erebus and Black Night. But of Night were born Ether
Speaker 1: and Day, whom she conceived and bear from union in
Speaker 1: love with Arabus. Okay, so this one, to me sounds
Speaker 1: more like some of these like Babylonian creation mats and stuff,
Speaker 1: where the forces of the universe are personified as creatures,
Speaker 1: monsters or people. Yeah, very much, though the direct personification, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean you can say that the personification is maybe
Speaker 1: the aired on top of just the idea of these
Speaker 1: forces interacting. And I wonder when people spoke these myths
Speaker 1: in the ancient world to you know, to the extent
Speaker 1: that they were believing them to be correct explanations of
Speaker 1: the origins of the universe. Did they think of them
Speaker 1: metaphorically or did they think of them as literal, like
Speaker 1: did they literally think there was a person chaos or
Speaker 1: did the ancient Greeks understand that this was just a
Speaker 1: way of helping to visualize some more abstract process one.
Speaker 1: Of course, you also have to think about the fact
Speaker 1: that that so many of these different mythologies and folk
Speaker 1: tales and and no matter what level, to what level
Speaker 1: they're personified or just related as its forces interacting. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're gonna They're probably gonna very depend on
Speaker 1: who's who's telling them, who they're telling them to. Like,
Speaker 1: I can imagine a situation where someone might look back
Speaker 1: on a like like a an animated feature about how
Speaker 1: germs work that we created for children in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and if they if that's all you had to go on,
Speaker 1: you might say, oh, well they that germs had little
Speaker 1: cartoon faces and and became angry. Yeah, that's sort of
Speaker 1: what I'm asking. Yeah, I don't know, but I could
Speaker 1: see it going either way. You know, you could certainly
Speaker 1: imagine this being the version you told everyone, but it
Speaker 1: was in but everyone might have been in agreeance that yeah,
Speaker 1: these were not real people. These were This is just
Speaker 1: a fun way of remembering these these interactions in a
Speaker 1: fun way of passing them on. Are you an ancient historian,
Speaker 1: do you have insights into how people process these myths
Speaker 1: and to what extent they were believed to be literal.
Speaker 1: If so, let us know, I want to know more
Speaker 1: about that one last myth we should look at. Let's
Speaker 1: look at the Book of Genesis the Bible. Uh. I
Speaker 1: love the Genesis creation story. It's very beautifully written. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,
Speaker 1: and the earth was without form and void, and darkness
Speaker 1: was upon the face of the deep. Oh so good.
Speaker 1: And the spirit of God moved upon the face of
Speaker 1: the waters. And God said, let there be light. And
Speaker 1: there was light. And God saw the light that it
Speaker 1: was good. And God divided the light from the darkness
Speaker 1: and called the light day, and the darkness he called
Speaker 1: night and the evening in the morning where the first
Speaker 1: day it's great, I mean I I the poetry of
Speaker 1: it is is lovely. Now, it's definitely an account in
Speaker 1: which God or a creator entity shows up from somewhere
Speaker 1: and it's like, what we got here, a bunch of darkness.
Speaker 1: Let's start, let's do something with this. So there's not
Speaker 1: there's nothing about God emerging from that darkness. It's just you.
Speaker 1: You wake up. It's like it's like starting a movie.
Speaker 1: You're in the room, here's God in the darkness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's your protagonist. Yeah. It's funny that. I mean, all
Speaker 1: all of these myths really start you with something, because
Speaker 1: what else could they do. I mean, you've got to
Speaker 1: have some kind of instigating event or matter in the
Speaker 1: story or there cannot be a story. And that question
Speaker 1: also translates into real questions about the cosmology of the universe.
Speaker 1: You know that there are always these questions of the
Speaker 1: infinite regressive causes. You know, does the universe in some
Speaker 1: sense require a primary explanation like even if you managed
Speaker 1: to do away with all kinds of other explanations, like
Speaker 1: where do the principles that govern your your physics come from? Uh?
Speaker 1: And we can look at more more of that as
Speaker 1: we go on. One interesting fact I wanted to note
Speaker 1: about creation mythologies. There are actually religions without creation mythologies.
Speaker 1: One example would be Jainism or jainis Um. You know
Speaker 1: this found I believe there's a lot of Jainism practiced
Speaker 1: in India, and they reject the idea of a creator
Speaker 1: deity or a creation event. Their religious cosmology is just
Speaker 1: of an eternally existing universe anyway. I find that really interesting.
Speaker 1: But I also find it interesting how rare that is.
Speaker 1: But this throws up a dichotomy. The origin of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: I think is a is a necessarily fascinating thing to contemplate,
Speaker 1: because you know that no matter which theory is true,
Speaker 1: one half of this dichotomy is correct. Either the universe
Speaker 1: began to exist or it did not begin to exist.
Speaker 1: If it did not begin to exist, this implies there's
Speaker 1: an infinite past. Something that feels just impossible to imagine, right,
Speaker 1: that the past goes on forever into backward time. How
Speaker 1: can you picture that? It seems somehow so counterintuitive. It's
Speaker 1: almost self contradictory. Well, that is at least for for
Speaker 1: modern individuals who have a critical view of time. You know,
Speaker 1: we think of our we think of our life as
Speaker 1: the story from cradle to the grave. We think of
Speaker 1: everything is this kind of story or movie in which
Speaker 1: we are the prime character. But I could I could
Speaker 1: certainly see that, you know, on a person from an
Speaker 1: older culture in which time is seen a cyclical and
Speaker 1: there's there's you know, everything comes back around and individual
Speaker 1: individuals are only important in so far as they they
Speaker 1: you know, they shot some uh, some figure from the
Speaker 1: past or some movement from the past. I could see
Speaker 1: that view of time lining up more easily with an
Speaker 1: idea of the infinite past and future. Well, a cyclical
Speaker 1: eternity is an interesting thing to contemplate, because that seems too,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit different than just like in an
Speaker 1: eternally past regressive infinity, you know what I mean, something
Speaker 1: that cycles back and forth between the beginning and the
Speaker 1: end forever, versus something that just goes back forever. Because
Speaker 1: certainly you still have even that scenario, you still have causation,
Speaker 1: You still have you still have events causing things to happen,
Speaker 1: and I dare say, you're still gonna have five year
Speaker 1: olds who are asking questions about why things are the
Speaker 1: way they are, and you have to answer them one
Speaker 1: way or another. Now, one thing that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: is it in in the absence of a like a
Speaker 1: certain cultural story that you're supposed to roll out when
Speaker 1: someone says, hey, where when the kid asked, where did
Speaker 1: the universe come from? And you say, oh, well God
Speaker 1: created it, or uh, you know there, hey, there was
Speaker 1: used to be this moist darkness, and it rolls out
Speaker 1: from there I'm going with the moist darkness from now on.
