November 4, 2025 • 38 mins
What if aliens came to earth… and helped us unlock the mysteries of the universe? That’s the premise of our pal Daniel Whiteson’s new book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, and today on the show he tells us how thinking through this wacky scenario can tell us a lot about ourselves, our science, and the boundaries of knowledge. Plus: Why sci-fi is just as important as sci-non-fi.
- Buy Do Aliens Speak Physics or request it at your local bookstore or library!
- Check out Daniel’s podcast, Daniel & Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe!
- Learn more about Daniel’s research and other work!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Do you know there are more than one hundred billion
stars in our galaxy alone and more than one hundred
billion galaxies in the universe, And also that scientists have
estimated that of all the stars that exists, somewhere between
ten and thirty percent have Earth like planets, which means
the odds of us truly being alone in the universe
(00:46):
is practically zero.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You should probably go and say it. Are you saying
aliens are real?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No? I'm saying what if? Where the aliens? And somewhere
on some distant planet, a couple of Neon green best
friends are recording a podcast about us.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You know, I never thought about it that way, And
I'm curious, have you been watching X Files again?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Something so much better. I read this incredible book called
Do Aliens Speak?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Physics?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And Other Questions about Science and the nature of Reality?
And it is hilarious, which you know, I never thought
i'd say about a book about physics or philosophy. But
it's also this really fascinating exploration of the idea that
we're not alone in the universe, and that other intelligent
life may have evolved the ability to study science and
the same way or in a completely different way than us.
(01:30):
So what does that mean for us humans? If aliens
ever do land here, will we be able to have
a great meeting of the minds or will we just
stare at each other in total confusion. Luckily, the book's
co author Daniel Whitson, who is an actual physicist and
a friend of yours and mine, agreed to talk it
through with thee so we had such a great conversation.
I'm really excited to dive in. So I am here
(02:13):
with Daniel Whitson, who I've known for quite a while,
but he's just put out this book Do Aliens speak physics?
And other questions about science and the nature of reality?
And Daniel, I've had this galley for a while and
it is really just so exciting and lovely and the
joyous read, but also something that's like way more philosophical
(02:35):
than I was expecting. So I'm very excited to get
into this. But one of our first questions, you know,
I'm sure this happens to you at a lot of parties.
You introduce yourself one says, oh, what do you do
when you say I'm a particle physicist, and then they're like, okay,
so what do you do? And I'm curious, how do
you answer this?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Well?
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I usually start with a song because I heard an
amazing particle physics Explained by song episode on Part Time Genius,
and I thought that is the best way to explain
what we do. You know, we smash protons together at
nearly the speed of light and try to understand what
is the nature of matter. But that's a big project.
It's thousands of people, it's billions of dollars. What do
(03:16):
I actually do? The best thing about particle physics is
that it's a big community, and so we all get
to specialize. There is somebody who really loves making the
collider work, and somebody else who really loves tuning the
ectro links to work super fast. My personal niche is
in the data analysis and the statistics. I am a
statistics nerd and I love programming, so I ended up
(03:38):
doing a lot of machine learning and statistics. I'm the
guy who like analyzes the data and says, do we
see this particle or not? How can we squeeze a
little bit more information. What if we use this new technique,
what if we talk to our friends in AI. What
if we bring in this machine learning pattern recognition thing?
Can we squeeze a little bit more information out of
this incredibly expensive and valuable data that tells us something
(03:58):
about the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I love that. I also love the idea that making
things collide as a kid, whether it's like trucks or
cars or whatever, and then growing up and seeing the
value and seeing these collisions and understanding them can animate
a whole field of science.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, it really is rooted in childhood curiosity first, because
like the question we're asking, what's the universe made out of?
It's a very simple question, right, It's a question people
have been asking for a long long time. And also
the technique in principle is simple, like let's take things apart.
Let's smash our toy trucks together and see what comes out.
Let's dismantle the toaster on the counter and see what's
(04:34):
in it. And that's just what we're doing. Let's take
stuff apart as much as we can, as powerfully as
we can, and see what's inside, because we want to
know what is everything? Mad I've one of the smallest
bits of the universe what really determines who we are
and why we're here.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
You know, from the first time I heard you talk,
I was just so enamored with the way you explain things.
And you've written a couple of books now, and they're
really incredible explainers of the world and science and physics
and the universe. And I'm curious, like, how did you
get to this idea about encountering intelligent life and within
(05:11):
the universe and exchanging science ideas with intelligent life? Like
have you always been interested in aliens? Have you always
wondered about this?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Where? Where does this obsession come from?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Yeah, this obsession comes from just wanting to know the answers.
One of the things that appealed to me about physics
was the idea that it wasn't just a question we
were asking here on Earth, that the questions we're probing
were universal questions, not just like what is stuff on
Earth made out of? But what is stuff on Jupiter
made out of? What is stuff in the other star systems?
What is stuff around the universe made out of? That
appealed to me that these questions were universal, and so
(05:44):
that makes me wonder if there are people out there,
not people, but like other beings out there working on
the same questions, and maybe they have the answers, And
that's an incredibly powerful feeling of like, I don't know,
envy or jealousy, Like what is if there are aliens
out there that have been working on this for millions
of years and they could just tell us the answers
(06:05):
they know, right, Like it's fun to figure this out.
But man, if somebody could just download the answers into
my brain today, oh yeah, absolutely, I would press that
button in a second. If I could like read Wikipedia
from the future and just get like a general introduction
to what people are thinking in a million years, I
would definitely do that. And that's not possible, But it's
(06:27):
sincerely likely that there are aliens out there and it's
possible they're doing science and that makes me wonder if
we could just take advantage of all of their knowledge.
But then it also makes me a little bit skeptical
because that idea is so tempting. It's also flattering. It
says that the questions we're asking and the solutions we've
(06:48):
begun to build, they're like at the center of the
intellectual universe. It puts us right at the heart of it.
It makes us important. And you know, anytime you have
a theory that makes you at the center of the universe,
you should be extras have to come of it, because
you know, you want to believe it. And folks like
Carl Seigen say aliens will come up with similar explanations
for what's happening around their star as what's happening around ours,
(07:10):
because the laws of physics are universal. But I wonder
if the explanations are universal, if their description of it
is universal can be translated, if we really could enact
my fantasy of like an interstellar science conference and just
skip forward into our scientific future.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I think all of that's so fascinating, And this idea
that science or physics could like possibly be a fundamentally
human thing, you know, that exists within sort of like
the boundaries of the human understanding and perception, and that
aliens could actually be interpreting this universe in a very
very different way.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, because we don't have pure or unfettered access to
the universe. We see the universe through our human lens,
and we don't know without seeing it through another lens,
like an alien lens. How to separate which parts of
the interpretations were making our human and which parts are
real and are true. And we like to assume that
everything we're learning is deep and true and fundamental, and
(08:07):
of course everybody else would also be doing string theory, right,
but we don't know that. And so the book is
really an exercise in asking, like, well, what can we
say about how much humanity there is in our physics?
And you mentioned earlier that the book has a surprising
amount of philosophy in it. That's exactly the hook, because
I originally wanted to write a book about is our
(08:27):
physics discovered or invented? You know, is our physics the
map or the territory? Is it human or is it universal?
And I pitched this to my fourteen year old at
the time, and he was like, yawn, boring, And I
was so disappointed. I seriously thought he was going to
be excited about that. But I took it to heart,
and you know, you got to take notes when you
get him. And so then I came back to him
(08:49):
with this idea of, well, what if aliens arrived, can
we talk to them about physics? And he was like, oh,
I would read that book and I was like, it's
the same book, and so I got to write my
philosophy book. But in the context of this question about aliens,
there's a lot of fascinating philosophical framing of your typical
science questions that I thought people should be aware of,
(09:09):
and so it gave me an excuse to read all
of those books and talk to those philosophers, and also
to get to answer what I thought was a really
fun philosophical question, or at least tackle it. You know,
there are no hard answers in philosophy.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So you read about something called the Drake equation, which
is pretty lengthy, but basically it lays out the conditions
we'd need for aliens to contact us, and I'm wondering,
can you explain that and is it really valid from
a scientific perspective.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, the Drake equation is fun because you first look
at it, it's just a bunch of numbers multiplied together,
and you're like, some guy got an equation named after him,
or just multiplying numbers together, Like what you know, this
is not the Schrodinger equation, This is not this lagrangea
in a standard model physics. But the structure of the
equation contains a really important insight. As you say, it's
a way to try to estimate how many aliens there
(09:59):
are out there that we might be capable of communicating with.
