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Speaker 1: Imagine the day the Aliens finally arrive. Maybe you're picturing

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Speaker 1: an invasion, ramps dramatically unfolding from gleaming ships, snarling tentacled

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Speaker 1: monsters slithering down rapidly, overrunning Earth's meager defenses. And yet

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Speaker 1: that's fair. We're as likely to be unceremoniously fried into

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Speaker 1: human crisps by a planet wide death ray as anything else.

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Speaker 1: But this is seeing the alien arrival glass as half empty. Instead,

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Speaker 1: let's look at the glass as half full, even if

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Speaker 1: we aren't sure yet what it's full of. Maybe aliens

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Speaker 1: have figured out the answers to puzzles that remain impenetrable

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Speaker 1: to us, like what everything is made out of at

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Speaker 1: the smallest level, or why time only flows forward, or

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Speaker 1: how big the universe is. What if aliens know for

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Speaker 1: a fact how our universe began and how it all

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Speaker 1: might end. What if they know what it's like inside

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Speaker 1: a black hole, or actually understand quantum mechanics like the

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Speaker 1: back of their tentacle. Maybe to them, the universe isn't

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Speaker 1: a place of consistent mystery, but one that tindly follows

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Speaker 1: some basic rules. And what if they could just tell

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Speaker 1: us how everything works? So we don't have to blindly

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Speaker 1: hack away for decades or centuries to gain this elusive knowledge.

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Speaker 1: They might carry the product of millions or billions of

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Speaker 1: years of alien scientific thought to catapult us unimaginably far

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Speaker 1: in our quest to understand this wonderful, bizarre, violent, and

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Speaker 1: beautiful cosmos. If our species met up, physicists hope that

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Speaker 1: we'd be able to geek out together, sharing notes on

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Speaker 1: this glorious galactic journey of discovery. But could that really happen.

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Speaker 1: A lot of scientists, especially physicists, believe it. Could. They

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Speaker 1: imagine that unraveling the secrets of nature is a universal

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Speaker 1: project that would be shared by the scientists of alien

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Speaker 1: species across the galaxy, and that physics describes everything in

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Speaker 1: the universe, not just life on Earth, and so should

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Speaker 1: also form the foundation of alien science. Therefore, we should

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Speaker 1: be able to use physics as a mental bridge between

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Speaker 1: our species. But hold on a second. Are we accepting

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Speaker 1: those arguments too quickly? Have we really given the question

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Speaker 1: careful thought? Or are we blinded by our fantasy of

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Speaker 1: galactic scientific cooperation and the narrowness of our own experience.

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Speaker 1: We have only our one example of science here on Earth,

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Speaker 1: so it's hard to be sure how much of it

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Speaker 1: might be colored by human nature and culture. Are human

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Speaker 1: physics and math the only way to think about the

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Speaker 1: universe or are they just the only way we can

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Speaker 1: imagine it. Are the laws of physics something universal, something

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Speaker 1: we have discovered, or are the human something we have invented.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Alien Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hello. I'm Kelly.

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Speaker 3: I study parasites and space, but I don't think about

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Speaker 3: aliens as much as Daniel does.

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Speaker 4: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I do want

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Speaker 1: to figure out the secrets of the universe myself, but

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Speaker 1: I'd rather just download them from alien brains if possible.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be nice, all right.

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Speaker 3: So my question for you, Daniel, when you think about aliens,

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Speaker 3: which is apparently all the.

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Speaker 1: Time, embarrassingly high fraction in my brain?

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. That's right.

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Speaker 3: For someone who's not like a conspiracy theorist or a

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Speaker 3: cryptid fan, you think about them a lot.

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Speaker 1: You're making some assumptions there.

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Speaker 3: I've known you for a while, But when you imagine aliens,

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Speaker 3: what do they look like in your head?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Boy? Wow? You know I think it's almost impossible

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Speaker 1: to anticipate what aliens actually look like, or at least

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Speaker 1: I hope. So you know this two scenarios. One is

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Speaker 1: aliens show up and they're basically star trek, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're humans with fuzzy foreheads or you know, just some

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Speaker 1: little tweak on the kind of life we have here

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Speaker 1: on Earth. The other scenario is they show up and

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Speaker 1: they're so much weirder than we could ever possibly imagine,

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Speaker 1: And that, to me is the fascinating scenario. That's the

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Speaker 1: non Starbucks scenario. You know, it's like, you don't want

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Speaker 1: to travel the world and discover Starbucks on every corner.

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Speaker 1: That's boring. You have Starbucks at home, says you. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I like Starbucks too, but I prefer like local, weird coffee.

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Speaker 1: That's why I go traveling. And so if aliens show

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Speaker 1: up and they're not really weird, I'm going to be

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Speaker 1: disappointed in the universe.

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Speaker 3: Quick side note, When I travel, I do like to

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Speaker 3: go to the McDonald's and other countries because but only

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Speaker 3: because I like to see what other stuff they have

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Speaker 3: on their menus, you know, because they usually don't have

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Speaker 3: like the US standard menu, and I like to see like, oh,

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Speaker 3: what's the how did McDonald's homogenize with this culture to

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Speaker 3: create something new? But also confession time, Zach and I

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Speaker 3: were in Versailles for our honey and we had this

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Speaker 3: lovely breakfast and we went to go throw away our

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Speaker 3: receipt in our trash and I noticed a McDonald's arch

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Speaker 3: and I was like, wait a minute, and it was

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Speaker 3: it looked so nice. We didn't realize we had gotten

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Speaker 3: breakfast at McDonald's on our honeymoon and it was delicious.

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Speaker 2: We had a great time.

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Speaker 1: In your defense, McDonald's in France is really a different

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Speaker 1: kind of thing. Yeah, it really is much more upscale, absolutely.

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Speaker 3: Well, and that's like a cultural insight or something that

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Speaker 3: I feel like you get by visiting the McDonald's. But

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Speaker 3: anyway else I don't exclusively eat at McDonald's.

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Speaker 1: Well. I went to a conference in TYPEI once with

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Speaker 1: an Israeli colleague and he ate every single meal at

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Speaker 1: Subway or McDonald's and like, this is Type AI people.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the food there is incredible. I was a

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Speaker 1: vegetarian at the time and we had this nineteen course

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Speaker 1: banquet dinner and they served me a separate, different vegetarian thing.

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Speaker 1: For each of the nineteen courses, and each one blew

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Speaker 1: my mind, Like the food there is unbelievable. Plus I

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Speaker 1: also went to the night market and like all sorts

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Speaker 1: of weird stuff that probably had eyeballs in it. But

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Speaker 1: to me, that was the joy of it, right. But

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Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, no, I'm not touching that.

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Speaker 2: But hold on.

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Speaker 3: If you're a vegetarian but you eat eyeballs, is that

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Speaker 3: like an eyebolitarian like a pesetarian only eats fish.

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Speaker 1: Well, I was a vegetarian at the time, but I

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Speaker 1: also wanted to explore, and I was at the night

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Speaker 1: market and I couldn't speak the language, so I took

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Speaker 1: some risks. And I'm not sure whether or not I

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Speaker 1: ate eyeballs. I think probability Daniel ate eyeballs that evening

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Speaker 1: fifty percent.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, good, good on you. It's good to try new awesome.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Anyway, the joy of traveling is exploring the universe and

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Speaker 1: having your mind blown by how surprising it is, by

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Speaker 1: breaking out of the box of your expectations.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely, and you always are so great at transitioning us home.

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Speaker 2: And so here we are today.

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Speaker 3: We're talking about the joy of studying physics and we're

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Speaker 3: trying to nail down on the philosophical question. Is physics

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Speaker 3: discovered or invented?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's the physics that we have developed here

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Speaker 1: on Earth. Are we figuring out basic rules of the universe?

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Speaker 1: Or are we just telling a human story one that's

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Speaker 1: approximate and effective and kind of only makes sense to us.

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Speaker 1: And this is a philosophical question for sure, but I

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Speaker 1: like to think about it in concrete terms and inject

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Speaker 1: aliens into it by imagining the scenario that aliens arrive

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Speaker 1: and we try to talk to them about this because

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Speaker 1: that's when it matters, right, And might think who cares

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Speaker 1: if it's discovered or invented, it works, right, But number one,

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Speaker 1: I'm curious about whether it's really deeply true. And also

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Speaker 1: I am concerned about this situation. What if aliens show

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Speaker 1: up and they have these answers but we can't make

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Speaker 1: a scientific connection with them. That would be so frustrating.