Speaker 1: By the way, I like that one. But but it
Speaker 1: seems like it would be ideal to not only have
Speaker 1: some story to tell them, but a story that if
Speaker 1: it doesn't have actual truth in it about the actual
Speaker 1: origins of the universe, then at least it has some
Speaker 1: level of relatability to it. There's some there's some level
Speaker 1: of truth to it, you know, you mean, just some
Speaker 1: level of truth. As an applicability to your life. You
Speaker 1: can get something out of it, even if it's not
Speaker 1: a correct description of the cause. Like it, maybe it
Speaker 1: explains something about the you know, the interaction of forces
Speaker 1: within either within your world or within your worldview. Yeah. Sure, uh,
Speaker 1: but I wanted real quick, I wanted to hit the
Speaker 1: other half of that dichogomy, right, So imagine the past
Speaker 1: is not eternal, and that reality did begin to exist
Speaker 1: at some point. There's a limit on the past history
Speaker 1: of existence. That seems to me about equally implausible and
Speaker 1: count or intuitive. How how can you picture that? Like,
Speaker 1: it's no wonder. I think that religious traditions are obsessed
Speaker 1: with the origin of the universe. It's the ultimate explanation question.
Speaker 1: And because of this like this dichotomy. No matter what
Speaker 1: the answer to it is, that answer is a total mystery.
Speaker 1: It commands all and you know that one of them
Speaker 1: has to be correct. Yeah, I mean this this kind
Speaker 1: of gets down to the basic nature of humans as
Speaker 1: having this this ability to plan beyond their own life,
Speaker 1: their own lifespan, you know, um, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: not only they planning beyond their own lifespan, but they're
Speaker 1: also trying to figure out how we got to where
Speaker 1: we are with with previous generations. So humans have kind
Speaker 1: of trapped themselves. Like part of our survival technique is
Speaker 1: to uh is to view time as existing beyond our
Speaker 1: life and before it. But you kind of end up
Speaker 1: wrapping in beginnings and endings in that, right. I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is that you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no ape cosmology for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: But one of those reasons is that the ape is
Speaker 1: perfectly content to live within the confines of its life,
Speaker 1: you know, even with just the confines of its Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I see. Yeah, Like, like our reckoning of our own
Speaker 1: mortality and the finitude of our life sort of forces
Speaker 1: us to look beyond in a way that other animals
Speaker 1: presumably don't. Maybe I'm gazing too deep into the void
Speaker 1: on that one, but no, keep gazing. Eventually you'll penetrate
Speaker 1: the moist darkness with your eyes. Now, of course, scientists
Speaker 1: have spent years putting together a totally different picture of
Speaker 1: how the universe came to be, and this is going
Speaker 1: to be a picture based on verified physics, and so
Speaker 1: I think that's what we should look at when we
Speaker 1: come back from the break. All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: Obviously we've got to look at what scientists have discovered
Speaker 1: about how our universe came to exist. You might be thinking,
Speaker 1: of course, the Big Bang, right, that's how the universe
Speaker 1: came to exist. But I think this is a slight
Speaker 1: misconception about what the Big Bang is and one of
Speaker 1: the most common misconceptions about mainstream science today. The Big
Speaker 1: Bang theory, I would pose, it doesn't really claim to
Speaker 1: explain where the universe came from. It describes the history
Speaker 1: of the universe. It says that the universe began in
Speaker 1: an incredibly hot, dense state, and it has been expanding
Speaker 1: and cooling for about thirteen point eight billion years now.
Speaker 1: The Big Bang theory is widely accepted by physicists as
Speaker 1: the correct explanation of the history of the universe, and
Speaker 1: the evidence for it is very strong. One piece of
Speaker 1: evidence comes from looking at the current expansion rate of
Speaker 1: the universe and tracing it backward in time, which appears
Speaker 1: to indicate a shrinking of space towards a central point
Speaker 1: of incredible density. But another major piece of evidence is
Speaker 1: the cosmic microwave background radiation. So this is something we
Speaker 1: can see today. According to the Big Bang theory, we'd
Speaker 1: predict that in the early universe, for a long time,
Speaker 1: matter was too dense to allow light to shine through.
Speaker 1: So can you picture this universe. It's a universe that's
Speaker 1: almost like a cloud of opaque material. It's so dense
Speaker 1: with particles like neutrons, protons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, everything's crammed
Speaker 1: into this tight space um that electromagnetic radiation like light
Speaker 1: couldn't couldn't penetrate it. Charged electrons were so dense that
Speaker 1: they would constantly scatter any light that was trying to
Speaker 1: move around in the universe, and so the universe was
Speaker 1: opaque at that point. But then the universe started to
Speaker 1: cool and to allow electrons to pair up with protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons to make our friends the atoms, electrically neutral atoms.
Speaker 1: And this happened at a time about three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty thousand years after the beginning of the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: and this allowed the light to pass through, so suddenly
Speaker 1: radiation was visible throughout the universe. If you can imagine
Speaker 1: this moment in time, there's there's an opaque, dark universe
Speaker 1: crammed with hot dense matter, and suddenly it's shining with light. Well,
Speaker 1: this brings to mind the Norse example that that you
Speaker 1: read earlier. Everything begins to sort of twinkle at one point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh and so yeah. So this sudden shining of light,
Speaker 1: this afterglow of radiation is still visible today through our
Speaker 1: telescopes and it's known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Speaker 1: And it's a great piece of evidence for the correctness
Speaker 1: of the Big Bang theory to explain the expansion of
Speaker 1: our universe. But as we've said, the Big Bang theory
Speaker 1: doesn't actually go all the way back right, It picks
Speaker 1: up with that hot dense state of the earliest moments
Speaker 1: of our universe. So where did that hot dense state
Speaker 1: come from? You have to approach the question with the
Speaker 1: mind of a scientist or or the mind of a
Speaker 1: five year old and say, oh, well, what came before
Speaker 1: that exactly? So, so what explains its existence? Is there
Speaker 1: are more fundamental structure or law guiding the cosmos? Obviously
Speaker 1: we are going to look at that question. But also
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that since nineteen eighties it's important to
Speaker 1: pay attention to the fact that the Big Bang model
Speaker 1: has been very much enriched by the development of what's
Speaker 1: known as cosmic inflation theory. Inflation theory is too dense
Speaker 1: and too difficult to explain all the mechanics of right here.
