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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio Crazy. Anyways, let's talk about your work the world

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Speaker 1: according to physics. First of all, to you, what is physics, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a way of understanding reality. For me, it's

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Speaker 1: the way of understanding right, the physical universe, the world

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Speaker 1: around us, the stuff, the matter, the energy, the phenomena.

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Speaker 1: At the deepest level you drill down, you get to physics.

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Speaker 1: You know, whatever explanations you have even you know when

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Speaker 1: when in other sciences, biology leads to chemistry ultimately at

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Speaker 1: least to physics. So it's the fundamental way of understanding

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Speaker 1: the true nature of reality in my view, What is

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Speaker 1: it about physics that really is something you enjoy? For me,

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Speaker 1: I think it's and this is why I fell in

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Speaker 1: love with it, you know, as a teenager. I think

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Speaker 1: it's I mean, I enjoy it because I'm good at it.

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Speaker 1: You know, not everyone is good at everything. I'm I'm

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Speaker 1: not so good at playing the piano. I'm good at it.

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Speaker 1: But I also it's fun, it's it's common sense, and

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Speaker 1: it's puzzle solving. So where their mysteries out there? I

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Speaker 1: don't follow what someone else tells me, this is the

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Speaker 1: explanation of the mystery. I realized that using mathematics, using

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Speaker 1: the tools and tricks of science, I can solve those mysteries.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's it's that there's a mystery there to

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Speaker 1: be solved. It's a puzzle, and there are ways and

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Speaker 1: means that you can use to reach an answer. I

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Speaker 1: just find that absolutely fascinating. You keyed in on nuclear physics.

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Speaker 1: How come? Well? That was sort of luck really. I

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Speaker 1: was in my final year of my bachelor's degree undergraduate degree,

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Speaker 1: and one of the professors that I did a research

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Speaker 1: project with a nuclear theoretical nuclear physicist. So he does mathematics,

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Speaker 1: carries out mathematics modeling of atomic nuclei and not nothing

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Speaker 1: to do with nuclear power or nuclear weapons, just understanding

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Speaker 1: the structure of the atomic nucleus. I did this project

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Speaker 1: with him, and he must have been impressed, and he said,

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Speaker 1: would you like to stay on and do a PhD

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Speaker 1: with me? And it hadn't even occurred to me to

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Speaker 1: do that. I was at the time, I was about

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Speaker 1: to get married. I've got to get a job, I've

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Speaker 1: got to get a house, I've got to be grown up,

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Speaker 1: and this PhD. Opportunity was handed to me, and as

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Speaker 1: soon as it was offered, I knew I had to

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Speaker 1: say yes, and my wife to be now my wife

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Speaker 1: for thirty years. I'm still paying her back for the

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Speaker 1: for the to say thank you for allowing me to

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Speaker 1: do my PhD. I love it. Well, tell me a

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Speaker 1: little bit about this new work, The World according to Physics. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So this is a is a small book. It's it's

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Speaker 1: almost pocket sized. It's sort of half the size and

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand words of other books that I've written. But

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Speaker 1: it's sort of my love affair with physics, what we

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Speaker 1: know and how we know what we know. So I

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Speaker 1: always say, as an example that if all our knowledge

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Speaker 1: of reality of the physical universe gained from physics is

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Speaker 1: an island, and beyond it are the shores of the

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Speaker 1: ocean of the unknown. We don't know if that extends

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Speaker 1: on for infinity or whether we'll finally know everything, but

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Speaker 1: this island is expanding all the time as our knowledge grows.

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Speaker 1: This book isn't an exploration of the island as a

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Speaker 1: lot of other popular science books are. It's really an

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Speaker 1: exploration of the shoreline that we're walking around the shoreline

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Speaker 1: looking at the cutting edge of what we now know

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Speaker 1: in physics. Maybe you're rolling up your travel lake and

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Speaker 1: wading into the water and storing a little bit of

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Speaker 1: the unknown. What is it that we still don't know?

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Speaker 1: But we're on the brink of understanding hopefully, So that's

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Speaker 1: where it's at. It's a book that brings the average

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Speaker 1: reader up to speed on some of the most profound

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Speaker 1: issues in physics. You were born in Baghdad back in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two. In one of your characters in your

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Speaker 1: book is the Arab physicist been Haytham. Tell me about him?