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Speaker 1: And that's why I wrote my new book, Do Aliens

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Speaker 1: Speak Physics? Out November fourth from Norton and available at

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Speaker 1: all fine bookstores. Please go check it out.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so you said that it would be a real

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Speaker 3: bummer if the aliens got here and we, like you know,

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Speaker 3: hadn't figured out the truth. Is that because you're worried

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Speaker 3: about what they're gonna think of us, In which case

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Speaker 3: I have a speed that I tell my daughter about

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Speaker 3: why you shouldn't worry about what other people think. Or

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Speaker 3: is it because it would inhibit our ability to communicate?

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Speaker 1: In that case, my fantasy is that the aliens deliver

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Speaker 1: to us answers to some of the puzzles, you know,

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Speaker 1: like I just want to know what is inside a

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Speaker 1: black hole? What is the real story of the universe.

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Speaker 1: I would love to know the answers to these questions.

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Speaker 1: And the idea that aliens have these answers out there

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Speaker 1: is endlessly frustrating to me. If they could just show

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Speaker 1: up and give them to us, you know, like somebody

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Speaker 1: knows the truth, please just share it with us. So

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Speaker 1: my concern is that they show up and we're mismatched

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Speaker 1: somehow so that we can't get those answers. Maybe we're

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Speaker 1: not smart enough to understand it, or maybe we're going

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Speaker 1: down a different path, or maybe they have a different

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Speaker 1: way of explaining these things, or maybe they're asking different questions,

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Speaker 1: you know, they perceive the universe differently. And they're not

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Speaker 1: interested in the questions we're asking, and so I'm worried

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Speaker 1: about these scenarios where we're mismatched with the aliens, and

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Speaker 1: so we can't have that moment of scientific cross emogenation.

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Speaker 3: I mean, do you think it's possible that we're on

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Speaker 3: the right track and they're not, or if they get

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Speaker 3: to us, then they must be on the right track

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Speaker 3: because they're doing stuff we can't.

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Speaker 1: That's a great question. I think if we're on different tracks,

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Speaker 1: that probably says something about the nature of the universe.

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Speaker 1: If he can be described in different ways, then maybe

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Speaker 1: there is no one truth and you can't say who's

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Speaker 1: on the right track or the wrong track.

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Speaker 3: Well, when I'm interested in finding the truth, what I

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Speaker 3: do is I reach out to the extraordinaries.

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Speaker 2: And so that's what we did.

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Speaker 3: We reached out to our listeners and we asked, are

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Speaker 3: the laws of physics discovered or invented?

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Speaker 5: I think that lots of physics are somewhere in between

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Speaker 5: an invention and discovery.

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Speaker 1: Maybe closer to the discovery I will help.

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Speaker 4: And Einstein didn't invent space time doing its bendy, squishy,

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Speaker 4: stretchy thing. He just caught it in the act, so

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Speaker 4: definitely discovered.

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Speaker 6: Our curiosity and need to understand the world around us

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Speaker 6: has led us to discover the laws of physics, and

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Speaker 6: we've had to invent tools to help us do that,

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Speaker 6: both abstract and physical. So it's a little bit of both.

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Speaker 6: It seems it's some of both.

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Speaker 1: There are realities in the universe that we can discover,

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Speaker 1: and then we invent models to describe those realities.

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Speaker 4: Surely the laws of physics discovered because they already exist.

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Speaker 7: I think they are discovered. I think it's a little

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Speaker 7: bit of both. I think they're invented as we're kind

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Speaker 7: of putting the bits and pieces together, and then the

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Speaker 7: more we can understand it, the more we are discovering

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Speaker 7: how things actually are.

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Speaker 4: So the laws of physics are certainly discovered, while the

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Speaker 4: maths used to describe them, or human inventions.

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Speaker 6: The laws of physics are of course discovered, but defined

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Speaker 6: in our language as humans and correct.

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Speaker 1: It's discovered, Otherwise it's invented because it's not correct. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem to make sense to me to say that

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Speaker 1: we invented gravitying.

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Speaker 2: I would say that the way things are is discovered,

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Speaker 2: but the methodology by which we use to measure and

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Speaker 2: categorize in our own terms is invented, but.

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Speaker 4: The laws of physics help us make order and meaning

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Speaker 4: from what we discover. But they're not immutable, so in

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Speaker 4: that sense they're invented and can change as new things

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Speaker 4: are discovered. I would say, while the fundamental mechanisms how

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Speaker 4: physics work are discovered, the laws of physics are invented.

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Speaker 2: They are useful and necessary for set mechanisms to make

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Speaker 2: sense to our big monkey brains.

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Speaker 4: I think the observations of the universe are constant, but

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Speaker 4: how we describe them as laws depends on our particular

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Speaker 4: moment in history and the mathematics available to us at

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Speaker 4: the time.

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Speaker 2: I think they were both. I think the laws of

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Speaker 2: physics were first discovered and then we invented the mathod

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Speaker 2: to goal with what we discovered.

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Speaker 5: The laws of physics must be fundamental and the way

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Speaker 5: we do Oh, there goes the dog, and we discover

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Speaker 5: it by doing inventions, and that was the dog participating.

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Speaker 1: I hope the dog was right. These are such great,

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Speaker 1: thoughtful answers. Not surprised, of course, but impressed.

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Speaker 3: When I started researching a city on Mars, one of

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Speaker 3: the things that I loved was that people would say, Oh,

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Speaker 3: obviously X is the case, and then you'd go and

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Speaker 3: talk to the next group and they'd be like, obviously,

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Speaker 3: why is the case? I think the most common version

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Speaker 3: for me was obviously we can't settle space right now.

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Speaker 3: And then other people would be like, obviously we're ready

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Speaker 3: to do it right now, and I'd be like, oh,

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Speaker 3: my goodness, how can everybody be so sure? But anyway,

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Speaker 3: so we've got a nice mix of answers.

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Speaker 1: I love those moments because then you get to dig

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Speaker 1: into the assumptions that are leading you there and open

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Speaker 1: people's mind. So hold on a second. That's an assumption

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Speaker 1: that's not something you know, and maybe it feels natural

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Speaker 1: to you, it feels intuitive, But do you have data?

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Speaker 1: Do you have one of the reasons for holding those assumptions.

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Speaker 1: Those are the moments when your mind expands, right when

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Speaker 1: you're like, oh, wait, maybe eyeballs are a good snack

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Speaker 1: after all, you know.

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Speaker 3: I feel like at the top of my list of

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Speaker 3: people that I want to correct me is you, because

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Speaker 3: when you're like, you know, when what you mean is well,

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Speaker 3: that sounds kind of wrong. Instead it sounds like an

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Speaker 3: amazing philosophical insight, and I'm like, oh, that's such a

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Speaker 3: cool way to think about and then afterwards you're like,

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Speaker 3: wait a minute, Daniel told me I'm wrong.

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Speaker 1: You know. That's my process with students and actually with

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Speaker 1: podcast listeners. They often come to me with a question

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Speaker 1: and the question doesn't really make sense or and it

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Speaker 1: makes me realize they've absorbed some piece of information that's

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Speaker 1: wrong and that's led them down this path. And so

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Speaker 1: I feel like the job of a teacher is not

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Speaker 1: to say you're wrong, here's the right answer, but to

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Speaker 1: unravel their thought process to the moment they took the

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Speaker 1: wrong path and show them the right way to go.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's one of the reasons I like working

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Speaker 3: with you so much, because I feel like you're an

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Speaker 3: easy person to throw ideas out at because you're not

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Speaker 3: going to be told, well, that was stupid. So anyway,

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Speaker 3: all right, our listeners are amazing. Let's jump into what

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Speaker 3: does this question even mean? What assumptions are in that question?

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of people might hear this question,

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Speaker 1: especially a lot of people in physics, and say, well,

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Speaker 1: of course, the laws of physics are something we're discovering,

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Speaker 1: because there's something real happening out there in the universe,

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Speaker 1: and we have this process of science for slowly deducing

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Speaker 1: the truth, and you know, we use mathematics to express

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Speaker 1: it and it just works so well, and so I

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Speaker 1: think it's the natural point of view. The place people

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Speaker 1: often start is that, Okay, physics is something we're figuring

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Speaker 1: out about the universe, and lots of physicists feel that.