And essentially it's fairly simple. It just says, start with
the number of stars in the universe, and multiply by
the fraction of those that have planets, and the fraction
of those planets that have life, in the fraction of
those planets with life that develop intelligence, and the fraction
of those that develop civilization capable of sending signals. Then
(10:19):
multiplied by how long they are around. And the crucial
thing about the structure is because it's multiplication, if any
of those numbers are zero, it's hopeless. It doesn't matter.
If you have a trillion planets, if none of them
have life, you still get in the answer zero. If
you have a trillion planets and they're all covered with life,
but it's just like slime and there's no intelligent life,
you're still getting zero. You need stars, you need planets,
(10:42):
you need life, you need civilization, you need technology. You
need to happen at the right time, otherwise we're not
hearing anything. And I took that as inspiration to extend
and said, well, you know, that's cool, but I don't
just want there to be aliens out there that maybe
we get a message from. I want aliens to be
out there who are scientific, who we have curiosity in
common with, and whose answers we might be able to like,
(11:04):
actually understand. And so I narrated even further. You know,
I posed an even harder question than Drake and said,
to answer the question like, how many aliens are there
we can actually do science with, which has to be,
of course, a smaller number than Drake's number, and maybe zero.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
But it feels like, you know, with the one hundred
billion galaxies in the universe and billions of stars, and
the estimation the ten to thirty percent of these stars
of Earth like planets, right, I mean like it changes
your perspective to the sense that maybe we aren't alone.
I think there's something really exciting about that.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Well, you're right, it's really exciting to live in a
time when we are learning about one of those numbers
that we didn't know before, right thirty years ago, with
the fraction of stars that have planets around them totally unknown,
we'd only seen like the few planets in our Solar system,
and now he's seen thousands and thousands of planets around
other stars. That's tremendously exciting that that number is big, right,
(11:59):
thirty percent ish, like even if it's ten percent, Like,
it's huge. There's billions of planets. That's wonderful news. But right,
the Drake equation throws cold water on that because the
other numbers we just don't know, like what is the
fraction of those planets that have life on them? Because again,
you got to have all those pieces in place, and
we like to believe that there might be life out there.
I'd like that to be the answer, But that's why
(12:21):
we got to be skeptical, because we tend to believe
things we want to be true, and you know, science
is about the data.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Yeah, that's definitely true.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So one of the things I love about this book
is that it's filled with little cartoons and they show
what would happen if, like, you know, aliens made contact
with us. They're like funny and ridiculous that they just
make the experience even more joyous. But it made me
realize that so much of what shapes my thinking about
(13:05):
alien contact comes from fiction and nonscience. And I was curious,
are there any favorite sci fi depictions of aliens that
inspired you or that you wish to be true?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Obviously they were all true almost in a while. That's
a great question. I think science fiction is undervalued. I
think it's not really taken seriously enough because science fiction
is where people get creative and they think about alternative universes.
What if aliens are like this? What if aliens is
are like that? And I love reading science fiction with
aliens that surprise me, you know. I read Blind Site
(13:38):
by Peter Watts totally blew me away, will not spoil it,
but incredible aliens in that. I read Shroud by Alien Tchaikowski,
very recent book, mind blowing aliens in that one really creative,
or like the Aliens and Enders game, I think it's
probably fair to spoil that one, you know, the hive mind,
very creative. I really like Alistair Reynolds Aliens. So many
great books out there, and I think these guys are
(14:00):
doing the important work of thinking how different could aliens be,
how alien could they be? Of breaking out of our
human box and imagining other ways life and intelligence, and
then maybe science could operate. And that's the hard part,
right We don't know what's out there. We have this
example of one and we extrapolate from it, and then
we tried to tweak it, but we don't really know
(14:21):
where the edges of the box are. And that's one
of the reasons why I decided to work on this
book with Andy Warner, because I thought it was really
valuable to think concretely and visually.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
About what these aliens might be like.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
And he's a fantastic non fiction cartoonist, and I just
cold emailed him and said, hey, want to work on
a book about aliens together, and he wrote right back.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I knew I had the right person.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
One of the things that's fascinating to me is just
like a small detail in the book, but something I
had never actually contemplated was that the word scientist wasn't
even used until the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
I was shocked to learn that as well. And in
writing this book, I did a lot of research into
the history of science. For me, it's a great excuse
to get to dig into these topics, and I thought
that was really important as a way to show people
that the way we think about science is something that's
been happening on Earth for like a century ish. It's
a very modern thing, and it could change. We see
it changing, actually, like the context and the cultural institutions
(15:18):
of science, and it matters. Like if aliens arrive, we think, oh,
we'll send them our physicists. They'll be at the chalkboard
talking about science. But like, who are they going to
send Do they have physicists? Do they have beings in
their culture who dedicate their whole life to understanding the
universe that want to come and talk to us. Five
hundred years ago, we might have sent our priests to
go talk to visiting aliens. The process of science itself
(15:41):
has been changing. You know, people imagine this this pop
size story about like science being invented five hundred years
ago by Galileo and Bacon and a few other white dudes,
and like it's much more complicated than that. You know,
the Greeks don't often get credit for experiments, but like
they measured the radius of the Earth, and folks all
over the globe we're like doing experiments and learning about
(16:03):
the nature of the universe. And so science is a
long history and we think it's still changing. So in
a thousand years, we may be doing a very different
kind of science than we are now in a way
that we look back on and we think, wow, that
was really primitive. Can you really call that modern science?
And so of course we're interested in the questions the
aliens are asking and the ideas they have, but also
(16:24):
you have to wonder, like, are they doing science the
way that we're doing it. It turns out to be
a very human activity driven by our human emotions.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I mean what was interesting to me too, is
like this question of math and whether it's actually universal.
You propose this question in the book, and how presumably
like intelligent life would want to be able to count
things with us, like food or offspring or whatever. And
we know that animals on earth to this, but we
(16:53):
don't know whether this is actually a basic element of intelligence.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, exactly, it's something that's the foundation or the way
we think, and so we imagine it might be, it
should be, it must be. I don't know, at the
foundation of the way everybody thinks. But that's very dangerous extrapolation.
And this question, you know, is math something that we
found in the universe, a feature of nature itself, or
a shorthand in the way that we think, an insight
(17:18):
into the way the human brain works. People have tried
to understand this, and you know, there's great arguments on
both sides. And I remember, for years I was deeply
convinced that math was fundamental to the universe because it
pops up so beautifully in physics and seems to fall
out so naturally. I remember as a junior taking quantum
mechanics and seeing this calculation that measures some property of
(17:39):
a subatomic particle, and then they go off and they
do the experiment and the two things agree to like
eight decimal places. And I got chills because I felt like, Okay,
this isn't some approximation. We've revealed the source code, man, like,
this is how the universe decides what happens to an electron.
I had that feeling. I was like, whoa, it's almost spiritual. Yeah,
And so it is like math feels like so powerful,
(18:02):
so unreasonably effective. It's very tempting to say it must
be part of the universe. And you know, I got
the amazing opportunity to talk to Num Chomsky about aliens
because he answers all of his email, and I asked him, like,
how would you start talking aliens? And he was like, yeah, arithmetic, right,
one plus one equals two. You start from there. But
the more you read in philosophy, the more you see
there are two signs to this question. We know that
(18:25):
math is very powerful for our science, but we don't
know that it's necessary. It might just be that math
is very powerful for us and feel so natural because
it's part of who we are. We're not guaranteed that
aliens have to find the same sort of mental shortcuts handy.