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Speaker 1: Is he real? Yes? Absolutely yes. My mother's English. My

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Speaker 1: father came from from Iraqi, met my mother in England

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Speaker 1: where he studied engineering. We went back. I grew up

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Speaker 1: in Iraq at a time when you know, life was easier,

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Speaker 1: was different there. That was different. Well, Mark, how about

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Speaker 1: to you? Oh? Well there very well? How about your creme?

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Speaker 1: I speak the way I was aware, although you know

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Speaker 1: we spoken to your home is my mother's tongue. I

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Speaker 1: did a school in Arabic and in history classes they're

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Speaker 1: not science classes. We learned about some of these great

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Speaker 1: medieval scholars of the of the Islamic Empire. You know,

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Speaker 1: people who who invented whole sciences, you know, like algebra

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Speaker 1: and trigonometry and astronomy, and they're not well known in

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Speaker 1: the West. Um And so ten ten, about ten years ago,

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Speaker 1: I did a BBC documentary about these medieval scholars. I

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Speaker 1: then followed it. I wrote a popular science book which

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Speaker 1: came out in the U under the title of the

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Speaker 1: House of Wisdom, and it did. It was received very well,

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Speaker 1: and one of the main characters in it was this

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Speaker 1: tenth century genius even Haythem. Mostly in the West, he

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Speaker 1: was known by the Latin version of his name, al Hazem,

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Speaker 1: because a lot of his works, his text were translated

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Speaker 1: into Latin. In the European Renaissance, they used his Book

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Speaker 1: of Optics. And he's one of these fantastically colorful characters

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Speaker 1: because a lot of historians wrote about him, so he

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Speaker 1: know quite a lot about his life. He figured out

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Speaker 1: how to solve the problem of the Nile in Egypt,

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Speaker 1: how it would be flooding and imperials of drought, and

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Speaker 1: he proposed what we would now have as the Aswan

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Speaker 1: Dam on the Nile. Yeah, he proposed building a dam.

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Speaker 1: He told the Caliph of en Cairo that he could

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Speaker 1: do this, and then so he might. He was invited

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Speaker 1: over and failed because he realized he'd been bitten off

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Speaker 1: more and he could choo. So rather than apologize or

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Speaker 1: try and make excuses, he feigned madness and that spared

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Speaker 1: him his life, which was actually the second time he

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Speaker 1: faged man When he was still a young man working

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Speaker 1: in the southern Iraq in the city of Basra. He

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Speaker 1: had a very boring clerical administrative job and he really

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Speaker 1: wanted to be studying the great work of the Greek,

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Speaker 1: the Greek Astronomatolemy. So to get out of his job,

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Speaker 1: he feigned madness, got kicked out of his job and

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Speaker 1: was supported by his parents. Just reading some of these texts,

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Speaker 1: so wonderful character. But he was also a genius, and

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Speaker 1: he was probably the greatest physicist in the two thousand

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Speaker 1: year span between Archimedes in ancient Greece and Isaac Newton.

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Speaker 1: And he made many great, big discoveries in astronomy and optics. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but of a hero of mine, can you imagine if

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Speaker 1: he lived today with the kind of technology we've got

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Speaker 1: available to him. Yeah, it is quite incredible, because he

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Speaker 1: was also one of the earliest proponents of the scientific method.

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Speaker 1: So he'd say things like, you know, if you have

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Speaker 1: a good idea, if you have a theory or hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: it's no good just saying it's true, believe me. You

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Speaker 1: have to try and test it. You have to find

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Speaker 1: an experiment to see if you're right. So he learned

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Speaker 1: things like light always travels in straight lines, and how

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Speaker 1: light reflects and refracts through glass and water, and so

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Speaker 1: he combined theory and mathematics and experiments all the time

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Speaker 1: in a way that I think didn't really happen until

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Speaker 1: much later in Europe Galileo for example. So yeah, with

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Speaker 1: modern technology, he well, who knows what geniuses like he

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Speaker 1: might have achieved. And you can imagine others like Leonardo

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Speaker 1: da Vinci. Yeah, you know what if they could live today,

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Speaker 1: what could they do? If Einstein had a computer? Right,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to write on that chalkboard all those numbers. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it looks cool, don't it? Did it? There are

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Speaker 1: still mysteries of science, mysteries of modern physics. Here we are,

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Speaker 1: it's twenty twenty. We've been to the moon in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine, We've done all these amazing things. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: still really don't know about dark matter and dark energy.