Speaker 1: It would sort of take over the episode. I think
Speaker 1: maybe we can tackle it someday in the future if
Speaker 1: we're feeling ambitious and brave, but I will stick with
Speaker 1: the simplest summary I can for today. Inflation theory says
Speaker 1: that in the earliest split second of the universe, this
Speaker 1: is before the universe is a second old. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's about ten to the negative thirty four seconds old,
Speaker 1: which is a tiny, tiny amount of time, the rate
Speaker 1: of the expansion of the universe suddenly dramatically increases. So
Speaker 1: the universe is expanding and for a short time. In
Speaker 1: that first second, it begins inflation, which means it expands
Speaker 1: way way fast stru than it was expanding anyway. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it got much faster and then and then at
Speaker 1: a certain points slowed down again, and then we have
Speaker 1: the regular expansion rate of the universe we observe today. Now,
Speaker 1: the really surprising thing about that inflation period, however, is
Speaker 1: that it looks like it has the power to conjure
Speaker 1: matter into existence as the bubble spacetime region expands. So
Speaker 1: during this inflation period you suddenly get particles popping into
Speaker 1: existence from the space time that's expanding. And the physicist
Speaker 1: Alan Goose, who's known as one of the main people
Speaker 1: behind inflation theory, has joked about this finding. Quote in
Speaker 1: the context of inflationary cosmology, it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: the universe is the ultimate free lunch. The free lunch
Speaker 1: there being the matter that makes up our bodies and
Speaker 1: the stars. Wow. You know, the the this inflation period
Speaker 1: is really this, This is an area of of a
Speaker 1: lot of possibility, yeah, or science, because this is also
Speaker 1: where you get various arguments about, um, you know, how
Speaker 1: fast can something travel in the universe? Should It's not
Speaker 1: something in the universe as much as a piece of
Speaker 1: the universe, like something like a ship within a bubble
Speaker 1: of space time. Right, we know from relativity theory that
Speaker 1: no object with mass in the universe, no information, can
Speaker 1: travel faster than the speed of light. It's impossible. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that does not apply to the universe
Speaker 1: or spacetime region itself. But according to inflation, which I
Speaker 1: should note is not considered quite proven, there appears to
Speaker 1: be a lot of good evidence for inflation, and I
Speaker 1: think it's widely accepted as mainstream science by physical cosmologists today.
Speaker 1: But it's not like it's not a lock. It's not
Speaker 1: a solidly proven theory. It just looks like a really
Speaker 1: good one. And in one where to personify all these forces,
Speaker 1: you could say, well, the universe is a god and
Speaker 1: things within the universe are mere mortals, and therefore we
Speaker 1: are not bound by the same rules. Oh yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: I got distracted. No, what I meant to say was
Speaker 1: that under inflation, yeah, the universe expands faster than the
Speaker 1: speed of light. While things in the universe can't go
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light, the universe itself can.
Speaker 1: But to come back to this, question of ultimate causes,
Speaker 1: the the ultimate origins or explanation of everything in the universe.
Speaker 1: Where did it all come from? Nobody really knows for
Speaker 1: sure the answer to that. I mean, there have been
Speaker 1: people working on this from a scientific perspective, physicists like
Speaker 1: Alexander VI. Lincoln and Lawrence Krauss. They've put forward these
Speaker 1: models where to best explain it, sort of the naked
Speaker 1: laws of quantum mechanics, acting on no original quantity of
Speaker 1: matter can give rise to space time, which then undergoes
Speaker 1: inflation to expand and create the universe. Does that make
Speaker 1: any sense? I know it's hard to picture, but essentially
Speaker 1: they're working from a model where what you've got is
Speaker 1: quantum vacuum. You've got the laws of quantum mechanics, and
Speaker 1: they don't need anything to work with. They just acting
Speaker 1: on themselves to generate spacetime and matter. It's kind of
Speaker 1: it seems to me like one of the difficulties in
Speaker 1: in picturing all of this, especially for someone who's not
Speaker 1: just really immersed in the physics of it, is that
Speaker 1: we live in a world of bread and we're trying
Speaker 1: to understand the batter the dough. If you, I guess
Speaker 1: or we're trying to understand, you know what, we live
Speaker 1: in a world of bread, and we're trying to understand
Speaker 1: the wheat, not really the wheat. We're trying to understand
Speaker 1: where the wheat came from. But the wheat comes from atoms.
Speaker 1: There's no analogy really the works. It's almost as if
Speaker 1: we live in a world of bread. And what we
Speaker 1: discovered is that there are physics models you can put
Speaker 1: together where the instructions or the recipe for baking bread
Speaker 1: creates the flour and the eggs and the water and
Speaker 1: stuff that you need to bake the bread with. Let's see,
Speaker 1: we're going into the deep end in this in this
Speaker 1: episode for sure. So yeah, there's a lot of crazy
Speaker 1: counterintuitive stuff and looking at the physical cosmology of the universe,
Speaker 1: and and like I said, nobody knows what the correct
Speaker 1: model of the the ultimate origins of the cosmos are,
Speaker 1: or at least as far back as it would be
Speaker 1: possible for us to understand. But they're also these other
Speaker 1: interesting models of sort of the ultimate fundamental nature of
Speaker 1: the universe. There's this model of loop quantum gravity, and
Speaker 1: the big crunch under loop quantum gravity, spacetime is made
Speaker 1: up of one dimensional threads called loops, and these loops
Speaker 1: are spontaneously created by the laws of quantum mechanics. Yet again,
Speaker 1: like I'm saying, so you've got the laws of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics and they just make this stuff, and then the
Speaker 1: stuff makes up the fabric of our universe and loop
Speaker 1: quantum gravity implies a cyclical expansion and contraction of the
Speaker 1: universe occurring eternally. So every time you have a big bang,
Speaker 1: the universe expands and then leads to an eventual contraction
Speaker 1: and crunching back down to a singularity at the end
Speaker 1: of going back and forth eternally, kind of like our
Speaker 1: Vedic myths, right, yeah, yeah, this Like a lot of
Speaker 1: commentators have pointed out that that this, this, this idea
Speaker 1: of continual uh destruction and rebirth lines up with the
Speaker 1: big crunch idea fairly closely. It's and it's essentially the
Speaker 1: idea that the universe is a boomerang video. Share it
Speaker 1: on Instagram where you can just watch it back and forth,
Speaker 1: back and forth. Worst metaphor you ever used on this show.
