WEBVTT - Exploring Alien Science with Daniel Whiteson! 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:17.880 You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:24.360 and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will? 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:25.120 What's that? Mango? 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:27.720 Do you know there are more than one hundred billion 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.560 stars in our galaxy alone and more than one hundred 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.320 billion galaxies in the universe, And also that scientists have 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.519 estimated that of all the stars that exists, somewhere between 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.480 ten and thirty percent have Earth like planets, which means 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.559 the odds of us truly being alone in the universe 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:47.440 is practically zero. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:49.720 You should probably go and say it. Are you saying 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:50.560 aliens are real? 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:55.080 No? I'm saying what if? Where the aliens? And somewhere 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.880 on some distant planet, a couple of Neon green best 0:00:57.880 --> 0:00:59.840 friends are recording a podcast about us. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:02.080 You know, I never thought about it that way, And 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:03.960 I'm curious, have you been watching X Files again? 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:04.360 No? 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.559 Something so much better. I read this incredible book called 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:08.600 Do Aliens Speak? 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:09.120 Physics? 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:11.759 And Other Questions about Science and the nature of Reality? 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.280 And it is hilarious, which you know, I never thought 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:17.520 i'd say about a book about physics or philosophy. But 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.240 it's also this really fascinating exploration of the idea that 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.000 we're not alone in the universe, and that other intelligent 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.440 life may have evolved the ability to study science and 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.800 the same way or in a completely different way than us. 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.399 So what does that mean for us humans? If aliens 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:35.240 ever do land here, will we be able to have 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.040 a great meeting of the minds or will we just 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:40.520 stare at each other in total confusion. Luckily, the book's 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:43.960 co author Daniel Whitson, who is an actual physicist and 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:46.240 a friend of yours and mine, agreed to talk it 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.240 through with thee so we had such a great conversation. 0:01:49.560 --> 0:02:13.560 I'm really excited to dive in. So I am here 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.600 with Daniel Whitson, who I've known for quite a while, 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.280 but he's just put out this book Do Aliens speak physics? 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.320 And other questions about science and the nature of reality? 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.040 And Daniel, I've had this galley for a while and 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:31.440 it is really just so exciting and lovely and the 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.480 joyous read, but also something that's like way more philosophical 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:37.919 than I was expecting. So I'm very excited to get 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.240 into this. But one of our first questions, you know, 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.600 I'm sure this happens to you at a lot of parties. 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.560 You introduce yourself one says, oh, what do you do 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.480 when you say I'm a particle physicist, and then they're like, okay, 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.880 so what do you do? And I'm curious, how do 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:53.679 you answer this? 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:55.160 Well? 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.480 I usually start with a song because I heard an 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:02.800 amazing particle physics Explained by song episode on Part Time Genius, 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.200 and I thought that is the best way to explain 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.320 what we do. You know, we smash protons together at 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.520 nearly the speed of light and try to understand what 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:13.959 is the nature of matter. But that's a big project. 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.240 It's thousands of people, it's billions of dollars. What do 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:19.520 I actually do? The best thing about particle physics is 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:21.480 that it's a big community, and so we all get 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.920 to specialize. There is somebody who really loves making the 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.760 collider work, and somebody else who really loves tuning the 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.760 ectro links to work super fast. My personal niche is 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.600 in the data analysis and the statistics. I am a 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.880 statistics nerd and I love programming, so I ended up 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:40.320 doing a lot of machine learning and statistics. I'm the 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:42.680 guy who like analyzes the data and says, do we 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.240 see this particle or not? How can we squeeze a 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.080 little bit more information. What if we use this new technique, 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:49.800 what if we talk to our friends in AI. What 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.320 if we bring in this machine learning pattern recognition thing? 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:54.720 Can we squeeze a little bit more information out of 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.640 this incredibly expensive and valuable data that tells us something 0:03:58.680 --> 0:03:59.560 about the universe. 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.920 I love that. I also love the idea that making 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:05.480 things collide as a kid, whether it's like trucks or 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:08.360 cars or whatever, and then growing up and seeing the 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.880 value and seeing these collisions and understanding them can animate 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:13.600 a whole field of science. 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:18.040 Yeah, it really is rooted in childhood curiosity first, because 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.880 like the question we're asking, what's the universe made out of? 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:22.880 It's a very simple question, right, It's a question people 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.400 have been asking for a long long time. And also 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.599 the technique in principle is simple, like let's take things apart. 