They might have a different way of thinking and express
it naturally and joyfully in another kind of intellectual language.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I mean, part of what's so amazing about this book
and this thought experiment, right is it really makes you
contemplate how we as humans work, and you point out
that there are words in certain languages that don't actually
translate to specific things, or you only have an approximation
of them, and all these communication barriers that exist just
on this one planet. You know how insane it is
(19:14):
to think about are immediately being able to communicate with
an alien?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I know, and I watched Contacts and I loved it,
and I wish it would happen.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
But I am not very bullish on that prospect.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
And you know, I'm a huge fan of SETI, and
I think we should be funding it and doing it,
listening to this guy and all sorts of channels. Absolutely,
But in writing this book, I've convinced myself that it
might be impossible to get a message from space and
actually decode it because translation is cultural and arbitrary. There's
no set of symbols that have only one interpretation, and
(19:49):
that means that you have to know how to invert
it or deduce it, and that requires that you can
recognize when you've done it right. Say we get a
message from aliens and we're like, oh, maybe they this
means this. How would you know it's correct if the
ideas themselves are super alien? Right, And we have this
hilarious example of this, it's wonderful, honestly, example of this
with a Pioneer plaque which Carl Sagan and Frank Drake
(20:12):
and folks designed to put on the Pioneer Probe, which
is sent out into the Cosmos decades ago, and it's
still out there and it carries this message from humanity.
And you know, in their defense, I think they only
were given two weeks to design this thing. So I
don't know what I could have done two weeks, but
they did their best to come up with ideas that
might be easy to interpret, and so of course they
(20:32):
didn't write it in English. They used simple pictograms, you know,
like an image of a hydrogen atom that looks sort
of the cartoon, you know, solar system orbital images of
a hygen atom, to try to convey what might happen
in the hydrogen atom, et cetera, et cetera. And I
love the enthusiasm of it, but the chances that aliens
get that and they look at it and they're like, oh, yeah,
that's a hydrogen atom requires so much cultural commonality. I
(20:55):
actually did an experiment where I showed the Pioneer plaque
to a bunch of UCI physics ride students, Like what
better audience could you hope for? These are like biological
humans in the same culture studying physics, and they had
no clue what this thing was. Right, They're young enough
to not have seen it before, and so I think
it's almost hopeless to imagine that some aliens are going
to actually understand what Carl Seigen was trying to say,
(21:18):
or that conversely, we could, which is in the book
why I focused more on the scenario the aliens have arrived,
because if they arrive, we do have a context in common.
We're they're in the same place. We can point at
things and we can try to work up from there
to build some kind of connection.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
But it's going to be challenging.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I mean, we have struggled to make contact with other
intelligence species on our planet. Right, Whales are saying something
to each other.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (21:42):
We don't know, right, We've been working on it, like dolphins,
who knows what they're trying to tell us. But if
the aliens arrive, I think we have a shot at it.
If we just get a message, it can just be
like the Wow signal, just like a mystery forever.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
One of the other things that you pointed out, which
I hadn't entirely thought about, was how we are curious species.
We actually did just do a series on curiosity, but
what you've mentioned is that we're curious about almost everything,
and we're constantly making decisions about what to pay attention to.
And then this example of that a tennis match, you
washed the ball going back and forth, but you're probably
(22:32):
not counting the blades of grass on the court, right,
And how we use these inputs to organize our stories.
And that really made me think differently, not just about
how aliens are perceiving the Earth, but also about your
communication example, right, like what we're sending makes it that
much harder if what they're curious about and the way
they perceive things is so different from the way we communicate.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Absolutely, And we imagine that our senses give us like
a revelation of the universe, but we know it's limited, right.
We know that there's UV light and radio waves and everything.
I'm not seeing that, And we also know there's like
nutrinos and dark matter and curved space, time and all
sorts of stuff going on that's invisible to us, And
(23:14):
so we see a tiny slice of the universe. And
you're right, like aliens could be communicating with us in
any of these means. Maybe they're sending us gravitational waves,
who knows. But more deeply than that, I think the
nature of our senses really affects the kind of answers
we accept about physics. It defines what we think is understandable.
(23:34):
Like think about the explanation that you typically hear in
popular science about a photon, Oh, it's a particle or
it's a wave, or it's both. It's some weird combination. Right,
What that is is a translation from the unfamiliar. A
photon is actually some weird quantum object that's not a particle,
it's not a wave. It's something new and outside of
our intuition translated into the language of our minds. And
(23:56):
it's not satisfying because that translation is imperfect. But we've
insisted on it, right, We demand that everything be translated
into some sort of natural, intuitive set of concepts that
are defined by our experience, and I think our perception,
and so I think if aliens have a very different
set of perceptual tools, even if they, like us, build
technologies to go beyond it, they still will be translating
(24:20):
that back into their mental language. You know, the set
of things that they would find acceptable as explanations might
be very different from ours. And that drives our science,
as you say, it's curiosity. The reason I'm a physicist
is I'm just so curious about the way the universe
works at the microscopical level. And somebody else is slashing
around in the rainforest with wet sox because they just
(24:41):
got to know how spiders reproduce or whatever. And that's
awesome and I love it. And that's why we're not
all particle physicists, which is good. And so there's a
lot of human curiosity and a lot of the human
perception I think, and the questions and the answers of science.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, and it does make you wonder too, right, But
like there are all these miss stories of the universe,
and like, is it that we haven't figured it out
because it's impossible to do so, or is it because
we're really limited by these human brains of ours?
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Right, it has dropped that nightmare scenario and it's right,
what if it's impossible to figure out the universe? Yeah,
And that's a great philosophical assumption because you know, at
the heart of science is this assumption that the universe
follows laws and that we can figure them out. Repeated
experiments will reveal them. How do we know that, Well,
it's worked for hundreds of years. We think the laws
(25:29):
of physics are there and stationary. Right, But it is
a philosophical assumption, and we don't know in every scenario
if that's true. If there's some like region where the
universe is chaotic in some way that's beyond explanation. Right, If,
as some philosophers say, things just sort of happen by half,
it could be the mind revolts at that idea, like
(25:51):
that's impossible.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Come on, the universe.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
There's something that's happening for a reason, and it has
to But you know, there's so many times in the
history of physics where the universe has revealed itself to
be so counter to our intuition. The things we just
assumed were obvious we're shown to not be true always.
You know, like the idea that if an object is
here and then it's there, that it has to go
(26:14):
from here to there. Duh, right, But quantum mechanics says no,
you can be here and then later you can be there. Oh,
and in between can be an impossible barrier. So you
didn't go from here to there. You were here and
then you were there boom what. So you have to
be alert to these assumptions. We don't know if the
universe is figure out a bull or explain a bull,
(26:37):
or if there is even a fundamental truth out there.
The aliens could show up and they could be like, yeah,
we've been working on our for millions of years, and
there's this little bit that kind of works, and that
little bit that kind of works. But there's no single truth.
You can't stitch it all together and just one big
glorious tapestry of knowledge and information. Right, that could be
the future. And to me, wow, that's a nightmare because
(26:58):
that means that there aren't answer to the deepest questions
in the universe, right, please?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I hope not.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So. I know you talked about reaching out to Chomsky.
Who else did you get to speak to in this
process and what was the process of writing this book.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Like for you?
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I talked to basically anybody who would talk to me.
I cold emailed so many philosophers and historians. I interacted
with Daniel Dannett before he passed about questions of like
how much of the universe could we actually understand, which
is super fascinating. I talked to lots of folks here
at UC Irvine. We have a like top notch logic
(27:37):
and philosophy of science department, and folks here really helped
me understand some tricky things in philosophy. They all read
the draft and that was a terrifying process. You know,
you go off, you do this reading. It's not your area.
You think you've understood it well enough to explain it
to the general public. But to me, the accuracy is
so important. So I sent it back to the experts.
I was like, please shred this, like find something in
(28:00):
this that you think might be a little misleading. And
you know you're terrified when you get their notes back.