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Speaker 1: I remember talking to string theorist Thomas van Reet and

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Speaker 1: he was like, yes, aliens will be doing string theory.

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Speaker 1: I don't even doubt it. His confidence was amazing. Yep,

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Speaker 1: I love that, and there's reasons for that. It's not

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Speaker 1: an unreasonable point of view, but it's also not the

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Speaker 1: only point of view. And you know, this question is

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Speaker 1: similar to another, maybe more widely discussed question in philosophy

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Speaker 1: and in popular discussion, which is about mathematics. Right, is

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Speaker 1: mathematics invented or discovered? And here mathematics is the language

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Speaker 1: of science, and so it's natural to ask, like, well,

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Speaker 1: is mathematics like our mental shorthand for the way the

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Speaker 1: universe works? Or is it some part of the universe?

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Speaker 1: Did the concept of seven exist before there are humans,

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Speaker 1: you know? Or is it something that we came up

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Speaker 1: with to help explain the universe around us. You know,

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Speaker 1: I think a way to sum up the question essentially,

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Speaker 1: is is physics the map or is it the territory?

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Speaker 1: Are we describing something that's happening out there in the

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Speaker 1: universe or are we revealing the actual truth?

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Speaker 2: So could you give me an example?

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Speaker 3: Like, all right, so say you've got a theory and

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Speaker 3: you make some observations and the observations matches what you

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Speaker 3: would expect from the theory, Bing bamboom, You've got it right,

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Speaker 3: And so like, why is that not sufficient?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. If you have a bunch

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Speaker 1: of data and you have a theory that describes that,

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Speaker 1: there's always another theory that also fits that data, right,

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Speaker 1: because you don't have infinite data, and you could have

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Speaker 1: two theories that deviate between the two data points. Or

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Speaker 1: for example, I could just take our current theory and say,

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Speaker 1: here's another theory that also describes the universe. It's exactly

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Speaker 1: the same, but it predicts that in one hundred years

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Speaker 1: electrons will lose their charge. I mean that theory perfectly

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Speaker 1: describes all of our experiments. It's sort of ridiculous reason

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Speaker 1: to believe in is obviously has this added twist to

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Speaker 1: it that you don't need, and you can use outcomes

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Speaker 1: razor to reject it. But it's just an example of

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Speaker 1: how there are always more theories that do describe the data,

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Speaker 1: and so you can't be guaranteed just by having a

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Speaker 1: theory that matches your data that it's the only theory,

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Speaker 1: or even that it's the true theory.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, could there be like some intermediate between

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Speaker 3: your theory and the observation that wasn't incorporated in some way,

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Speaker 3: Like you think that X causes why, but actually there's

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Speaker 3: a Z that's interacting there that wasn't in your theory

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Speaker 3: at all, and that would change predictions in another environment

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Speaker 3: or something.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, because perhaps you only have data in a certain

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Speaker 1: set of circumstances, right, and you haven't seen the wider picture.

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Speaker 1: For example, for hundreds of years, we thought Newton was

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Speaker 1: right about gravity, and his theory bore out every single

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Speaker 1: test we did until we pushed the boundaries and we

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Speaker 1: started looking at really high speed events and you know,

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Speaker 1: the orbit of mercury and tiny little details. Only then

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Speaker 1: was it revealed that Newton's theory wasn't as accurate as

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Speaker 1: we thought, and in fact the whole story that it

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Speaker 1: was telling, right and forces between them, that story is

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Speaker 1: not the story of what's really happening in the universe.

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Speaker 1: Now we have another story, Einstein's story of curvature and

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Speaker 1: space time. Right, the two agree almost always in our experience,

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Speaker 1: but they tell a very very different story about what's

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Speaker 1: really happening behind the curtains. And that's philosophically sort of

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Speaker 1: scary because it tells you that you could have a

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Speaker 1: theory that describes almost everything you see in the universe,

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Speaker 1: but it could be telling the wrong story about reality.

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Speaker 1: And when the aliens show up and they're like, what,

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Speaker 1: what are you guys talking about? That's nonsense. Here's what's

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Speaker 1: really going on.

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Speaker 3: Okay, But so let's imagine a world where and heaven forbid,

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Speaker 3: this is the case where we never meet aliens, Like,

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Speaker 3: I know, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Would it

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Speaker 3: still matter, Like, if we've got predictions and we can

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Speaker 3: use those to make new technologies, does it matter if

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Speaker 3: we actually are right or not, or if we've just

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Speaker 3: figured out a way to understand the world that's helpful.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. I think it depends on what's important

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Speaker 1: to you. If what's important to you is, let's build

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Speaker 1: cool technology and you know, self driving toothbrushes and whatever,

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Speaker 1: then it doesn't really matter, right. But if your goal

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Speaker 1: is to reveal something true about the universe to understand,

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Speaker 1: and I think in the end that's what physics is about.

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Speaker 1: Fundamental physics is a desire to unravel the nature of

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Speaker 1: the universe, not just to build cool gizmos. Then it's

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Speaker 1: fundamentally frustrating to think that we're not doing that, that

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Speaker 1: we're just telling ourselves a story that works, that we're

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Speaker 1: not actually hearing from the oracle and revealing the truth

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Speaker 1: of the universe, that we're stuck in Plato's cave, essentially

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Speaker 1: just looking at shadows on the wall. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: that would be fundamentally frustrating.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, I'll give you that.

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Speaker 1: But you ask a great question because aliens haven't arrived yet,

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Speaker 1: and so you might ask, like, well, what progress can

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Speaker 1: we make anyway on this question before the aliens show up?

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Speaker 1: Do we have to just sit here and wait for

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Speaker 1: the aliens to arrive and say like yes or no,

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Speaker 1: or see how it works? And so that was sort

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Speaker 1: of the struggle I faced trying to write this book,

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Speaker 1: it's like, well, how do we make any progress before

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Speaker 1: the aliens show up? And it turns out you can, right,

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Speaker 1: you can look at the structure of human science and

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Speaker 1: you can ask like, well, are there places where the

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Speaker 1: choices we've made are arbitrary? Or are there things that

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Speaker 1: could only have happened this way and in this area.

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Speaker 1: I have to give a lot of credit to like biologists,

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Speaker 1: because biologists have already done this work. Congratulations, Kelly. You know,

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Speaker 1: like biologists have thought about is life on Earth the

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Speaker 1: only way it could be? We only have this one

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Speaker 1: example of life on Earth, but they've tried their best

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Speaker 1: to push beyond the box. For example, they see that

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Speaker 1: all life on Earth has carbon as its backbone, but

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean you can assume that all life in

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Speaker 1: the universe is carbon based. They imagine ways it could

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Speaker 1: have gone differently. Maybe it's silicon in there, right, or

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Speaker 1: all life has water in it, but maybe it could

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Speaker 1: have had ammonia. So there's been a lot of this

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Speaker 1: like push beyond our one example thinking in biology, and

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Speaker 1: I wanted to do the same thing for physics, to

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Speaker 1: examine the places in physics where oh, maybe this could

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Speaker 1: be different or no, this absolutely has to be this way,

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Speaker 1: there's no other choice as a way to try to

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Speaker 1: figure out before the aliens show up, what truths were

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Speaker 1: revealing and what are just stories we're telling ourselves.

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Speaker 3: All right, let's take a break and when we get back,

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Speaker 3: Daniel will tell us where we should start looking.

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Speaker 2: All right, and we're back. So Daniel was.

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Speaker 3: Telling us about how biologists are leading the way and

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Speaker 3: like probably everything, and physicists are trying to catch up,

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Speaker 3: and so what kind of work are they doing to

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Speaker 3: try to catch up?

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Speaker 1: Daniel, Well, it's an impossible task as cool and as

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Speaker 1: good looking and as suave, and it's socially well adjusted

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Speaker 1: as biologists athletic, but you know we Oh sorry, I

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Speaker 1: thought you were joking. I'm going to take that totally seriously.

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Speaker 1: I'll have you know that we have a physics soccer

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Speaker 1: game here every year and the faculty usually win.