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.200 Let's smash our toy trucks together and see what comes out. 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.440 Let's dismantle the toaster on the counter and see what's 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.719 in it. And that's just what we're doing. Let's take 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:39.480 stuff apart as much as we can, as powerfully as 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.200 we can, and see what's inside, because we want to 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.680 know what is everything? Mad I've one of the smallest 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.039 bits of the universe what really determines who we are 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:49.120 and why we're here. 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:51.960 You know, from the first time I heard you talk, 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:55.160 I was just so enamored with the way you explain things. 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.039 And you've written a couple of books now, and they're 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.680 really incredible explainers of the world and science and physics 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.600 and the universe. And I'm curious, like, how did you 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.800 get to this idea about encountering intelligent life and within 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:15.560 the universe and exchanging science ideas with intelligent life? Like 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.400 have you always been interested in aliens? Have you always 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:19.000 wondered about this? 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:19.200 Like? 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:21.239 Where? Where does this obsession come from? 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.560 Yeah, this obsession comes from just wanting to know the answers. 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:26.839 One of the things that appealed to me about physics 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:29.280 was the idea that it wasn't just a question we 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:32.280 were asking here on Earth, that the questions we're probing 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.440 were universal questions, not just like what is stuff on 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:37.080 Earth made out of? But what is stuff on Jupiter 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.000 made out of? What is stuff in the other star systems? 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.120 What is stuff around the universe made out of? That 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.640 appealed to me that these questions were universal, and so 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.240 that makes me wonder if there are people out there, 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.640 not people, but like other beings out there working on 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.600 the same questions, and maybe they have the answers, And 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.920 that's an incredibly powerful feeling of like, I don't know, 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.920 envy or jealousy, Like what is if there are aliens 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.200 out there that have been working on this for millions 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:05.240 of years and they could just tell us the answers 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.160 they know, right, Like it's fun to figure this out. 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.760 But man, if somebody could just download the answers into 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.840 my brain today, oh yeah, absolutely, I would press that 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:17.920 button in a second. If I could like read Wikipedia 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.080 from the future and just get like a general introduction 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:23.320 to what people are thinking in a million years, I 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.480 would definitely do that. And that's not possible, But it's 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.560 sincerely likely that there are aliens out there and it's 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.360 possible they're doing science and that makes me wonder if 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.480 we could just take advantage of all of their knowledge. 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.560 But then it also makes me a little bit skeptical 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:44.320 because that idea is so tempting. It's also flattering. It 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:48.000 says that the questions we're asking and the solutions we've 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.599 begun to build, they're like at the center of the 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.200 intellectual universe. It puts us right at the heart of it. 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:56.839 It makes us important. And you know, anytime you have 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.080 a theory that makes you at the center of the universe, 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:01.200 you should be extras have to come of it, because 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:03.159 you know, you want to believe it. And folks like 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:07.040 Carl Seigen say aliens will come up with similar explanations 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.239 for what's happening around their star as what's happening around ours, 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.400 because the laws of physics are universal. But I wonder 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.200 if the explanations are universal, if their description of it 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.880 is universal can be translated, if we really could enact 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:24.640 my fantasy of like an interstellar science conference and just 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.280 skip forward into our scientific future. 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:29.960 I think all of that's so fascinating, And this idea 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.960 that science or physics could like possibly be a fundamentally 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.480 human thing, you know, that exists within sort of like 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.880 the boundaries of the human understanding and perception, and that 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.040 aliens could actually be interpreting this universe in a very 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:44.840 very different way. 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.040 Yeah, because we don't have pure or unfettered access to 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.160 the universe. We see the universe through our human lens, 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.920 and we don't know without seeing it through another lens, 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.920 like an alien lens. How to separate which parts of 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:02.200 the interpretations were making our human and which parts are 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:05.080 real and are true. And we like to assume that 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.720 everything we're learning is deep and true and fundamental, and 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.320 of course everybody else would also be doing string theory, right, 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.600 but we don't know that. And so the book is 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.680 really an exercise in asking, like, well, what can we 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.600 say about how much humanity there is in our physics? 