Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know Frundhouse stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chipper. Josh Clark's Chipper,
Speaker 1: Charles Pryant. Oh, that's your new nickname, Chipper Charles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's that Jerry. She's not Chipper, she is
Speaker 1: actually Chipper. I'm not chipperun crumpy because this man, oh man,
Speaker 1: my head is already melted. You guys should see the
Speaker 1: vein and Chuck's forehead. It is protruding. It's our best,
Speaker 1: of course Stu astrophysicists. But we do have an astrophysicist
Speaker 1: coming on as a guest at the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: don't we Yes, my friend, you interviewed Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson,
Speaker 1: or as I like to call him in d T. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's what I call him to uh indeed, Dino My yeah,
Speaker 1: but I was unable to be on the interview for
Speaker 1: various tooth related reads, so you took it upon yourself,
Speaker 1: and I think an interview like that it's probably just
Speaker 1: better for one person. Anyway. It gets a little clumsy
Speaker 1: if two people that I don't know anything about astrophysics
Speaker 1: are trying to glean information here's my question. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: would you eat for breakfast? Doctor Um? But yeah, it
Speaker 1: was very kind of him to come on, and we
Speaker 1: want to thank um our friends at the Fox Theater
Speaker 1: where he's going to be on April twentie here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: UM for hooking that up. So thanks to everybody who
Speaker 1: made that happen, because it's a great interview, as you
Speaker 1: guys will hear at the end of this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved listening to it. And I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and say my two favorite parts are probably one that
Speaker 1: won't make it in when you said that you're happy
Speaker 1: to plug the Fox Theater show and he was like,
Speaker 1: don't bother, it's going to be sold out. And then
Speaker 1: at the end when you thanked him for advancing our
Speaker 1: our understanding of this light years and he was like,
Speaker 1: that's not nearly enough. He's like a light Year, it's
Speaker 1: not very far. Thanks. Yeah, so I changed the par sex.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're getting close. I know it was. It
Speaker 1: was very funny. Actually, I hope you leave that part
Speaker 1: in there. I I hope so. And later on I
Speaker 1: immediately were good at not saying, well you you advanced
Speaker 1: our show billions and billions of light years. You would
Speaker 1: have appreciated that, Yeah, you would have, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do it. Didn't It wasn't sharp enough. It was a
Speaker 1: good interview though, Uh, feel free to skip right ahead
Speaker 1: of that, but a little here and go to sleep. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about the Big Bang theory and not
Speaker 1: the TV show, So settled down, nerds. I think he
Speaker 1: was on that show. THO wouldn't I'm sure sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he made an appearance. Um, I think all you have
Speaker 1: to do is say, like, you will further science if
Speaker 1: you appear on this. He's like, I'll do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've never seen one episode of that show. I guess
Speaker 1: that may be seen some here and there. It's it's
Speaker 1: I think, literally the most popular show in the world,
Speaker 1: or it was like last season or the season before.
Speaker 1: Like it's just taking off like a rocket. And hats
Speaker 1: off to them too, because they like mix actual science
Speaker 1: and science jokes and that stuff. It's it's like smartening
Speaker 1: up the world. Well, I'll tell you one quote I
Speaker 1: got from Mr Tyson, uh Dr Tyson from the Internet
Speaker 1: and it was actually heard him say it, so I
Speaker 1: know it was a real quote. Uh. He said that
Speaker 1: you know people ask do you believe in the Big
Speaker 1: Bang theory? And uh, and only the way that he can.
Speaker 1: He was like, well, it's not a matter of believing,
Speaker 1: he said, I only believe in things that are evidence based.
Speaker 1: And he said the question should be that you posit
Speaker 1: to people, of all the data and evidence out there,
Speaker 1: what theory is best supported uh, And he said it's
Speaker 1: the Big Bang theory, right And UM our colleague Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland who wrote the article that this is based on,
Speaker 1: and kudos to that cat because he took some really
Speaker 1: really difficult concepts and explained it really well. He explained
Speaker 1: it in a way that I came close to understand
Speaker 1: a time. But he makes that same point too, that
Speaker 1: that UM not only is the Big Bang theory of theory,
Speaker 1: which obviously cannot be proved and can only be disproven UM,
Speaker 1: but that there are other competing theories out there too,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about later UM, but that for the
Speaker 1: most part, it has the most UM observational evidence backing
Speaker 1: it up, including the recent UM confirmation of gravitational waves
Speaker 1: which made a huge stir UM, and that as a result,
Speaker 1: it's the most widely subscribe to theory among scientists as
Speaker 1: describing the early universe, and that's a big thing. There's
Speaker 1: a big distinction about that. A lot of people think
Speaker 1: that the Big Bang describes the formation of the universe. No,
Speaker 1: the Big Bang describes the time starting very soon after
Speaker 1: the universe formed. But it does not go back into
Speaker 1: where the origin of the universe came from what came
Speaker 1: before it. And it actually doesn't even go all the
Speaker 1: way back to that point where everything started. It just
Speaker 1: can't because science falls apart, as we'll see the further
Speaker 1: you try to go back in time because you know,
Speaker 1: time ceases to exist at that point. Yeah, if the
Speaker 1: universe were a human being, it's the big Bang theory
Speaker 1: sort of describes the point where the sperm and the
Speaker 1: egg meet up. Uh, it describes the time a trillionth
Speaker 1: of a trillionth of a second after they met up.
Speaker 1: What about that? Yeah, which is you know, it's close.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty great time it. So another misconception, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that, um, the Big Bang was an explosion, and
Speaker 1: that's not that's not correct. No. In fact, a man
Speaker 1: named Sir Fred Hoyle is the one who gave it
Speaker 1: a name almost, well not almost. He gave it to
Speaker 1: it in jest as sort of an insult because he
Speaker 1: was a believer. I don't know if he always was,
Speaker 1: but he was a believer at the time in the
Speaker 1: steady state theory. Um, And it was like, yeah, the explosion,
Speaker 1: this big bang, but it's not an explosion at all,
Speaker 1: so chuck, um, it's a it's a rapid expansion. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the best way to think of it is like this,
Speaker 1: So like an explosion. Right, Let's say you have a
Speaker 1: planet and that planet is actually the universe, and it's
Speaker 1: just floating there in space, and Darth Vader shoots it
Speaker 1: with the Death Start and goes right, and it goes everywhere,
Speaker 1: starts scattering everywhere, but it's scattering within the boundaries that
Speaker 1: confines of space as we understand it. That would be
Speaker 1: the popular conception of what the Big Bang represents, not
Speaker 1: at all what the Big Bang actually, he says, is
Speaker 1: that space itself inflated, it expanded, and that all the
Speaker 1: stuff that was in it was in this very tightly wound, dense,
Speaker 1: incredibly hot core that was a singularity basically that expanded
Speaker 1: into the universe. That's as big as we understand it now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something that was so tiny and hot, it had an
Speaker 1: infinite amount of density because everything we know was crammed in.
Speaker 1: You know what It's like, It's like, uh, if Neil
Speaker 1: de grass Tyson listens to this, he's going to love this. Okay.
Speaker 1: You know the little pellets that you would get with
Speaker 1: your fireworks, a little black pellet and then you light
Speaker 1: it a smoke snake and then it snakes out to like,
Speaker 1: you know, several feet Right. That's that's like it, except
Speaker 1: if that pellet were like thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of fraction of the size of ahead of a pin.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy. And I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: leave the room right and I'll come back in forty minutes.