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Speaker 2: Oh nice way to go.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So, following in the footsteps of the wise biologists,

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Speaker 1: we can ask like, well, where are the places where

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Speaker 1: physics could be making assumptions? What are the arguments that

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Speaker 1: suggest physics has to be universal? And what are the

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Speaker 1: arguments against that? And I think one of the most

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Speaker 1: powerful arguments is that physics seems to apply everywhere. Right,

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Speaker 1: we have this universality of physics, which really goes back

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Speaker 1: to Newton, Newton looking at the apple or thinking about

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Speaker 1: gravity and imagining, oh, maybe gravity doesn't just apply here

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Speaker 1: on Earth, it applies also in the heavens. Right. He

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Speaker 1: takes the physics that we deduce these tiny little apes

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Speaker 1: on this little rock and applies it to the cosmos.

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Speaker 1: And that's that's such a huge leap, right. It's incredible

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Speaker 1: to think that the laws of physics we're writing down

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Speaker 1: on pieces of paper, never having left this planet, really

435
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:08,320
Speaker 1: with a very small number of exceptions very nearby, could

436
00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:11,720
Speaker 1: apply to things happening across the universe. And that might

437
00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:15,359
Speaker 1: sound like Hubris, right, but it's also totally backed by data,

438
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:18,600
Speaker 1: Like we can look at distant galaxies in the telescope

439
00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 1: and we can see they are following basically the same

440
00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 1: rules of physics. We can understand what's happening there back

441
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 1: in time and far away.

442
00:22:26,600 --> 00:22:29,200
Speaker 3: Ye's funny Hubvers was exactly the word I that was

443
00:22:29,280 --> 00:22:32,960
Speaker 3: rolling around in my brain the way to free Kelly's critique.

444
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:35,840
Speaker 1: And there's a really fantastic example of this which is

445
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:39,399
Speaker 1: very recent maybe people heard about this validation of Hawking's

446
00:22:39,440 --> 00:22:42,960
Speaker 1: area theorem. Hawking was thinking about black holes and how

447
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:47,240
Speaker 1: they come together, and he applied the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics,

448
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 1: of course, having its origins in like eighteen century dudes

449
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 1: in essentially steampunk outfits playing with gas in valves and engines, right,

450
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:57,879
Speaker 1: I'm in yeah, and they were thinking about heat and

451
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:01,040
Speaker 1: energy transfer and they figured out some cool stuff and

452
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,480
Speaker 1: Hawkings said, oh, let's apply this to black holes. And

453
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 1: he came up with this theorem about how black holes merge,

454
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:09,359
Speaker 1: and because black holes have entropy. When black holes come together,

455
00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:12,160
Speaker 1: he said, well, the merger of the two black holes

456
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:14,639
Speaker 1: have to result in a black hole that's bigger than

457
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,240
Speaker 1: the sum of the two initial areas, because the area

458
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 1: of the black hole is connected to its entropy. And

459
00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:23,439
Speaker 1: we just saw this happen with this direct validation of

460
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: Hawking's area theorem. So you have this direct line from

461
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 1: like dudes with gas flasks to like black holes a

462
00:23:29,359 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 1: billion light years away. It really is incredible that the

463
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,280
Speaker 1: laws of physics we figure out here seem to apply everywhere.

464
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: And so we have this, you know, Newton's leap to

465
00:23:39,359 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 1: the cosmos and then Carl Sagan and folks make another leap.

466
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:47,560
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan, when asked, do you think that aliens do

467
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 1: physics and math the same way we do? He said,

468
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: quote yes, And the reason I think that's likely is

469
00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:56,879
Speaker 1: that they live in the same universe as we, so

470
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 1: they must deal with the same laws of physics and

471
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: chemistry and astronomy as we. So this is Carl Sagan, who,

472
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 1: of course, you know, I hesitate to disagree with on

473
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: anything because smart dude, fantastic science communicator, right the best.

474
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:13,159
Speaker 1: Maybe I want to, but I want to underline that

475
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 1: he's making a second leap there, even bigger than Newton's leap,

476
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 1: to apply the laws of physics across the heavens. He's

477
00:24:19,359 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 1: saying that because the laws of physics that we have

478
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:25,119
Speaker 1: to do seem to work everywhere, they must be discovered

479
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,760
Speaker 1: the same way everywhere, or thought of the same way everywhere.

480
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:31,320
Speaker 1: And that's really a step beyond right. I want to

481
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:33,479
Speaker 1: separate those two for people, because I think a lot

482
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: of people conflate those two arguments that just because the

483
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:40,120
Speaker 1: laws of physics apply everywhere, our description of the laws

484
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 1: of physics apply everywhere doesn't mean it's the only way

485
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:43,920
Speaker 1: to describe them.

486
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 3: So would there ever be a way that you could

487
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 3: convince yourself we have found the explanation or is it

488
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:53,640
Speaker 3: just like a continuous process of testing your theories over

489
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 3: and over and over and over again and being willing

490
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 3: to get rid of them if they're wrong, but never

491
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 3: knowing one hundred percent for sure if they're totally right

492
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:01,120
Speaker 3: until the aliens come.

493
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 1: I don't think you can know one hundred percent for

494
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: sure if they're right, even after the aliens come. I mean,

495
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,119
Speaker 1: say the aliens show up and you know, they do

496
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 1: physics the same way we have, and they follow the

497
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:11,960
Speaker 1: same path, and they figured out the answers, and they're

498
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 1: just like, you know, the simplest possible scenario, there are

499
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: a thousand years ahead of us. That doesn't mean that

500
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: it's the only way to do it right. Even if

501
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 1: five different groups of aliens show up and they're all

502
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: doing quantum field theory, that doesn't mean that it's the

503
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: only way. Maybe we're all affected by having the same

504
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: evolutionary history or the same conditions or something. There could

505
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:34,359
Speaker 1: always be another way to think about it that we

506
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:37,879
Speaker 1: don't know, And so even having the aliens show up,

507
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: I don't think is conclusive. I think one way to

508
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 1: approach this is to think about how close the map

509
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: matches the territory. Right, So this is the question of accuracy.

510
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,199
Speaker 1: And another argument people feel very strongly about is that

511
00:25:52,240 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 1: our human physics must be true, must be real, because

512
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:58,639
Speaker 1: it works so darn well. Right. It's not just like

513
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:03,240
Speaker 1: some fuzzied description of the territory. Right, it's like, wow,

514
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,320
Speaker 1: bang on. And you know, we've talked on this podcast

515
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:09,480
Speaker 1: a lot of times about the incredible power of the

516
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: standard model of particle physics. But you know, just to

517
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: highlight it, like we can predict how particles interact and

518
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: sit down and do pages and pages and pages of

519
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:22,239
Speaker 1: calculations and predict some measurement experimentalists will try to do

520
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:26,040
Speaker 1: to like ten decimal places. And then the experimentalists go

521
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: out and they make these measurements, and it's like, this

522
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: is amazing science on both sides. Like the theoretical calculation

523
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: takes so much work and careful thought. The experiment to

524
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 1: measure something so precisely is really difficult, requires very different skills.

525
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: But the two numbers agree. And when you have a

526
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: theory that predicts something to ten decimal places, oh, you're

527
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 1: tempted to make that leap and to say, yeah, this

528
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,959
Speaker 1: isn't a description. This is a revelation. You know, this

529
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 1: is like we have found the source code of the universe.

530
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that as like a junior in

531
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:03,360
Speaker 1: quantmics at Rice, hearing about these experiments and seeing them

532
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 1: compared to the theory and feeling like, there's no way

533
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 1: this is just a description. We have really pulled back

534
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: a veil on nature.

535
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's a very inspiring idea.

536
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 2: I love that.

537
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,119
Speaker 3: But then you look and you're like, oh, wait a minute,

538
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 3: but we don't know how to reconcile quantum mechanics and

539
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 3: all this other with all the other stuff, and so

540
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:25,919
Speaker 3: like you know, I m hmm, oh, I want to say.

541
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: There you want to just generally go hmm, have you

542
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:30,720
Speaker 1: guys really figured it out?

543
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:31,200
Speaker 4: Well?

544
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 3: I think maybe you all have figured a lot of

545
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,400
Speaker 3: things out, and truth be told, I'm very impressed by

546
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 3: what you all have figured out. But you know, so

547
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:39,920
Speaker 3: you can look at all the things you have figured out,

548
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 3: but there's still things that don't fit together the way

549
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 3: that you would expect them to, which could mean that

550
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 3: there's some other theory out there that would explain all

551
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 3: of that stuff that hasn't been found yet, which we

552
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 3: were talking to Ethan Siegel about the other day.