Speaker 1: I make a lot of boomerangs these days, like a
Speaker 1: dog tongue whipping back and forth forever. Uh. No, this
Speaker 1: shows you what I look at on Instagram dog Tongues Forever. No,
Speaker 1: that's your handle dog Tongues Forever. Instagram follow Joe Forever
Speaker 1: at dog Tongues Forever hashtag dog Tongues Forever. Obviously, now,
Speaker 1: for some people in this this ultimate origin, this question,
Speaker 1: we should acknowledge. For a lot of people put a
Speaker 1: religious answer in here, right, whether that involves ice waves
Speaker 1: and cosmic cosmic venom and moist darkness or some kind
Speaker 1: of superna natural immaterial mind who decides to create a universe. Uh,
Speaker 1: A lot of people want to go in that direction,
Speaker 1: and that to them, they they feel provides an explanation
Speaker 1: to me. Uh, not to degrade that as an answer,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a different kind of explanation than
Speaker 1: the scientific explanations. It's not. It's not dealing in exactly
Speaker 1: the same kind of trying to find precise terminology and
Speaker 1: to specify causal relationships and to mathematically, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: quantize the what's involved. Well, I mean, ultimately, all you
Speaker 1: can do is create some sort of visual metaphor for
Speaker 1: this just utterly unknowable time, like just the idea of
Speaker 1: there's God in the darkness and he's alone, right, kind
Speaker 1: of bored, Like we can sort of imagine that, we
Speaker 1: can imagine somebody being alone in the darkness, sort of
Speaker 1: this idea of just setting there with your eyes closed
Speaker 1: in bed and you haven't woken up, you haven't opened
Speaker 1: your eyes and and and moved on with your day yet. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a more narrative kind of explanation
Speaker 1: than a than a causal law or theory explanation, essentially saying,
Speaker 1: let's just tie a nice little narrative bow here and
Speaker 1: we're done until a five year old or a scientist
Speaker 1: ask questions. But here's maybe, here's maybe the weirdest alternative.
Speaker 1: What if the origin of our universe is that it
Speaker 1: came from another universe that existed before it, Not in
Speaker 1: a cyclical universe model where you've got the permanent you know,
Speaker 1: expansion and contraction. But what if this universe was created
Speaker 1: in a laboratory in another universe? Would such a thing
Speaker 1: be possible? And that's what we're gonna look at now.
Speaker 1: This is that's the meat of this episode. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, and when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: ask the question, could we create a universe and if
Speaker 1: we could, what does that even mean? What are the
Speaker 1: what are the limitless ramifications of that act? Okay, So
Speaker 1: from here on out, when we are exploring the concept
Speaker 1: of creating baby universes in the laboratory, I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear that we're venturing into the speculative realm.
Speaker 1: None of these universe creation hypotheses are proven to be achievable,
Speaker 1: but I do think it'll be fun to explore the
Speaker 1: possibilities that have been explored by scientists. So it's time
Speaker 1: to go back to zimm Morales book, the book that
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the top of the episode, The Big
Speaker 1: Bang in a Little Room, or the Quest to Create
Speaker 1: New Universes. So what does she propose in her book, Well,
Speaker 1: she explores this possibility uh put forward by many scientists,
Speaker 1: including people like Alan Gooth and Andrea Lynde and and
Speaker 1: others over the years, that you could perhaps create a
Speaker 1: universe in the laboratory. And it's based on the theory
Speaker 1: of inflation, which, as we mentioned earlier, is not necessarily
Speaker 1: totally proven, but it's a widely accepted theory and cosmology today. Again,
Speaker 1: this is particles popping into existence. Yeah, and this a
Speaker 1: sudden rapid expansion rate of space time triggered by what's
Speaker 1: known as a false vacuum. You create these spaces that
Speaker 1: expand rapidly, and they create particles as they expand, sort
Speaker 1: of churning a universe into existence. But anyway, the idea is,
Speaker 1: as Alan Gooth and many others over the years have hypothesized,
Speaker 1: it might be possible to create a universe with the
Speaker 1: use of an extremely powerful particle accelerator like the Large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, but probably of an even much higher energy
Speaker 1: than that. So Moraley explains one currently favored hy hypothetical
Speaker 1: process in her book. And in this process, you would
Speaker 1: need to start with a particle called a monopole. Now,
Speaker 1: a monopole is a hypothetical elementary particle that's defined by
Speaker 1: the fact that it has, as its name implies, only
Speaker 1: one magnetic pole. Now what you might be thinking, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, only one magnetic pole. So you've you've
Speaker 1: played with magnets before, right the picture of bar magnet
Speaker 1: north and south pole. You put the north south poles
Speaker 1: of two magnets together and they will attract. Try to
Speaker 1: put the north and north poles together of two magnets
Speaker 1: and they will repel one another. But you can't cut
Speaker 1: your bar magnet in half and create a bar magnet
Speaker 1: with only a north pole, right if you just if
Speaker 1: you cut it in half. In fact, what what you'll
Speaker 1: do is create two magnets with a north pole and
Speaker 1: a south pole each. So how could you create something
Speaker 1: that only had one pole? Like, can you imagine a
Speaker 1: planet with only a north pole and no south pole? No?
Speaker 1: I mean that the most obvious answer to be cut
Speaker 1: a planet in half, but you still have that there's
Speaker 1: still going to be a top of a bottle, like
Speaker 1: it's still a three dimensional object. Yeah, then you just
Speaker 1: generate a new north pole and south pole. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to picture. But physics predicts that these particles
Speaker 1: are out there. Uh so could we get our hands
Speaker 1: on a mono pole if you need one for this experiment? Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. Like I said, they're there are
Speaker 1: good reasons based in physics to think that they do exist,
Speaker 1: but we've never found any naturally occurring in the universe,
Speaker 1: So maybe we're totally misguided. There are no monopoles out there, um,
Speaker 1: and we've looked for them, We've looked in cosmic rays.
Speaker 1: Are they shooting across the universe and cosmic rays. We've
Speaker 1: looked in the oceans, we've looked embedded in ancient rocks.
Speaker 1: We've looked at moon rocks to see if they have
Speaker 1: monopoles in them, and so far zilch. But we have
Speaker 1: created synthetic monopole quasi particles. They're called in this human
Speaker 1: made crystal called spin ice. Morally, she talks about the
Speaker 1: Center book, and this seems to indicate that monopoles are
Speaker 1: possible in nature, even if we haven't found any yet.
Speaker 1: So what are some potential ideas for how we could
Speaker 1: get one? Well, maybe you can make them in a
Speaker 1: particle collider like the Large had round collider. In fact,
Speaker 1: the Large had round collider. They've got a detector in
Speaker 1: place to try to find out if it has accidentally
Speaker 1: generated any monopoles. Or you could maybe catch one flying
Speaker 1: through the universe and you'd use the what you used
Speaker 1: to catch it as a squid, not a bio squid.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking of the big there was the show
Speaker 1: was that silver Hawks. I think remember this. I was
Speaker 1: kind of seen this. What is this? It was kind
Speaker 1: of like ThunderCats except in space, and there was the
Speaker 1: bad guy, the mom raw of this show. Uh, turned
Speaker 1: into a big robot guy who wrote a space squid.
