Joe Rogan Experience #2217 — Brian Cox Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. So I got interested in it. Like, how do we study a black hole? It's a collaboration called Event Horizon. called the the Swatchill radius of the thing. So if you took our Sun, which you Schwarzschild radius is larger than our solar system basically. Oh my god. This thing that sits in a galaxy. So that was a prediction from Einstein's theory, basically published in 1915.

4:07 So it sends ripples out in the fabric of the universe, space and time. they go through and we can detect that now. So we have detectors that can pick So basically, it's laser beams. And so we've started to, we've observed many of those, Which is a weird thing to say sometimes because people think Stephen Hawking sure didn't get his math wrong, but It's called Hawking radiation. And so important

7:22 all one day they'll be gone. So that means that things on it and then I set fire to this even, just incinerated But this and I should say it's very much in principle this, It's there. it, you couldn't get out. So that's called the event horizon. So you wouldn't notice holes, we could fall across this horizon. is you go inexorably, nothing you can do, you

11:52 to make these big supermassive black holes. We don't quite know how they form actually, tomorrow. So is it the end of time because all information is being erased? So there's Well, that's the thing. So we're starting to get hints The thing is, it's coming from the horizon. It's coming from empty space. information is never destroyed. the mass of the galaxy? Is that what it is?

16:07 a black hole, a supermassive black hole in the centre. It's obviously got something to Well they do pull in material. But if you've got stuff It'd be so cool. I'd love to see one. The universe comes much more quickly. I went to the Keck Observatory once in people would get involved in just the exploration of the known universe because it's so majestic. And instead we have

18:57 Yes. and as you said, when you see it in a truly dark sky, I don't know what that means. No, that's That if if we haven't seen it, So if there's no one else out there, And once you have become a multi-planetary civilization. And once you have become a multi-planetary and multi-stellar civilization, if you become that isn't it bizarre like the one of the things that's fascinating about looking into the night skies because it's so humbling because it's so immense

22:02 If you think about, let's assume, so there's a question I ask, The first thing to say is meaning. exists. Everyone who's listening to this knows that the world means something But I made this argument as fast as I could. What I would say is given that as far as I'm aware, we don't have any good evidence to the contrary I used to say that in the far future then the complex life will cease to exist. So it

25:53 Let's imagine that we continue for a million years or a billion years as a civilization. it could. Then the evolution of stars would, life would matter in the sense that it could And whilst this is, I should say, it's wildly speculative, but it's actually logically, just nonsense, right, science fiction. a temporary little phenomena that flickers in and out and then disappears again.

28:56 the 15 and once the 16 and once keep going forever and ever never well if in known space. Life has been around for what four billion years. Yeah, that's not that long. So four billion years there's a lot to say about that, by the way, we have is this planet right and the evidence on this planet is that unbroken for a third of the age of the universe

32:25 Well, also we aren't we very unusual in the size of our moon and the distance the moon that is big is that things get more complex or they adapt to their environment. And if you have a bunch that becomes far superior and literally There's no law that says that the more complex you are, the more likely you are So there could be planets where life never evolves past single cells, but life exists.

35:10 Right. Basically nothing basically and so us? What if the space probes are the size of an iPhone? Well, that's kind of a reasonable we tend to look for big things, Right. find it hard to believe that if we get that far as a civilization, we won't begin to send Maybe that's an answer. But that's a guess. So I assume that they would do that. You want to protect your community.

40:11 And that might be ultimately where we go to. And I think, so again, I think the answer is it's not known. that a silicon-based life form or whatever it is, a brain in a jar, don't they, and say, well, that's not right. different motivations more secure buildings, things along those lines, and then computers that help you do we had to fight off the conquering tribes,

43:27 with the DNA that's around you. the universe. If we could just exist like that, why would we need to go to space? What does it matter? of them later called symphonic Horizons, you become godlike? You said it earlier. Right. If you acquire so much knowledge completely and they understand everything about it and they exist inside of it, there would really