553
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and that's the incredible puzzle of physics

554
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 1: that quantum mechanics is super duper accurate in scenarios where

555
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: you can ignore gravity particle collisions or interactions, right because

556
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: gravity is so weak at the particle level. And also

557
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: general relativity, a classical theory that ignores quantum mechanics, is

558
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:13,120
Speaker 1: super duper accurate in scenarios where you ignore quantm mechanics,

559
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:16,439
Speaker 1: so like black hole mergers and gravitational waves and the

560
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: orbit of mercury, and you know, ring down of binary

561
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: pulsars and frame dragging as measured in space. With these

562
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: super duper precise balls that spin in gyroscopes and satellites,

563
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: it's amazing how accurate general relativity is also, so you

564
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: can make the same argument for general relativity, So like, wow,

565
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 1: this has got to be reality, right, because it's so

566
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: correct that every test we've ever done of general relativity

567
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: has been bang on completely accurate. And it leaves you

568
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: with the impression like wow, this is also the truth.

569
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: But you make the point like you can't have two truths,

570
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,520
Speaker 1: especially if they disagree with each other. And these two

571
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: don't agree. They don't agree not only on what's happening

572
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: out there in the universe, like what's the story, you know,

573
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: what's real, what's really running the machinery, They also don't

574
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: agree about what is going to happen. They make conflicting

575
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: predictions about what's inside a black hole, or how the

576
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: universe began, or how it's all going to end in

577
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: frustratingly places we can't test, we can't do experiments to

578
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 1: reconcile yet. But you're right, and that points to a

579
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 1: problem with this argument. Right, we have these very precise theories,

580
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:27,520
Speaker 1: but all of these theories are what we call effective.

581
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 1: None of them, we think are actually describing the real

582
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: truth of the universe. We think that all of our

583
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: theories are describing this process we call emergence. If you

584
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: think that there's a real truth out there, that microscopically

585
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: the universe has something happening, and that our experience somehow

586
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 1: bubbles out of that, right, well, this is incredible step there,

587
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: this amazing feature of the universe that we don't have

588
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: to know how the universe works at the microscopic level.

589
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 1: It's fundamental base layer of reality in order to start

590
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:06,720
Speaker 1: doing science at the macroscopic level, because this magic happens

591
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: where when you zoom out from the microscopic to the macroscopic,

592
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: the rules are different and somehow simple, right, Like the universe.

593
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:18,440
Speaker 1: Imagine it's filled with these tiny buzzying strings or flings

594
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: or whatever sprayings you know, is at the base layer

595
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: of reality, And imagine you have no idea how that works. Right. Still,

596
00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: somehow you can zoom out and you can describe how

597
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:33,959
Speaker 1: a baseball flies across your backyard with simple mathematics. Why

598
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: is that possible? Right? Why isn't it all just chaos

599
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: from the bottom up the way Like we can't describe

600
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: hurricanes using simple mathematics because it's a bunch of rain

601
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 1: drops and doing all sorts of complicated things. Why doesn't

602
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:49,960
Speaker 1: the same thing hold for zooming out from the fundamental

603
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: layer of reality? We don't know.

604
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 3: Is it just too many moving pieces? Like you could

605
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 3: maybe predict what you know, two rain drops are gonna do,

606
00:30:57,240 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 3: but not a whole hurricane. And you can predict throw

607
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 3: a ball because that's there's a limited number of things

608
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 3: acting on that. But the more complicated it gets the

609
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 3: more we're.

610
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: Like, oh, yeah, exactly. Sometimes simplicity emerges, right, and sometimes

611
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: it doesn't. And when it doesn't, the reason is chaos.

612
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: Like you have two rain drops, you can maybe describe it.

613
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:19,240
Speaker 1: You have ten to the twenty rain jobs. There's too

614
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 1: many interactions and the outcome is very sensitive to how

615
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: those rain jobs started in the direction they were going,

616
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: and no simplicity emerges. It just gets more and more

617
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 1: complicated as you add rain drops. But sometimes simplicity does emerge.

618
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: You have ten to the twenty six particles moving across

619
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,840
Speaker 1: your backyard. They pull together and they follow a simple parabola.

620
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: Hurricanes don't follow simple parabolas. And so because we don't

621
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:47,479
Speaker 1: understand why it ever happens right and why it doesn't

622
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 1: always happen, that tells us that we're not sure if

623
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: it's a part of the universe. Like is the fact

624
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 1: that we can attack the questions of the universe and

625
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: make some progress at some levels without knowing what's going

626
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: on underneath. That we can make chicken soup without knowing

627
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,880
Speaker 1: quantum gravity? Is that because that's just how the universe is.

628
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: Simplicity emerges and we'll figure that out. Why that is

629
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 1: at some point or is it part of our minds?

630
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: Is it the way that we understand and filter the universe?

631
00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: Is it some selection we're making that we're like, we're

632
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 1: going to choose this thing to focus on, ask questions

633
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 1: and do signs, and we're going to choose that thing.

634
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: Is it an interplay between our brains and the universe

635
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: or is it only part of the universe. And that's

636
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: the kind of question we could answer if we had

637
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 1: alien brains, right, which work differently, and maybe they saw

638
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: different things emerging, or maybe they saw the same. We

639
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: just don't know where the line is between the human

640
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: and the universe.

641
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:43,719
Speaker 2: Alternative idea.

642
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 3: We put a ton of money into trying to make

643
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 3: bats which echo locate, and bees which see in more colors.

644
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 3: We try to make all of them have advanced intelligence

645
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 3: and then see what they come up with, because now

646
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 3: we'll have different ways of looking at the world, and

647
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 3: we've discovered that biology needs more money for physics sake.

648
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 1: Oh I see right, yes, Okay. In the end, it's

649
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,160
Speaker 1: all just a scheme. Yeah, nice for big biology.

650
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 2: I'm schemey Okay.

651
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,040
Speaker 3: So is the idea here then that like if we

652
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 3: could dig down and understand everything at exactly the base level,

653
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 3: and then we could scale up and understand the hurricane.

654
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:21,959
Speaker 3: Would that make us feel like we had discovered something

655
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 3: or would we still just be inventing because we just

656
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 3: managed to describe what happened mm hmmm instead of necessarily

657
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:28,800
Speaker 3: knowing why.

658
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question, And that's the temptation. And you know,

659
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist. That's my goal. It's like, I

660
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:36,160
Speaker 1: want to drill all the way down to the base

661
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: layer of reality and find out what are the bits there?

662
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: Because philosophically, that feels like that's a moment of possible revelation.

663
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: You forced the universe to tell you, Okay, I'm naked.

664
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: Now here are all my basic components. Now you've seen

665
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: the reality of how things work everything else, how things

666
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: come together and make baseballs and marching bands and whatever.

667
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: You know, that's more complex science, that's basically chemistry. But

668
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: you know, the fundamental physics is about the fundamental things

669
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: in the universe. So yeah, if we drilled all the

670
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,840
Speaker 1: way down to those, wouldn't we have those in common

671
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,399
Speaker 1: with aliens? Could we avoid all these questions of like

672
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: what's emergent and why? Well, the problem with that is,

673
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: we don't know if there is a fundamental layer. You know,

674
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: I think about our theories is sort of like a tower.

675
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: We have this tower of effective theories at different scales,

676
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: like zoom all the way out. We have like theories

677
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,239
Speaker 1: about how galaxies work. Zoom a little bit in. You

678
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: have theories about how planets form. Zoom a little bit

679
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: more in. You have like classical physics of the every

680
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: day Zoom even more. You have chemistry, Zoom even more.

681
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: You have physics, Zoom even more, you have particle physics.

682
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 1: You could keep zooming. And at every level we have

683
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:45,760
Speaker 1: a theory. Do we know that there is a foundational truth,

684
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: like a base layer to reality. We haven't found it, right, We.

685
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 3: Just got to get to the plank scale.

686
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 1: Well, we definitely got to keep going. But the problem is,

687
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: number one, we have no guarantee that there is a

688
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: fundamental layer. And I hear this all the time. Plank

689
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: scale is the pixel of reality. And Elon Musk likes

690
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:05,799
Speaker 1: to say, and it's sort of out there in the

691
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: popular science world that we somehow know that the plank

692
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: scale is the layer, the finest grain we have of reality.