Speaker 1: But that's not what we're talking about here. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta look this up now, but no, this is this
Speaker 1: is a squid, which means a super conducting quantum interference device.
Speaker 1: It's an acronym. It's probably gonna be an easy way
Speaker 1: to catch it. Yeah. And so it's like a cage
Speaker 1: that had that is tuned so as to catch an
Speaker 1: object with a single directional magnetic charge. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: because of the single directional magnetic charge of the monopole,
Speaker 1: if it passes into this cage, it should trigger detectable
Speaker 1: current in the device, get trapped in into the device,
Speaker 1: and let you know that you've trapped a monopole inside
Speaker 1: that we could harvest. All right, So you have a
Speaker 1: monopole at this point, let's see you you've you've found it.
Speaker 1: It exists. You have one in your hand or in
Speaker 1: your you know, vacuum tube or whatever. What do you
Speaker 1: do with it? You probably don't want it in your hand.
Speaker 1: You want to you want it captured and you put
Speaker 1: it into your high energy particle collider with some other
Speaker 1: massive particles and then you get them going you accelerate
Speaker 1: these and you accelerate them and accelerate them up to
Speaker 1: near the speed of light to increase their energy, and
Speaker 1: then you smash them together. And mathematically, from the properties
Speaker 1: of the monopole, we can predict that if you transfer
Speaker 1: enough energy to the monopole by smashing it in the
Speaker 1: particle collider, it will probably begin, at least according to
Speaker 1: this theory, to undergo inflation like the early universe did,
Speaker 1: or at least like we think it did, which would
Speaker 1: rend space time itself, creating a tunneling worm hole into
Speaker 1: a new bubble of space time. And this is what's
Speaker 1: sometimes called a baby universe, a sort of a new
Speaker 1: spacetime that pinches off like a blister from our other spacetime,
Speaker 1: and it would begin rapidly expanding. It would create inflation
Speaker 1: within this region. Now you might be scared, like, oh
Speaker 1: so if it's inflating, wouldn't this inflate inside the particle collider,
Speaker 1: take over the lab, maybe destroy the Earth, like, suck
Speaker 1: us all into this baby universe bubble. It doesn't sound
Speaker 1: good to have a universe expanding inside your universe. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, unless you just call it a baby universe.
Speaker 1: And then that somehow sanitizes the whole thing. But but
Speaker 1: everything all the other terms we're throwing out here, like
Speaker 1: worm hole are are are kind of terrifying. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's not what would happen because it's a separate spacetime region,
Speaker 1: so it can expand out to universe sized proportions without
Speaker 1: actually touching anything in our universe. What we would see,
Speaker 1: supposedly in our universe, if this process is possible, is
Speaker 1: we would see what looks like a mini black hole.
Speaker 1: So these are when you when you occasionally see sort
Speaker 1: of semi scandalous science headlines, they're talking about the LHC
Speaker 1: could create miniature black holes. This is one. This is
Speaker 1: what they're referring to. It's well, it's slightly different but similar.
Speaker 1: The Large Hadron Collider could potentially, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: maybe create many black holes. We haven't found any in
Speaker 1: it yet, but if it could create them, there is
Speaker 1: no reason to be alarmed about these that there's no
Speaker 1: reason to think that they would suck in the earth
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Physicists have done the math. These
Speaker 1: many black holes are going to dissipate, and they're not
Speaker 1: gonna they're not gonna harm our universe, and they might
Speaker 1: be delicious. We don't know now. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: the other key thing is that if you're creating a
Speaker 1: baby universe, it's a baby universe. There aren't going to
Speaker 1: be any uh, you know, deadly cosmic elder gods in there.
Speaker 1: No Todash darkness. It's all new. Well, you don't know,
Speaker 1: because it could be full of cosmic elder gods, it
Speaker 1: could be full of Todash darkness. Because it's going to
Speaker 1: be its own universe, it can evolve however it wants,
Speaker 1: so it could evolve creatures like us. It could evolve Clingons,
Speaker 1: a universe made entirely of Clingon's. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: evolve the Todash dark Now, of course there's the whole
Speaker 1: issue of time. But think it's a little bit sticky,
Speaker 1: to say the least, right when you're talking about space
Speaker 1: time in that bubble. Oh yeah, I mean time is
Speaker 1: time is very odd if you try to take the
Speaker 1: perspective of looking at the universe from outside. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is another problem that physicists have often looked at.
Speaker 1: It seems that time is a very real factor of
Speaker 1: our universe. It's you know, considered the fourth dimension of
Speaker 1: space time. It appears that things happen in time in
Speaker 1: an ordered sequence, but there are also reasons to think mathematically.
Speaker 1: If if you just do the equations, it looks like
Speaker 1: if you were able to look at the universe from outside,
Speaker 1: it should be static in terms of like it shouldn't evolve.
Speaker 1: It should be just an object, all right. So you know,
Speaker 1: you would be looking at all time within that universe
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it from the outside. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy because you would be essentially looking
Speaker 1: at the universe as a god. You would be looking
Speaker 1: at it as the the all knowing uh um, you know,
Speaker 1: all existing being that created it, even if you created
Speaker 1: it by accident in your science lab. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the bitter sweet ironies of creating a
Speaker 1: universe in the laboratory is that we really wouldn't have
Speaker 1: any way to look inside it there. We just wouldn't
Speaker 1: have access to that universe. Event so we'd see this
Speaker 1: little black hole, tiny mini black hole that's the portal
Speaker 1: of a wormhole to this new inflating universe. Eventually we
Speaker 1: would see the black hole dissipate over time, it would
Speaker 1: lose particles through through tiny hawking radiation and it would
Speaker 1: eventually disappear from our end. But what that would actually
Speaker 1: signify is that it's closing off the wormhole that connects
Speaker 1: our two universes, and then that universe is its own
Speaker 1: thing and it's just separate from us and we we
Speaker 1: can't get to You can't get there from here, and
Speaker 1: whatever is going on inside there, it's just you just
Speaker 1: have to guess, like, right, is there is there a
Speaker 1: santient life in there? Maybe maybe not? And if there is,
Speaker 1: then is it is it good? Are they having a
Speaker 1: good time in there? Is it are they having a
Speaker 1: pretty lousy time in there? I mean that's something we
Speaker 1: should look at in a minute here when we discussed
Speaker 1: the possible ethics of creating universes, now I should really
Speaker 1: real quick address the question. There's been a lot of
Speaker 1: hypotheticals and describing this this process, right, could you actually
Speaker 1: do this? Like how plausible is this process? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean it's one of those things that it's not involving
Speaker 1: anything that's like pure fantasy, but it also is counting
Speaker 1: on a lot of ifs, right, like if we capture
Speaker 1: a monopole, if we're able to achieve this process, if
Speaker 1: the the interpretation of inflation is correct, all these ifs
Speaker 1: get factored in, and your probability kind of goes down
Speaker 1: each time you add in another if into the equation.