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:21.840 And you mentioned earlier that the book has a surprising 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.560 amount of philosophy in it. That's exactly the hook, because 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.840 I originally wanted to write a book about is our 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.760 physics discovered or invented? You know, is our physics the 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:33.640 map or the territory? Is it human or is it universal? 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.040 And I pitched this to my fourteen year old at 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:40.360 the time, and he was like, yawn, boring, And I 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.319 was so disappointed. I seriously thought he was going to 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:45.320 be excited about that. But I took it to heart, 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:46.679 and you know, you got to take notes when you 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.080 get him. And so then I came back to him 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.400 with this idea of, well, what if aliens arrived, can 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.080 we talk to them about physics? And he was like, oh, 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:55.400 I would read that book and I was like, it's 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:59.240 the same book, and so I got to write my 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:03.000 philosophy book. But in the context of this question about aliens, 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.840 there's a lot of fascinating philosophical framing of your typical 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.600 science questions that I thought people should be aware of, 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:11.880 and so it gave me an excuse to read all 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.600 of those books and talk to those philosophers, and also 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:16.679 to get to answer what I thought was a really 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:19.560 fun philosophical question, or at least tackle it. You know, 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:21.880 there are no hard answers in philosophy. 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:25.880 So you read about something called the Drake equation, which 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.559 is pretty lengthy, but basically it lays out the conditions 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.800 we'd need for aliens to contact us, and I'm wondering, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.240 can you explain that and is it really valid from 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:36.559 a scientific perspective. 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.000 Yeah, the Drake equation is fun because you first look 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.120 at it, it's just a bunch of numbers multiplied together, 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.240 and you're like, some guy got an equation named after him, 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.320 or just multiplying numbers together, Like what you know, this 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.680 is not the Schrodinger equation, This is not this lagrangea 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:53.880 in a standard model physics. But the structure of the 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.760 equation contains a really important insight. As you say, it's 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.400 a way to try to estimate how many aliens there 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.319 are out there that we might be capable of communicating with. 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.080 And essentially it's fairly simple. It just says, start with 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:07.360 the number of stars in the universe, and multiply by 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:09.959 the fraction of those that have planets, and the fraction 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.480 of those planets that have life, in the fraction of 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.959 those planets with life that develop intelligence, and the fraction 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.880 of those that develop civilization capable of sending signals. Then 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:22.880 multiplied by how long they are around. And the crucial 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.160 thing about the structure is because it's multiplication, if any 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:29.440 of those numbers are zero, it's hopeless. It doesn't matter. 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:31.920 If you have a trillion planets, if none of them 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:34.800 have life, you still get in the answer zero. If 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.040 you have a trillion planets and they're all covered with life, 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.440 but it's just like slime and there's no intelligent life, 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.080 you're still getting zero. You need stars, you need planets, 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:44.640 you need life, you need civilization, you need technology. You 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.400 need to happen at the right time, otherwise we're not 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.280 hearing anything. And I took that as inspiration to extend 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.520 and said, well, you know, that's cool, but I don't 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.040 just want there to be aliens out there that maybe 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.840 we get a message from. I want aliens to be 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.640 out there who are scientific, who we have curiosity in 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:04.320 common with, and whose answers we might be able to like, 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.960 actually understand. And so I narrated even further. You know, 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.240 I posed an even harder question than Drake and said, 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.400 to answer the question like, how many aliens are there 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:16.839 we can actually do science with, which has to be, 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.480 of course, a smaller number than Drake's number, and maybe zero. 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.280 But it feels like, you know, with the one hundred 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.480 billion galaxies in the universe and billions of stars, and 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.920 the estimation the ten to thirty percent of these stars 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.160 of Earth like planets, right, I mean like it changes 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:36.720 your perspective to the sense that maybe we aren't alone. 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:38.960 I think there's something really exciting about that. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:41.480 Well, you're right, it's really exciting to live in a 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.480 time when we are learning about one of those numbers 0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:47.240 that we didn't know before, right thirty years ago, with 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.439 the fraction of stars that have planets around them totally unknown, 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:53.319 we'd only seen like the few planets in our Solar system, 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.560 and now he's seen thousands and thousands of planets around 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.280 other stars. That's tremendously exciting that that number is big, right, 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.280 thirty percent ish, like even if it's ten percent, Like, 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:07.040 it's huge. There's billions of planets. That's wonderful news. But right, 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.520 the Drake equation throws cold water on that because the 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:12.360 other numbers we just don't know, like what is the 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:14.520 fraction of those planets that have life on them? Because again, 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:16.880 you got to have all those pieces in place, and 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:19.199 we like to believe that there might be life out there. 