Speaker 1: But but even still, Chuck, take that analogy, right, when
Speaker 1: you imagine that, you imagine that snake growing that you
Speaker 1: on a sidewalk and maybe there's kind of grass in
Speaker 1: your view and it's at night and there's a car
Speaker 1: park there because you're outside, right, Well, sure, that's where
Speaker 1: our brain wants to take us. We want to confine
Speaker 1: what we know within the boundaries of our universe. What
Speaker 1: we're talking about is the universe itself growing, Yeah, expanding
Speaker 1: in nothingness. Yeah, and he points out in the interview,
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it, but he kind of
Speaker 1: blows my mind when he starts talking about like this
Speaker 1: goes yawned, what our human senses can understand night and
Speaker 1: sound like forget about it. Yeah, and that's how nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna be able to pin anything on us, because we'll
Speaker 1: be like, well, we just can't comprehend that, So how
Speaker 1: could you blame us for getting it wrong? So um, chuck,
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to leave the room, okay, and you
Speaker 1: need what half an hour? It may take a little
Speaker 1: longer than that. Now I get parts of it, so
Speaker 1: I'll just chime in when I feel confident. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a line right, um that that Strickland had in here.
Speaker 1: It was, um, he says, at the earliest moments of
Speaker 1: the Big Bang, all of the matter, energy, and space
Speaker 1: we could observe was compressed to an area of zero
Speaker 1: volume and infinite density. Doesn't that sound like the line
Speaker 1: from a religious text or something like that? Isn't it
Speaker 1: just like right there on that border between like science
Speaker 1: and religion basically, yeah, Like and and now take this drug,
Speaker 1: and everyone take their clothes off and follow me and
Speaker 1: we'll understand what I'm talking about. Uh yeah, And you
Speaker 1: know what when Strickland and and and scientists and cosmologists
Speaker 1: talk about that, that is what is known as a singularity,
Speaker 1: that that thing with a zero volume and infinite density. Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: I think it bears repeating at least one more time.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about is all of the matter, all
Speaker 1: of the energy, all of the heat, all the radiation,
Speaker 1: everything in the universe that is here or ever was
Speaker 1: here over the last thirteen point roughly seven and nine
Speaker 1: billion years, was in an a point that was twenty
Speaker 1: three orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of an atom.
Speaker 1: You almost you just call it yourself, wanting to say
Speaker 1: it's like a little ball. But there's not even circularism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that a word? There was nothing circular. And so
Speaker 1: at this time, at this point, um, we know that
Speaker 1: it was very very hot, makes sense, mind bogglingly hot,
Speaker 1: Like you can't even think of all the zeros associated
Speaker 1: with the degree is of kelvin or fahrenheit or celsius. Right,
Speaker 1: and it was incredibly dense. And then something happened. We
Speaker 1: don't know what that was. A science simply isn't equipped
Speaker 1: to explain it or understand it or detect it. Something
Speaker 1: happened to make this incredibly dense ball or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: There was expand Yes, and it was not like the
Speaker 1: smoke snake. It wasn't a child with a lighter. You
Speaker 1: don't know that, neither grass Tyson doesn't know that. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows that. So this uh expanding happened really really really fast.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk later about just those first few seconds afterwards,
Speaker 1: like that's how fast we're talking, Well, a few like
Speaker 1: trillions of a second is how they break it down,
Speaker 1: Like there this so much happened in that first literally
Speaker 1: the first second of the origin of the universe. That
Speaker 1: um that there are different ages and epochs that happened
Speaker 1: in like trillions of a second. Yeah, it's really mind blowing.
Speaker 1: So as things expanded though in those first few seconds,
Speaker 1: and today things are still expanding. Things are expanding and
Speaker 1: things are cooling down even as we speak. Literally every
Speaker 1: second that we're on the Earth, we're expanding and well
Speaker 1: not us, but the universe is expanding and cooling right exactly.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: um our our region of the universe, which is um
Speaker 1: something like ninety billion light years across is is no
Speaker 1: longer expanding, but other parts of the universe are expanding.
Speaker 1: And there's this really great article about cosmology and where
Speaker 1: it stands right now. It's in a on not cosmetology,
Speaker 1: no cosmology, um and it was written by a guy
Speaker 1: named Ross Anderson, and I think it's called in the Beginning,
Speaker 1: and it's incredibly well written. But he makes a really
Speaker 1: great analogy. He says that that ninety billion light year
Speaker 1: across portion of the universe that we inhabit, that we
Speaker 1: consider our own, is but a small section of one
Speaker 1: tiny bubble that floats along on a frothy sea whose
Speaker 1: proportions defy comprehension, and that neat And that's just our
Speaker 1: section of the universe, right, that's our little neighborhood. So
Speaker 1: the universe is unknowably large. We sound like HP Lovecraft
Speaker 1: here describing this stuff. Um, and still some parts of
Speaker 1: it are expanding. And apparently in the early universe, when
Speaker 1: it was a singularity, the four forces, the four fundamental forces,
Speaker 1: the dark side. Oh I thought you were going. I
Speaker 1: thought you met the Star Wars universe. Uh. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the force, the dark Side, mindy Glorians and Mark Hamil's
Speaker 1: hair prequels. The four basic forces as everyone knows, electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity, right, and
Speaker 1: that that's singularity. Before the universe expanded began to expand, um,
Speaker 1: all of them were coupled together into a single unified force,
Speaker 1: which we don't understand how we know we don't And
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, trying to get them back
Speaker 1: together is one of the great pursuits of physics because
Speaker 1: if we can figure out how they were all unified, um,
Speaker 1: we can start to understand the science we need, the paradigm,
Speaker 1: we need to understand the origins of the universe, but
Speaker 1: we just can't figure out how to do it, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that kind of blows my mind with this
Speaker 1: is when you know, we get to this stuff later on,
Speaker 1: about does it defy other laws of physics and stuff?
Speaker 1: Like Basically every answer is like the further you travel
Speaker 1: back towards that singularity, the less all these rules that
Speaker 1: we think we understand apply, right falls apart. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: just you know, we will probably never understand this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, at that very singular moment. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I disagree. I think I disagree. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: we are maybe a century or two away from understanding it. Well,
Speaker 1: you just clearly pull that out of your hat. Well,
Speaker 1: I totally did. But we've made some another hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty six years. Well, no, we've made some incredibly huge
Speaker 1: strides in the last like hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 1: years in our understanding thus far. Right, So I think
Speaker 1: that's not a bad guest, right it be a be
Speaker 1: a string theorist right to marry all these Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Probably I don't know. And that's what n
Speaker 1: d T said. That's what we call him, now, that's
Speaker 1: what he said. He was like, who knows. It could
Speaker 1: be string theory. Um, maybe someone will be able to
Speaker 1: come up with a unified theory or what's called the
Speaker 1: theory of everything that unifies the four fundamental forces back
Speaker 1: into their their single um version of a force. Or
Speaker 1: maybe we just don't understand quantum physics enough quite yet. Um,
Speaker 1: And when we figure that out a little more, that
Speaker 1: will unlock some keys for us. So chock before we
Speaker 1: get into um the how we started to come to
Speaker 1: understand the Big Bang and the origin of the universe Um,
Speaker 1: let's take a break real quick. Al, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: wipe my brow. You're doing great, all right. I sort
Speaker 1: of get this part, So the history part, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about it. Uh. And this makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. You go back in time.
Speaker 1: Let's get in the way back machine. Oh yes, let's
Speaker 1: boys feel so safe and comfortable in here. Um, it does. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: it's eighteen hundreds and astronomers started using something called a spectroscope,
Speaker 1: which is pretty nifty. And we've talked about light waves
Speaker 1: in year before. A spectroscope is something that divides that
Speaker 1: light spectrum up into the wavelengths. Uh, blue on the left,
Speaker 1: right on the right, and as you go further towards
Speaker 1: the red, the wavelengths grow longer. So that's part one, right,
Speaker 1: that was spectroscopes. Yes, that's that's light waves, right and
Speaker 1: thew Around the same time, Um, a guy named Christian
Speaker 1: Doppler was tinkering with the frequency of sound waves. Right.