But it's important, and it's better, of course to hear
those things before you published than after. So for me
it was like a joyful exercise of self education. I
had never read Science Without Numbers by Heartreyfield, but I
read that book, and i'd never read How the Laws
(28:21):
of Physics Live by Nancy Cartwright, who suggests that there
is no answer out there. So I read a lot
of books on philosophy, and I talked to a lot
of people, and I had a lot of fun. It's
so much fun thinking and reading. I did a deep
dive into the history of the development of science, because
I wondered about alternative Earth's alternative paths, the thought experiment
(28:42):
of like what if we hadn't wiped out the Mayan civilization,
what astronomy would they be doing today and how different
would it be? Or what if the Chinese had gone
deep into math? And physics instead of diverting into material
science and inventing gunpowder. You know, if you ran the
experiment of like having a thousand earths, where would we
all be scientifically? Would we all have eventually stumbled into
(29:04):
the same stuff or would we be vastly different questions
and answers. It's really fun to read about like ancient
Mayan astronomers, and they recently found not just writings of minds,
which tragically most of those were destroyed by the Spanish,
but places where you could see them doing calculations or
they're like trying to figure stuff out. So like thinking
through these things, and it really made me want to
(29:27):
be able to talk to them.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I would love to get.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
In the minds of early people trying to solve these problems,
tackling these big unknown questions of where we are in
the universe without the benefit of all the giants that
we stand on. So I had a great time. I
learned so much writing this book, and I had a
great time with Andy because I would write a first
draft and he would add a bunch of stuff to it.
He knows so much fascinating history of science and language.
(29:50):
And then of course he did all of his Doodles,
which I always look forward to seeing the first draft
of because they're so clever and so insightful, and to me,
it's a really important part of the book is to
have these visuals, not just because they help explain, but
they sort of lighten the mood a little bit. There's
different kinds of science books out there. This is the
ones that like, maybe you didn't really understand everything, but
you felt like you were in the presence of a
(30:12):
great mind. That's not my favorite kind of science book.
I want people to really get it, and I want
them to feel comfortable, and I feel like having cartoons
and jokes, you know, it makes you feel like, hey,
these guys don't take themselves too seriously, and also it
mixes it up. You get like a big philosophical idea,
then you get a dad joke and a mental.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Break, which I appreciate and honestly like my dad's past.
But my dad would have loved this book. You know.
There's something so funny about what you're saying about just
knowing that you're in the presence of someone great but
not being able to decipher what the content is. There's
an intro to a Gertrude steinbook that Bert Surf, who
(30:52):
is the founder of Random House, included and in front
of it, it's basically saying it's copying to the fact
that he doesn't understand most of what she's saying, but
it is publishing it because it's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Well, you know, there's a lot of great books out there,
like you know, Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.
I don't understand everything in that book. And then I think, like, well,
what's it like for you know, a random person who
doesn't know a PhD In physics? What fraction are they getting?
And yet the book is widely popular, and I don't
know if it's not read or if it's just read
in a different way as people are just like you know,
(31:25):
enjoy hearing from this great person. But to me, I
want to make sure that everything in the book makes sense,
that you get it, because to me, that's the point
of science communication and not to denegrate anybody else's efforts.
But I think is you know there's different approaches in
mind is definitely make sure you get every bit of it.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
One thing I had a question about is you're obviously
this very busy person you're a parent, You've got all
this responsibility at the university in terms of teaching and research,
and you also have a podcast, and somehow you've made
time to write this book and get a fact checked
and set out the philosophers all about stuff. I'm curious, like,
(32:02):
how do you find time to write and what's the
process of writing like for you?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
To me, I work on the fun stuff. So being
a faculty member means you're constantly overload with with way
too many things to do, but you also got to choose,
like I'm gonna do this today, I'm gonna do that today.
And so I'm at the point in my career where
I can just like pick the fun bits focus on those,
and to me, this is the fun bit. Like thinking
about this stuff and reading about this stuff is exciting.
(32:29):
I probably could have put out a few more physics
papers if I hadn't written this book, but you know,
I'm still putting out ten papers a year. I think
I'm doing fine in that category. But to me, this
is exciting, and I think it informs my physics. It
makes me think broadly and gives me new ideas and
connects me with people who think differently and I think
it's really important as an academic not to get too
narrowly focused in your sub sub sub sub subfield and
(32:51):
to be inspired by people in adjacent area. So that's
the story I told myself when I was like reading
philosophy books instead of the reviewing some paper. But I
was just pulled to it, you know, I was excited
about it. I was curious about it. I wanted to
read that next thing, I wanted to write this next bit.
I just sort of like had a burning desire to
work on it. And that's to me how I know
that I've like found a project that I'm excited about
(33:14):
because I'm just pulled to work on it all the time.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So, assuming there is intelligent, scientific alien life out there,
and assuming we have a way to communicate with it,
which is a lot of assuming, what is the one
question you'd like to ask and what's the one thing
you try to explain?
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Man, why do I just get one question? You know,
got a long line of physicists. Everybody gets one question.
You know, I think I've sort of voted with my feet.
There's lots of questions about the universe you could ask,
and the one I asked in my career is what
is it made out of? Because yeah, I'd like to
know lots of things about what's inside a black hole,
(33:55):
et cetera, or how do the universe begin? But to me,
the most important question is what are the bits? And
are there even any Because if there are basic bits
of the universe, if there's like some fundamental thing which
just has to exist and defines the nature of the universe,
it can't be taken apart, it always exists, it's not
emergent or composite, then that tells you something deep about
(34:16):
the universe itself. It reveals its inherent nature in a
way that like chemistry doesn't and even particle physics. Now,
because we don't think we found those pieces, we have
these approximate theories that describe really zoomed out stuff. We
don't really know what the universe is made out of.
And I want to know that. Or if mind blowingly
like it's not made of anything, it's just everything is
made of smaller stuff, which is made of smaller stuff
(34:38):
in infinite tower of craziness. I also want to know that.
So that would be my number one question.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And is there one thing you try to explain.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I would hope that there's some cute bit of currently
irrelevant mathematics that might solve some alien problem. I love
how in the history of science we have this pattern
where mathematicians develop some little bit of mathematics like group theory,
not because it's useful, just because there are wonderful nerds
who think patterns are fun, and they made up some
(35:08):
games and like, oh, look at the cool stuff that
comes out of this, and then one hundred years later
physicists are like, oh, actually, that's what we need to
solve this problem over here.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
You know, like group theory perfectly explains how fundamental particles
interact in a way nobody expected when people were coming
up with this stuff one hundred years earlier. And so
maybe there some bit of weird human math that like
clicks perfectly into an alien physics puzzle, and together, you know,
our chocolate and their peanut butter can unravel the nature
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I love that. That's a really lovely place to stop.
You know, your book is so wonderful. It really is
something that people should gift, people should read, and I
think part of what's so amazing about it is one
you got me to read philosophy two you got me
to like really think about humans and what we know
about ourselves.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Well, thank you for reading it, and thank you for
the kind words.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
And I hope that folks out there enjoy this tour
philosophy with a little bit of aliens and if you
enjoy thinking about physics in the universe. I have a
fun podcast, Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Go check it out.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
It's wonderful. So thank you so much, Daniel, I really
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Thanks for having me on super fun conversation. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Okay, first of all, this has totally changed the way
I think about what would happen if aliens landed on Earth,
because you know, we always talk in terms of alien invasions, right,
and now I'm like, maybe they would just want to
come here and tell us about their physics research.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, more like an intergalactic science fair than an invasion.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I mean it sounds way more interesting and a lot
less dangerous, of course. But it's funny because until today
I'd never really thought about the practical implications of that
term intelligent life in the universe, and this conversation maybe
realize that if there's intelligent life out there, it's doing
something with that intelligen I don't know, maybe science, maybe
other stuff too.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, you could take that concept from the book and
apply it to other disciplines, right, like alien philosophers, alien archaeologists,
alien interior designers. You know, we have no idea if
their approaches are universal and therefore similar to ours, or
if they're operating in such an alien context that it's
completely different.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, we have no idea yet.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
That's right. Well, maybe someday, but while we await the
answers to life, the universe and everything else. I would
like to thank Daniel Whitson for coming on the show.