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:21.280 I'd like that to be the answer, But that's why 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:23.840 we got to be skeptical, because we tend to believe 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.840 things we want to be true, and you know, science 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:27.679 is about the data. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:43.440 Yeah, that's definitely true. 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.240 So one of the things I love about this book 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:54.079 is that it's filled with little cartoons and they show 0:12:54.440 --> 0:12:57.040 what would happen if, like, you know, aliens made contact 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.680 with us. They're like funny and ridiculous that they just 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.040 make the experience even more joyous. But it made me 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.840 realize that so much of what shapes my thinking about 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.840 alien contact comes from fiction and nonscience. And I was curious, 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.480 are there any favorite sci fi depictions of aliens that 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.439 inspired you or that you wish to be true? 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.520 Obviously they were all true almost in a while. That's 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.800 a great question. I think science fiction is undervalued. I 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:27.000 think it's not really taken seriously enough because science fiction 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.560 is where people get creative and they think about alternative universes. 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:32.679 What if aliens are like this? What if aliens is 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.560 are like that? And I love reading science fiction with 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.800 aliens that surprise me, you know. I read Blind Site 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.480 by Peter Watts totally blew me away, will not spoil it, 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.240 but incredible aliens in that. I read Shroud by Alien Tchaikowski, 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:49.240 very recent book, mind blowing aliens in that one really creative, 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.400 or like the Aliens and Enders game, I think it's 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:53.720 probably fair to spoil that one, you know, the hive mind, 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:58.480 very creative. I really like Alistair Reynolds Aliens. So many 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:00.480 great books out there, and I think these guys are 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.080 doing the important work of thinking how different could aliens be, 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:06.760 how alien could they be? Of breaking out of our 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:10.680 human box and imagining other ways life and intelligence, and 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:14.080 then maybe science could operate. And that's the hard part, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:16.240 right We don't know what's out there. We have this 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.280 example of one and we extrapolate from it, and then 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.640 we tried to tweak it, but we don't really know 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.320 where the edges of the box are. And that's one 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:26.240 of the reasons why I decided to work on this 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:28.760 book with Andy Warner, because I thought it was really 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.040 valuable to think concretely and visually. 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:33.200 About what these aliens might be like. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.080 And he's a fantastic non fiction cartoonist, and I just 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.120 cold emailed him and said, hey, want to work on 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.720 a book about aliens together, and he wrote right back. 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:42.440 I knew I had the right person. 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.520 One of the things that's fascinating to me is just 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.920 like a small detail in the book, but something I 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.640 had never actually contemplated was that the word scientist wasn't 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:55.680 even used until the eighteen thirties. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.920 I was shocked to learn that as well. And in 0:14:57.960 --> 0:14:59.480 writing this book, I did a lot of research into 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.800 the history of science. For me, it's a great excuse 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:04.120 to get to dig into these topics, and I thought 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:06.840 that was really important as a way to show people 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.440 that the way we think about science is something that's 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.280 been happening on Earth for like a century ish. It's 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:14.920 a very modern thing, and it could change. We see 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:18.640 it changing, actually, like the context and the cultural institutions 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.720 of science, and it matters. Like if aliens arrive, we think, oh, 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:25.000 we'll send them our physicists. They'll be at the chalkboard 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.360 talking about science. But like, who are they going to 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:31.000 send Do they have physicists? Do they have beings in 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:33.880 their culture who dedicate their whole life to understanding the 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.200 universe that want to come and talk to us. Five 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.520 hundred years ago, we might have sent our priests to 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.640 go talk to visiting aliens. The process of science itself 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:44.520 has been changing. You know, people imagine this this pop 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.960 size story about like science being invented five hundred years 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.000 ago by Galileo and Bacon and a few other white dudes, 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.800 and like it's much more complicated than that. You know, 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:56.720 the Greeks don't often get credit for experiments, but like 0:15:56.840 --> 0:16:00.000 they measured the radius of the Earth, and folks all 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.920 over the globe we're like doing experiments and learning about 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.200 the nature of the universe. And so science is a 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.160 long history and we think it's still changing. So in 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.600 a thousand years, we may be doing a very different 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.440 kind of science than we are now in a way 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:16.240 that we look back on and we think, wow, that 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.560 was really primitive. Can you really call that modern science? 