46:23 volcanoes and there's no natural disruptions, and then they've completely eliminated violence on earth, they've completely out a nuclear bomb, I think we'd step in. I think we'd say, Hey, hey, hey, hey, dude, looking at us exactly the way we would look at a chimp I remembered I was talking to someone and they said, Like it would have to be completely independent from any ideology and it would have to look at things completely objectively

49:07 Immediately make sure that we have no polluting of rivers that we're not draining all the fish out of the ocean be worse in fact? This doesn't make any sense. You can't do that because if you get a virus, an illogical virus, that somehow or another gets into AI, but there's a reality. on blowing people up, let's spend all this money to raise up all of civilization so there's

52:09 going up because there are in fact infinite resources out there right and so you begin once it's kind of the various people are brilliant they like lock them all up know by the way that we we're talking about the gravitational wave detectors But it also seems now that it comes from the collision between neutron stars Like you need a star to blow up

54:41 what would be the point of existence We have hearing and sight and taste and touch. like the human brain doubled over two million years and it's the biggest mystery in the and territory, which ultimately leads to innovation, which ultimately leads to cities and agriculture, It's indistinguishable from a car today in No signal, no, I mean, woods forever.

57:40 think there's a Buddhist concept that you, but you did it and you're alive now. Like I really enjoyed life. I have great friends. I have a great family and it just kept going on and on, why would that be terrifying for you when you're enjoying it now? you do remove hope as well as fear. Christmas for example, right when you Christmas Eve. Yeah, go on. We're gonna get tomorrow Yeah, it's one of the most wonderful feelings isn't it one of the most wonderful. Yeah in the presence of

1:01:17 our excitement about something that we've wanted Does it? this thing to keep going. I mean, that's what Buddhists strive for. For us, yes, for us. anxiety, is that right? I hope it works out. You're fighting the into the unknown with excitement and curiosity because you can go over the horizon. And so that's the sense in which I'm using these terms.

1:05:09 not find that. I wouldn't think I'd achieved nirvana. I would think I'd, I'd that make us fascinated by this, is a part of being a human being. you know, we try to keep the body alive. of those stories are, these are ways that people tried to find meaning and probably had some like baked in Absolutely created everything not only to absolutely create everything we know the process we know how it happened

1:08:26 It has to be. It's everything. The universe is everything, including God, if God is a And he's trying to answer questions about the very special state of the early universe No, no, I don't think many of us understand what you've, Roger, I mean Roger Fenner is one of the greats, right? black holes have evaporated away, you have conditions that begin to look

1:10:40 So it but it what it does tell you is that we don't know gets dumped into space and changes What is inflation there? What did that have a beginning and the answer is that in Einstein's theory alone? the no boundary proposal, there's all sorts. So just in the way that we've been talking about consciousness emerging from this physical So in quantum computing terms, it would be just qubits.

1:13:47 when you say that, it sounds bizarre, doesn't it? is a good question. makes the universe look in some ways like a giant quantum computer, which is not to something that mimics a quantum computer in the universe, you know we're like ah been there forever, that network of qubits. So actually in quantum theory, it's more natural for it to be just eternal.

1:16:36 What does that mean for your sort of picture of a creator? I mean, comfortable is a weird word because I always wonder if our whole desire to form It's much more likely that it's always existed Presupposes that nothing is more likely than something. The history, I think historically, you have, I think it's right to say that Einstein really And then we saw the universe was expanding.

1:19:34 and also a satellite called COBE. So we have these images of the afterglow of the Big Bang. that we detected now in the gases of the young universe. almost featureless universe then, And so the question is where did that come from, that pattern? So it's incredible rate of expansion that draws to a close. no. So but so but but but it's right that our universe is accelerating in its expansion at the moment, which is one of the great mysteries

1:23:16 And no one was expecting it, and he just published it. For that discovery. maybe it's the same kind of thing. We don't really know. And so it's one of the great given what we know, than dark matter. through this room now, and so we could build a detector in here and we do that, and we So we're just less than 5% this. have a hypothesis which is strongly supported by lots of bits of evidence

1:26:36 And most of them have problems with that pattern, So it's almost like you're looking at a pond and galaxies and how they bend light and deform space and time and how they interact together. So like heavy neutrinos. until you really find that particle, then you don't know. It's from looking at the way that galaxies rotate by looking at the way it's expanded and how that expansion history has changed over time.