Speaker 1: He was studying those because he's a smart guy, and
Speaker 1: he said, you know what, it's weird that when I
Speaker 1: sit by a train it sounds different as it goes
Speaker 1: by me. Approaches then goes by me and goes further
Speaker 1: away from me. Right, it sounds different than that doesn't
Speaker 1: really make any sense. Yeah, And whereas most people would
Speaker 1: just seat their figgy pudding and go about their day,
Speaker 1: he wanted to try and explain it. He was like
Speaker 1: anybody else who had been like this new Charles Dickens
Speaker 1: book is top notch. Uh. So he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: as as this noise approaches you, the sound waves that
Speaker 1: generates compress is going to change that frequency, or at
Speaker 1: least how you perceive it, in a different pitch. So
Speaker 1: as it moves away from you, those waves are gonna
Speaker 1: stretch that pitch goes down. And I'm gonna name this
Speaker 1: effect after myself. Well, let my wife do it so
Speaker 1: I don't look like a jerk. Right. So basically you
Speaker 1: marry these two things, light wavelengths in the Doppler effect,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of let us down this path to
Speaker 1: where we could understand the Big Bang theory. Right. It
Speaker 1: would indicate that um, something it's something that was emitting
Speaker 1: light out there in the universe whose light moved towards
Speaker 1: the red end of the spectrum would be emitting longer wavelengths,
Speaker 1: which would suggest based on Christian Doppler's findings that it
Speaker 1: was moving away, right yeah, and they they found that.
Speaker 1: They said, look at these stars, some of the light
Speaker 1: is falling into this this right hand side, and does
Speaker 1: that mean it's it's moving away and it's getting faster
Speaker 1: and that just wants to get away from us. That's
Speaker 1: that's where Edwin Hubble came in. He based He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really weird, guys, because some of these stars
Speaker 1: appear to have a velocity that's proportional to its distance
Speaker 1: from the Earth. Like there seems to be some sort
Speaker 1: of rhyme or reason here to it. And it suggested
Speaker 1: to Hubble and later on to everybody else, including Einstein,
Speaker 1: as we'll see, that the universe itself was expanding. And
Speaker 1: this is where we came to the genuine origin of
Speaker 1: the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was
Speaker 1: expanding and constant right, yes, is that the the idea
Speaker 1: is that the constant no no no um. The the
Speaker 1: Hubble constant is the the proportion between or the relationship
Speaker 1: between how fast something is moving away from us to
Speaker 1: its distance from us. We constant rate, I mean and
Speaker 1: actually no, the universe appears to be expanding more quickly
Speaker 1: than it was before. Yeah, so it's increasing, which is
Speaker 1: that's what makes a lot of really in relationship. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hubble constant has to do not necessarily with the
Speaker 1: inflation of universe itself and the expension universe itself, but
Speaker 1: that how far or how fast uh say, a star
Speaker 1: is moving away from us, and the further away from
Speaker 1: us it is, it appears to be moving faster than
Speaker 1: others that are closer. Yeah, and we should point out
Speaker 1: you said inflation, uh, and or expansion. And apparently if
Speaker 1: you're an insider, if you're a scientists, you probably say inflation. Sure.
Speaker 1: So expansion is the basis of the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that the the universe has expanded over time.
Speaker 1: So that by logic, since time is one of the
Speaker 1: four dimensions that we live in, right, you've got the
Speaker 1: three dimensions plus time, So therefore space time describes the
Speaker 1: fabric of the universe and the reality we live in. Right.
Speaker 1: So by logic of that, if you went backward in time,
Speaker 1: the universe would be smaller and smaller and smaller. And
Speaker 1: the more they started looking into it, the more their
Speaker 1: minds started pop being as they realized like, wow, this
Speaker 1: thing was really really small ones and that's the basis
Speaker 1: of it. Inflation theory comes in and suggests how that happened,
Speaker 1: how that expansion happened, and it fills in a lot
Speaker 1: of blanks that well, we'll also talk about Yes, you
Speaker 1: mentioned Einstein earlier. Uh, he's a noted smart guy. Um.
Speaker 1: And he actually had some issues because it conflicted somewhat
Speaker 1: with his general relativity theories because he subscribed to his
Speaker 1: own theory that the universal static it's not expanding, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't I think like he was like a
Speaker 1: member of the there's a way of viewing the universe
Speaker 1: that like it was always this way, it was always
Speaker 1: spread out this way. It wasn't getting bigger. That's nuts.
Speaker 1: And so he figured that his general theory of relativity
Speaker 1: would prove this, and actually he was extremely surprised to
Speaker 1: find that his own general theory of relativity actually said no,
Speaker 1: the universe is either expanding or contracting. It's certainly not steady.
Speaker 1: And then Edwin Hubble came along and he had his
Speaker 1: findings and I'm Stein said, you know what I was wrong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's big enough of a man to admit it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of guy I am. Uh. And one
Speaker 1: day people are gonna keep my brain in a jar
Speaker 1: in a barn and slice it up. It's gonna go
Speaker 1: on a car trip. That was a good episode we
Speaker 1: did too. Yeah, do we do one on that on
Speaker 1: its own? Einstein's Brain? Oh yeah, that's right, boy. Those
Speaker 1: were the good old days Einstein's Brain episodes. Alright, so, uh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the predictions that rose from
Speaker 1: the uh the theory that the universe is expanding. Uh.
Speaker 1: One is uh And Strickland says the universe is homogeneous
Speaker 1: and isotropic, which is a fancy way of saying it's
Speaker 1: it's made up of the same materials in completely uniform. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Here is one of the first times we run into
Speaker 1: something where you're like, what are you talking about. It's
Speaker 1: funny if you read Strickland's article, and I sent him
Speaker 1: an email saying as much that I was like, this
Speaker 1: is really well written, but if you just read the
Speaker 1: words you're saying, it sounds like it was written by
Speaker 1: someone who is totally insane, you know. And he makes
Speaker 1: the point too, He's like, well, yeah, all you have
Speaker 1: to do is look out into the Milky Way or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Anything we can see easily and see
Speaker 1: that it looks different, Like there's not a star that
Speaker 1: looks just like our son with the same number of
Speaker 1: planets looking around. The point is is that you look,
Speaker 1: if you go out of several orders of magnification and
Speaker 1: look at the universe outside of any given galaxy, you're
Speaker 1: gonna see that Actually, yeah, everything's distributed pretty evenly throughout
Speaker 1: the universe, and so that makes it homogeneous. And then secondly,
Speaker 1: it's isotropic, meaning that there is no center to the universe.
Speaker 1: There's no central point. Yeah, which some people positive that
Speaker 1: the Earth is the center of the universe. Uh well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about that later. But that's wrong, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, it hasn't been disproven, but it's just extremely unlikely.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, I think it's very human centric thing
Speaker 1: to say. But the reason why some people say that
Speaker 1: is that they are if you look around, that expansion
Speaker 1: that we're seeing is everything's going away from us, which
Speaker 1: is like, why is that happening? Like we should be
Speaker 1: going along at least with with something else. But the
Speaker 1: idea is that we're not because we're the center of
Speaker 1: the universe. But the the implications of that are so
Speaker 1: mind boggling that it's just not possible almost that we're
Speaker 1: actually at the center of the universe. When we're just
Speaker 1: the small segment of a tiny bubble in a frothy
Speaker 1: sea that defies proportions. There's no way that's the center
Speaker 1: of the universe. Uh. So another prediction was UM and uh.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about the intense heat uh
Speaker 1: at the very first moments of the Big Bang. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if that were true, then you would feel and
Speaker 1: see this radiation I guess, not see it, but you
Speaker 1: would have this radiation expanded over the entire galaxy in
Speaker 1: roughly equal proportions. Yeah, because again, remember the universe is
Speaker 1: homogeneous and isotropics, so if there was radiation, it should
Speaker 1: be evenly distributed toether be like they call it an echo.
