June 24, 2025 • 53 mins
What is the universe? Where did it come from, and what happens to it in the future? Humanity has wrestled with these questions since the dawn of civilization -- and though we've made a lot of progress, there's still much more to learn. In today's episode, the guys join special guest Jorge Cham, the polymath, engineer, author, cartoonist, and creator of the hit new show ScienceStuff as he explains the vast (and often ridiculous) history of humans attempting to understand the universe.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Rock.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
We've got someone throwing up some hands there in celebration.
You were Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen, and we
are please this punch over the Moon to have a
very special episode today. Noel, we are exploring some heady
concepts that no offense to us. We're not qualified to
explore on.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Our own Well sure when I qualified to explore much
on our own weekend by Yeah, today we're talking about
one of our favorite topics, which is mind science of
the mind or brain science or mind science of the brand.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I know there's a band called mind.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Science of the Mind, and I just always thought that
was fun and a nice catch all for these types
of explorations.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
But it's true.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We're joined by our buddy or hey cham from Science
Stuff of Science Stuff, Fame of Daniel and universe, and
he's coming to us from the void, the emptiness that
is the origin of all.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Things in the universe. Yeah, we're gonna.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Talk about Hello, Hello, or hey, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
How are we feeling today?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Oh, I'm feeling pretty good. It looks like I'm in
a black hole, but that's just mind recording booth.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
With a soud proofing now, or hey, you are a polymath.
We were talking earlier, not too long ago, when we
were asking you to hang out with us on air.
I just want to give your bona fides for the audience.
I'll keep it brief so it's not, you know, too
embarrassing or anything. But you have to be away for this,
(02:26):
fellow ridiculous historians, our pale. Jorge doctor cham is not
only the creator of the fantastic web comic strip Piled
Higher and Deeper short name PhD Comics, but is also
a PhD grad from Stanford University has published multiple books.
(02:47):
You've worked with in PR You created the PBS Kids
series Eleanor Wonders Why. Most recently, you have masterminded the
new podcast Science Stuff, which ask deep questions in a
I think one of the things that amazes me the
most personally about it is how you are able to
(03:08):
take very complex concepts and break them down into an approachable,
understandable way, which is really we always say it right
in science. That's the hallmark of that's the hallmark really
knowing what you're talking about, being able to elegantly explain it.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yeah, you know, it's a super fun show. Signce stuff.
We just try to make science fun and accessible.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
We start with very interesting and fascinating questions that you know,
we think everyone wants to know the answer. Do you
like is your dog lying to you?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yes? Really definitely? Is? That's right?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
That's right? It might be pet dependent or questions like
do you really have to wait thirty minutes after eating
to go swimming? You know, I think we all need
to know.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
That yes, yeah, do you have pets?
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Do I have pets?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sort of?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I have kids? Does that count? Oh wait, I'm sorry,
I forgot. I'm also true?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Also true. Well, you know it's funny.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
We we actually come from a similar background that we
didn't go to Stanford uh and we are not PhDs,
but we did come from the stuff world of Internet
explaining edutainment as we like to call it, the house
stuff works family of you know, articles and podcasts that
are other podcast stuff that I want you to know
is one of and ridiculous history really is spiritually is
(04:32):
kind of like a continuation of that.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Whole sort of de mystification through exploration, you.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Know in podcast form, and you know, science stuff is
absolutely a continuation of that de mystification exploration.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Yes, yes, on this podcast as well.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Now or hey, as we're as we're diving into some
of these big questions history of brain science, the history
of the the Big Bang theory not the TV show
and other heady concepts, could you tell us a little
bit about your your own origin story in your words,
(05:14):
because I think it's something that would be quite amazing
for our audience.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Yeah. Yeah, sure, what's the ridiculous history of forehead champ?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Here we go.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
So I was born and raised in Panama. Actually my
grandparents were from China, but they emigrated there. My parents
were born there. They worked for the Panama Canal. I
worked there one summer. Superb Yeah, okay, actually it was
really bored. I worked in like the AC, like the HVAC,
(05:45):
you know, design department.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I feel like they probably do need a lot of
air con.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
They did, that's right, it is critical to keeping us cool.