He is so great. His book Do Alien Speak Physics
is available now at your local bookstore, and if it's
not at your local library, you can request it. There's
also a link in our show notes and we will
(37:43):
be back next week with another brand new episode. But
from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself, thank you so
much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
(38:05):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson
and me Mongage Heatikler, and research by our good pal
Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
the wonderful Dylan Fagan, with support from Tyler Klang. The
show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and
Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee
(38:28):
Dara Potts and Viney Shoring. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
What's that? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Do you know there are more than one hundred billion
stars in our galaxy alone and more than one hundred
billion galaxies in the universe, And also that scientists have
estimated that of all the stars that exists, somewhere between
ten and thirty percent have Earth like planets, which means
the odds of us truly being alone in the universe
(00:46):
is practically zero.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You should probably go and say it. Are you saying
aliens are real?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No? I'm saying what if? Where the aliens? And somewhere
on some distant planet, a couple of Neon green best
friends are recording a podcast about us.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You know, I never thought about it that way, And
I'm curious, have you been watching X Files again?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Something so much better. I read this incredible book called
Do Aliens Speak?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Physics?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
And Other Questions about Science and the nature of Reality?
And it is hilarious, which you know, I never thought
i'd say about a book about physics or philosophy. But
it's also this really fascinating exploration of the idea that
we're not alone in the universe, and that other intelligent
life may have evolved the ability to study science and
the same way or in a completely different way than us.
(01:30):
So what does that mean for us humans? If aliens
ever do land here, will we be able to have
a great meeting of the minds or will we just
stare at each other in total confusion. Luckily, the book's
co author Daniel Whitson, who is an actual physicist and
a friend of yours and mine, agreed to talk it
through with thee so we had such a great conversation.
I'm really excited to dive in. So I am here
(02:13):
with Daniel Whitson, who I've known for quite a while,
but he's just put out this book Do Aliens speak physics?
And other questions about science and the nature of reality?
And Daniel, I've had this galley for a while and
it is really just so exciting and lovely and the
joyous read, but also something that's like way more philosophical
(02:35):
than I was expecting. So I'm very excited to get
into this. But one of our first questions, you know,
I'm sure this happens to you at a lot of parties.
You introduce yourself one says, oh, what do you do
when you say I'm a particle physicist, and then they're like, okay,
so what do you do? And I'm curious, how do
you answer this?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Well?
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I usually start with a song because I heard an
amazing particle physics Explained by song episode on Part Time Genius,
and I thought that is the best way to explain
what we do. You know, we smash protons together at
nearly the speed of light and try to understand what
is the nature of matter. But that's a big project.
It's thousands of people, it's billions of dollars. What do
(03:16):
I actually do? The best thing about particle physics is
that it's a big community, and so we all get
to specialize. There is somebody who really loves making the
collider work, and somebody else who really loves tuning the
ectro links to work super fast. My personal niche is
in the data analysis and the statistics. I am a
statistics nerd and I love programming, so I ended up
(03:38):
doing a lot of machine learning and statistics. I'm the
guy who like analyzes the data and says, do we
see this particle or not? How can we squeeze a
little bit more information. What if we use this new technique,
what if we talk to our friends in AI. What
if we bring in this machine learning pattern recognition thing?
Can we squeeze a little bit more information out of
this incredibly expensive and valuable data that tells us something
(03:58):
about the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I love that. I also love the idea that making
things collide as a kid, whether it's like trucks or
cars or whatever, and then growing up and seeing the
value and seeing these collisions and understanding them can animate
a whole field of science.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, it really is rooted in childhood curiosity first, because
like the question we're asking, what's the universe made out of?
It's a very simple question, right, It's a question people
have been asking for a long long time. And also
the technique in principle is simple, like let's take things apart.
Let's smash our toy trucks together and see what comes out.
Let's dismantle the toaster on the counter and see what's
(04:34):
in it. And that's just what we're doing. Let's take
stuff apart as much as we can, as powerfully as
we can, and see what's inside, because we want to
know what is everything? Mad I've one of the smallest
bits of the universe what really determines who we are
and why we're here.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
You know, from the first time I heard you talk,
I was just so enamored with the way you explain things.
And you've written a couple of books now, and they're
really incredible explainers of the world and science and physics
and the universe. And I'm curious, like, how did you
get to this idea about encountering intelligent life and within
(05:11):
the universe and exchanging science ideas with intelligent life? Like
have you always been interested in aliens? Have you always
wondered about this?
Speaker 5 (05:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Where? Where does this obsession come from?
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Yeah, this obsession comes from just wanting to know the answers.
One of the things that appealed to me about physics
was the idea that it wasn't just a question we
were asking here on Earth, that the questions we're probing
were universal questions, not just like what is stuff on
Earth made out of? But what is stuff on Jupiter
made out of? What is stuff in the other star systems?
What is stuff around the universe made out of? That
appealed to me that these questions were universal, and so
(05:44):
that makes me wonder if there are people out there,
not people, but like other beings out there working on
the same questions, and maybe they have the answers, And
that's an incredibly powerful feeling of like, I don't know,
envy or jealousy, Like what is if there are aliens
out there that have been working on this for millions
of years and they could just tell us the answers
(06:05):
they know, right, Like it's fun to figure this out.
But man, if somebody could just download the answers into
my brain today, oh yeah, absolutely, I would press that
button in a second. If I could like read Wikipedia
from the future and just get like a general introduction
to what people are thinking in a million years, I
would definitely do that. And that's not possible, But it's
(06:27):
sincerely likely that there are aliens out there and it's
possible they're doing science and that makes me wonder if
we could just take advantage of all of their knowledge.
But then it also makes me a little bit skeptical
because that idea is so tempting. It's also flattering. It
says that the questions we're asking and the solutions we've
(06:48):
begun to build, they're like at the center of the
intellectual universe. It puts us right at the heart of it.
It makes us important. And you know, anytime you have
a theory that makes you at the center of the universe,
you should be extras have to come of it, because
you know, you want to believe it. And folks like
Carl Seigen say aliens will come up with similar explanations
for what's happening around their star as what's happening around ours,
(07:10):
because the laws of physics are universal. But I wonder
if the explanations are universal, if their description of it
is universal can be translated, if we really could enact
my fantasy of like an interstellar science conference and just
skip forward into our scientific future.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I think all of that's so fascinating, And this idea
that science or physics could like possibly be a fundamentally
human thing, you know, that exists within sort of like
the boundaries of the human understanding and perception, and that
aliens could actually be interpreting this universe in a very
very different way.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, because we don't have pure or unfettered access to
the universe. We see the universe through our human lens,
and we don't know without seeing it through another lens,
like an alien lens. How to separate which parts of
the interpretations were making our human and which parts are
real and are true. And we like to assume that
everything we're learning is deep and true and fundamental, and
(08:07):
of course everybody else would also be doing string theory, right,
but we don't know that. And so the book is
really an exercise in asking, like, well, what can we
say about how much humanity there is in our physics?
And you mentioned earlier that the book has a surprising
amount of philosophy in it. That's exactly the hook, because
I originally wanted to write a book about is our
(08:27):
physics discovered or invented? You know, is our physics the
map or the territory? Is it human or is it universal?
And I pitched this to my fourteen year old at
the time, and he was like, yawn, boring, And I
was so disappointed. I seriously thought he was going to
be excited about that. But I took it to heart,
and you know, you got to take notes when you
get him. And so then I came back to him
(08:49):
with this idea of, well, what if aliens arrived, can
we talk to them about physics? And he was like, oh,
I would read that book and I was like, it's
the same book, and so I got to write my
philosophy book. But in the context of this question about aliens,
there's a lot of fascinating philosophical framing of your typical
science questions that I thought people should be aware of,
(09:09):
and so it gave me an excuse to read all
of those books and talk to those philosophers, and also
to get to answer what I thought was a really
fun philosophical question, or at least tackle it. You know,
there are no hard answers in philosophy.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So you read about something called the Drake equation, which
is pretty lengthy, but basically it lays out the conditions
we'd need for aliens to contact us, and I'm wondering,
can you explain that and is it really valid from
a scientific perspective.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, the Drake equation is fun because you first look
at it, it's just a bunch of numbers multiplied together,
and you're like, some guy got an equation named after him,
or just multiplying numbers together, Like what you know, this
is not the Schrodinger equation, This is not this lagrangea
in a standard model physics. But the structure of the
equation contains a really important insight. As you say, it's
a way to try to estimate how many aliens there
(09:59):
are out there that we might be capable of communicating with.