Speaker 1: I've seen described in some right. Okay, So apparently back
Speaker 1: in the forties they detected this stuff and didn't know
Speaker 1: what they were looking at, and in the sixties they
Speaker 1: figured out, holy cow, this is the cosmic microwave background,
Speaker 1: which is basically UM. I think of it as more
Speaker 1: like a fingerprint, the fingerprints of the universe, right, and
Speaker 1: it's evenly distributed. It's this trace radiation that's still around
Speaker 1: from the Big Bang, which is pretty amazing. So when
Speaker 1: you put that in the discovery that the universe does
Speaker 1: seem to be homogeneous and isotropic, along with the fact
Speaker 1: that we discovered this cosmic radiation background that's evenly distributed
Speaker 1: throughout the universe, it really gives a lot of credence
Speaker 1: to the Big Bang theory. And so too does this
Speaker 1: UM gravitational wave. The gravitational wave discovery. They apparently found
Speaker 1: um curls in the cosmic microwave background that were are
Speaker 1: remnants of gravitational wave from the Big Bang too. So
Speaker 1: it's just getting supported all for the place, and everybody's
Speaker 1: super happier. Yeah, there's like real observational data there, all right,
Speaker 1: we tease those those first nano seconds nano moments after
Speaker 1: the Big Bang. Um, so let's let's talk about them
Speaker 1: right now. The earliest thing that scientists can even talk
Speaker 1: about like with a straight face, like later on when
Speaker 1: they're having drinks at the bar, that they talk about
Speaker 1: but before this, but if they're like on a podium
Speaker 1: in front of an audience, they can go back as
Speaker 1: far as uh I'll just say the equation, even though
Speaker 1: it will make no sense to anyone. Uh T equals
Speaker 1: one times ten to the negative forty three seconds. Yeah, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so T equals the time after the creation of the universe,
Speaker 1: and as far back as they've gone is point zero
Speaker 1: zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero one second after the creation of the universe. That's
Speaker 1: how far back they've been able to trace the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: and that amazing. That fraction of one second is how
Speaker 1: far back they've been able to figure it out. And
Speaker 1: so much happened in that first second. Chuck, that just
Speaker 1: fractions of that fraction are, like I said before, like
Speaker 1: different epochs in the era or the age of the Universe,
Speaker 1: like entire epochs happened in trillions of a trillion of
Speaker 1: a second. It's just so mind boggling. I love it, though,
Speaker 1: Like I've really given myself over this. I was fighting
Speaker 1: at first, like, well it just makes sense. I don't
Speaker 1: want to how how does that make sense? And I
Speaker 1: did look plenty of stuff up. I also just kind
Speaker 1: of was like, I'm just taking it to submit on faith,
Speaker 1: despite what Andy T says, like you do kind of
Speaker 1: have to take this on faith, especially if you're not
Speaker 1: an astrophysicist. And I just kind of gave myself over
Speaker 1: to and I love it. You know what happens when
Speaker 1: my mind gets bent like that too far? I just
Speaker 1: have some pie. Oh that's good stuff. What's kind of
Speaker 1: stare at the wall and have some pie. What do
Speaker 1: you recommend? It does matter? Okay, so something super sweet,
Speaker 1: not fruity. Uh, what's a fruity pie? Like a cherry
Speaker 1: pie or apple pie? M m. I like a good
Speaker 1: apple crumble pie. Oh yeah, I do too, but but
Speaker 1: not like the one with the crisscross pastry on top.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't really discriminate against pie. I tend
Speaker 1: more towards the fruity section of the pie spectrum, and
Speaker 1: I tend to think of pecan like right in the middle.
Speaker 1: But then on the other end you have like your
Speaker 1: creamy and chocolate moose pies and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: tend to be on the other side, a little good
Speaker 1: lemon pie, lemon stuff. What I don't get is the
Speaker 1: cheddar on the apple pie. I've never gotten that. I've
Speaker 1: never tried it. Maybe I should. Those people are obviously crazy.
Speaker 1: I like sweet and savory together, so maybe I should
Speaker 1: give it a whirling again. French and a frosty and
Speaker 1: a day. Alright, So at that point that you described that,
Speaker 1: you know, don't say all the zeros again, but that
Speaker 1: at that point the universe was tiny, tiny, tiny and
Speaker 1: small and dense and hot, and the area of the
Speaker 1: universe spanned a region of about three point nine by
Speaker 1: ten to thirty in everything, and that that area, right,
Speaker 1: tend to the negative thirty three centimeters. Again, the average
Speaker 1: diameter of an atom or roughly something like that is
Speaker 1: tend to the negative ten. This is that much smaller
Speaker 1: than an atom. And everything that's in the universe now
Speaker 1: was encapsulated in that tiny little thing, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: That's right. And again, like surely astrophysicist and cosmologists when
Speaker 1: they were coming up with these calculations are like, I
Speaker 1: just can't be right, and I guess over time they
Speaker 1: were like, it seems to be right either. We're all
Speaker 1: just totally off our rockers. And really, somebody forgot to
Speaker 1: carry one and everybody forgot to carry one or this
Speaker 1: is really how things started, and it's just mind boggling
Speaker 1: to think. All right, So in that very first first, first,
Speaker 1: first moment um, theorists think that, uh, those four primary
Speaker 1: forces that we mentioned are still hanging together, They're still united,
Speaker 1: and that matter and energy were inseparable at this point,
Speaker 1: which is another don't feel bad if like you're sitting
Speaker 1: there going like, how is that possible? No one knows.
Speaker 1: They just see, like the calculations bear that out is
Speaker 1: another way to put it. You know, that's right, But
Speaker 1: that's how it was. Matter and energy were one and
Speaker 1: the same. Uh. And as things expanded, we'll go into
Speaker 1: these in detail. Um. We go through something called bario genesis,
Speaker 1: particle cosmology, and then standard cosmology. And as this time passes,
Speaker 1: things become a little more easy to understand. And when
Speaker 1: I say easy to understand, I mean extremely difficult, but
Speaker 1: at least at least your mind can wrap around it
Speaker 1: start to at least right. So remember we started at tea,
Speaker 1: which is the time after the creation of the university
Speaker 1: equals one times tend to the negative forty three seconds. Uh.
Speaker 1: The next the next big part where things start and actually, um,
Speaker 1: in between the two gravity separated from the from the
Speaker 1: four fundamental forces, just a little thing like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But the next big one that came along was that
Speaker 1: tend to the negative thirty six seconds and um, this
Speaker 1: is where Barrio genesis happened. And around this time also,
Speaker 1: this is where the electro week, which is electro magnetic
Speaker 1: and weak force combined together, separated from the strong magnetic force.
Speaker 1: And apparently here at that tend to the negative thirty
Speaker 1: six power seconds. Um, that was where inflation happened. That's
Speaker 1: that's where the expansion began, right, And that's where we
Speaker 1: actually could begin to observe some kind of matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they think that what happened was a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of matter and anti matter were created. But that and
Speaker 1: we did it. We we don't remember a lot of
Speaker 1: about the details. But remember we did a a podcast
Speaker 1: on anti matter spacecraft. How amazing those were. But ani
Speaker 1: matter and matter like to just destroy each other and
Speaker 1: effectively cancel one another out. Um. But apparently at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, that the origin of the universe.
Speaker 1: It's suggested by this that there was a slight imbalance
Speaker 1: in whatever makes matter and whatever makes anti matter, so
Speaker 1: that there was slightly more matter that um was created
Speaker 1: than anti matter. That good thing. So that right, so
Speaker 1: that that stuff survived. Had the balance been the other direction,
Speaker 1: there would be slightly more anti matter than matter now,
Speaker 1: and who knows what kind of loopy bizarro universe that
Speaker 1: would have created, seriously, or if there would have been
Speaker 1: anything at all. So all that matter matter that survived
Speaker 1: is the matter that we see in the universe now,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot of matter. So imagine, since this
Speaker 1: is just a tiny fraction of the matter that was
Speaker 1: created and destroyed by the antimatter that was also created,
Speaker 1: how much matter in any matter was created at ten
Speaker 1: to the negative thirty six seconds through Barrio genesis. Again,
Speaker 1: it's just mind boggling. And that was the result chock
Speaker 1: of energy and matter uncoupling as well. Right, that's right, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, And this is the point where we can
Speaker 1: actually start to you know, we we did one on
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider. It's a particle accelerator, the biggest
Speaker 1: and best that we have on the Earth. And this
Speaker 1: is where you can actually use a particle accelerator to
Speaker 1: recreate and look at this stuff. So we can actually
Speaker 1: observe this at this point. Yeah, we can smash things
Speaker 1: together and be like ka boom, look at that early universe.
