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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: You got interested in gravity in what kind of way?

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Speaker 1: Because it's not something everybody would just say, Hey, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to write a book about this. I suppose I'm

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Speaker 1: intrigued by the paradoxes. I mean, it's the force that

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Speaker 1: we think was the first to be understood by Isaac

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Speaker 1: Newton in the sixteen hundreds, you know, so three or

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Speaker 1: four hundred years ago, and yet it's the least understood today.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's the weakest force by some tremendous factor.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the electric force which is holding together the

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Speaker 1: atoms in your body is ten thousand, billion, billion, billion

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Speaker 1: billion times stronger than gravity. So gravity is fantasity weak,

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Speaker 1: and yet on the very large scale, the scale of

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Speaker 1: planets and stars and galaxies in the universe, it controls everything.

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Speaker 1: So the weakest force is the most powerful on the

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Speaker 1: large scale. And of course the other thing is that

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Speaker 1: you know, we think of it as as a force

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Speaker 1: like a piece of invisible elastic that connects the Sun

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Speaker 1: to the Earth and keeps the Earth going around the

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Speaker 1: Sun that Einstein showed us a hundred years ago. That

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Speaker 1: in fact, that's completely incorrect, and there is no such

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Speaker 1: forces gravity. The force of gravity does not actually exist.

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Speaker 1: If we did not have gravity, what would happen wire Well,

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Speaker 1: basically we live in in a very very boring universe

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Speaker 1: because the reason that matter has clumped into interesting things

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Speaker 1: like the s and the stars and the planets and

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Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff is because of gravity. It's

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Speaker 1: an attractive force. I mean, this is the this was

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Speaker 1: Newton's discovery. It's a universal force. So that means it's

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Speaker 1: a force which operates between every chunk of matter and

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Speaker 1: every other chunk of matter. So you know, we all

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Speaker 1: know that there's a force pull in the Moon towards

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Speaker 1: the Earth, or the Earth towards the sand. But actually

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Speaker 1: it's it's a universal force, which means there's a force

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Speaker 1: between you and the person that walking pass you on

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Speaker 1: the high street. On the street, there's a force between

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Speaker 1: you and the coins in your pocket. It's just that

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Speaker 1: on that scale the force is quite weak. So you know,

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Speaker 1: it trumps together all the interesting objects in the universe.

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Speaker 1: There would be no planet Earth if there were no

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Speaker 1: gravity in the moon would smash into us or what

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Speaker 1: would happen with that, well, I mean it would just

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Speaker 1: fly off, basically off towards the stars, you know. I

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Speaker 1: mean it's this is This was Newton's genius because Newton,

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Speaker 1: a man of the seventeenth century whose father couldn't even

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Speaker 1: write and signed his name with a croft, recognized that

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Speaker 1: the same force that was pinning his feet to the

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Speaker 1: ground and causing apple to fall from a tree was

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Speaker 1: the same force that was keeping the moon trapped around

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Speaker 1: the Earth. That's a stroke of genius. Because an apple

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Speaker 1: falls from a tree to the ground, it's not obvious

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Speaker 1: that the moon is falling as well. But Newton recognized

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Speaker 1: that it is falling, it's actually falling in a circle.

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Speaker 1: So his genius was to realize that the Earth and

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Speaker 1: the heavens are governed by exactly the same force, exactly

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Speaker 1: the same laws. And that would have been a tremendously

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Speaker 1: brave thing to say in the seventeenth century, because obviously

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Speaker 1: it was a very religious time, and people believed that

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Speaker 1: the heavens were governed by different forces than the earth.

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Speaker 1: So to say there was just one force that governed

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Speaker 1: terrestrial affairs and celestied affairs was a really bracing He

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Speaker 1: was actually incredibly religious person, and in fact, most of

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Speaker 1: his work was actually analysis of the Bible, and his

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Speaker 1: scientific work was actually only a small portion of his life.

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Speaker 1: All right, give us your definition that we could understand

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Speaker 1: on what gravity is. Gravity is an attractive force between

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Speaker 1: every chunk of matter and every other chunk of matter. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So there's an attractive force, as I said, between you

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Speaker 1: and the coins in your pockets, between you someone on

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Speaker 1: the street, between the Sun and the Earth. So for

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Speaker 1: every single piece of matter, every single piece of mass

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Speaker 1: attracts every other piece with this force. Now, Newton also

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Speaker 1: was able to buy comparing the fall of an apple

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Speaker 1: to the way the moon was moving. He was able

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Speaker 1: to figure out how that force change with distance. So

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Speaker 1: the force gets weaker the further apart two masses are,

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Speaker 1: and it drops off as what we call an inverse

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Speaker 1: square law. So if you double the distance between two masses,

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Speaker 1: then the force is four times as week. If you

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Speaker 1: triple it, if nine times this week. So he figured

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Speaker 1: that out. So it's a universal attractive force between all

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Speaker 1: bits of matter. And as I said in the beginning,

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Speaker 1: we still don't quite understand what the actual what gravity

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Speaker 1: is Newton described it, but we don't actually know what

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Speaker 1: it is. What did our all friend Albert Einstein think

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Speaker 1: of gravity? Well, interestingly he showed that it didn't exist

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Speaker 1: the force of gravity. As I said in the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the Newton was thinking that there was this force

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Speaker 1: between you know, the Sun and the Earth that think

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Speaker 1: of it as a piece of invisible invisible tether or

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Speaker 1: something like that piece elastic that connects the Earth to

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Speaker 1: the Sun and keeps us constrained to go around the

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Speaker 1: Sun forever. Newton, I sorry, Einstein realized that that's an illusion.