But yeah, then I came to the US. I went
to actually Georgia, tig to study engineering which is near
where you all are. And then I went and then
I decided I wanted to study robotics. I was like,
wait a minute, you can get a job making robots.
I was like, yeah, sign me up.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
If I could just interject really quickly, I'd love to
get your hot take on the state of robotics and
specifically some pretty funny pr let's say kerfuffles involving Elon
Musk's company, and like robots that are supposed to be
sentient and self propelled but are actually being remote controlled
by interns from other rooms.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Any thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
That, poor he Yeah, I think we're all doomed. Friends,
these are the ones pulling the strings. Robots look pretty
pretty amazing. I have to say, I didn't think we
get there so quickly. You know, It's part of the
reason I kind of changed fields. But yeah, it's pretty
amazing what they can do now and how they can
(06:57):
basically move with humans around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, I guess what I was getting at those is,
you know, they are definitely mechanically amazing, but I don't
know that they're fully there yet in terms of you know,
the singularity and all of that, because you know, Elon's
having them kind of serve drinks as bartenders with the
impression that they're actually doing all of this on their own.
But then there are actually folks like remote controlling piloting
(07:22):
them from other places. And I just don't think that's
it's a funny.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I think it might be a little over hype right now,
but I think we're almost there, you know, Like just
imagine taking all that AI that's happening online and then
putting it on a robot, and you're gonna have robots
drawing us as studio ghibli in.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Like a week probably, yes, And then they'll also be
able to set up on you know, the boardwalk of
your local tourist attraction New age. Right now, what we're
talking we're talking about how I'd love that you mentioned there, Orge,
(08:00):
that these breakthroughs and innovations arrived much more quickly than
previous scientific consensus had concluded. When we tell the story
of robots, Noelt's see if I can pull off this segue.
We're talking about a culmination of a vast, vast chasm
(08:24):
of history, and it's fascinating to me, and I think
to all of us that human beings are now creating
technology that arguably human beings themselves don't fully understand. And
that question only becomes more interesting when we think about
the origin story, not just of you, Orgey, not just
(08:46):
of our silly little show, but the origin of what
we call the universe. And I must confess not being
the brightest crayon in the box, I have often been
amazed by how how much scientific rigor goes into understanding
the history of the universe until you get to a
(09:07):
certain point, and some of the smartest people in the
world will say, yeah at one point, and then the universe,
so what is.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
The Big Bang?
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah? The Big Bang is this theory that like everything
that you see in the universe right now, like all
the stars and planets and galaxies, everything out there, and
all the stuff that you can't even see or field,
all that, at some point about fourteen billion years ago,
was crammed into a space smaller than a pinhead. So
(09:41):
imagine all those trillions of stars out there crammed the
small space like that, and actually should be smaller, but
a pinnate is usually the smallest thing people can imagine.
And then at fourteen billion years ago, it all just
kind of suddenly expanded and exploded out into the universe
we see today. That's the basic gist of it.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Okay, now, cool, got it?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sorry, I got some questions, just.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A couple of.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
How they get everything so small, How they get everything
so small and then then became regular sized or like
way bigger than regular size. I don't understand. I'm sorry,
my pen sized brain cannot.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
This is a This is currently the most widely still
accepted theory right now. How did people begin sort of
coalescing and agree on this? Is there a pivotal moment
where someone particular academic or something found irrefutable proof of
(10:45):
the Big Bang? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, it's a super fascinating story. It involves like Einstein
being sketchy with this math. It involves people discovering things
through pigeonproof. It's really kind of an interesting story.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
We're in.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Pigeon poop. Yeah, yeah, that usually gets people going there.