Speaker 1: That's what they do, sir. Yeah, all right, well people
Speaker 1: should listen to that one too, by the way, that
Speaker 1: would be a good like primer. That was one where
Speaker 1: we wondered whether it was going to end the universe
Speaker 1: or not. Right it did not not yet. So at
Speaker 1: this point there is still no light. Things are too dense,
Speaker 1: and it is still just a dark, dense area, right exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: and about I think during the particle cosmology epoch, um,
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic force and the weak force breakoff into separate forces.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we still can't at this point. These
Speaker 1: sub atomic particles still can't bond there there. They can form,
Speaker 1: but they can't hook up in party, right exactly. That
Speaker 1: actually didn't start to take place until we reached the
Speaker 1: standard cosmology age, which is the age that I believe
Speaker 1: we're in now, right, Yeah, which started point oh one
Speaker 1: seconds after the initial bang, right a second. So we've
Speaker 1: gone through that many ages and we haven't even mentioned
Speaker 1: them all in those that within that first second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, it is crazy. So um that standard cosmology
Speaker 1: this is about where the the astrophysicists and cosmologists say,
Speaker 1: we understand it from about here on out right. Everything
Speaker 1: else it's a little shaky, but we've got some observational
Speaker 1: data that backs it up. But here is where neutrons
Speaker 1: and protons were formed, and um, a little after that
Speaker 1: they started to be able to form nuclei through nucleosynthesis, right,
Speaker 1: and they would ultimately be the building box of atoms. Right.
Speaker 1: And so at this point, uh, things are still expanding
Speaker 1: and cooling at a rapid rate, and we can actually, uh,
Speaker 1: there are no atoms yet. But like you said, it's
Speaker 1: it's too hot at this point for electrons to complete
Speaker 1: that process. Still too hot in the hot tub. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean after a hundred seconds, the universe had cooled
Speaker 1: to a temperature cooled after a hundred seconds to one
Speaker 1: point eight billion degrees fahrenheight or a billion degrees since
Speaker 1: Celsius was how how hot it was still after a
Speaker 1: hundred seconds. Should we take another break here? All right,
Speaker 1: let's do that, and we'll come back in uh and
Speaker 1: explain the rest of it in great easy to understand detail.
Speaker 1: All Right, buddy, When we left off, things were expanding
Speaker 1: and cooling and they still are actually the end. Ye Nope,
Speaker 1: good night everyone and everyone. Here's Neil de grass Tyson
Speaker 1: to take us home. So, uh, fifty six thousand years
Speaker 1: after the creation of the universe, or after the Big Bang, UM,
Speaker 1: we were at the temperature of fifteen thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: forty degrees fahrent height and cool seven twenty six degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: Right after another three hundred and twenty four thousand years.
Speaker 1: So at three hundred and eighty thousand years after, it
Speaker 1: had cooled down to four thousand, just under five thousand
Speaker 1: degrees fahreent height and just under three thousand degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: And finally here adams started to form because protons and
Speaker 1: electrons could combine um. And the other thing that happened
Speaker 1: to was the density had expanded out enough the volume
Speaker 1: head increases a better way to put it, and the
Speaker 1: temperature had cooled so that suddenly the universe was now transparent.
Speaker 1: We could see through it. Up to this point three
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy nine thousand years, you still couldn't see
Speaker 1: through it was too dense and too hot. And at
Speaker 1: about three hundred and eighty thousand years it hits that
Speaker 1: point and you can see it like we do now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we finally have light at that point. Those cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background radiation was that we talked about earlier. It's locked
Speaker 1: in UM. I don't think we mentioned earlier where we're
Speaker 1: at now temperature wise, just to kind of put it
Speaker 1: in perspective, we currently are at roughly negative four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty four point eight degrees fahrenheit negative to seventy
Speaker 1: point four degrees celsius. Yeah, that's the temperature of space
Speaker 1: right now. Right, Yeah, so it's definitely cool. Apparently it's
Speaker 1: still cooling, like it's still not at absolute zero yet,
Speaker 1: which is the the lowest temperature um or the lowest
Speaker 1: activity that atoms will move at ever. So it's it's
Speaker 1: still cooling and still expanding. Alright, So here's when things
Speaker 1: really heat up. Alright, guess really cool down. Sorry bad
Speaker 1: one um Strickling points out for the next hundred million
Speaker 1: years or so. Uh, this is when the universe is
Speaker 1: really cooling. It's expanding. Uh, and then you have matter
Speaker 1: clusters together, yeah, eventually forms gas and this is the
Speaker 1: quick view we'll dive into it. Uh, those gases form stars,
Speaker 1: So stars cluster into galaxies, those galaxies cluster together into
Speaker 1: solar systems. That's the overview. And so what they think
Speaker 1: happened was because this really doesn't make any sense as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact. One of the criticisms of big
Speaker 1: bang theories that it violates the law of entropy, that
Speaker 1: organizations become more disordered and chaotic over time, and the
Speaker 1: idea that planets and galaxies and things formed seem like
Speaker 1: it became more the opposite, right exactly UM, And so
Speaker 1: they've really kind of looked into how anything would have
Speaker 1: formed at all. And what they think happened was that
Speaker 1: back in say the ten to the negative forty three
Speaker 1: um second era UM, there were quantic quantum fluctuations, little
Speaker 1: vacuum energy fluctuations within this universe, this tiny little universe,
Speaker 1: and that as the universe expanded very quickly, those fluctuations
Speaker 1: grew tremendously in size, and the vacuum energy in the
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background, those little fluctuations that are on the
Speaker 1: um we're just different enough from the other spots in
Speaker 1: the universe that they had slightly more density and thus
Speaker 1: exerted slightly more gravitational poll than other areas. And so
Speaker 1: more matters started to attract around them, and they started
Speaker 1: to form stars, and the stars started to form galaxies,
Speaker 1: and planets started to form around him, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, what had just started out as little vacuum
Speaker 1: energy became ultimately universal hot spots where you could find
Speaker 1: matter clustered together, which explains why so much of it
Speaker 1: is deep of deep spaces just void, and why some
Speaker 1: of it has stuff. Apparently it all began with these little,
Speaker 1: tiny quantum fluctuations way back trillions of the trillions of
Speaker 1: a second after the universe was created. So like a
Speaker 1: really cool dude at a at a party the size
Speaker 1: of all human kind, and he's so cool that people
Speaker 1: start hanging out with him, and then his party grows
Speaker 1: a little bigger. Is that a good way to describe it?
Speaker 1: I think that's that's better than anybody could ever hope too.
Speaker 1: So it's so it's an attraction basically that drew things
Speaker 1: together ever so slightly enough to form larger bodies and
Speaker 1: then larger bodies. Yeah, And the reason why they think
Speaker 1: this happen is because these tiny little fluctuations, little little
Speaker 1: details in these little this little universe um grow bigger
Speaker 1: over time, right, especially if you look at this inflation
Speaker 1: growing as a process of time rather than just like
Speaker 1: volume expansion, it's also time is is a dimension to it, right,
Speaker 1: So it makes total sense, um in that just these
Speaker 1: little things would get bigger as the universe itself got
Speaker 1: bigger too. Well, does that mean that the universe being
Speaker 1: coy here? Does that mean the universe will ever expand
Speaker 1: for all of time infinitely? So I mean you're talking
Speaker 1: about like that debate, right, Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: debate over whether or not it's ever going to stop,
Speaker 1: and all of it comes down to how much matters
Speaker 1: in the universe, which we don't quite know yet. When
Speaker 1: they calculate the matter we do know about, um, they
Speaker 1: realize that there's actually something that you can't account for,
Speaker 1: and that's dark matter. Because we know that there's something
Speaker 1: that's making stars behave differently here, there's clearly some matter
Speaker 1: that we can't detect that's out there, So we can't
Speaker 1: account for all the matter in the universe. So we
Speaker 1: don't know how much matters in the universe. But the
Speaker 1: idea is if there is enough, then that gravity will
Speaker 1: reverse and things will start to contract again, right, right,
Speaker 1: Because gravity is this force that attracts matter to other matter.