And essentially it's fairly simple. It just says, start with
the number of stars in the universe, and multiply by
the fraction of those that have planets, and the fraction
of those planets that have life, in the fraction of
those planets with life that develop intelligence, and the fraction
of those that develop civilization capable of sending signals. Then
(10:19):
multiplied by how long they are around. And the crucial
thing about the structure is because it's multiplication, if any
of those numbers are zero, it's hopeless. It doesn't matter.
If you have a trillion planets, if none of them
have life, you still get in the answer zero. If
you have a trillion planets and they're all covered with life,
but it's just like slime and there's no intelligent life,
you're still getting zero. You need stars, you need planets,
(10:42):
you need life, you need civilization, you need technology. You
need to happen at the right time, otherwise we're not
hearing anything. And I took that as inspiration to extend
and said, well, you know, that's cool, but I don't
just want there to be aliens out there that maybe
we get a message from. I want aliens to be
out there who are scientific, who we have curiosity in
common with, and whose answers we might be able to like,
(11:04):
actually understand. And so I narrated even further. You know,
I posed an even harder question than Drake and said,
to answer the question like, how many aliens are there
we can actually do science with, which has to be,
of course, a smaller number than Drake's number, and maybe zero.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
But it feels like, you know, with the one hundred
billion galaxies in the universe and billions of stars, and
the estimation the ten to thirty percent of these stars
of Earth like planets, right, I mean like it changes
your perspective to the sense that maybe we aren't alone.
I think there's something really exciting about that.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Well, you're right, it's really exciting to live in a
time when we are learning about one of those numbers
that we didn't know before, right thirty years ago, with
the fraction of stars that have planets around them totally unknown,
we'd only seen like the few planets in our Solar system,
and now he's seen thousands and thousands of planets around
other stars. That's tremendously exciting that that number is big, right,
(11:59):
thirty percent ish, like even if it's ten percent, Like,
it's huge. There's billions of planets. That's wonderful news. But right,
the Drake equation throws cold water on that because the
other numbers we just don't know, like what is the
fraction of those planets that have life on them? Because again,
you got to have all those pieces in place, and
we like to believe that there might be life out there.
I'd like that to be the answer, But that's why
(12:21):
we got to be skeptical, because we tend to believe
things we want to be true, and you know, science
is about the data.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
Yeah, that's definitely true.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So one of the things I love about this book
is that it's filled with little cartoons and they show
what would happen if, like, you know, aliens made contact
with us. They're like funny and ridiculous that they just
make the experience even more joyous. But it made me
realize that so much of what shapes my thinking about
(13:05):
alien contact comes from fiction and nonscience. And I was curious,
are there any favorite sci fi depictions of aliens that
inspired you or that you wish to be true?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Obviously they were all true almost in a while. That's
a great question. I think science fiction is undervalued. I
think it's not really taken seriously enough because science fiction
is where people get creative and they think about alternative universes.
What if aliens are like this? What if aliens is
are like that? And I love reading science fiction with
aliens that surprise me, you know. I read Blind Site
(13:38):
by Peter Watts totally blew me away, will not spoil it,
but incredible aliens in that. I read Shroud by Alien Tchaikowski,
very recent book, mind blowing aliens in that one really creative,
or like the Aliens and Enders game, I think it's
probably fair to spoil that one, you know, the hive mind,
very creative. I really like Alistair Reynolds Aliens. So many
great books out there, and I think these guys are
(14:00):
doing the important work of thinking how different could aliens be,
how alien could they be? Of breaking out of our
human box and imagining other ways life and intelligence, and
then maybe science could operate. And that's the hard part,
right We don't know what's out there. We have this
example of one and we extrapolate from it, and then
we tried to tweak it, but we don't really know
(14:21):
where the edges of the box are. And that's one
of the reasons why I decided to work on this
book with Andy Warner, because I thought it was really
valuable to think concretely and visually.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
About what these aliens might be like.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
And he's a fantastic non fiction cartoonist, and I just
cold emailed him and said, hey, want to work on
a book about aliens together, and he wrote right back.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
I knew I had the right person.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
One of the things that's fascinating to me is just
like a small detail in the book, but something I
had never actually contemplated was that the word scientist wasn't
even used until the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
I was shocked to learn that as well. And in
writing this book, I did a lot of research into
the history of science. For me, it's a great excuse
to get to dig into these topics, and I thought
that was really important as a way to show people
that the way we think about science is something that's
been happening on Earth for like a century ish. It's
a very modern thing, and it could change. We see
it changing, actually, like the context and the cultural institutions
(15:18):
of science, and it matters. Like if aliens arrive, we think, oh,
we'll send them our physicists. They'll be at the chalkboard
talking about science. But like, who are they going to
send Do they have physicists? Do they have beings in
their culture who dedicate their whole life to understanding the
universe that want to come and talk to us. Five
hundred years ago, we might have sent our priests to
go talk to visiting aliens. The process of science itself
(15:41):
has been changing. You know, people imagine this this pop
size story about like science being invented five hundred years
ago by Galileo and Bacon and a few other white dudes,
and like it's much more complicated than that. You know,
the Greeks don't often get credit for experiments, but like
they measured the radius of the Earth, and folks all
over the globe we're like doing experiments and learning about
(16:03):
the nature of the universe. And so science is a
long history and we think it's still changing. So in
a thousand years, we may be doing a very different
kind of science than we are now in a way
that we look back on and we think, wow, that
was really primitive. Can you really call that modern science?
And so of course we're interested in the questions the
aliens are asking and the ideas they have, but also
(16:24):
you have to wonder, like, are they doing science the
way that we're doing it. It turns out to be
a very human activity driven by our human emotions.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, I mean what was interesting to me too, is
like this question of math and whether it's actually universal.
You propose this question in the book, and how presumably
like intelligent life would want to be able to count
things with us, like food or offspring or whatever. And
we know that animals on earth to this, but we
(16:53):
don't know whether this is actually a basic element of intelligence.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, exactly, it's something that's the foundation or the way
we think, and so we imagine it might be, it
should be, it must be. I don't know, at the
foundation of the way everybody thinks. But that's very dangerous extrapolation.
And this question, you know, is math something that we
found in the universe, a feature of nature itself, or
a shorthand in the way that we think, an insight
(17:18):
into the way the human brain works. People have tried
to understand this, and you know, there's great arguments on
both sides. And I remember, for years I was deeply
convinced that math was fundamental to the universe because it
pops up so beautifully in physics and seems to fall
out so naturally. I remember as a junior taking quantum
mechanics and seeing this calculation that measures some property of
(17:39):
a subatomic particle, and then they go off and they
do the experiment and the two things agree to like
eight decimal places. And I got chills because I felt like, Okay,
this isn't some approximation. We've revealed the source code, man, like,
this is how the universe decides what happens to an electron.
I had that feeling. I was like, whoa, it's almost spiritual. Yeah,
And so it is like math feels like so powerful,
(18:02):
so unreasonably effective. It's very tempting to say it must
be part of the universe. And you know, I got
the amazing opportunity to talk to Num Chomsky about aliens
because he answers all of his email, and I asked him, like,
how would you start talking aliens? And he was like, yeah, arithmetic, right,
one plus one equals two. You start from there. But
the more you read in philosophy, the more you see
there are two signs to this question. We know that
(18:25):
math is very powerful for our science, but we don't
know that it's necessary. It might just be that math
is very powerful for us and feel so natural because
it's part of who we are. We're not guaranteed that
aliens have to find the same sort of mental shortcuts handy.
They might have a different way of thinking and express
it naturally and joyfully in another kind of intellectual language.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I mean, part of what's so amazing about this book
and this thought experiment, right is it really makes you
contemplate how we as humans work, and you point out
that there are words in certain languages that don't actually
translate to specific things, or you only have an approximation
of them, and all these communication barriers that exist just
on this one planet. You know how insane it is
(19:14):
to think about are immediately being able to communicate with
an alien?
