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

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George

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Speaker 1: Norri with you, doctor Leonard Mulatta now back with us

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Speaker 1: theoretical physicists noted author's latest book is called Stephen Hawking

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Speaker 1: just came out, and he was on the faculty of

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Speaker 1: the California Institute of Technology. And one of his other

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Speaker 1: book is called Elastic Unlocking your Brain's ability to Embrace Change.

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Speaker 1: And he has been a dear friend of the late

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Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking. And here he is back on Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast Leonard, Welcome back, my friend. Happy to be here.

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Speaker 1: This is my twelfth appearance. That's fantastic, always fun. George.

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Speaker 1: How much do you miss Stephen Hawking? Oh? I missed

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Speaker 1: him a lot. He added so much to my life.

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Speaker 1: You know, people know him as a as a great physicist,

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Speaker 1: but once you get to know him as a person

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Speaker 1: and to see what he went through, in the kind

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Speaker 1: of character he had, than that that really teaches you

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Speaker 1: great human lessons far much apart and beyond his physics.

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Speaker 1: What a fighter he was, wasn't he? Yeah? I mean

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Speaker 1: every day, every every moment of his life was a

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Speaker 1: battle um in the in the in the book, I

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Speaker 1: talked about when I was first in his office and

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Speaker 1: I see him some sweat going down his brow, and

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Speaker 1: I was like horrified because he can't move, And I

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Speaker 1: know what that feels like. It's like Chinese water torture. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's just like a little pile and would just wipe

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Speaker 1: it away without thinking. And he couldn't do that, and

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Speaker 1: he'd have to either accept it or wait for one

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Speaker 1: of his carrots to notice didn't wipe it off. And

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Speaker 1: what he was able to do was really to learn

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Speaker 1: to to control his own feelings and his own happiness

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Speaker 1: from within and to the couple of himself from a

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Speaker 1: lot of these outside things that are that he has

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Speaker 1: to go through, so that you know, whereas it really

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Speaker 1: would bother you to him, he told himself that he's

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Speaker 1: not gonna be bothered by it. And you know, people

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Speaker 1: don't realized that in his everyday life. You know, feeding

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Speaker 1: him was difficult. They had to cut all the food.

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Speaker 1: He could move a little bit into his head so

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Speaker 1: he could chew a little bit, but some of it

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Speaker 1: would come out. Yeah, his head was always tilted to

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Speaker 1: the side, wasn't it Yeah, he couldn't hold it up,

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Speaker 1: and so feeding was quite an ordeal. He breathed through

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Speaker 1: a stoma hole in his chest that would get clogged

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Speaker 1: up and he'd start to suffocate. They'd have to clear it,

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Speaker 1: you know, moment after moment, hour after hour. He had,

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Speaker 1: you know, horrible we would each consider a really horrible experience.

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Speaker 1: And yet he learned, you know, how to be happy

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Speaker 1: and optimistic and energetic and have a joy of life

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Speaker 1: despite all that. It was so how can you be

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Speaker 1: with that all day, every day for you know, many

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Speaker 1: days and not have that rub off on you and

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Speaker 1: you apply it to your own life. He had that,

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Speaker 1: Louke Garrigan, He's als, which of course destroyed his entire

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Speaker 1: ability to have any muscles or anything. How many years

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Speaker 1: did he have that, Leonard? He had it for I

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Speaker 1: think about fifty five years. You know, most people die

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Speaker 1: it's I think within two years. He was given two years.

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Speaker 1: About twenty percent make it past ten years, but he

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Speaker 1: went fifty five years as a record as far as

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Speaker 1: I know. As a physicist, I mean, he was one

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Speaker 1: of the best. What did he leave us? Well, Stephen

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Speaker 1: started a physics career in the early sixties and you know,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting again. It was his disease that made him

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Speaker 1: a great physicist. He was kind of a goof off

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Speaker 1: as an undergrad at Oxford, and he still did fine.