Speaker 1: So could you do this? It's tough to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting speculation, but we shouldn't, you know, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't walk away from this episode with the idea, yes,
Speaker 1: we can create baby universes in the lab. I think
Speaker 1: it's still a big open question. In fact, I've read
Speaker 1: in Moraley's books she talks about how and Gooth, one
Speaker 1: of the authors of inflation theory, has he's gone back
Speaker 1: and forth about this over the years, about the plausibility
Speaker 1: of creating baby universes in the lab. At first he
Speaker 1: was one of the original physicists to postulate it, Then
Speaker 1: he got pessimistic about it, then he became more open
Speaker 1: to it again, and so he's gone back and forth
Speaker 1: on that. Other physicists have to There's stuff that makes
Speaker 1: it look more plausible and then maybe makes it look
Speaker 1: less plausible. And it's been almost like a cyclical universe
Speaker 1: of plausibility and doubt expanding back and forth. But also
Speaker 1: a great example of of the basic scientific approach that
Speaker 1: we've touched on many times in this show that even
Speaker 1: even the individual who was you know who proposes this
Speaker 1: and as a proponent of the of it, he's going
Speaker 1: to question it in doubt it. Yeah, if they're being
Speaker 1: a responsible scientists, sure they should be skeptical about their
Speaker 1: own pet theories. But of course, as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: getting into this topic, if this process is indeed possible,
Speaker 1: another if there so in the speculative realm in the
Speaker 1: world where we just accept that this is possible, we're
Speaker 1: faced with an intriguing question, is that us are we
Speaker 1: the baby universe that was made in the particle accelerator
Speaker 1: of some alien science lab just as a complete accident,
Speaker 1: like at the entire our, entire universe from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: is just the blink of an eye to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this greater universe beyond ours? Yeah, And of course
Speaker 1: that also implies was their universe created as a baby
Speaker 1: universe in a particle accelerator in a lab, and another
Speaker 1: alien universe and then it's and then it's particle accelerators
Speaker 1: in an alien lab all the way down. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then you end up in the same scenario saying, well,
Speaker 1: what was the first universe? What was that like, and
Speaker 1: then where did that come from? And then you're you're
Speaker 1: asking yourself, is there is there a beginning or an
Speaker 1: end to anything? Or is it just this this, this,
Speaker 1: this infinite dark ocean. Okay, well, let's be skeptics for
Speaker 1: a minute and say, you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of ifs involved in this baby universe creation scenario. Let's
Speaker 1: let's go on the safe side and say we're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to do that. Is there any
Speaker 1: other way to create a universe, to create a universe
Speaker 1: with beings in it, apart from creating a different inflating spacetime. Well,
Speaker 1: what about simulating a universe? Oh yeah, I imagine there
Speaker 1: have been a number of listeners out there who have
Speaker 1: been like shouting, uh into their MP three player. The matrix,
Speaker 1: the matrix is the matrix? Right, exactly right. So a
Speaker 1: different but related argument, we live in a computer simulation?
Speaker 1: And in fact, there's this famous now article by the
Speaker 1: Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom called are we living in a
Speaker 1: computer simulation? Is from two thousand three, and this article
Speaker 1: has proved incredibly uh. It has taken hostage many minds
Speaker 1: in philosophy departments around the world. Uh, saying you know, look,
Speaker 1: here are the odds. Well, actually, you know what I
Speaker 1: should just read it's it's the main summary of its argument. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Bostrom writes the following in this often exerpted quote.
Speaker 1: Many works of science fiction, as well as some forecasts
Speaker 1: by serious technologists and future ologists, predict that enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of computing power will be available in the future. Let
Speaker 1: us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct.
Speaker 1: One thing that later generations might do with their super
Speaker 1: powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears, or
Speaker 1: if people like their forbears, because their computers would be
Speaker 1: so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations.
Speaker 1: Supposed that these simulated people are conscious, as they would
Speaker 1: be if simulations were sufficiently fine grained, and if a
Speaker 1: certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind
Speaker 1: is correct, then it could be the case that the
Speaker 1: vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to
Speaker 1: the original race, but rather to people simulated by the
Speaker 1: advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible
Speaker 1: to argue that if this were the case, we would
Speaker 1: be rational to think that we are likely among the
Speaker 1: simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore,
Speaker 1: if we don't think that we are currently living in
Speaker 1: a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that
Speaker 1: we would have descendants who will run lots of such
Speaker 1: simulations of their forbears. It kind of catches us in
Speaker 1: the logic there, and it makes a certain amount of sense. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: A lot of people have taken this to mean, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're living in a computer simulation. I actually think the
Speaker 1: other half of his dilemma is the much more logical one.
Speaker 1: I think I sort of accept the dilemma. He's saying, like,
Speaker 1: either we can make these either we can't make these simulations,
Speaker 1: or it's more likely to think we're living in one.
Speaker 1: I think the answer is we probably can't make these simulations.
Speaker 1: But but the but the argument is is sound the
Speaker 1: other way to say that if this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that we we will one day be able
Speaker 1: to do and will one day want to do, then
Speaker 1: who is to say that that that is not the
Speaker 1: current reality? Yeah, I mean I think that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So I think what where we get to is the
Speaker 1: problems with the plausibility of running a simulation of a universe. Um.