Speaker 4 (19:20):
I know, and I watched Contacts and I loved it,
and I wish it would happen.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
But I am not very bullish on that prospect.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
And you know, I'm a huge fan of SETI, and
I think we should be funding it and doing it,
listening to this guy and all sorts of channels. Absolutely,
But in writing this book, I've convinced myself that it
might be impossible to get a message from space and
actually decode it because translation is cultural and arbitrary. There's
no set of symbols that have only one interpretation, and
(19:49):
that means that you have to know how to invert
it or deduce it, and that requires that you can
recognize when you've done it right. Say we get a
message from aliens and we're like, oh, maybe they this
means this. How would you know it's correct if the
ideas themselves are super alien? Right, And we have this
hilarious example of this, it's wonderful, honestly, example of this
with a Pioneer plaque which Carl Sagan and Frank Drake
(20:12):
and folks designed to put on the Pioneer Probe, which
is sent out into the Cosmos decades ago, and it's
still out there and it carries this message from humanity.
And you know, in their defense, I think they only
were given two weeks to design this thing. So I
don't know what I could have done two weeks, but
they did their best to come up with ideas that
might be easy to interpret, and so of course they
(20:32):
didn't write it in English. They used simple pictograms, you know,
like an image of a hydrogen atom that looks sort
of the cartoon, you know, solar system orbital images of
a hygen atom, to try to convey what might happen
in the hydrogen atom, et cetera, et cetera. And I
love the enthusiasm of it, but the chances that aliens
get that and they look at it and they're like, oh, yeah,
that's a hydrogen atom requires so much cultural commonality. I
(20:55):
actually did an experiment where I showed the Pioneer plaque
to a bunch of UCI physics ride students, Like what
better audience could you hope for? These are like biological
humans in the same culture studying physics, and they had
no clue what this thing was. Right, They're young enough
to not have seen it before, and so I think
it's almost hopeless to imagine that some aliens are going
to actually understand what Carl Seigen was trying to say,
(21:18):
or that conversely, we could, which is in the book
why I focused more on the scenario the aliens have arrived,
because if they arrive, we do have a context in common.
We're they're in the same place. We can point at
things and we can try to work up from there
to build some kind of connection.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
But it's going to be challenging.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
I mean, we have struggled to make contact with other
intelligence species on our planet. Right, Whales are saying something
to each other.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
What is it?
Speaker 4 (21:42):
We don't know, right, We've been working on it, like dolphins,
who knows what they're trying to tell us. But if
the aliens arrive, I think we have a shot at it.
If we just get a message, it can just be
like the Wow signal, just like a mystery forever.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
One of the other things that you pointed out, which
I hadn't entirely thought about, was how we are curious species.
We actually did just do a series on curiosity, but
what you've mentioned is that we're curious about almost everything,
and we're constantly making decisions about what to pay attention to.
And then this example of that a tennis match, you
washed the ball going back and forth, but you're probably
(22:32):
not counting the blades of grass on the court, right,
And how we use these inputs to organize our stories.
And that really made me think differently, not just about
how aliens are perceiving the Earth, but also about your
communication example, right, like what we're sending makes it that
much harder if what they're curious about and the way
they perceive things is so different from the way we communicate.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Absolutely, And we imagine that our senses give us like
a revelation of the universe, but we know it's limited, right.
We know that there's UV light and radio waves and everything.
I'm not seeing that, And we also know there's like
nutrinos and dark matter and curved space, time and all
sorts of stuff going on that's invisible to us, And
(23:14):
so we see a tiny slice of the universe. And
you're right, like aliens could be communicating with us in
any of these means. Maybe they're sending us gravitational waves,
who knows. But more deeply than that, I think the
nature of our senses really affects the kind of answers
we accept about physics. It defines what we think is understandable.
(23:34):
Like think about the explanation that you typically hear in
popular science about a photon, Oh, it's a particle or
it's a wave, or it's both. It's some weird combination. Right,
What that is is a translation from the unfamiliar. A
photon is actually some weird quantum object that's not a particle,
it's not a wave. It's something new and outside of
our intuition translated into the language of our minds. And
(23:56):
it's not satisfying because that translation is imperfect. But we've
insisted on it, right, We demand that everything be translated
into some sort of natural, intuitive set of concepts that
are defined by our experience, and I think our perception,
and so I think if aliens have a very different
set of perceptual tools, even if they, like us, build
technologies to go beyond it, they still will be translating
(24:20):
that back into their mental language. You know, the set
of things that they would find acceptable as explanations might
be very different from ours. And that drives our science,
as you say, it's curiosity. The reason I'm a physicist
is I'm just so curious about the way the universe
works at the microscopical level. And somebody else is slashing
around in the rainforest with wet sox because they just
(24:41):
got to know how spiders reproduce or whatever. And that's
awesome and I love it. And that's why we're not
all particle physicists, which is good. And so there's a
lot of human curiosity and a lot of the human
perception I think, and the questions and the answers of science.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah, and it does make you wonder too, right, But
like there are all these miss stories of the universe,
and like, is it that we haven't figured it out
because it's impossible to do so, or is it because
we're really limited by these human brains of ours?
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Right, it has dropped that nightmare scenario and it's right,
what if it's impossible to figure out the universe? Yeah,
And that's a great philosophical assumption because you know, at
the heart of science is this assumption that the universe
follows laws and that we can figure them out. Repeated
experiments will reveal them. How do we know that, Well,
it's worked for hundreds of years. We think the laws
(25:29):
of physics are there and stationary. Right, But it is
a philosophical assumption, and we don't know in every scenario
if that's true. If there's some like region where the
universe is chaotic in some way that's beyond explanation. Right, If,
as some philosophers say, things just sort of happen by half,
it could be the mind revolts at that idea, like
(25:51):
that's impossible.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Come on, the universe.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
There's something that's happening for a reason, and it has
to But you know, there's so many times in the
history of physics where the universe has revealed itself to
be so counter to our intuition. The things we just
assumed were obvious we're shown to not be true always.
You know, like the idea that if an object is
here and then it's there, that it has to go
(26:14):
from here to there. Duh, right, But quantum mechanics says no,
you can be here and then later you can be there. Oh,
and in between can be an impossible barrier. So you
didn't go from here to there. You were here and
then you were there boom what. So you have to
be alert to these assumptions. We don't know if the
universe is figure out a bull or explain a bull,
(26:37):
or if there is even a fundamental truth out there.
The aliens could show up and they could be like, yeah,
we've been working on our for millions of years, and
there's this little bit that kind of works, and that
little bit that kind of works. But there's no single truth.
You can't stitch it all together and just one big
glorious tapestry of knowledge and information. Right, that could be
the future. And to me, wow, that's a nightmare because
(26:58):
that means that there aren't answer to the deepest questions
in the universe, right, please?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I hope not.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
So. I know you talked about reaching out to Chomsky.
Who else did you get to speak to in this
process and what was the process of writing this book.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Like for you?
Speaker 4 (27:16):
I talked to basically anybody who would talk to me.
I cold emailed so many philosophers and historians. I interacted
with Daniel Dannett before he passed about questions of like
how much of the universe could we actually understand, which
is super fascinating. I talked to lots of folks here
at UC Irvine. We have a like top notch logic
(27:37):
and philosophy of science department, and folks here really helped
me understand some tricky things in philosophy. They all read
the draft and that was a terrifying process. You know,
you go off, you do this reading. It's not your area.
You think you've understood it well enough to explain it
to the general public. But to me, the accuracy is
so important. So I sent it back to the experts.
I was like, please shred this, like find something in
(28:00):
this that you think might be a little misleading. And
you know you're terrified when you get their notes back.