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Speaker 1: He was brilliant, but he didn't really apply himself. And

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Speaker 1: when he was after he was diagnosed, and then he

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Speaker 1: was at Cambridge for his graduate school and he was

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Speaker 1: given two years, he said to himself, I want to

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Speaker 1: address I wanted to make my life means something. And

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Speaker 1: you know, finding meaning in life is so important, maybe

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Speaker 1: the most important thing in life, and the most important

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Speaker 1: thing having you overcome obstacles. And for him, the meaning

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Speaker 1: was to understand where we came from, why we're here,

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Speaker 1: why is the universe the way it is? And he

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Speaker 1: decided to dedicate his dedicate his last few years. What

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Speaker 1: he thought would be a few years to that turned

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Speaker 1: up to be fifty five. So he ended up working

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Speaker 1: on problems that no one else, well very few people

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Speaker 1: were interested in. Back then. It was the origin of

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Speaker 1: the universe and these crazy things called black holes. And

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Speaker 1: back then physicists thought that we have no way of

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Speaker 1: studying the early universe experimentally or observationally, and the same

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Speaker 1: with black holes. So why study them theoretically because we

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Speaker 1: can't test our ideas, and you know, that turned out

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Speaker 1: to be wrong, and it turned out that those are

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Speaker 1: very important realms to study and that we can probe them.

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Speaker 1: Later on technology developed that allowed us to do that,

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Speaker 1: and we learned a lot by studying them. And he

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Speaker 1: was one of the main pioneers who would like put

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Speaker 1: that on a map and made it not just respectable,

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Speaker 1: but but a hot topic. Did he talk much about

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Speaker 1: the late Albert Einstein? Well, of course, all physicists talked

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Speaker 1: much about a lot about Albert Einstein. And one Stephen

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Speaker 1: studied two theories that he put together that was especially

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Speaker 1: One was Einstein's general relativity, which is the theory of gravity,

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Speaker 1: and the other one, and that's a that's applicable and

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Speaker 1: the astrophysics and the large scale of stars and galaxies

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Speaker 1: and the beginning of the universe. And the other theory

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Speaker 1: was quantum theory, which isn't normally applicable in those realms

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Speaker 1: because it's really a theory for the very small the

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Speaker 1: atoms and subatomic particles. And in fact, the quantum theory

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Speaker 1: and Einstein's relativity they class they can't both be right there,

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Speaker 1: they're contradictory. But physicists before Stephen didn't really mind that

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Speaker 1: so much because some of them work and you know,

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Speaker 1: extra galactic stuff with Einstein's theory and some work with

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Speaker 1: quantum theory, and the clash never shows itself. But by

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Speaker 1: concentrating on the problems he did, such as out just

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Speaker 1: outside of black hole or the early universe, it turns

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Speaker 1: out that you need both and those those are two

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Speaker 1: of the only situations where you really need both. And

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Speaker 1: he had to make an out of this of applying

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Speaker 1: a little bit of one and a little bit of

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Speaker 1: the other and just the right way that they don't clash,

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Speaker 1: and to extract some some answers. So he was a

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Speaker 1: big you know, I mean, he idolized of Einstein, as

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Speaker 1: we all do. And uh. And he was one of

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Speaker 1: the people who took Einstein's theory and moved it forward.

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Speaker 1: How did you get to know Stephen Hawking Leonard, Well,

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Speaker 1: he had read my first two books, so Uclud's Window,

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Speaker 1: which was about curved space, and the second one was

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Speaker 1: called Fiman's Rainbow, a memoir Friendship. Now that's a new one.