But you know, like if you think about like hundreds
of years ago or even before, like the nineteenth century,
when you look down into the night sky, you just
see stars, right, You just pinpoint to stars, and you
actually don't see that many, and they're all pretty static, right,
(11:22):
Like they're not moving like the Earth moves, and so
they move them the sky. But you know, a year
after year you look at these stars and they're basically
the same, like the constellations are still the same. So
I think mostly for the throughout of human history, people thought, oh,
the universe is just the way it is, and maybe
it's always been like that, or maybe it got created
in a snap by some deity, but it's not really changing,
(11:45):
and it's kind of like that's all you can see
a few stars, so maybe that's the whole universe, right,
because like if the universe was had more stars, we
would see them, right yeah. And so that's what mostly
people thought. But then one interesting one, it was moment.
One interesting moment was in the nineteen ten when Einstein
(12:06):
was like working out how gravity works, how physics works,
and he sort of came out with this theory about
the whole universe called general relativity, and the theory kind
of told him something weird, which is that the universe
should be either shrinking or expanding. Those were kind of
the two options. And he's like, whoaha, whoa, that's that's crazy.
(12:29):
I mean, Einstein, but even for me, that's crazy. Either
or right, yeah, or kind yeah, basically that's what the
math kind of told him. And you know, he looked
out at the sky and he thought, we're not shrinking,
we're not expanding. Something weater. So there's something famous called
the Einstein fudge factor. So like he just like added
a number at the end of the equation to make
(12:50):
it seem like the universe was not changing at all.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Hey, God, isn't that kind of bad science?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Like isn't that sort of like an example of someone
having a pre conceived idea about something and just sort
of being like, nah.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
No, let's just fix it so that this is the
result that we get.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's not great. It doesn't look good on Einstein,
And later on in his life he basically called it
like the biggest blunder of his life, of his career.
So he added this fudge factor. And then in nineteen
twenty four, people kind of figured out that the universe
was bigger than it seemed. So like when you look
at into the nice Guy, you see stars, but you
(13:27):
also see these kind of like fuzzy things. They look
like little cotton balls, and people that just thought like, oh,
those are like gas clouds, right, Like there's just like
little fuzzy things in the universe. But then someone called
Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, basically
figured out that these things are not fuzzy clouds of gas.
(13:51):
There are actually galaxies, and so there's this guy is
just full of these galaxies. So basically our universe went
from like we're like about the size of the Milky
Way to like, we're trillions of times bigger than that.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
And think if it is like being able to zoom
in and zoom in and zoom in, and every time
you zoom there's another layer with more stuff and more stuff.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, it kind of blew people's mind. And
that's that's.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The observable universe, right, which we'll come to find. Yeah,
could you tell us a little bit about because I
think it's a phrase that can be misleading to a
lot of lay folk. You hear the phrase observable universe
and you automatically think, yeah, man, I got up earlier today.
I observed all kinds of stuff there. So what is
(14:40):
the observable universe? Why is that an important concept?