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.920 And so of course we're interested in the questions the 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:24.360 aliens are asking and the ideas they have, but also 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:26.760 you have to wonder, like, are they doing science the 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:28.360 way that we're doing it. It turns out to be 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.720 a very human activity driven by our human emotions. 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.960 Yeah, I mean what was interesting to me too, is 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:41.280 like this question of math and whether it's actually universal. 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.720 You propose this question in the book, and how presumably 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.200 like intelligent life would want to be able to count 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.400 things with us, like food or offspring or whatever. And 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:53.520 we know that animals on earth to this, but we 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:58.000 don't know whether this is actually a basic element of intelligence. 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.080 Yeah, exactly, it's something that's the foundation or the way 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.200 we think, and so we imagine it might be, it 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:06.199 should be, it must be. I don't know, at the 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:09.760 foundation of the way everybody thinks. But that's very dangerous extrapolation. 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.560 And this question, you know, is math something that we 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.280 found in the universe, a feature of nature itself, or 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:18.840 a shorthand in the way that we think, an insight 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.040 into the way the human brain works. People have tried 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:23.560 to understand this, and you know, there's great arguments on 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:27.199 both sides. And I remember, for years I was deeply 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.199 convinced that math was fundamental to the universe because it 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:32.800 pops up so beautifully in physics and seems to fall 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:36.720 out so naturally. I remember as a junior taking quantum 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.960 mechanics and seeing this calculation that measures some property of 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:41.879 a subatomic particle, and then they go off and they 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.040 do the experiment and the two things agree to like 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:48.399 eight decimal places. And I got chills because I felt like, Okay, 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.639 this isn't some approximation. We've revealed the source code, man, like, 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.920 this is how the universe decides what happens to an electron. 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.960 I had that feeling. I was like, whoa, it's almost spiritual. Yeah, 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.359 And so it is like math feels like so powerful, 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.000 so unreasonably effective. It's very tempting to say it must 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:07.680 be part of the universe. And you know, I got 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.320 the amazing opportunity to talk to Num Chomsky about aliens 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.399 because he answers all of his email, and I asked him, like, 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.760 how would you start talking aliens? And he was like, yeah, arithmetic, right, 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.240 one plus one equals two. You start from there. But 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.280 the more you read in philosophy, the more you see 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:25.440 there are two signs to this question. We know that 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.840 math is very powerful for our science, but we don't 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.280 know that it's necessary. It might just be that math 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.800 is very powerful for us and feel so natural because 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.919 it's part of who we are. We're not guaranteed that 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.679 aliens have to find the same sort of mental shortcuts handy. 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:45.360 They might have a different way of thinking and express 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:50.400 it naturally and joyfully in another kind of intellectual language. 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:53.280 I mean, part of what's so amazing about this book 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.560 and this thought experiment, right is it really makes you 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.800 contemplate how we as humans work, and you point out 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:02.600 that there are words in certain languages that don't actually 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.280 translate to specific things, or you only have an approximation 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:10.199 of them, and all these communication barriers that exist just 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.679 on this one planet. You know how insane it is 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.719 to think about are immediately being able to communicate with 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:18.280 an alien? 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:22.720 I know, and I watched Contacts and I loved it, 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:23.840 and I wish it would happen. 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:26.639 But I am not very bullish on that prospect. 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.520 And you know, I'm a huge fan of SETI, and 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.080 I think we should be funding it and doing it, 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:33.840 listening to this guy and all sorts of channels. Absolutely, 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.119 But in writing this book, I've convinced myself that it 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:40.600 might be impossible to get a message from space and 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:45.280 actually decode it because translation is cultural and arbitrary. There's 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:49.600 no set of symbols that have only one interpretation, and 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.760 that means that you have to know how to invert 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.280 it or deduce it, and that requires that you can 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:56.560 recognize when you've done it right. Say we get a 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:58.960 message from aliens and we're like, oh, maybe they this 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.399 means this. How would you know it's correct if the 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.560 ideas themselves are super alien? Right, And we have this 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.920 hilarious example of this, it's wonderful, honestly, example of this 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.359 with a Pioneer plaque which Carl Sagan and Frank Drake 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:14.960 and folks designed to put on the Pioneer Probe, which 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:17.680 is sent out into the Cosmos decades ago, and it's 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.399