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

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: Astrophysicist doctor Charles lou with Us, professor at the City

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Speaker 2: University of New York's College of Staten Island and an

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Speaker 2: associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at

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Speaker 2: the American Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on

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Speaker 2: colliding galaxies, star wars, galaxies, coisars, and the star formation

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Speaker 2: history of the universe. His book is called The Handy

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Speaker 2: Quantum Physics answer Book. And he's back with us on

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Speaker 2: Coast to Coast Charles. Welcome have you been. Oh, I've

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Speaker 2: been very well, George, Thank you so much. I really

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Speaker 2: appreciate being here tonight.

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Speaker 3: Be a lot of fun.

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, when you look at the marvels of

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Speaker 2: the universe, it is just truly unbelievable. Now taking God

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Speaker 2: out of the equation for a moment, and that's not

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Speaker 2: easy to say or do. How in the world did

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Speaker 2: this start from nothing?

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Speaker 3: Well, this is a great question, and the reality is

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Speaker 3: that scientists are humble enough to recognize that we don't

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Speaker 3: know how did these start from nothing? It may well

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Speaker 3: have been something, but it's something that we don't understand yet.

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Speaker 3: For example, our understanding of space and time three dimensions

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Speaker 3: of space and one dimension of time. If there are

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Speaker 3: other dimensions, there could have been plenty of stuff from

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Speaker 3: which those other dimensions funneled into what we now know

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Speaker 3: is our four dimensional space time, and some sort of

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Speaker 3: a quantum event or a multidimensional event having to do

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Speaker 3: with membranes or string theory or something like that, but

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Speaker 3: we don't have any evidence for it yet. We can

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Speaker 3: set up the equations, shall we say, the structure for it,

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Speaker 3: but then we have to design the experiments and have

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Speaker 3: enough technological capability to test those hypotheses to decide which

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Speaker 3: one is actually reality. We don't have that technology yet, unfortunately.

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Speaker 2: Do you think we will ever get the answers your

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Speaker 2: real answers?

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Speaker 3: I think so, and I think the answers will be

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Speaker 3: much more complicated than we hope.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: We always like to think that there's one thing that

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Speaker 3: explains everything, all right, one idea, But we've found out

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Speaker 3: that the simpler the basic idea, the more complexities that

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Speaker 3: it can spawn. Right, So, for example, the idea that

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Speaker 3: the universe started with a big bang. That's pretty settled

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Speaker 3: in terms of the observational evidence. The universe used to

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Speaker 3: be much smaller and much hotter than it is now,

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Speaker 3: and it is now bigger and colder, and it's continued

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Speaker 3: to grow bigger and colder over time. That's something we understood.

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Speaker 3: But that simple idea has led to much more complication,

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Speaker 3: like what is the density of the universe in terms

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Speaker 3: of matter? How about the dark energy distribute? Has the

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Speaker 3: changing of the expansion rates caused changes and variations in

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Speaker 3: the development of stars and galaxies and planets and people.

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Speaker 3: So the more we simplify and create the truth shall

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Speaker 3: we say and answer, the more we realize that there

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Speaker 3: are greater details that yet have to be explained.

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Speaker 2: We have emotion, we get sick, we get the happy.

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Speaker 2: So I'm pretty sure that we are real, We're alive.

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Speaker 2: But is there a possibility, Charles, that all of this

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Speaker 2: is an illusion?

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Speaker 3: You have hit upon a fundamental question that astronomers are

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Speaker 3: asking ourselves all the time, and in fact all scientists

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Speaker 3: really when we're thinking about the concepts of consciousness or

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Speaker 3: reality or perception, right, we actually cannot mathematically prove that

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Speaker 3: there is any universe outside our own heads. So, George,

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Speaker 3: you and I are talking right now, but you actually

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Speaker 3: don't know if I am actually a person just like you,

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Speaker 3: or I'm just some sort of a clever simulation that

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Speaker 3: responds so perfectly that you're imagining me to be a

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Speaker 3: real person with actual thought, and you, yourself are the

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Speaker 3: only person in the universe with actual thought. Indeed, you're

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Speaker 3: the only person in the universe period. And all of

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Speaker 3: the other stuff is not the reality that you think

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Speaker 3: it is, or that anybody else thinks it is. And

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Speaker 3: because all of us, all the billions of us humans,

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Speaker 3: have the same problem, we can get a sense of

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Speaker 3: what everything else is, but we always have to reserve

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Speaker 3: the possibility that we are fooling ourselves.

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Speaker 2: What about the possibilities that Charles that I'm chat GPT,

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Speaker 2: that I'm more intelligent?

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Speaker 3: George, I can't just prove that, right, I mean, I

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Speaker 3: can just prove that you're not CHATGPT. Because if someone, say,

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Speaker 3: on the other side of this phone line, were to

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Speaker 3: go into a studio and see, oh, there is George right,

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Speaker 3: there is a perception, there is an observation of reality

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Speaker 3: that we share, and that person could then call me

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Speaker 3: or contact me and say, yep, George is a human being.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: But if we were only talking through a screen, and

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Speaker 3: I did not know that you were a person over there,

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Speaker 3: and you did not know I were a person over here,

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Speaker 3: then there may not be a way for you to

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Speaker 3: confirm definitively that I'm not a clever computer program. It's

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Speaker 3: just a matter of whether or not that computer program

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Speaker 3: that chat, GPT or any other large language model can

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Speaker 3: express itself so effectively that you can't tell. And right now,

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Speaker 3: the artificial intelligence scientists are able to create computer programs

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Speaker 3: that can fool a human being after five minutes of

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Speaker 3: conversation about a third of the time.