Speaker 1: And yeah, eventually, if there's enough matter, it'll it'll it'll
Speaker 1: counteract that expansive force that came out of it. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, probably will either stop, is one school of thought,
Speaker 1: or the universe will contract and form what's called the
Speaker 1: Big Crunch. And some people say that's what our universe is.
Speaker 1: It's just the cycle of expansion and contraction that takes
Speaker 1: place over many billions of years. But we're just one
Speaker 1: part of a cycle that UM is ongoing, perhaps forever.
Speaker 1: It makes it sound when we talk about like that.
Speaker 1: It makes it sound like the universe is just breathing.
Speaker 1: It does, doesn't it in a creepy way? And Chuck.
Speaker 1: That has to do also the reason why they don't
Speaker 1: know UM if it's going to keep expanding or contracting.
Speaker 1: They don't know if it's UM what's called the closed
Speaker 1: universe with positive curvature or one with negative curvature, right,
Speaker 1: And it also has to do with the the shape
Speaker 1: of space to a certain degree. And Strickland also wrote
Speaker 1: a really top notch article called does space have a shape?
Speaker 1: It really is? Um? And something from studying this that
Speaker 1: they figured out is that really it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it has a positive or a negative curvature. It seems flat,
Speaker 1: seems like it has a zero curvature. And this is
Speaker 1: what's called the flat problem of the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: Why should it be flat? That doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: because if you look at the spectrum between positive curvature
Speaker 1: and negative curvature, there's a lot of places on that
Speaker 1: spectrum where the universe could fall one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But it's so close to the middle that astrophysicists and
Speaker 1: cosmologists have no idea if it's positive or negative in
Speaker 1: its curvature, and they've started to wonder like, why should
Speaker 1: we be almost exactly in the middle. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. It would suggest that the early universe was
Speaker 1: so finely tuned that we're only slightly off of center.
Speaker 1: So it would have had to have started almost completely
Speaker 1: at center. Because remember, small fluctuations grow bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: over time and on a larger scale. So since we're
Speaker 1: still so close to center right now, with the universe
Speaker 1: as big as it is, it would have had to
Speaker 1: have been basically on top of exactly in the middle
Speaker 1: between a closed and or a negative and a positive
Speaker 1: curvature at the very beginning of it, which is kind
Speaker 1: of puzzling in and of itself. That that's like, well,
Speaker 1: that indicates some sort of weird fine tuning. So does
Speaker 1: that mean that the astrophysicists are off a little bit
Speaker 1: and their their own fine tuning of the Big Bang
Speaker 1: theory and inflation or what? Who knows? Or is there
Speaker 1: a little kid with the lighter who set the snake
Speaker 1: off and the snake was very well manufactured. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: that's just one thing that we can't quite explain. Um.
Speaker 1: We talked earlier about the fact that at the very
Speaker 1: beginning that the Big Bang theory wasn't meant to address
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. Um. One of which is that
Speaker 1: we touched on was what happened before the Big Bang?
Speaker 1: And we just don't know. It doesn't even try, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It can't write. Yeah, that like trying to explain time
Speaker 1: before timing existed is a futile right because you get
Speaker 1: into stuff that I just suggested, which is basically amounts
Speaker 1: to intelligent design or whatever, And there's that's that's beyond science.
Speaker 1: Like science isn't equipped to say, oh, well, what about
Speaker 1: this or what about that, and I tried really hard
Speaker 1: to get Neil the grass Tyson to say something and
Speaker 1: he was not going to bite. Well, no, and smartly.
Speaker 1: You know, I think a scientist looks at the observational
Speaker 1: data and extrapolates from there and not And I'm sure,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm sure, And I think he even
Speaker 1: said in the interview that sure, people like to talk
Speaker 1: about these things, but um, it's not like you know,
Speaker 1: hard science. And and also to answer that flat problem
Speaker 1: that I brought up, apparently inflation theory does answer it
Speaker 1: does satisfy it by saying the universe appears flat to
Speaker 1: us because we're looking at it strictly on a very
Speaker 1: local level, even though we're looking at ninety nine billion
Speaker 1: light years or something like that. Um, the it it's
Speaker 1: really just a very small segment of something. So if
Speaker 1: you take a balloon and you blow it up, it's
Speaker 1: still curved. But um, the if you're just looking at
Speaker 1: just a pinpoint segment of it, it's gonna appear flat
Speaker 1: to everybody looking at it from just that tiny perspective.
Speaker 1: So it's basically a perspective that we're looking at the
Speaker 1: universe right now, makes it seem like it's flat, but
Speaker 1: it's really actually curved one way or the other. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the answer to that. Uh, Well, should we talk
Speaker 1: about some of the problems with the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: There are criticisms and there will continue to be. One
Speaker 1: was that, uh, is that it violates the first law
Speaker 1: of thermodynamics, that you can't create or destroy matter or energy.
Speaker 1: And UH proponents will say that that's unwarranted for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One is it, like we already said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't address the creation of the universe that was
Speaker 1: never meant to but just how it evolved or inflated
Speaker 1: over the years, over the years, over the sixty or
Speaker 1: seventy years. Uh. And another reason is kind of like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, is that the further back you go,
Speaker 1: the rules don't apply. So maybe the law of thermodynamics
Speaker 1: is just completely moot when you go back that far,
Speaker 1: like it didn't come into being until later. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: matter and energy or like one and the same, I
Speaker 1: can imagine that some of our current laws don't thoroughly apply. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: probably a lot of them. Right. And then one of
Speaker 1: the other things too, is that, um, that inflation that
Speaker 1: supposedly happened when um, the strong nuclear force decoupled from
Speaker 1: the electro weak force, and the universe suddenly expanded, you know,
Speaker 1: within that one second, it just kept growing and growing
Speaker 1: and growing way faster than the speed of light. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, wrong, nothing can go
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light. Well there was no light,
Speaker 1: Well nothing you could see. Yeah, they're definitely photons, but
Speaker 1: they they had that. The proponents of Big Bang have
Speaker 1: the same answer. They say, well, again, dude, you're talking
Speaker 1: general relativity. This this that wouldn't have applied at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the answer is kind of consistently. Don't even come at
Speaker 1: me with that, right your laws? Yeah, uh, should we
Speaker 1: talk about should we finish with a few other alternative explanations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we said, there are alternative models, right, One of
Speaker 1: is that same one that Einstein was a proponent of,
Speaker 1: the steady state model. That it is not actually expanding
Speaker 1: um and the apparently this this is hard for me
Speaker 1: to wrap my mind around. The people who say that
Speaker 1: it's not expanding explain away expansion by saying that matters
Speaker 1: created as um in proportion to the original density of
Speaker 1: the universe. So maybe the universe is expanding some and
Speaker 1: more more matter has to be created to keep the
Speaker 1: same density. So I think what they're saying is that
Speaker 1: the universe has been at the same density all the time,
Speaker 1: and sure it's expanding, but it's also creating more matter,
Speaker 1: so which holds it static? Yeah, I guess so. Uh
Speaker 1: the eck pi rodic echirotic pyrochic I know this two
Speaker 1: letters should not be epirotic pyrotic model. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that's just we're the worst. Uh that suggestion universe as
Speaker 1: the result of a collision of Uh, well, that's when
Speaker 1: you brought up earlier of two three dimensional worlds and
Speaker 1: that there is some hidden fourth dimension out there. Well,
Speaker 1: that's part of UM. The fourth dimension is part of
Speaker 1: like standard astrophysics and cosmology. But this was like this,
Speaker 1: this thing says our universe came out of two universes
Speaker 1: colliding um in the fourth dimension, which that defies me
Speaker 1: a little bit. But but the idea that there are
Speaker 1: four dimensions in one of them is time is definitely
Speaker 1: a part of like standard stuff. Still hard to think of.