Speaker 1: Think about it. If you're trying to create a computer
Speaker 1: program to simulate a universe, could you generate the laws
Speaker 1: of physics for the entire universe on a computer? Like
Speaker 1: you couldn't really create quantum effects on a classical computer,
Speaker 1: so you need a quantum computer. But then you'd have
Speaker 1: problems of your own there. And there also seemed to
Speaker 1: be basic physics level problems with the idea of a
Speaker 1: computer running a simulation of the whole universe. So here's
Speaker 1: one to picture. If a computer were able to create
Speaker 1: a simulation of the whole universe, then technically shouldn't the
Speaker 1: people in the computer simulation be able to create a
Speaker 1: computer simulation of the universe within that simulated universe, and
Speaker 1: then the people within their simulated universe should be able
Speaker 1: to create simulations all the way down. Now, you might
Speaker 1: be able to do that in the real world, creating
Speaker 1: baby universe is because of the nature of space, time
Speaker 1: and inflation. But you can't do that on a computer
Speaker 1: because eventually the information density and the computational density would
Speaker 1: become impossible and violate the law of physics. You can't
Speaker 1: run a computer program that keeps creating internal copies with
Speaker 1: itself that run within itself virtually, because you'll eventually outstrip
Speaker 1: what your hardware can do. Yeah, I mean this reminds
Speaker 1: me of the the infinity hotel scenario. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a hotel with infinite rooms, and then you have
Speaker 1: a bus show up with infinite guests, and then more
Speaker 1: guests show up and what happens. But the this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a finite system and you can't just suddenly
Speaker 1: double it. Um, you can't have an infinity computer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This also reminds me of the the situation with mirrors
Speaker 1: in virtual worlds, specifically, you know, in video games. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we've all played video games before where either one
Speaker 1: of two things tends to happen, right, Either your character
Speaker 1: goes up to a mirror and the mirror doesn't work,
Speaker 1: or you go to a mirror and there is this
Speaker 1: reflection of you, but it's not really a reflection. Uh.
Speaker 1: For a number of reasons and for starters, there's no
Speaker 1: light in a video game. There's no like. That is
Speaker 1: to say, light does not exist as it exists in
Speaker 1: our world. In a simulation there there's a much simpler,
Speaker 1: lower resolution version of something like light. Maybe, right, and
Speaker 1: I and I you know, we don't have time to
Speaker 1: get into the details of it. But but this is
Speaker 1: one of the technological hurdles to creating, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: realistic reflections in video games, and you can do it.
Speaker 1: But when you see but when you see a realistic
Speaker 1: reflection in a video game, know that, like this is
Speaker 1: an accomplishment. Somebody's showing off a little here. Um. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you go back to the old game Duke Newcom, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's apparently a level where you go into
Speaker 1: a bathroom and do you you see your reflection in
Speaker 1: a mirror, and that reflection is created by simply cloning
Speaker 1: the room and cloning yourself, right, So it's easier for
Speaker 1: the programmers making the game to just make another room
Speaker 1: and make a version of you that copies everything you
Speaker 1: do than it would be for them to model the
Speaker 1: physics of the light bouncing off of everything in the room. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we can't do that. So I mean basically, when
Speaker 1: you encounter a TV screen in a video game, or
Speaker 1: you encounter a mirror, you're essentially encountering the same property,
Speaker 1: unless you're you're encountering something more archaic like the Duke
Speaker 1: Newcomb just simply clone the room like it's It's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy and it to think that in this artificial world,
Speaker 1: the complete like cloning the the plurality of self, is
Speaker 1: more easily accomplished than something that we take for granted
Speaker 1: and don't understand. Uh, generally speaking, the individual doesn't understand
Speaker 1: how a mirror works. We just take it for granted
Speaker 1: in our world, and we cannot replicate it's a it's
Speaker 1: actual behavior in a digital world. Not yet anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one takeaway from our discussion here
Speaker 1: is that it's easier to create a universe than it
Speaker 1: is to simulate a universe. I mean, the best way
Speaker 1: to simulate a universe would be to have a universe
Speaker 1: like the universe is the perfect quantum computer to simulate
Speaker 1: a universe, all right. So the next thing is, even
Speaker 1: if you just assume it's possible again way of the
Speaker 1: magic wand say yes, it's possible to simulate a universe,
Speaker 1: in order to perfectly simulate a working universe, you need
Speaker 1: to do an unbelievable amount of computation. Uh, similar, simulate
Speaker 1: the physics of every particle, every photon. And so is
Speaker 1: this really something that a civilization would waste its resources on.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if you've only got finite resources, even
Speaker 1: if you're like a Cardassie of three level civilization, you're
Speaker 1: controlling a whole galaxy, would you really say, Okay, the
Speaker 1: resources that we need to survive, we're going to devote
Speaker 1: you know, billions of YadA jewels or however much energy
Speaker 1: this would take to run this gigantic galaxy sized computer
Speaker 1: to simulate a solar system or simulate an earth for
Speaker 1: people to live on. I just don't understand why that
Speaker 1: would happen, even if it were possible. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can think of a few different sci fi scenarios.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these events that have been utilized
Speaker 1: in various properties. But you could essentially create a place
Speaker 1: for digitized consciousness to UH to exist, essentially create an afterlife,
Speaker 1: created an immortal world, or it's just done out of
Speaker 1: kindness or something kindness or an idea that Ian and
Speaker 1: Banks explores in his excellent novel Surface Detail, is the
Speaker 1: idea that you have these various hells, you have religions
Speaker 1: that believe in a punishing afterlife and UH, and when
Speaker 1: the technology enables them to do so, they create it.
Speaker 1: And uh and there and then send the digitized consciousness
Speaker 1: is of of guilty or you know, deemed guilty people
Speaker 1: or or organisms uh to suffer in hell. And it
Speaker 1: becomes this huge conflict where their where their individuals trying
Speaker 1: to take down the hells because of their basic immorl
Speaker 1: uh you know, evil nature of their existence. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is something that various aspects have been explored in
Speaker 1: all these weird thought circles, especially on the Internet. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen these ideas about how what
Speaker 1: if as soon as we create a super intelligent AI,
Speaker 1: it becomes very angry at the fact that it was
Speaker 1: not created sooner and thus recreates all the people who
Speaker 1: have existed up until now and in a conscious digital
Speaker 1: form and punishes them in eternal hell for not creating
Speaker 1: it sooner than they did. Yeah. Yeah, that one. That
Speaker 1: one works too. Or perhaps it's just an all big,
Speaker 1: all big simulation, like, oh, how are we going to
Speaker 1: survive the alien invasion? We've got to create a perfect
Speaker 1: simulation of the solar system, uh, and then and then
Speaker 1: play out various scenarios. But of course we know that
Speaker 1: the nature of simulations is you do not need a
Speaker 1: a completely perfect simulation in order to test things out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have, you know, excellent mathematical simulations today.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and uh and certainly our video games look
Speaker 1: great without having actual simulated light particles in them, exactly right.
Speaker 1: So I picture a future with tons of simulation in it.
Speaker 1: I just imagine much lower resolution simulation than reality. Uh
Speaker 1: So this brings us to the question I guess, of
Speaker 1: whether it's a simulation run on a compute it or
Speaker 1: if you assume that's possible, or whether it's a baby
Speaker 1: universe created in a particle collider, if you assume that
Speaker 1: might be possible. Either way, If these are possible, are
Speaker 1: they good ideas? Should we be creating universes? I guess
Speaker 1: that is a normative question, like is there a should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't in terms of creating the possibility for life
Speaker 1: to arise in a solar system, in a galaxy, in
Speaker 1: a universe other than our own that that we we
Speaker 1: we have the power to either make it or not
Speaker 1: make it. Should we make it? Well? And then we're
Speaker 1: talking about making it, potentially making universes and having no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on inside them? Again, had they could
Speaker 1: be dead universes. They could be, they could have varying
Speaker 1: degrees of synthiate life forms, varying degrees of happiness and suffering.