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Speaker 1: What the Sun in snack does is it warps or

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Speaker 1: bends the spacetime around it. Now, spacetime is not something

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Speaker 1: you can see. It's it's a higher dimensional thing that

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Speaker 1: you cannot see. So, but the Sun actually creates a

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Speaker 1: valley in the space around it, and the Earth rolls

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Speaker 1: around the edge of this valley rather like a roulette

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Speaker 1: ball around a Roulett will. So actually there is no

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Speaker 1: force of gravity at all. We're just responding to this

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Speaker 1: hidden warpage of spacetime. Now we can't see it, which

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Speaker 1: is why it crook a genius like Einstein to realize. Now,

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Speaker 1: the ultimate proof that this is correct, and that space

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Speaker 1: or spacetime is actually a thing that can be warped

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Speaker 1: and bent is the discovery made in America on the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth September twenty fifteen. And that was the discovery of

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Speaker 1: gravitational waves. Because if space time or spacetime is a

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Speaker 1: thing that can be warped, as Einstein fold us, it's

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Speaker 1: something that can be rippled as well, just like the

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Speaker 1: surface of a pond. And those ripples are gravitational waves.

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Speaker 1: And they were picked up, as I say, in Hanford,

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Speaker 1: Washington State, and in Louisiana on the fourteenth sept twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and the three of the people that made that discovery

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Speaker 1: one of twenty seventeen no Bil Prize for Physics and Marcus.

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Speaker 1: If you were to have two people holding a bed

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Speaker 1: sheet and somebody drop the bowling ball in the middle

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Speaker 1: of this bed sheet and it would kind of like

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Speaker 1: roll down in the bottom and sag the sheet with it,

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Speaker 1: is that like warping space and time exactly exactly, So,

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Speaker 1: so we had a race of ants that lived, say

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Speaker 1: on it not a bed sheet, let's say a trampoline.

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Speaker 1: They had a race of ants. They live on the

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Speaker 1: surface of a trampoline. They only know about the surface

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Speaker 1: of the trampoline, so that they can't experience above and

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Speaker 1: below the trampoline. And you put a as you say,

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Speaker 1: a bowling ball on the trampoline. Okay, from our perspective,

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Speaker 1: because we are three dimensional creatures, we see that it's got,

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Speaker 1: you know, a depression that's created. From their perspective, they

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Speaker 1: don't see that at all. They see that if they

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Speaker 1: walk across their trampoline, they appear to be bent towards

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Speaker 1: this bowling ball, and they may think, oh, there's an

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Speaker 1: attractive force um not even call it gravity. But of course,

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Speaker 1: from our perspective, from this higher dimensional perspective, we see

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Speaker 1: there is no such force. All there is, as you

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Speaker 1: just pointed out, is the depression caused by the bowling ball,

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Speaker 1: and that's exactly the way it is with the Sun.

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Speaker 1: We think there's a force because we our path is

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Speaker 1: bent into us into an ellipse or a circle around

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Speaker 1: the Sun. The Earth's path is bent. But actually if

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Speaker 1: we could see things from the higher dimensional perspective, we

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Speaker 1: would see that in fact that isn't the case, and

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Speaker 1: that the Sun is actually pretty much like a bowling

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Speaker 1: ball that's depressed the space around it. Is the rule

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Speaker 1: of physics that helps determine I believe gravity. Is it

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Speaker 1: the same throughout the universe? I mean, are there any

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Speaker 1: surprises out there? Well? I mean this. I mean, first

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Speaker 1: of all, I should point out that that this what's

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Speaker 1: so incredible is that Newton he actually identified a universal force. Okay,

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Speaker 1: it's a force that applies in all places in the universe,

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Speaker 1: and he didn't have any instruments to do it with

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Speaker 1: no at all times, and it was a very very

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Speaker 1: simple force. So then then you have to ask yourself,

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Speaker 1: the universe could be actually constructed in a really complicated way,

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Speaker 1: but it's actually constructed in such a simple way that

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Speaker 1: a man of the seventeenth century could identify a universal force,

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Speaker 1: that is, one that applies in all spaces, all places,

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Speaker 1: and all time as far as we know. I mean, obviously,

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Speaker 1: Einstein has has shown that Newton Newton's theory was actually well.

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Speaker 1: Newton's theory is an approximation of Einstein's, and Einstein got

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Speaker 1: a slightly better picture that basically Newton and Einstein's gravity

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Speaker 1: does apply everywhere in the universe as far as we know. So,

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Speaker 1: and since the discovery by Newton of this universal law,

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Speaker 1: we found other laws which apply all places and all times. Now,

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Speaker 1: of course, we can't go to other bits of the

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Speaker 1: universe to check the physics is the same. However, we

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Speaker 1: can pick up things like starlight, and starlight has encoded

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Speaker 1: in it information, for instance, about the atoms that produced

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Speaker 1: the light, and we can and see that light coming

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Speaker 1: from the most distant objects comes from atoms which are

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Speaker 1: very similar to the ones are identical to the ones

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Speaker 1: on the Earth. So, as far as we do know,

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Speaker 1: the same laws apply in other places as on Earth.

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