Speaker 1: And then plasma cosmology. I like that one a lot
Speaker 1: because it's just totally different from the way we think
Speaker 1: of the universe. It seeks to describe it based on
Speaker 1: its um basically in it's it's electrical charge state, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than like the temperature of it or the gent
Speaker 1: ay or anything like that. It's more involved in like
Speaker 1: the plasma aspects of a plasma's ionized gas um, and
Speaker 1: it's like a fourth state of matter, and plasma cosmology
Speaker 1: looks at it through that lens, which is basically totally
Speaker 1: alien to everything we just talked about. From what I
Speaker 1: can gather, did you just say there's a totally aliens
Speaker 1: out there? There's aliens out there and the universe just
Speaker 1: started by a little kid with a lighter. That's my stand. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: if you like this, then stick around because right now, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we have uh an interview with Neil Degrass Tyson. We
Speaker 1: weren't joking. Great job on that one too, buddy, Thanks man,
Speaker 1: we missed you. He was like, where's Chuck? That we did?
Speaker 1: Did well? How are you guys doing good? How are
Speaker 1: you doing? How stuff works? I have an inkling that
Speaker 1: you may have a clue. Um, so I guess my
Speaker 1: first question is then, how do you specifically, how do
Speaker 1: you think of the universe. When you think of the universe,
Speaker 1: as a whole, like do you think of it as
Speaker 1: something like a speck of dust underneath the giant fingernail?
Speaker 1: Or is it part of a branching multiverse or is
Speaker 1: it a bubble that kind of pushes up against other bubbles? Like? What?
Speaker 1: What is the universe when you think of it? I
Speaker 1: don't think I think of the universe in a fundamentally
Speaker 1: different way from that of my colleagues. What you want
Speaker 1: to do is separate the things we have data and
Speaker 1: observations to support and the things that live and thrive
Speaker 1: on the frontier of theorizing about what the universe was
Speaker 1: is or will one day be, or what larger system
Speaker 1: it could be a part of. So if you live
Speaker 1: in the realm of data, then we are in an
Speaker 1: expanding universe, and it's been expanding for nearly fourteen billion years,
Speaker 1: and it was smaller in the past and hot in
Speaker 1: the past, and it's getting larger and cooler by the minute.
Speaker 1: And we exist on this planet we call Earth born
Speaker 1: four point six billion years go, with the rest of
Speaker 1: the Solar System in some undis undistinguished part of an
Speaker 1: undistinguished galaxy we call the Milky Way. And this this,
Speaker 1: this scenario. This picture was very hard earned, and it's
Speaker 1: it's no more than about eighty or ninety years old
Speaker 1: in total. Edwin Hubble, the man in this particular usage
Speaker 1: of the words, Edwin Hubble, in the nine twenties, ninety
Speaker 1: years ago, discovered that there are other islands universes, if
Speaker 1: you will, not the way we might think of that
Speaker 1: term today, but back then there were the spiral fuzzy
Speaker 1: things in the night sky, imagined to be just spiral
Speaker 1: fuzzy things in the Milky Way. He would show that
Speaker 1: those spiral fuzzy things are not in the Milky Way,
Speaker 1: they are entire other milky ways, other galaxies. And that
Speaker 1: was a profound expanding expansion of our worldview, if you would.
Speaker 1: And then just three years after that, he would show
Speaker 1: that these spiral fuzzy things are rapidly moving away from us.
Speaker 1: Coupled with Einstein's general theory of relativity, we would learn
Speaker 1: that it's not just galaxies spreading apart within a pre
Speaker 1: existing space. It is the fabric of the space and
Speaker 1: time itself that's expanding. All of this is supported by data.
Speaker 1: So if you have discomfort thinking that the universe had
Speaker 1: a beginning and that we will expand forever. Then too bad.
Speaker 1: That's just what the universe says. And the universe, I've
Speaker 1: said this before, the universe is under no obligation to
Speaker 1: make sense to you, especially when what we learn of
Speaker 1: the universe comes to us from methods and tools that
Speaker 1: completely transcend our native, in born biological senses, which in
Speaker 1: fact is the great ascent of science. What are all
Speaker 1: the ways we can decode the operations of nature without
Speaker 1: having to rely on the limits um that are sent
Speaker 1: our biological senses forced us to occupy. So when science
Speaker 1: is furthered um you know, decades down the road um,
Speaker 1: and the vision we have or the view we have
Speaker 1: of the universe we live in is um is magnified
Speaker 1: by orders of magnitude from what we're looking at through
Speaker 1: right now? What do what do you suspect? It's what
Speaker 1: shape do you suspect it's going to take? Do you
Speaker 1: have suspicions? And if I mean, if you don't, how
Speaker 1: do you keep yourself from from making that leap? Like? Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, this is what it's going to be, this
Speaker 1: is what we're really living in. Well, we all have biases,
Speaker 1: and let me not call them biases. Let's say, we
Speaker 1: all have longings for how we think or want the
Speaker 1: universe to be, and if you begin to believe your
Speaker 1: longings too strongly, then you could you might miss some
Speaker 1: realities that don't fit your expectations, and someone else will
Speaker 1: catch them and make the discovery. So it's okay to
Speaker 1: lean in one direction or another, but don't do so
Speaker 1: while being blind to what else could be true in
Speaker 1: spite of how you think it might be. So uh So,
Speaker 1: now that the scenario I gave you is sort of
Speaker 1: is very well established in terms of observations, data, uh data,
Speaker 1: and um basically a century of thinking about and observing
Speaker 1: the universe, imposing questions and answering them. So beyond that
Speaker 1: we can ask, um, is there a multiverse? A right?
Speaker 1: This seems to come naturally out of certain thinking about
Speaker 1: the behavior of the universe. When you try to bring
Speaker 1: together quantum physics and Einstein's general relativity, there are there
Speaker 1: are good arguments to suggest that we could be in
Speaker 1: a multiverse, and it's not obvious, at least to me,
Speaker 1: how one would test that just yet. And so the
Speaker 1: theories of the universe that point to a multiverse are
Speaker 1: themselves well tested. So this is what gives you the
Speaker 1: confidence that maybe maybe our multiverse folks are onto something.
Speaker 1: And there are other frontiers, for example, the quantum physics,
Speaker 1: which is the theory of the small, and general relativity,
Speaker 1: the theory of the large. They work perfectly well in
Speaker 1: their own regimes. General relativity describing the large scale universe,
Speaker 1: quantum physics describing with very high precision atoms, molecules, nuclei, particles,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. But in the early universe, when
Speaker 1: the entire universe was the size of an atom, then
Speaker 1: we might suppose that quantum forces override whatever was going
Speaker 1: on with general relativity, because now the entire universe is
Speaker 1: of the size that quantum laws um significantly manifest and
Speaker 1: so and right now we do not have a good
Speaker 1: way to merge those two theories. And this we've got
Speaker 1: top people working on it, either collectively to string theorists
Speaker 1: and others in that realm who are thinking long and
Speaker 1: hard about these are the like a third theory that
Speaker 1: needs to be introduced that will enclose quantum physics and
Speaker 1: general relativity into a deeper, broader understanding of what's going on,
Speaker 1: or will quantum physics absorb general relativity uh I don't
Speaker 1: know that people know just yet, and it involves very
Speaker 1: high levels of math and higher dimensions and this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And some people have criticized string theory for
Speaker 1: not really being a legitimate theory because you can't test
Speaker 1: it in any traditional way. But it's the only game
Speaker 1: in town. So and they're not very expensive, you know,
Speaker 1: you give them a pencil and a pad throwing a
Speaker 1: laptop of string theorists in business. So I let them
Speaker 1: go as far as they can take it. So, UM,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like there is either like you said, uh,
Speaker 1: quantum quantum physics maybe the answer to all this. We
Speaker 1: just don't fully understand uh that that field yet enough
Speaker 1: to um get back to the moment of the Big
Speaker 1: Bang or the what happened before the Big Bang? Um.