693
00:35:13,360 --> 00:35:17,480
Speaker 1: And that's just fundamentally a misunderstanding. The Plank scale is

694
00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:21,319
Speaker 1: the point where we can no longer ignore gravity when

695
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: we do our quantum mechanical calculations because things are so

696
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 1: hot and so dense, and we can no longer ignore

697
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics when we do our gravity calculations because things

698
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 1: are so small and the particles are now relevant. And

699
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 1: so it's just the point beyond which we can no

700
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: longer calculate. It's sort of like an intellectual horizon, right.

701
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: We don't know anything about what's below the Plank scale.

702
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: I remember, the plank scale is not even like a

703
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: solid estimate of these things. It's just like, well, let's

704
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 1: take a bunch of constants and mush them together until

705
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:53,919
Speaker 1: we get a distance. That's not like a reliable way

706
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:56,600
Speaker 1: to estimate things. It's what you do when you have

707
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,400
Speaker 1: no idea how to answer a question on a test.

708
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:01,840
Speaker 1: I'm just going to guess the units and see what

709
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:04,240
Speaker 1: numbers I can push together to get the right units.

710
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:07,240
Speaker 1: Maybe this is close. I hope it's within a factor

711
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: of one hundred or one thousand. So the playing scale

712
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 1: is no guarantee that the universe has a fundamental layer.

713
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 1: And if you talk to philosophers, they think it's just

714
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,879
Speaker 1: as likely that the universe as what they call gunky right,

715
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: that everything is made of something smaller, nothing is made

716
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:28,439
Speaker 1: of itself. And immediately you're like, what come on, how

717
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: could that possibly be? But actually, if you think about it,

718
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: it's the more natural explanation. Everything we've ever seen has

719
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: been made of something else, So why would we expect

720
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: there to be something which is just made of itself.

721
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: It feels sort of like, you know, the cause that

722
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: needs no cause. You know, it's a bizarre philosophical construct,

723
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: and we assume it's natural even though we've never seen

724
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 1: it in the universe. So this is the kind of

725
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: stuff where you really got to ask yourself, why do

726
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 1: I accept this explanation and not that other explanation when

727
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: I have no evidence and not even really great arguments

728
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 1: for it.

729
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 3: So you're saying that we might be just digging down

730
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 3: and down and down and down ad infinitum.

731
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be that it goes on forever, right,

732
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: that it's just smaller and smaller and smaller down infinitely, right,

733
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: an infinite tower of effective theories, an infinite tower of

734
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:24,640
Speaker 1: emergent phenomena. And so we can't shortcut this question by saying,

735
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 1: we're just going to zoom down to the fundamentals and

736
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:28,960
Speaker 1: talk to the aliens about the sprawings or the springs

737
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 1: or the shmings or whatever is down there at the

738
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 1: fundamental layer, because we don't know that there is a

739
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: fundamental layer.

740
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 3: Do you think they'll stop giving out Nobel Prizes eventually

741
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 3: if it turns out there's just like infinite fundamental layers

742
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 3: and they're like, you know, Kelly found the twentieth one,

743
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:44,800
Speaker 3: Daniel found the twenty fifth.

744
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 2: Hooray oh.

745
00:37:47,280 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: In this scenario, you're a particle physicist who's discovered some

746
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: fundamental layer of reality. Love that.

747
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 2: Welcome a book, ellogist, Man, I can do anything. Thanks.

748
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: After you win the Olympics, right, and I'm gonna hang

749
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: this no next to my Olympic gold medal. Wow? Wait?

750
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:05,359
Speaker 1: Has there ever been anybody who won an Olympic medal

751
00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: and a Nobel Prize?

752
00:38:06,600 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 3: Hmm oh, Philip Noel Baker is the only person who

753
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 3: has won both an Olympic medal and a Nobel Prize.

754
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:18,359
Speaker 3: Amazing it was for a race in the nineteen twenty

755
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:20,239
Speaker 3: Summer Olympics. I mean things were easier then.

756
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:22,720
Speaker 1: That's an incredible achievement.

757
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 2: Congrats, dude, I think he's passed away.

758
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it could be the particle physics is just

759
00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: a big grift for infinite Nobel prizes. Yes, that's the

760
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: answer to your question. Oh yes, you forced me to

761
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:37,439
Speaker 1: reveal that on air.

762
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 2: Thank you, amazing, amazing.

763
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, good time, My work here is done, all

764
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 3: right on the next episode.

765
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: No, So, now, imagine, right, we have this tower of

766
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: effective theories that we use to describe science. We have chemistry,

767
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: we have physics, we have particle physics, we have subatomic

768
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: particle physics. And the question then is like, well, if

769
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: they there's no firmament in which to ground these things,

770
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 1: and we don't know why these things seem to emerge

771
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: to allow us to explain them, why they're not just

772
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: like totally intractable, then do we know if aliens would

773
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 1: or wouldn't find the same tower of effective theories? Like,

774
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: you know, the skeptic in you might say, well, look,

775
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: you know, planets are obviously a thing. Aliens are going

776
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:24,879
Speaker 1: to think about planets, you know, orbiting stars. Like, let's

777
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: not get ahead of ourselves and get too deep in

778
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: the philosophy that we imagine that like aliens don't observe

779
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: planets and come up with Kepler's laws, right, That's so,

780
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,359
Speaker 1: I think that's like an intuitive argument people might make

781
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 1: to feel like aliens are going to see the same

782
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: stuff as we.

783
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 3: They're probably going to call it Zorblacks's laws or something,

784
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, exactly.

785
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: And that might be right. And I don't want to

786
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,720
Speaker 1: say that that's impossible, but I do want to open

787
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: your mind maybe a little bit, to the possibility that

788
00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: they wouldn't see planets. Think about why we think about

789
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: planets and does it actually make sense to think about planets,

790
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: because in reality, the Solar system is a big spectrum

791
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: of stuff. You know, you have the Sun and then

792
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:04,919
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of other little blobs, and those

793
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 1: blobs go all the way from Jupiter down to dust

794
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: specs and humans we like to categorize things, right, We

795
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 1: like to say this is A and this is B.

796
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: And historically we saw a few different kinds of things,

797
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: and so we started making boxes. But also we've seen

798
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,759
Speaker 1: over time that those boxes don't really make sense. That

799
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: our categories of stuff are sort of arbitrary dotted lines

800
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: that we draw around things and not just randomly we

801
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:33,399
Speaker 1: draw those arbitrary dotted lines in a way to make

802
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: ourselves more important. This whole concept of planets that we

803
00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: argue with Phil Metzger about it recently on the podcast.

804
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: Does it even make sense to have this category? It's

805
00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: obvious to me because this category has become so baroque.

806
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 1: You know, they have to add so many qualifiers. It

807
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: has to have cleared its path that has to be

808
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: gravitationally round. They're reverse engineering this category because we like it.

809
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 1: We want there to be a special category of things

810
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 1: that seem important and that are relevant to us. But

811
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 1: if you're going to take like a hard objective scientific

812
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: eye to the Solar System, you might never come up

813
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:09,919
Speaker 1: with this special category of planets. You might just think

814
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: about the whole spectrum of things and not focus on

815
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 1: Earth like things at all.

816
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 3: So would you argue that definitions are I mean, they're

817
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 3: certainly invented. Yeah, is a definition ever discovering the nature

818
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 3: of the universe? I guess it's always just our way

819
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 3: of grappling with stuff.

820
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: I think definitions are helpful, but categories are often very

821
00:41:30,239 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: arbitrary and lead you down the wrong path and make

822
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:35,120
Speaker 1: you think something is special or something is different when

823
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 1: in reality there's a spectrum. You know, think about gender,

824
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 1: think about like you know, the platypus, right, which is

825
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: like what And these categories they're helpful for organizing your thoughts.

826
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:48,600
Speaker 1: But you got to remember that there are things we

827
00:41:48,640 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: impose on the universe. They're not always things that emerge

828
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:53,520
Speaker 1: naturally from the universe. And that's the point I want

829
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: to make, is that even things that we feel like

830
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 1: we are just observing have a lot of our cultural

831
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 1: bio in them. I mean, think about the way we

832
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 1: represent the Solar System when we draw it out right,

833
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: like it's not representative at all. We take the planets

834
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 1: and we like magnify them by huge numbers to make

835
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,040
Speaker 1: them relevant, when in reality they're pretty irrelevant. The Solar

836
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: System is basically the Sun plus a few drops of gas, right.