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Speaker 2: Well, with doctor Charles lou we are going to be

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Speaker 2: taking calls with him next hour. We're talking about the

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Speaker 2: marvels of the universe. Is science continuing to find new

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Speaker 2: discoveries of this fourteen billion year oly universe all the time.

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Speaker 3: It's amazing how much we're discovering. I mean, even on

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Speaker 3: the smallest scales, things like human DNA and the evolution

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Speaker 3: of life here on Earth, and the possibility of planets

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Speaker 3: existing in such abundance that there is life elsewhere, Like

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Speaker 3: that's the smallest stuff, the biggest stuff that's happening right now.

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Speaker 3: With new technology. Specifically, I'm thinking of the James Webb

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Speaker 3: Space Telescope and also other telescopes that are both on

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Speaker 3: Earth and in space. We are able to look so

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Speaker 3: far away and into the distant past that we're seeing

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Speaker 3: objects in the universe that we only theorized could exist

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Speaker 3: so early in the history of the cosmos. As a result,

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Speaker 3: we're discovering that we have to keep adjusting our models

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Speaker 3: and understanding how the universe is going forward is being

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Speaker 3: continuously informed by new discoveries that are literally being made

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Speaker 3: every night.

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Speaker 2: And James Webb just discovered a planet that they think

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Speaker 2: has the possibility of harboring life because it's got all

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Speaker 2: the makeup. That's fantastic.

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Speaker 3: That's a really neat story. Yes, this telescope is just

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Speaker 3: the latest to provide evidence on this particular planet. This planet,

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Speaker 3: which orbits a star many light years away, was seen

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Speaker 3: to have possible indications that in its atmosphere there was

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Speaker 3: a kind of gas that here on Earth is produced

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Speaker 3: by biological life, DNA based life, and we haven't yet

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Speaker 3: figured out a way to produce this gas in quantity

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Speaker 3: that could saturate in an entire atmosphere in any way

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Speaker 3: other than having like algae or other kinds of semi plant,

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Speaker 3: semi animal microbiome to be able to produce it. And

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Speaker 3: so when the JWST came online, scientists asked to point

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Speaker 3: that telescope at this planet and take a more detailed

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Speaker 3: observation to see what they could find, see if they

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Speaker 3: could confirm those hints that they had found before using

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Speaker 3: other telescopes, And sure enough those hints were confirmed at

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Speaker 3: a higher confidence level than ever before. And so this material,

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Speaker 3: this gaseous material that seems to be in this planet's

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Speaker 3: atmosphere could well be have formed if chemistry and biochemistry

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Speaker 3: is the same on that planet as it is here,

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Speaker 3: could have been formed by microbiobes. But these microbes we

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Speaker 3: don't know of their existence there. We just have this

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Speaker 3: one chemical signature. And so right now what we're doing

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Speaker 3: is well, not me specifically, but my colleagues who are

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Speaker 3: involved in things like astrobiology and biochemistry, are trying to

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Speaker 3: figure out are there any other ways with which this

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Speaker 3: gas can be formed in such quantity that it could

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Speaker 3: signal a planet wide kind of process other than extraterrestrial

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Speaker 3: life as we know it.

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Speaker 2: Doctor Low, give me your impression, your thoughts on the

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Speaker 2: Big Bang and what happened.

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Speaker 3: Okay, the Big Bang has been tested and has been

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Speaker 3: poked and prodded and used looked at by hundreds of

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Speaker 3: scientists thousands of scientists over decades, and so it is

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Speaker 3: now quite certain scientifically that the universe as we understand

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Speaker 3: it and experience it was once very small and very hot.

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Speaker 3: By very small, I mean smaller than an atom, and

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Speaker 3: by very hot, I mean trillions upon trillions of degrees.

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Speaker 3: And now it's not right. So, over the past thirteen

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Speaker 3: point eight billion years or so, give or take maybe

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Speaker 3: one hundred million years, based on our measurements, the Big

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Speaker 3: Bang has happened. That doesn't mean though we know how

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Speaker 3: it happened or what the pieces of it are going

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Speaker 3: on with it, that event could have been triggered by

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Speaker 3: a wide variety of physical activities which we can't test

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Speaker 3: yet because we don't have the technology. We can't see,

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Speaker 3: for example, much smaller than the sub atomic particles that

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Speaker 3: we detect, things like electrons. Right, But the physics of

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Speaker 3: what must have happened when the universe was that small

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Speaker 3: is not reproducible. In a laboratory that we have today.

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Speaker 3: All Right, the closest we've been able to get is

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Speaker 3: being able in our most powerful particle accelerators to mimic

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Speaker 3: what the universe might have been like about a trillionth

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Speaker 3: of a second after the Big Bang, but not before

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Speaker 3: that point. And before that point, trillionth of a second

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Speaker 3: doesn't seem like a much time, but so much can

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Speaker 3: happen at the quantum level, at the sub atomic level

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Speaker 3: in that period of time that it could have shaped

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Speaker 3: everything that's happened since then. So the short answer, which

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Speaker 3: I've just given you a long answer, right, my personal

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Speaker 3: take is that the Big Bang did happen, and there's

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Speaker 3: a lot of evidence scientifically to show that it did.

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Speaker 3: And then the question now is to figure out the details,

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Speaker 3: including what happened before the time that our technology has

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Speaker 3: been able to study the Big Bang.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: oneam Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot com

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Speaker 1: for more