But it's important, and it's better, of course to hear
those things before you published than after. So for me
it was like a joyful exercise of self education. I
had never read Science Without Numbers by Heartreyfield, but I
read that book, and i'd never read How the Laws
(28:21):
of Physics Live by Nancy Cartwright, who suggests that there
is no answer out there. So I read a lot
of books on philosophy, and I talked to a lot
of people, and I had a lot of fun. It's
so much fun thinking and reading. I did a deep
dive into the history of the development of science, because
I wondered about alternative Earth's alternative paths, the thought experiment
(28:42):
of like what if we hadn't wiped out the Mayan civilization,
what astronomy would they be doing today and how different
would it be? Or what if the Chinese had gone
deep into math? And physics instead of diverting into material
science and inventing gunpowder. You know, if you ran the
experiment of like having a thousand earths, where would we
all be scientifically? Would we all have eventually stumbled into
(29:04):
the same stuff or would we be vastly different questions
and answers. It's really fun to read about like ancient
Mayan astronomers, and they recently found not just writings of minds,
which tragically most of those were destroyed by the Spanish,
but places where you could see them doing calculations or
they're like trying to figure stuff out. So like thinking
through these things, and it really made me want to
(29:27):
be able to talk to them.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I would love to get.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
In the minds of early people trying to solve these problems,
tackling these big unknown questions of where we are in
the universe without the benefit of all the giants that
we stand on. So I had a great time. I
learned so much writing this book, and I had a
great time with Andy because I would write a first
draft and he would add a bunch of stuff to it.
He knows so much fascinating history of science and language.
(29:50):
And then of course he did all of his Doodles,
which I always look forward to seeing the first draft
of because they're so clever and so insightful, and to me,
it's a really important part of the book is to
have these visuals, not just because they help explain, but
they sort of lighten the mood a little bit. There's
different kinds of science books out there. This is the
ones that like, maybe you didn't really understand everything, but
you felt like you were in the presence of a
(30:12):
great mind. That's not my favorite kind of science book.
I want people to really get it, and I want
them to feel comfortable, and I feel like having cartoons
and jokes, you know, it makes you feel like, hey,
these guys don't take themselves too seriously, and also it
mixes it up. You get like a big philosophical idea,
then you get a dad joke and a mental.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Break, which I appreciate and honestly like my dad's past.
But my dad would have loved this book. You know.
There's something so funny about what you're saying about just
knowing that you're in the presence of someone great but
not being able to decipher what the content is. There's
an intro to a Gertrude steinbook that Bert Surf, who
(30:52):
is the founder of Random House, included and in front
of it, it's basically saying it's copying to the fact
that he doesn't understand most of what she's saying, but
it is publishing it because it's brilliant.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Well, you know, there's a lot of great books out there,
like you know, Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.
I don't understand everything in that book. And then I think, like, well,
what's it like for you know, a random person who
doesn't know a PhD In physics? What fraction are they getting?
And yet the book is widely popular, and I don't
know if it's not read or if it's just read
in a different way as people are just like you know,
(31:25):
enjoy hearing from this great person. But to me, I
want to make sure that everything in the book makes sense,
that you get it, because to me, that's the point
of science communication and not to denegrate anybody else's efforts.
But I think is you know there's different approaches in
mind is definitely make sure you get every bit of it.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
One thing I had a question about is you're obviously
this very busy person you're a parent, You've got all
this responsibility at the university in terms of teaching and research,
and you also have a podcast, and somehow you've made
time to write this book and get a fact checked
and set out the philosophers all about stuff. I'm curious, like,
(32:02):
how do you find time to write and what's the
process of writing like for you?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
To me, I work on the fun stuff. So being
a faculty member means you're constantly overload with with way
too many things to do, but you also got to choose,
like I'm gonna do this today, I'm gonna do that today.
And so I'm at the point in my career where
I can just like pick the fun bits focus on those,
and to me, this is the fun bit. Like thinking
about this stuff and reading about this stuff is exciting.
(32:29):
I probably could have put out a few more physics
papers if I hadn't written this book, but you know,
I'm still putting out ten papers a year. I think
I'm doing fine in that category. But to me, this
is exciting, and I think it informs my physics. It
makes me think broadly and gives me new ideas and
connects me with people who think differently and I think
it's really important as an academic not to get too
narrowly focused in your sub sub sub sub subfield and
(32:51):
to be inspired by people in adjacent area. So that's
the story I told myself when I was like reading
philosophy books instead of the reviewing some paper. But I
was just pulled to it, you know, I was excited
about it. I was curious about it. I wanted to
read that next thing, I wanted to write this next bit.
I just sort of like had a burning desire to
work on it. And that's to me how I know
that I've like found a project that I'm excited about
(33:14):
because I'm just pulled to work on it all the time.
Speaker 5 (33:18):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So, assuming there is intelligent, scientific alien life out there,
and assuming we have a way to communicate with it,
which is a lot of assuming, what is the one
question you'd like to ask and what's the one thing
you try to explain?
Speaker 4 (33:34):
Man, why do I just get one question? You know,
got a long line of physicists. Everybody gets one question.
You know, I think I've sort of voted with my feet.
There's lots of questions about the universe you could ask,
and the one I asked in my career is what
is it made out of? Because yeah, I'd like to
know lots of things about what's inside a black hole,
(33:55):
et cetera, or how do the universe begin? But to me,
the most important question is what are the bits? And
are there even any Because if there are basic bits
of the universe, if there's like some fundamental thing which
just has to exist and defines the nature of the universe,
it can't be taken apart, it always exists, it's not
emergent or composite, then that tells you something deep about
(34:16):
the universe itself. It reveals its inherent nature in a
way that like chemistry doesn't and even particle physics. Now,
because we don't think we found those pieces, we have
these approximate theories that describe really zoomed out stuff. We
don't really know what the universe is made out of.
And I want to know that. Or if mind blowingly
like it's not made of anything, it's just everything is
made of smaller stuff, which is made of smaller stuff
(34:38):
in infinite tower of craziness. I also want to know that.
So that would be my number one question.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
And is there one thing you try to explain.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
I would hope that there's some cute bit of currently
irrelevant mathematics that might solve some alien problem. I love
how in the history of science we have this pattern
where mathematicians develop some little bit of mathematics like group theory,
not because it's useful, just because there are wonderful nerds
who think patterns are fun, and they made up some
(35:08):
games and like, oh, look at the cool stuff that
comes out of this, and then one hundred years later
physicists are like, oh, actually, that's what we need to
solve this problem over here.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
You know, like group theory perfectly explains how fundamental particles
interact in a way nobody expected when people were coming
up with this stuff one hundred years earlier. And so
maybe there some bit of weird human math that like
clicks perfectly into an alien physics puzzle, and together, you know,
our chocolate and their peanut butter can unravel the nature
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I love that. That's a really lovely place to stop.
You know, your book is so wonderful. It really is
something that people should gift, people should read, and I
think part of what's so amazing about it is one
you got me to read philosophy two you got me
to like really think about humans and what we know
about ourselves.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Well, thank you for reading it, and thank you for
the kind words.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
And I hope that folks out there enjoy this tour
philosophy with a little bit of aliens and if you
enjoy thinking about physics in the universe. I have a
fun podcast, Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Go check it out.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
It's wonderful. So thank you so much, Daniel, I really
appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
Thanks for having me on super fun conversation. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Okay, first of all, this has totally changed the way
I think about what would happen if aliens landed on Earth,
because you know, we always talk in terms of alien invasions, right,
and now I'm like, maybe they would just want to
come here and tell us about their physics research.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, more like an intergalactic science fair than an invasion.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
I mean it sounds way more interesting and a lot
less dangerous, of course. But it's funny because until today
I'd never really thought about the practical implications of that
term intelligent life in the universe, and this conversation maybe
realize that if there's intelligent life out there, it's doing
something with that intelligen I don't know, maybe science, maybe
other stuff too.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, you could take that concept from the book and
apply it to other disciplines, right, like alien philosophers, alien archaeologists,
alien interior designers. You know, we have no idea if
their approaches are universal and therefore similar to ours, or
if they're operating in such an alien context that it's
completely different.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, we have no idea yet.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
That's right. Well, maybe someday, but while we await the
answers to life, the universe and everything else. I would
like to thank Daniel Whitson for coming on the show.
He is so great. His book Do Alien Speak Physics
is available now at your local bookstore, and if it's
not at your local library, you can request it. There's
also a link in our show notes and we will
(37:43):
be back next week with another brand new episode. But
from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself, thank you so
much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
(38:05):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson
and me Mongage Heatikler, and research by our good pal
Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
the wonderful Dylan Fagan, with support from Tyler Klang. The
show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and
Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee
(38:28):
Dara Potts and Viney Shoring. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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