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Speaker 1: How come. Well, it's a sign that we haven't reached

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Speaker 1: the end of our understanding of the universe. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there was a famous article written by Stephen Hawking in

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Speaker 1: about forty years ago now, early nineteen eighties, where he said,

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Speaker 1: the end of physics is near. We're almost at a

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Speaker 1: theory of everything. All we just need to do is

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Speaker 1: dot sumized custom tees a theory that we'd unify all

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Speaker 1: the forces of nature. And of course he was wrong

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Speaker 1: because we are still looking for that theory of everything.

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Speaker 1: And in that intervening period, as you say, there have

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Speaker 1: been things like dark energy that have been discovered. We

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Speaker 1: still don't know what dark matter has made of, and

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Speaker 1: we don't even know if the Big Bang was the

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Speaker 1: big Oh no, don't get beyond that. But I'm going

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Speaker 1: to ask you about that now. Yeah, So that I

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Speaker 1: mean for me, that's great that there are still mysteries

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Speaker 1: out there, because you know that, as I say, this

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Speaker 1: is one of the reasons I love physics. If we

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Speaker 1: had all the answers, life will be more boring. I'd

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Speaker 1: be out of a job as well. You know, I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to think about this universe and let's take God

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Speaker 1: out of the equation for a moment, because that's an

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Speaker 1: easier answer. But with God out of the picture for

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Speaker 1: just this moment, I'm trying to think of this universe

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Speaker 1: how it was formed from nothing, and I just can't

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Speaker 1: get it, Jim, I can't get it. Yeah, it's one

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Speaker 1: of those ideas that it's things like, you know, if

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Speaker 1: the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into and

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Speaker 1: all that exactly what's on the other side of it

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Speaker 1: or something? There are ways. I think the problem is that,

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Speaker 1: you know, people working at the cutting edge of the

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Speaker 1: foundation of physics do have an understanding of of of

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Speaker 1: these these shoes, albeit not complete, but we're rubbish as

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Speaker 1: explaining it to people without the benefit of years of experience.

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Speaker 1: One of the things I've tried to do in my

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Speaker 1: book is find fresh ways of explaining some of these concepts.

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Speaker 1: It's you know, it's not something you can just saying

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Speaker 1: a sound bite and then and the other persons are Okay, oh,

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Speaker 1: now I get it. It's is subtle, the idea that

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Speaker 1: there could be something from nothing. Physicists have even called

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Speaker 1: it the ultimate free lunch. How can you get matter

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Speaker 1: and energy and space and time from from from zero?

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Speaker 1: I try and give it, have a stab at explaining

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Speaker 1: it in the book. But yeah, one of the ideas,

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Speaker 1: for example, is that, as I say, our universe isn't

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Speaker 1: the only one. That there's other there's a multiverse out

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Speaker 1: there with all the ingredients the energy needed to create

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Speaker 1: our universe. And might that multiverse have life like this

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Speaker 1: one does? Well, it could do. And of course the

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Speaker 1: fundamental constants of physics may be very, very different, so

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Speaker 1: the other universes may be much more boring than ours

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Speaker 1: as well. You know, some gravity might be too strong,

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Speaker 1: so they sort of burst into existence and disappear again

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Speaker 1: in a big crunch. Or the electric charge on the

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Speaker 1: electrons in other universes is slightly two weeks, so atoms

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Speaker 1: never form. And if atoms never form, you can't get complexity,

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Speaker 1: You can't get you can't reach life unless you have structure,

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Speaker 1: something that can you know, deal with information flow. So

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Speaker 1: it may be our universe really is the lottery winner.

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Speaker 1: You know, everything was just right, and here we are

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Speaker 1: talking about it. Plenty of other universes it wasn't right.

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Speaker 1: And I've never emerged. How do you think the Big

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Speaker 1: Bang occurred? Well, are there are? And maybe there was

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Speaker 1: no big bang? Well, well the big bang. The term

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Speaker 1: big bang, I think in a way has confused us

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Speaker 1: over the over the years because it isn't wasn't necessarily

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Speaker 1: it's certainly not an explosion as we would imagine, and

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Speaker 1: that's what it sounds like exactly. And I think it's

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Speaker 1: the name that really confuses the current thinking is and

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Speaker 1: this isn't an error physics, which in the book I'm

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Speaker 1: slightly critical of because there's some of these ideas fundamental

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Speaker 1: physics are almost metaphysics, they're almost philosophy because we've got

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Speaker 1: no way of testing them. And in science, you know,

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Speaker 1: a theory has to be testable. You've got to do

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Speaker 1: an experiment, make an observation, and say, yep, okay, the

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Speaker 1: theory looks like it predicts this, and I've checked it out.