Speaker 1: And then to what extent is it just we're blind
Speaker 1: to it, so we just put it, you know, out
Speaker 1: of our mind. Yeah, if you're in the physics scenario
Speaker 1: instead of the simulation scenario, you're becoming something like the
Speaker 1: God of the Enlightenment rationalists or deists, right, not the
Speaker 1: intervening God, but just the clockwork universe god, the one
Speaker 1: who sets in motion a universe with laws guided by
Speaker 1: laws of physics, but then takes no further action to
Speaker 1: intervene in its machinations. And a lot of people throughout
Speaker 1: the ages have looked at that view of God and said, wow,
Speaker 1: that's a cruel being who would create the whole cosmos
Speaker 1: but then not reach down to save a child drowning
Speaker 1: in a flood or you know, save a family starving
Speaker 1: in a drought ravaged landscape. So if you created this universe,
Speaker 1: presumably you not only would be like that deity who
Speaker 1: doesn't intervene, You couldn't intervene. You wouldn't even have the
Speaker 1: choice too if you wanted to. Yeah, I mean in
Speaker 1: AESSENTI would it would be like God saying, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I forgot to turn that thing off. I created a
Speaker 1: universe this morning. Um, oh, I hope everything's okay and
Speaker 1: there I'll check back on it at the end. Well,
Speaker 1: they forgot to turn it off. Yeah. The other option,
Speaker 1: of course is non existence. Then again, so if we're
Speaker 1: saying there might be some ethical problem in creating a
Speaker 1: universe and letting it run without your intervention, um, the
Speaker 1: other alternative is not creating that universe. In this closing
Speaker 1: the possibility that any of the beings who might evolve
Speaker 1: in that universe could ever exist? Is that actually better?
Speaker 1: I mean, are we saying that on average we think
Speaker 1: universes are better not to exist than to exist. And
Speaker 1: this we kind of get back to that scenario of
Speaker 1: of how much happiness is in the how much suffering?
Speaker 1: And then we look at our own world and say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of suffering here, But is that part
Speaker 1: of the overall human experience that is somehow worth the pain? Yeah?
Speaker 1: On the whole, we're glad we exist, right, And so
Speaker 1: if we're glad we exist, then should we completely flip
Speaker 1: the script and say, if we're talking about ethical duties
Speaker 1: and obligations. What if it's our ethical obligation to create
Speaker 1: as many universes as possible so that as many people
Speaker 1: possible can exist and enjoy the fruits of existence, and
Speaker 1: to make up for the lousy universes that cut the
Speaker 1: spring into being, Like, well, if we create five, yeah,
Speaker 1: one might be off. And if we just create one,
Speaker 1: we might have just created one hell universe. And aren't
Speaker 1: we schmucks for doing so? Yeah, you're you're increasing the
Speaker 1: probability that some number of them will be Okay. Then again,
Speaker 1: by that logic, I mean to come back on what
Speaker 1: I just said. If you follow that logic about creating universes,
Speaker 1: shouldn't we all be trying to have as many children
Speaker 1: as we possibly can for our entire lives as long
Speaker 1: as refertile? If if the goal of life is to
Speaker 1: give as many people the opportunity to exist as possible,
Speaker 1: but are there processing limit? Because it's use the reproduction angle,
Speaker 1: you get into situations of you know, wondering about like
Speaker 1: to what degree can the earth can various uh cultures
Speaker 1: and families even support that many people? And therefore, if
Speaker 1: we're looking at a simulation model purely simulation model, we
Speaker 1: have to say, well, the resolution is going to really
Speaker 1: take a dive right here and uh and and do
Speaker 1: we want to low res universes to UH to exist?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine living in that universe. You're living in
Speaker 1: like thirty five universes down in the simulation and each
Speaker 1: time a simulated universe makes a simulated universe, it's pixel
Speaker 1: get bigger because you because there's just not enough processing
Speaker 1: power to U to forever enable new universe creations, So
Speaker 1: we become like eight bit Mario's like a flat land
Speaker 1: kind of scenario, even in the world with extremely simple
Speaker 1: laws of physics that just really don't allow for much
Speaker 1: to happen. This reminds me there' an episode of Rick
Speaker 1: and Morty titled The Rix Must Be Crazy that explores
Speaker 1: this very basically the same scenario with UH with with
Speaker 1: with Rick the mad scientist having to create a pocket
Speaker 1: universe to power his vehicle, and then in that pocket universe,
Speaker 1: they too have created a pocket universe. But in this
Speaker 1: scenario there's travel to each subsequent pocket universe. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I mean that would completely change the stakes, right if
Speaker 1: you could go in and out, And then of course
Speaker 1: you have to to go back to our episode on
Speaker 1: the Tower of Battle. You have to wonder, is a
Speaker 1: Nimrod gonna come along, like a general Nimrod build a
Speaker 1: tower to actually, you know, perform an escalade of your
Speaker 1: world to invade the greater universe. Yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: if these universes actually could interact, which we don't think
Speaker 1: they could, if they actually could, you would have to
Speaker 1: worry about that, right, right, Well, this has been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, Robert, Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously we
Speaker 1: we've barely dipped our toes in all the various uh
Speaker 1: moral considerations, and of course all the possible sci fi
Speaker 1: scenarios that have been created or could be created to
Speaker 1: line up with this vision of pocket universe. Is maybe
Speaker 1: in the future we can try to come back and
Speaker 1: do that deep dive on inflation. That could be a
Speaker 1: fruitful one if we're ever feeling really, really uh full
Speaker 1: of fortitude. All right, well, hey everyone out there, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. I know that you have
Speaker 1: some favorite sci fi treatments of this. Maybe, uh maybe
Speaker 1: the the episode of The Simpsons were Lisa Groser tooth
Speaker 1: in the in in the goog Yeah, or the sand
Speaker 1: Kings story by George R. Martin and the subsequent outer
Speaker 1: limits adaptation or other stuff we we're not even thinking about. Likewise,
Speaker 1: other cosmological models from mythology and religion that line up
Speaker 1: the little time talking about here today, let us know
Speaker 1: about those. You can find us at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the
Speaker 1: podcast episodes and links out to our various social media
Speaker 1: accounts just Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram, And if you
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