Speaker 1: But it could also be, from what I've seen, the
Speaker 1: unified field theory that gets us back to that point.
Speaker 1: But either way, to get to a point where we
Speaker 1: go further beyond our current understanding, further back in time
Speaker 1: in the Big Bang, including before the Big Bang, of
Speaker 1: what was before. Um, it seems like it's going to
Speaker 1: take a vast leap forward. Um. Do you think that
Speaker 1: leap is going to come from a genius that hasn't
Speaker 1: been born yet, or has been born but hasn't been
Speaker 1: educated and entered the field yet. Is that how it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Is it gonna happen from you know, uh,
Speaker 1: this person combining this work with this work and that
Speaker 1: work and this work and and suddenly the pieces are
Speaker 1: going to fall together. In that sense, that's a great
Speaker 1: question that also has a philosophical dimension to it, such
Speaker 1: that if you in modern times great leaps and science,
Speaker 1: do they happen by the lone genius burning the candle
Speaker 1: at midnight coming up with a Eureka moment? Or do
Speaker 1: they come about because you have huge, expensive, highly collaborative
Speaker 1: scientific projects such as LIGO discovering gravitational waves, such as
Speaker 1: UM the next generation space telescope it's called the James
Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope, not yet launched, but that will enable
Speaker 1: us to see galaxies being born in the early universe,
Speaker 1: as well as a host of other other front tier
Speaker 1: observations that were not possible with previous telescopes. Well, that
Speaker 1: telescope had to be designed by whole teams of people
Speaker 1: with questions that they had in mind that they want
Speaker 1: answered by the new data. So so I I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced that we're just waiting for a new smart person
Speaker 1: to come along and have it all makes sense. I
Speaker 1: think we're waiting for someone to obtain new data that
Speaker 1: we've never seen before that then forced us into new
Speaker 1: ideas and understandings of the universe. Maybe there's some new
Speaker 1: theory that something. Maybe I'm not discounting it, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you is we're in an era. Look at
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson for example, that required the large Hadron
Speaker 1: collider and thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: engineers who built the thing in the first place. So
Speaker 1: we're kind of in a collaborative era right now. And
Speaker 1: so if I would, if I were betting man, I
Speaker 1: would say that the great discoveries to come will come
Speaker 1: about from huge collaborations, possibly even international collaborations. Now that
Speaker 1: that doesn't remove with the question as to whether there
Speaker 1: is an Einstein walking among us who happened to have
Speaker 1: been born into poverty in a developing country, and then
Speaker 1: we will never know, Well, that would be one of
Speaker 1: the great tragedies of modern civilization. So I, as an educator,
Speaker 1: feel very strongly about what kind of access. People of
Speaker 1: the world should have to knowledge, to learning, to health,
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, a person should be able to
Speaker 1: live a day and not have the entire day be
Speaker 1: preoccupied about whether whether you have food or whether or
Speaker 1: not you're going to die from a disease that your
Speaker 1: neighbor just died of. So this is a So I
Speaker 1: think we should be able to measure our state of
Speaker 1: our civilization by the extent to which we are in
Speaker 1: the position to discover another Einstein rising up from the
Speaker 1: midst and and that's so that's one way to get
Speaker 1: an Einstein another one. So's to wait around until one
Speaker 1: is born into the right circumstances. I'd rather, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got seven billion people on Earth, somebody and there's
Speaker 1: got to be badass enough to help us out. So you,
Speaker 1: I mean, you brought up your your your role as
Speaker 1: an educator, and you're a world class science popularizer and explainer.
Speaker 1: What what is it that got you into science as
Speaker 1: a kid? I was I was nine years old and
Speaker 1: it was a first visit to the Hayden Planetarium right
Speaker 1: here in New York. But my local planetarium. I think
Speaker 1: most big cities have planetariums, even medium sized cities, we'll
Speaker 1: have a planetarium. And my family, my parents took my
Speaker 1: brother and my sister and me too, all the cultural
Speaker 1: institutions of the city every weekend. So one weekend it
Speaker 1: was the Natural History Museum, another it was the zoo,
Speaker 1: another it was the aquarium. We even went to other
Speaker 1: things that sort of talented grown ups did, like we'd
Speaker 1: go to a baseball game, or the opera or or
Speaker 1: the theater. And that exposure enabled the three of us
Speaker 1: to see what is possible beyond the traditional you want
Speaker 1: to be a doctor, lawyer, indian chief, you know, the
Speaker 1: three traditional options that you're given as a as a
Speaker 1: as a six year old or a seven year old.
Speaker 1: And so out of that arose my interest in the
Speaker 1: universe that really got cemented by by the time I
Speaker 1: was eleven, I knew that if I was so convinced
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do astrophysics, that I began to
Speaker 1: began to question whether whether or not it was in
Speaker 1: fact the universe that chose me. That's really cool. Um, well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Dr Tyson. We appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 1: This is like you just took our big Big Bang
Speaker 1: episode and moved along light years. So thank you. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you, And is not actually very far in the
Speaker 1: scale of the union, so I feel bad if I
Speaker 1: had taken it along billion. How about how about or something?
Speaker 1: Part is only three point to six light years, so
Speaker 1: that still won't even alright, you know, park is not
Speaker 1: even far enough a way to get to the nearest
Speaker 1: star to the Sun. Okay, so you're just in the
Speaker 1: wrong zone there, Okay, Well then how about billions of parsecs? Nice?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. What a guy, huh, great job.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was. Man, he's just such a cool customer.
Speaker 1: That's why he is where he is now. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you want to hang out with him, head on
Speaker 1: over to the Hayden Planetarium. I'm sure he'd be happy
Speaker 1: to see you. Um. You can see him on tour.
Speaker 1: You can see him with Star Talk Live. He's got
Speaker 1: a podcast for those of you who don't know, with
Speaker 1: our pel Eugene Merman. He was on our TV show.
Speaker 1: Even he was I didn't get a chance to ask
Speaker 1: him if he remembered that he didn't. That's why I
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance. Yeah, I just would have been embarrassing. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the big bank
Speaker 1: type those words into the search part how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com and they'll bring up some great stuff. And
Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this is Russia European. Remember that debate, Well,
Speaker 1: wouldn't so much a debate. We just kind of wondered
Speaker 1: in the Continents episode, Hey guys, thanks for cracking me
Speaker 1: up with the show. Astonishing how many film references you
Speaker 1: can fit into a geography lesson. Yes, Russia is definitely
Speaker 1: a European country exclamation point. Historically, it's always been considered
Speaker 1: a part of Europe. For example, was named as one
Speaker 1: of the six major European countries in World War One,
Speaker 1: and the czar was closely related to other royalty in Europe. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is very different from China or India, always much
Speaker 1: more distant and mysterious to the east. Also, consider that
Speaker 1: maps are very deceptive. Over of Russia's population is on
Speaker 1: the European side, including every major city from Moscow to St. Petersburg,
Speaker 1: from Milan to I knew you were gonna say that
Speaker 1: very nice. I would have been so disappointed if you not. Uh,
Speaker 1: most of the land you see to the east is
Speaker 1: empty and largely uninhabitable, only there to look pretty on
Speaker 1: a map. Well, I don't know about that, but that's
Speaker 1: what that's what the little kid with the lighter put
Speaker 1: it there for. So cheers. That is from Timothy and
Speaker 1: that was one heckroposcience fil reference Timothy or timoth Ay?
Speaker 1: Is he Russian? Yeah? Good point. Yeah it's timoth Ay,
Speaker 1: Mosco wrote, using a pseudonym Timothy Milan to miss. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me and Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry, you can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us
Speaker 1: to email, to stuff Podcast, to how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com and as always, joined us at home on the
Speaker 1: way Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com