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Speaker 1: Ideas like the Big Bang, not whether the Big Bang happened.

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Speaker 1: We have lots of evidence for that or the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the matter and energy that we see around us.

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Speaker 1: Now you can wind the clock back and we have

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Speaker 1: three or four clincher pieces of evidence that tell us

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Speaker 1: that definitely happened, but what caused it, whether there was

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Speaker 1: something before it. Those are questions that we're trying to

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Speaker 1: answer that we're guarded simply by mathematics at the moment,

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Speaker 1: and we have no way of testing when they these

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Speaker 1: ideas are really true. You know, when the Bible talks

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Speaker 1: about God always was, always will be, doesn't it kind

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Speaker 1: of sound like the universe, that God himself could have

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Speaker 1: been the universe. I think that that's in many ways. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: in many ways, a lot of these ideas in physics

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Speaker 1: that you know, the multiverse ideas for example, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if our universe was started at a big bang, that

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Speaker 1: maybe there are other universe and the multiverses existed forever. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of the ideas in modern physics

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Speaker 1: do sound theological in that sense. And the difference, I

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Speaker 1: guess is, you know, when a personal faith says, you know,

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Speaker 1: God created the ingredients for the way universe is, God

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Speaker 1: has always existed. For me as a physicist, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: push the explanation. I'm always looking for answers for me

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Speaker 1: to say, well, God made it that way, or God

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Speaker 1: has always existed. You know, it may or may not

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Speaker 1: be true, but that's not part of science. Science isn't

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Speaker 1: in the business of proving or disproving God. But for me,

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Speaker 1: it just doesn't help me. Push mind doesn't give you

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Speaker 1: the answer you're looking for. Now. All it seems to

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Speaker 1: me is that, you know, if you say the universe

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Speaker 1: is so complex and beautiful, surely there must have been

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Speaker 1: a higher power creator, And then just say, well, the

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Speaker 1: higher power a creator, must be even more complex and

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Speaker 1: beautiful than us. And who created the creator? You know,

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Speaker 1: it's one of those questions where you're not solving the problem,

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Speaker 1: you're just saying, I'm putting putting a drawing a line

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Speaker 1: here beyond this, I need not explore further. Why do

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Speaker 1: the laws of physics seem to be uniform throughout the universe.

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Speaker 1: There's no anything that is different. It's all the same,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. It looks that way. There's no reason for

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Speaker 1: it to be like that. But it seems that however

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Speaker 1: far out we look, in what we can see what

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Speaker 1: we call the visible universe, very sort of very edge.

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Speaker 1: Because the universe is expanding, there's a limit beyond which

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Speaker 1: we're never going to see. But in every direction we look,

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Speaker 1: wherever we get light that carries with it the information

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Speaker 1: about the nature of styles and galaxies. Everything seems the same,

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Speaker 1: that lights is traveling the same speed, They're made of

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Speaker 1: the same chemical elements hydrogen, helium mostly. Yeah, there's no

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Speaker 1: reason for everything to be the laws of physics to

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Speaker 1: be the same, but that's what we've seen so far.

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Speaker 1: Of course, beyond the limits of our universe, then you know,

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Speaker 1: all bets are open because of course, what can you

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Speaker 1: What can you say about what you can never observe

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Speaker 1: or test? That's amazing. It is exciting, though, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: I find it exciting. Yes, I mean I think, and

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Speaker 1: that's why one of the reasons why I moved also

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Speaker 1: into science communications. So I mean I spend half my

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Speaker 1: time as an academic. I teach students, I might even

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Speaker 1: grab students. We do research. But the other half of

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Speaker 1: my time I like to write, broadcasting chat to you.

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Speaker 1: You know, I find because I find it exciting and

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Speaker 1: and and thrilling. I always say, if I find out

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Speaker 1: something new about how the world works, why would I

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Speaker 1: want to not shout it at from the rooftops tell

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Speaker 1: everyone else about it? You know that I like to

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Speaker 1: share that passion, not because I'm I'm a great guy

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Speaker 1: and I want to you know, get people interest in physics,

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Speaker 1: but because it gives me pleasure to explain to other

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Speaker 1: people some of these ideas. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and

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Speaker 1: go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more