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah? Yeah, Basically it turns out that the universe is
so big we can't see all of it yet, like
there are parts of the universe that are so far
away that we haven't been able to see them. A
because the light light has a speed it and b
because the universe is not infinitely old. We figured out
(15:05):
that the universe is fourteen billion years old, so basically
we can only see things that have been able to
get to us in those fourteen billion years.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Because if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at a cool
little pictogramograph of the Big Bang expansion, and it's sort
of a timeline as well, because it's sort of this
cone shaped whether they'm on one end, they sort of
tapers into like this flat circle. And the first stars
are calculated to have formed four hundred million years ago,
and those are the ones that were like, those are
(15:37):
the ones that we are like seeing or those are
the ones that we have not seen yet. I'm just like,
because it is a time travel equation as well, right,
because of the way light works.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
So I'm just trying to wrap my head around there.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So stars are being made all the
time in the universe, and then they have been been
made all throughout the history of the universe, and stars
also die have been dying throughout the universe of stars explode,
some of them just kind of taper on and simmer
for a long time. So the stars you're seeing, they
could have been born, Like, if they're close to us,
they were probably born recently. If they were really far away,
(16:12):
they were probably born a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It's it's one of my favorite things to think about
whenever I can get away from the light pollution so
abiquitous in in you know, various human cities. Uh, I
don't know the answers that I think you have explained
it in the best way.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I have heard. Sorry, Carl communications on this one.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how
the concept of dark energy plays into this. I've always
been fascinated with dark matter and dark energy. But isn't
that that's a force that aids or in some way
has contributed to this whole expansion.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah proposition, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, probably the best thing we know about
dark energy is that it has a cool name, and
then and that's about it. It's actually related to the
Big Bang as well. So kind of picking up the
story in the nineteenineteen twenty nine, Hubble not only discovered
that those fuzzy things were galaxies. He also discovered that
(17:23):
they were moving away from us. So, you know, like
if you've heard of the Doppler shift, the fact like
kind of what cops used to measure your velocity when
you're speeding down the highway. Obviously always within the speed limit,
but that's how measure your.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So you can also hear it in an audio form
as sound source moves away from you, it is interpreted
as almost like a pitched kind of envelope, like it
sort of changes in pitch as it moves away, which
I believe is an oral representation of the Doppler.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah, that is exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Is this related to what's called wretch?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Exactly, That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
So like you know, like when an ambulance is driving
towards you, it kind of sounds like higher pitch, but
it's a move that's a mooves passed you away from you.
It sounds a little bit lower woo woo woo. The
same thing is happening with light because light kind of
behaves like a wave, and so you can tell from
the redshift of the light of galaxies that they're moving
(18:22):
away from us.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
That is both fascinating and frightening for some reason I
cannot I cannot yet articulate.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
In this language.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So the universe is running away from us. Anybody with
abandonment issues just think about that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
True?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, well, and how does this affect us in a
functional way? Like it's super interesting and knowing about all
this history, but is this something that that is there
is sort of an actionable you know, effects in our
in our daily lives kinda.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Yeah, So, so how they measure the galaxies are all
moving away from everything's moving away from each other, but
from our perspective, it looks like it's moving away from us.
And so that's how they extrapolated the Big Bang. Basically,
like if everything's moving apart, if you just run the
clock back, that means everything at some point was really
scrunched together. And that's kind of the Big Bang. And
(19:14):
that's kind of what dark energy is, which is that
A little bit later, or actually kind of recently, they
found that the galaxies they are not just moving away
from us, They're getting faster and faster. It's like they're
not just moving away from us. It's like they're hitting
the pedal to the medal, trying to get away from us.
As fast as possible.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Wow, well we've all seen Earth.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
We can't play, you know, we will see what's going on.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I'd have to imagine that has to do with some
sort of like exponential curve perhaps, or just some the
way things sort of like over time, you know, kind
of the curve sort of becomes steeper. And I don't
know me trying to put it in. I'm a sound guy,
so maybe I'm thinking of it in those terms. But
can you explain a little bit about why non occurs?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
The soul's speeding up?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, so the universe is expanding faster and faster and
nobody knows why. And that big question mark about why.
That's what scientists call dark energy, because you're like, you
need something to be pressing the pedal on these galaxies,
something's like, you know, pushing them away and the and
so you need some kind of force, some kind of energy,
and so they don't know what it is, so they
(20:23):
just call it dark energy.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So if the if the world's brightest minds, the eggheads
and the boffins, if they're like police investigators on the
case of universe expansion, they've got this big board right
with their suspects. You know, there's there's a little thumbnail
picture of gravity there pictures a strong weak nuclear force.