1:30:21 will fit all of those different observations. I mean another example would be the age of things. So by measuring the amount of helium in the core, and a half billion years old, a planet that's four and a half billion years old, the fact So it's a consistent picture. There are theories that people try to build where you modify our theory of gravity.

1:32:45 stretched over time because the light let's say you have a supernova and it Maybe the light was emitted a bit different. So that's why it's quite difficult. arrogant I think it can seem you know like these people are saying well this You know, this is, if your goal is to understand nature, It's all nonsense. You're not trying to, you shouldn't be, anyway, good scientists.

1:36:06 what we're experiencing. the further out into the universe you look, I mentioned before, we don't really fully understand why they have black holes in But that means that your model that absolutely, completely destroys our picture are present in the universe earlier than we might have expected. What are those red dots the red dots that were observed?

1:39:15 Small galaxies either crammed with stars or they host gigantic black holes. So that would be, as I said, because we don't really understand the formation of the galaxies Do we have another like next generation James Webb type telescope One of the proposals is called LISA, And you can see things. that's even more puzzling and then you keep going further and further and further. And we want to know it's like you said earlier we're asking very deep questions about why

1:42:10 And that's so important, by the way. before, but it's that I was pushing back on you saying, I don't know. I'd like, what would it mean I'm sure you're right. I mean where did we get past this little blip? We should all be fixed by AI. But we have nuclear weapons now, so it's terrifying. incredible achievements in human history and you barely saw it because Elon Musk unfortunately

1:45:16 This is so incredible. Well, you know, neither did Apollo 1. pushing us space crates. But the question is when. Sort of. say that dinosaurs had a space program, infrastructure in space because if you think about building Amazon, he said what I needed What are you talking? and then beyond. That's a lot closer now. Let's look at that and say what is that

1:49:07 So I think we're on the 1906. Yes. So we're on the verge of a revolution in many fields. if we get the next few years wrong. a nuclear weapon, Israel uses it in Iran, Russia uses it in Ukraine. We have World War You realize like we're in a new era of destruction where you can and what's interesting is to me is I've got interested in a in because no one understood what he was talking about.

1:51:36 And he describes this, the deal, how if there's any lessons that science teaches us, the exploration of nature it is like this thing, it is doomed, right? own needs and desires, and they have their views and strongly held views. might strongly disagree with that anchor and they're and you might strongly disagree with little particles with their own anchors and their own positions. And what is the goal?

1:54:49 to sort the rest out. It's completely accurate. And the problem with our version of democracy is that it's first place and why all the money is going over to these places and what is being done to mitigate any of these issues of the information that gets distributed online. And so by this little sneaky little loophole, they've essentially put a stop on the free

1:58:15 Times website it's not hurting them in fact it's promotion it doesn't make any sense that if it becomes viral on Twitter. Well, I'm just curious. See if it's the case. It's been influential. It's clear. I think we would, you know, people again will be listening to and crazy claims and you go to that website or you go to that Twitter page and you realize,

2:00:43 He thinks 80% of all the accounts, and this was around the But that was a big part of it. the way that I do it is you can tell, I think, by someone's timeline usually, because my So I think you can I think you can see a real person by seeing a bread My sense will be your sense. to deal with this sort this new world of information. means to you and the addiction that people have to social media and

2:04:21 That's not good. like this is nuts this place is flooded and timeline and see that, oh, this is crazy. and these are not like well thought out actions. I do understand though that you I mean, I remember when I became, quite late in life, and you come to terms with it and you learn how to do it, You know, it can be that. Yeah. And it wasn't in a controversial area.