837
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 1: So it's obvious once you drill into it that there's

838
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 1: a lot of humanity in our choices of what to

839
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,239
Speaker 1: study and think about in the universe. And so it

840
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: might be that aliens have made different choices that they're

841
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:30,919
Speaker 1: like they grew up in the atmosphere of a star

842
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: and they're like planet Schmanitz, who cares? Or maybe they

843
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,360
Speaker 1: evolved in a subsurface ocean on a moon, and so

844
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: to them, like who cares at all about planets? Maybe

845
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: they think about things fundamentally differently.

846
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a break and when we get

847
00:42:44,719 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 3: back we will answer the simple question of whether or

848
00:42:47,600 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 3: not there is a truth at all. And we're back

849
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,280
Speaker 3: and we are about to answer, you know, the only

850
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:17,800
Speaker 3: question that really matters, which is is their truth at all?

851
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 3: And the good news is Daniels thought a lot about

852
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:21,279
Speaker 3: this and now we're going to know.

853
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, we're just going to wrap up a millennia

854
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: old philosophical conversation here on the pod today. So so

855
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 1: far we've been talking as part of the larger question

856
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:33,120
Speaker 1: of like is physics discovered or invented? We've been asking

857
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: like could you have several maps of the same territory?

858
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: But it always in that sense assumes that there is

859
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 1: a territory, that there is fundamentally something that's going on.

860
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,000
Speaker 1: I heard this sentiment in the listeners responses, right, well,

861
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:49,239
Speaker 1: maybe our description of the universe is human, but there's

862
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: something going on. And so let's question that assumption, like,

863
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: how do we know that there really is something going

864
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: on out there in the universe one truth, whether or

865
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: not we're just discovering it or describing it or approximating it. Right,

866
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: how do we know that there really is something that's

867
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: going on out there? And when I first started digging

868
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: into this, I thought, well, of course there is, right,

869
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: something is happening in the universe, and there has to

870
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: be a reason why stuff happens, right, But not surprisingly,

871
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 1: philosophers have responses to that, and they've thought about ways

872
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 1: that might not be true because remember that all of

873
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:28,800
Speaker 1: our descriptions of the universe, they are approximate, right, because

874
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,359
Speaker 1: we can't do the really complicated calculations like we talked

875
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:33,880
Speaker 1: about earlier. We can describe a couple of rain drops,

876
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: we can't describe the hurricane, or we can't describe like

877
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:39,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of hurricanes smashing into each other, or really

878
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: complicated situations. There is always going to be something that

879
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:46,359
Speaker 1: we cannot describe. Because all of our laws are approximate, right,

880
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: they only apply in certain situations. Like, for example, take

881
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: fluid dynamics. Right, fluid dynamics works really well. It helps

882
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: you think about how water flows down pipes. But we

883
00:44:57,200 --> 00:44:59,760
Speaker 1: know number one, it's not a fundamental description of the universe.

884
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:03,560
Speaker 1: It's a description of an emergent phenomena. But number two,

885
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: it's only valid in certain situations. You freeze that water,

886
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:10,440
Speaker 1: you no longer gonna apply fluid dynamics. You turn it

887
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 1: into steam, you're no longer gonna apply fluid dynamics. In

888
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: that same way, everything we can do about the universe

889
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: has boundaries where it's relevant, right, and you go beyond

890
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 1: those boundaries, you can no longer use your fluid dynamics

891
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:27,759
Speaker 1: or your chemistry, even fundamental physics. Right. Quantum mechanics and

892
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: gravity are only relevant down to the plank scale, and

893
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: beyond that, who knows what the laws of physics are.

894
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 1: So there's a school of philosophy that says, h how

895
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: do we know there are laws of physics? Beyond those boundaries? Maybe,

896
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 1: instead of imagining that we have this patchwork of theories

897
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 1: that eventually we could stitch together to describe the truth,

898
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 1: maybe between those patches there's nothing. So Nancy Cartwright wrote

899
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 1: this book called How the Laws of Physics Lie, and

900
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:01,560
Speaker 1: we're like, wow, bold title, right, Yeah, And she imagines

901
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 1: the universe where between these patches where things get complicated,

902
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: that maybe what happens happens by Hap. That's her phrase,

903
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: that there is no fundamental rule, And you know, every

904
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: instinct in me, every fiber of my being, says no,

905
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: that's crazy, right, the universe follows laws. But then I ask, well,

906
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: how do I know that exactly? I only know that

907
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:29,400
Speaker 1: because it seems to work in simple situations where I

908
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:32,360
Speaker 1: can set up a simplified experiment and I can do

909
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,440
Speaker 1: a calculation to predict it. And that's really what experiments are.

910
00:46:36,160 --> 00:46:40,280
Speaker 1: Ways you've like tricked the universe into only doing something

911
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: simple enough that we can calculate it. That's the whole

912
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,279
Speaker 1: job of experimental physics is to concoct these artificial scenarios

913
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:49,919
Speaker 1: where things are simple enough for us to predict. Most

914
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: of the stuff that happens in the universe, from you know,

915
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,320
Speaker 1: like tiny particles to hurricanes to even like the leaves

916
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: swirling outside my office, we could never hope to calculate.

917
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,640
Speaker 1: So how do we know that it follows rules? If

918
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 1: you're going to be a skeptic about it, you got

919
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 1: to say, like, hmmm, I guess we actually don't know, right.

920
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: It could be that when things get complicated, there aren't

921
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 1: laws that are being followed, And I don't believe that,

922
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: but I don't have a scientific reason to not believe it.

923
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:22,280
Speaker 3: My brain has trouble wrapping itself around how that could

924
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,799
Speaker 3: possibly be true. But that might be the limit of

925
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 3: my imagination.

926
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think even Nancy Cartwright probably doesn't like

927
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 1: believe this in her soul. But it's a very valuable

928
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:34,320
Speaker 1: exercise to think, well, is it possible for the universe

929
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,839
Speaker 1: to be different from what we expect at some deep

930
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:40,600
Speaker 1: fundamental way, because historically we've seen that happen. Right, the

931
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 1: universe turns out it violates lots of our intuition, you know,

932
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 1: the way things operate near the speed of light or microscopically,

933
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: the fact that cause and effect has a stochastic element

934
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: to it. These things we would have been rejected out

935
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: of hand right initially, like that's crazy, there's no way

936
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: the universe works that way. And yet it does. And

937
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:01,359
Speaker 1: so we do need to be prepared to have our

938
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:03,680
Speaker 1: minds blown. And that's the whole joy of this exercise,

939
00:48:03,760 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: is to imagine, like what if aliens show up and

940
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:10,359
Speaker 1: they tell us the universe is really fundamentally different from

941
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:12,719
Speaker 1: the way that we expect. That's why we want the

942
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:16,680
Speaker 1: aliens to show up to shock us to reveal an amazing,

943
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,600
Speaker 1: mind blowing truth. And yeah, it'd be kind of disappointing

944
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:22,319
Speaker 1: to discover that the laws of physics only apply in

945
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: simplified situations. And beyond that there is this darkness right

946
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:30,399
Speaker 1: where the universe doesn't follow laws, but we don't know

947
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: that it's not true.

948
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:34,319
Speaker 3: I feel like if the aliens came and they were like, nah,

949
00:48:34,440 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 3: you guys are totally wrong, like I mean, it would

950
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 3: be wouldn't it be decades before you could convince yourself

951
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:40,399
Speaker 3: that they were right?

952
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 2: Instead?

953
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:42,799
Speaker 3: Would you like, if the alien said, Daniel, you're wrong,

954
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:44,319
Speaker 3: would you just be like, all right, I'm throwing away

955
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 3: everything we know the alien said so, and I'm a

956
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 3: super fan.