(20:45):
They've got this one picture that's just a question mark
and they wrote dark energy.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Yeah. Basically, well they call it dark because you can't
see it, and it's an energy because it's like causing acceleration,
it's causing things to move. Uh, And it's kind of
really relevant to us because we since we don't know
what it is, we don't know what it's going to
do in the future. So like in the future, dark
energy might be like, oh, you know what I'm done,
I'm gonna stop accelerating the universe, in which case then
(21:12):
gravity might take over the whole universe and then scrunches
down back into a little tiny spot fun like at
the Big Bang.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, oh no, reverse Big Bang. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
They called it the Big Crunch, very imagination, a big crunch.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Not to be confused with the serial brand.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That's that must be the h that must be what
gave me that terrifying, inexplicable sense of unease.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
So you don't know what it's going to do, yeah,
nor when right or when. Yeah, it might be tomorrow,
it might be in the trillion years, and nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Oh my gosh, everybody be nice to your friends. Just
in case.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Can you tell us a little bit about this guy,
George I believe. I'm sorry, I'm maybe over on saying
his name, but it's my understanding that his paper is
what kind of solidified some of the first discussions of
the Big Bang theory that were then kind of accepted.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Yeah, yeah, sort of. So like if we go back
to the point where we didn't know what those fuzzy
things in this guy were, So we could see these
fuzzy things in the sky, and we could tell that
they were red shifted. So like they because they were
moving away from us. The light kind of gets slower
and so it turns red. When light gets slower, it
turns red, and so they, like we could tell these
(22:31):
things were red shifted and so moving away from us.
And so he was a guy who kind of floated
the idea that maybe means things are moving away from
us and maybe means things are expanding.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And to date, when we're talking about concepts like this, right,
we are able to gather a lot of data.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We are able.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
To draw or construct our most reasonable national theories about it.
But as anybody reading pop science in the news today
or throughout history knows there for one person that makes
an agreed upon, you know, going theory, there are easily
a rogues gallery of dozens of other people who come
(23:18):
up and say, yeah, but what if I had another idea?
So I would love to hear just from your expertise,
would love to hear some of your favorite alternative explanations
for the universe, because I know, you know, science stuff
has been talking about black holes quite recently. One of
(23:42):
one theory that I think came back into resurgence quite
recently was a group of scientists Now I'll have to
find their names who proposed that proposed an old theory
that the universe was not created by a big bang,
but instead dwells within somehow within a super massive black hole.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
What are you?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
What are your Some of your favorite alternative theories bonus
points were crazy?
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, well, I think that ranks up pretty high. So
we recently did an episode on scigence stuff about what
could be inside of a black hole and we had
we had five theories and this was number five, like
like the most craziest one, and the is that you know,
if you take a black hole and you throw two
rocks into it, Like you throw a rock in one
direction and a rock in the other direction. They're both
(24:32):
going to fall down to the center, but near the
center of the black hole, those rocks are going to
be moving so much that one of them is actually
going to kind of curve around the center of the
black hole inside of what's called the singularity and actually
hit the other rock that you threw in that was
(24:54):
going the other way. Because everything gets warped inside of
a black hole down to a point. So those two
rocks are going to hit each other, and they're going
to hit each other with so much energy that it's
going to have the same or more energy than what
was at the Big Bang. And so scientists think like, oh, whoa,
So these are just two rocks hitting each other inside
(25:14):
of a black hole, and it's probably happening all the
time in every black hole that we know out there,
and it's energy as big as a Big Bang. Maybe
that's how our universe started, Like our universe could just
be two rocks hitting each other inside of a black hole,
and that's where that's that's where we are right now,
and inside of our universe you can have more black
holes with more universes and instead of those universes, you
(25:37):
can have more black holes with more universes inside of them.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Not to get too like sci fi about it, I guess,
but given that potential for all of these infinite you know,
other universes, doesn't it seem a little bit kind of
I don't know, self centered to think that this is
the only universe that supports life and that this is
the only universe that has like, you know, stuff going
for it. Always kind of had a hard time accepting that. Like,
(26:02):
I don't know if I believe in extraterrestrials and not
much more of an atheist and agnostic than any kind
of religious person, but I have a hard time believing
that this is all there is, given these infinite possibilities. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Yeah, and that's not even getting into like the multiverse,
which is like this, yeah, his ex version of multiple universe.