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Speaker 1: Other pressure um search from You've gotten so many out

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Speaker 1: there now, huh. Yeah, I've got, well, I've got these

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Speaker 1: two of two icons of the century. Actually, Richard Fiman

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Speaker 1: was called a Search for Beauty and Physics, and in

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Speaker 1: life about my relationship with him when I was in

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Speaker 1: my twenties and now with Stephen, you know, in my

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Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, so it's kind of interesting. But he

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Speaker 1: read those two books, and he was looking for someone

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Speaker 1: to write with because writing and communicating is so difficult

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Speaker 1: for him, and he apparently had been looking for a

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Speaker 1: while and couldn't find somebody that he wanted, someone where

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Speaker 1: was a sense of humor, who's writing he liked, and

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Speaker 1: who also really knew physics like a physicist. And one

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Speaker 1: day I got a call from my agent that his

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Speaker 1: office had contacted her and said, well, would I'd like

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Speaker 1: to write with him? I didn't have to think very long. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think I would so. And the idea then was

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Speaker 1: to rewrite his famous book, A Brief History of Time

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Speaker 1: in a way to make it more understandable. He knew that,

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Speaker 1: you know, even though it sold more than ten million copies,

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Speaker 1: that most people didn't finish it or didn't understand all

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Speaker 1: of it, and he wanted to make a clearer version

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Speaker 1: and so that's what we did together. That was called

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Speaker 1: a Briefer History of Time, and that was a classic here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and after that we you know, I said hey, and

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Speaker 1: I was on the faculary of Celtech and he would

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Speaker 1: come for four to six weeks each year. And so

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Speaker 1: the next time he came, I looked him up and said, hey,

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Speaker 1: it was so much fun writing that other book. Let's

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Speaker 1: write a book about your new stuff, you know, because

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Speaker 1: that's all about the stuff he did in the seventies

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Speaker 1: and eighties. And I thought he would have to think

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Speaker 1: about but he was like me. He immediately said, sure,

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Speaker 1: but that was only the part of that book. Let

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Speaker 1: me tell you, Leonard, explain to us what is a

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Speaker 1: giant quantum computer? What is a quantum Okay, so, well,

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Speaker 1: can I assume that everyone knows how a computer works?

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Speaker 1: Or should I start? We may not know that either.

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Speaker 1: So a computer is. The idea behind a computer is

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Speaker 1: that you can use the laws of logic or arithmetic too,

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Speaker 1: not only to do math problems, to solve problems in

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Speaker 1: the everyday world, if you just translate them somehow to

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Speaker 1: a mathematical language. So a regular computer does that. It

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Speaker 1: has it's a bunch of switches that are connected and

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Speaker 1: they talk to each other. They're either on or off,

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Speaker 1: and and by reducing language or reasoning to the rules

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Speaker 1: of logic, you can get a computer to answer questions

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Speaker 1: in business, or in math, or in different areas. And

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Speaker 1: that's how our phones work and everything that we use works.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's make millions and millions of little switches

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Speaker 1: that are connected in some brilliant way to allow them

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Speaker 1: to make do these functions that we want. Now, that's

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Speaker 1: a regular computer. It's I mean, it's the switches are

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Speaker 1: either on or off. So that makes them we would

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Speaker 1: call physicist a classical computer, or just a computer that

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Speaker 1: works in the same way as Newton's laws. Now, quantum theory,

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Speaker 1: if you just look in the realm of atoms, it

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Speaker 1: would be things behave differently, and a switch can be

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Speaker 1: on and off at the same time. It can have

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Speaker 1: it can be what we call superposition of on and off.

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Speaker 1: And that sounds kind of weird, but you know, we

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Speaker 1: won't get into that. I just have to accept that's

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Speaker 1: quantum theory. And so if you make a computer based

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Speaker 1: on switches that are of that nature that can be

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Speaker 1: on and off at the same time, it turns out

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Speaker 1: that you can get a much more powerful, much faster,

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Speaker 1: I mean extremely unimaginably faster, better computer that way than

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Speaker 1: the than the other way. So that's what a quantum

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Speaker 1: computer is. A computer that works with switches that are

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Speaker 1: like atoms. The atoms each switches say an atom or

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Speaker 1: or a molecule, or maybe the state of a photon,

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Speaker 1: which is a particle of light. People are trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out which kinds of particles to use to build

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Speaker 1: their quantum computers. It's just at the beginning stages now.

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Speaker 1: But but that would be the components would be that

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Speaker 1: instead of the switches that we that we have, the

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Speaker 1: tiny molecular switches that we now have in computers. Listen

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

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Speaker 1: am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot

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