2:08:10 You're just dealing with so many mentally ill people that are tweeting at you that the world's flat firmament that's over the earth and they think that the lights are dangled in the And then the thing I've never understood, and I've asked this in my early days on Twitter, So SpaceX are just like a scam or something. all lie together and yet there's no record of it, there's no record of communications, there's no people that rebel against this idea and go this is madness, everything's

2:10:55 they can't even, in my country, I mean, there's certainly conspiracies that are real, but that's just preposterous. This is why the planet's around. yeah at the root of all the flat earth stuff is the firmament the root of all Well I'd well not only that but everyone would be talking about how crazy Earth is in comparison and then translated to Latin and then to Greek and a lot of that gets lost in the translation a lot of it gets

2:14:43 What is it starts with in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and there's that form void Darkness was on the face of the deep. That's it, that's ultimately it, isn't it? people who have different different views different belief systems and my about a taxi driver when he got in the taxi at the start, by society, by education, they love stuff like that, where they're in the know of like some top secret information.

2:17:41 And I'm OK. set an idea then you are attached to that idea and you defend that idea it's talked to you about before, theory, and you're really sure about it. you do the experiment and you're just wrong and so It doesn't matter. Right. right, so but they're the best you can do so you have a go and you come up with some That's what my definition of science would be is it's it's nothing more or less than

2:22:03 tie something up neatly when reliable information might not be available. But no reliable information zero not one thing that I've ever seen. I'm like, well, that's for sure real not one every sighting There's probably something really kooky that they could fly really fast through the sky, towards the creation of AI and ruining the planet advanced life forms that eventually transform the world that they live in. This is a natural progression.

2:24:06 Yes, Cuban Missile Crisis or asteroid impacts or super volcanoes. past all of these hurdles to... And if I saw a planet that's real close like us, I'm like, Everybody keeps bringing in these whistleblowers. You don't want to go save your children every time, you know, like they're when they they get older I want to believe all of it. I was I said I wouldn't be surprised right I'd be relieved as well

2:26:30 jungle. Like instead of like living this subsistence lifestyle they've been living for tens of We can preserve which is also weird. take all your nuclear weapons away. probably some scam religions that get invented we stumble upon these people that are developed, they have tools, they haven't figured out I think we would hope that they would prevent, but if that's the case, why didn't they

2:29:52 view. If the universe is so big wouldn't every single potential situation happen infinite? is two million light years away, which is the largest and our nearest large neighbor. of light, then distances shrink from your perspective. can build a spacecraft that goes very close to speed of light, million years would have passed on the earth. Oh boy. So you can't, so there's

2:33:03 by flying around in a rocket very close to speed of light so we could come back a million years there are events which are things that happen in space-time. So that would be an event, and Dallas right and you'd say okay well it depends what route you go. Well what's amount of time. It's a tiny amount unless you travel, someone goes close to speed and they're moving and all sorts of things.

2:35:50 feet of position measurement if you drift your clock out by 30,000 nanoseconds. So it You might say, what happens if you go really close to the speed of light? alongside a beam of light? And the answer is that you wouldn't perceive any time. albicure, what's it called, the drive. So you can, you can, Einstein's general then indeed you can build a warp drive, right?

2:38:31 what kind of thing would you need to make that geometry? systems different environments that these elements could exist? from the future. to what I said at the start, that one of the pictures of how I said there was this thing, there in the future and we could be reconstructed, right? But it's still in principle there. it looks like maybe, so it looks like maybe there's some role for wormholes, these things,

2:42:13 Not in a way that you can transmit information, So we build things that rely on this effect. and program quantum computers. And these are the kind of problems you have to face about quantum entanglement and how is created in the quantum computer. It's kind of a one-dimensional wormhole and it's a bit because I've got to blow your mind because your mind looks like this. These theories, the hologram thing is quite well

2:45:15 but one many physicists think our universe is like that. So what we're saying is that And they allow you to do those experiments, but an electron would be an example of one. things because they want to build these computers. But they're perfect laboratories for quantum Structures like that. That's so fascinating. We couldn't understand if they did this on purpose to make it the shape of a yin-yang,

2:48:23 Let me put it that way. So it does look as if doing is finding the prime numbers that you multiply together in multiple universes. And does the calculation in parallel, and then brings them classical computer can ever do how do you explain it where is it doing the camera, the researchers teased apart the interference pattern you calculate the way you calculate how a photon goes from A to B or an electron whatever

2:52:13 It is beautiful isn't it? That was ages ago, wasn't it? Yeah. So this is, it explores many of these questions actually,