This is like the actual just in our universe, there
could be other universes and other people in those as well,
a world.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
In a grain of sands, right, as they used to say,
this is okay, this is fascinating. First off, again, not
being an expert, I love the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide
vibe of explaining the universe as two rocks bumped together
and then everything happens. This, also, I think, leads us
(26:49):
to a fantastic and natural segue on something that has
been an area of fascination for ourselves and a lot
of our audience members for a long time, quantum physics.
We've been circulating this clip from a fantastic professor named
Rama Murty Shenkar, and he had this line where he's
(27:13):
speaking with his students and it's the day they start
studying quantum physics, and he says, here's my goal. Right now,
I'm the only one who doesn't understand quantum mechanics. In
about seven days, all of you will also be unable
to understand quantum mechanics.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
The famous physicist Richard Feinman is famously quoted as saying, like,
if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand
quantum physics basically, like, not even the smartest people in
the world really understand it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, And I guess that's what I was getting at
in terms of, you know, there comes this crossover point
where you have to accept the things that you don't
know and Ben and I have often talked about, is
that the point where things become in the realm of
spirituality or in the realm of magic or all of that.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You know, it just seems like.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
There has to be room for the things we don't know,
and what is the scientific communities perspective on that. The
guy that I mentioned earlier, this dude La maitre Belgian
astronomer or cosmologist. Rather, he was also deeply religious person
and you know, had a lot to do with talking
about this Big Bang theory stuff, but also kind of
(28:27):
looked at it in a way that reconciled it with
the creation of the universe, like in a religious sense.
I just wonder what your thoughts are around around that
and where those worlds meet and if there's room for
these worlds to coexist.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, yeah, well well I should I say, well, I
should sort of clarify so people don't understand quantum mechanics
because it's like it's based on math that's very unintuitive
to us, Like we're not trained, like our brains get
involved to really kind of have an intuitive feel for
like things that are random and things that are in
two places at the same time, or they have probability
(29:00):
of being at the same place at the same time
in this universe. And so most of what people know
about quantum physics comes from experiments. So like, if you
run experiments, this is what the universe tells you. That's
how things are. And so when people say they don't
understand it, it's like people are saying, like, well, it's
(29:20):
crazy that it is that way, but that's you know,
if you poke at the universe, that's what it shows
you how it is. And so it's experimentally based. This
is what I wanted to just clarify. But yeah, I
think science is very clear, and scientists are very good
at saying only things or believing in things, only in
(29:43):
things that they know they can prove with experiment. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, we've often I try to condense that thought down,
often by explain it this way. Science attempts to answer
how thing occurs, right, and spirituality metaphysics, who could call it,
attempts to address why that occurs. So the how and
(30:09):
the why can sometimes seem quite separated. And then when
you get to the bleeding edges of physics and our understanding,
the two things get weirdly combined, you know. And I've
do it since we'd audio podcast, I'm doing little hand gestures.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, and I think that just the last thing on
this la maitre dudes and just fascinating to me. I
want to dig more into him. He had this to
say about exactly what you're talking about. As far as
I can see, such a theory, talking about Big Bang
remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves
the materialist free to deny any transcendental being. For the believer,
it removes any attempt at familiarity with God. It is
(30:50):
consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The beginning of the universe. I just think that's a
badass quote.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely things that are
beyond what scientists can say or even understand, and and
there are things that may possibly never be able to
be understood by scientists. But until then, you know, we
just gotta use our best approach to understanding the world,
which is science. It's better than making things, so it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Is, no doubt it is.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It's it's that even if you add a little bit
of fudge.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
To your equation, Yeah, yeah, it happens, you know. It happens.