957
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really fun question. So in the book,

958
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,160
Speaker 1: I actually imagine a bunch of different alien contact scenarios,

959
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:57,560
Speaker 1: and one of them is that exact one. The aliens

960
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:00,439
Speaker 1: show up and have a competing theory of physics, and

961
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:04,240
Speaker 1: in that hypothetical example, I imagine that some humans are like, oh,

962
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 1: you know, our theory never made sense to me. I

963
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 1: really like this alien idea, and they go over to

964
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,360
Speaker 1: the alien camp and some aliens are like, oh, you

965
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,359
Speaker 1: know what, I really prefer the human way, and like

966
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 1: people have different ways of thinking, the way that some

967
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: people need to see something written out and other people

968
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:20,839
Speaker 1: need to hear it, or some people need to play

969
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: with something. Right, there's different kinds of learners. So maybe

970
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:27,240
Speaker 1: some people will find the alien description of the universe

971
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:30,960
Speaker 1: more intuitive and easier to play with, and other people

972
00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: will feel the opposite. It'd be fascinating how that breaks out.

973
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would. I hope I'm alive to see it.

974
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 1: Another objection people make to the idea that we could

975
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 1: be getting physics all wrong, or that physics could have

976
00:49:44,160 --> 00:49:47,120
Speaker 1: a lot of humanity into it is the idea that

977
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 1: you raised at the beginning of the episode. You know what,

978
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 1: if we have a bunch of data and it describes

979
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: the universe, doesn't that tell us that our theory is right?

980
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: And this is this question of uniqueness, right do we

981
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: know that there has to be one explanation for the universe?

982
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: And earlier we were giving the examples of having a

983
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:07,960
Speaker 1: superseded theory, like, well, maybe you have a theory and

984
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 1: it works for now, but then later you get more data,

985
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 1: so you've got toss out that theory for a new one.

986
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:15,800
Speaker 1: That's cool. And that's almost certainly what we're doing today,

987
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:18,120
Speaker 1: right that in the future we'll have a theory of

988
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:21,399
Speaker 1: quantum gravity that tells us a different story about what's

989
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: happening in the universe and any of the stories we

990
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: have now, So we'll toss out our whole explanation for

991
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: what's really out there and come up with a new one. Cool.

992
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 1: But what if we find the fundamental layer of reality.

993
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,440
Speaker 1: We discover it and we explain it, and we have

994
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: a theory that works perfectly and incorporates dark energy and

995
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: dark matter and the expansion and everything, and all of

996
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: our questions are answered and it tells us this beautiful

997
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: story about what's happening. Then aliens show up. Could they

998
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 1: have a different theory that explains the same experiments? Could

999
00:50:48,760 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 1: they have done the same experiments, made the same observations,

1000
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:54,360
Speaker 1: but draw a different line through the same data points.

1001
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: The answer is, philosophically, yeah, maybe, because you'll never have

1002
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: infinite data, and even if you did, you could always

1003
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 1: still draw two different curves. Right. Just imagine, like plotting

1004
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: a bunch of points on a piece of paper, how

1005
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:11,319
Speaker 1: many curves could you draw through those points? An infinite number? Right?

1006
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:13,920
Speaker 1: Make the curve as complex as you like, you can

1007
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: draw an infinite number, and so we never really know

1008
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,960
Speaker 1: if our explanation is the only one. And this is

1009
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: something philosophers are deeply debating, Like there's a bunch of

1010
00:51:24,600 --> 00:51:28,759
Speaker 1: philosophers who say, look, if you have another theory that

1011
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 1: explains the data equally, well, it's got to be equivalent,

1012
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: you know, it's got to be like the same theory

1013
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: dressed in different clothes. And they point to good examples,

1014
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 1: like we used to have a wave theory of quantum

1015
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:42,760
Speaker 1: mechanics and a matrix theory of quantum mechanics, each derived

1016
00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:45,320
Speaker 1: by a different German guy, and those two guys disliked

1017
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 1: each other and called each other's theories crap. And then

1018
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: later John von Neuman brought them together and said, look, guys,

1019
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:54,320
Speaker 1: these are actually the same theory. I can draw connections

1020
00:51:54,320 --> 00:51:56,080
Speaker 1: between them and prove it. Or we used to have

1021
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of different string theories until at Witten show

1022
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:02,359
Speaker 1: they're actually just extreme points of the same m theory, right.

1023
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:05,760
Speaker 1: Or we have like Hamiltonian mechanics and Lagrange and mechanics,

1024
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: two different ways to think about complex physics that are

1025
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: fundamentally the same. So isn't it just like that, maybe

1026
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:14,360
Speaker 1: the aliens have a different description, but you know, you

1027
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: can make connections. We don't know, right, We don't know

1028
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: if every theory has to be that way. And another

1029
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 1: group of philosophers say that there might be another explanation,

1030
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 1: that it's possible to have another theory of physics that

1031
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:30,840
Speaker 1: doesn't map over, that is conceptually different to our theory,

1032
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:33,479
Speaker 1: But we don't know, right, we don't have that theory.

1033
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: We would have a recipe for building this alternate theory.

1034
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,840
Speaker 1: So it's just like a speculation. It's an argument we

1035
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 1: don't know how to defeat, which means it might be possible.

1036
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:46,239
Speaker 3: Okay, So if we ended up discovering the theory of

1037
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 3: everything and we felt like we had it all figured out, Yeah,

1038
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:51,440
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you if you would put

1039
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 3: up a giant billboard saying never mind.

1040
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:54,839
Speaker 2: Aliens, we got it all figured out.

1041
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 3: But what you're saying is you'd be interested to see

1042
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:00,480
Speaker 3: if they had a different way to describe everything. But

1043
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 3: some philosophers would say, well, that doesn't really matter because

1044
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,239
Speaker 3: it's fundamentally going to be the same theory, even if

1045
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:07,360
Speaker 3: it's wearing different clothes.

1046
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:10,600
Speaker 1: There's no scenario in which I'm putting up a billboard

1047
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: saying aliens never mind, no scenario, but yeah, we have

1048
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 1: a theory of everything and they show up and they

1049
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: have a different theory of everything. Then that's fascinating, right,

1050
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:24,239
Speaker 1: because even if it is fundamentally the same, you're still

1051
00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: learning something mathematically or philosophically and it's fundamentally different. If

1052
00:53:28,520 --> 00:53:31,440
Speaker 1: you can't make a connection between the two, boom, that

1053
00:53:31,480 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: tells you something mind blowing about the universe. That you

1054
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: could have two different maps of the same territory that

1055
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 1: both work. Then, like, is there really a territory? What

1056
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 1: does that say about our sense that there is an objective,

1057
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,360
Speaker 1: physical reality that's out there that doing things following some

1058
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: laws that we're figuring out, Like, maybe that's not the case.

1059
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: Maybe things are more complicated or weirder than we imagine.

1060
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: So I'm always in the camp of hoping for the weird,

1061
00:53:57,160 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 1: surprising outcome.

1062
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:02,600
Speaker 3: Danielle, I really hope you get your aliens one day.

1063
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:05,160
Speaker 1: I hope I do, and I hope that they don't

1064
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: nuke us from space before they tell us the answers

1065
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: to all of these questions.

1066
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 2: You are a weird one, daniel and.

1067
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:14,799
Speaker 1: This is just a taste of all the concepts we

1068
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 1: describe in the book Do Aliens Speak Physics, where we

1069
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:20,759
Speaker 1: do a really deep dive into these questions. It also

1070
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 1: includes a bunch of really fun cartoons for my friend

1071
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 1: Andy Warner, who helped me write the book, and little

1072
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:29,919
Speaker 1: hypothetical case studies to examine concrete scenarios where aliens could

1073
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:32,799
Speaker 1: show up and be weirdly different in ways you might

1074
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:36,359
Speaker 1: not expect. So if you enjoy these questions and enjoy

1075
00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:39,080
Speaker 1: this conversation, there's lots more in the book, go check

1076
00:54:39,120 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: it out Do Aliens Speak Physics. You can get it

1077
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,400
Speaker 1: at www dot Alienspeakphysics dot com.

1078
00:54:44,440 --> 00:54:46,560
Speaker 3: And I think if aliens do come to visit the US,

1079
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Speaker 3: this book is going to be the first thing they

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Speaker 3: grab travel across the cosmos for this book totally makes

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Speaker 3: sense worth doing.

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Speaker 1: I hope they're not offended by our depictions.

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Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: We really would. We want to know what questions you

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Speaker 1: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 3: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

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Speaker 3: for future shows.

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Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

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Speaker 1: at Questions at Danielankelly.

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