We're just humans.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
I love these It happens while.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
We're on much happens.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Or a could you tell us about the history of
quantum physics. We know that there's something afoot right with
the double slit experiment. The other the other concept and
popular culture would be like Schrodinger's cat. For instance, when
did people really start clocking onto this idea of quantum
(32:04):
physics and later quantum mechanics, Like was there was there
a light bulb moment? Was there like one guy or
one person who stood up and said, eureka, I'm in
two places at once.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, what's rarely like one guy or girl? You know,
it's usually a group of people. But what's fascinating about
quantum physics is it all? It also happened within the
same like ten years, ten, fifteen, twenty years at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. So the way I think
of physics is like think of coke, Coca Cola coke. Right,
there's classic coke and then there's New Coke. I guess
(32:37):
if you're old enough to remember new Cooke of Coke
zero didn't. New coke didn't do super super well. People
love Coke zero. I think that's better. Okay, there's classic coke,
there's a coke zero, and so classic coke is what
people call classical physics, like think of Newton and f
eicals Ma, And the best analogy is to think of
(32:59):
like a old table, like how the billiard balls knock
on each other, how they bounce each is how you
can like aim one and hit one at an angle
and know that which angle they're both gonna come off from.
That's like classical physics, and that's kind of how the
whole world around this to our eyes and ears works,
Like if I throw a ball at you, you're gonna
(33:20):
basically know where it's gonna go and you're gonna be
able to catch it right. And so that's classical physics,
very pretty simple stuff. But around the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the physicists started kind of looking closer at
things and noticing weird things, like they notice that the energy,
like the light that comes from something that's hot, it's
kind of weird, like there's some weird things about it.
(33:42):
They notice that like if you shine a light on
some metals, electrons will kind of pop off, but only
like it's certain frequencies of light or certain settings of light,
or it's not proportional to how much light you shine
on it, and so there are all these like weird
things at the microscopic level. So the thing about quantum
physics is that it really only sort of applies to
(34:04):
things at the quant the really really tiny like atomic
or close to atomic sizes. That's when you really see
the weird quantum stuff. Like in our everyday lies, we're
not gonna like your cat is not gonna be in
two places at the same time, if it's a live
or it's dead. It's one of those two things. But
if you get down to like atoms and you like
you ask, like, is where is this atom? You're gonna
(34:24):
get some weird answers like sometimes the atom is here,
but then you measure it a little bit later on
it's over there. And sometimes you measured a little bit
before where you thought it would be, but no, it's
over here. And that's when you get these weird quantum effects.
Reality seems negotiable. That's spooky, uh, because that's what we
call it, right, spooky Actually.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Is this is this where quantum entanglement comes in. Forgive
me if I'm jumping the shark here.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when people talk about like quantum physics,
they usually mean like a couple of like two or
three weird things of how things behave. One of them
is this idea that like things can be in two
places at the same time, or they can be up
and down at the same time. A quantum entangum quantum
entanglement is another one where like if you have two
(35:10):
fuzzy things, they can sort of and make them interact.
Now they're sort of coupled in this weird thing where
like if you take one cat that's maybe a labor
dead and another cat's maybe a labor dead, and you
have him interact, now you have like four possibilities, like
both cats could be delave, if both cats could be dead,
and so things just get kind of like complicated, and
all those possibilities are now happening at the same time.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
So this is.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
This is something that for a lot of people might
be dismissed as an academic truth. There's a series of observations.
You might read this in the paper or I guess
see it online or on your phone now, and then
you say, Okay, that's cool, but how does that apply
to me? And it feels like, the most immediate answer
(35:56):
to that now would be the ongoing breakthroughs in what
we call quantum computers. Could you tell us a little
bit about what a quantum computer is, or what quantum
computing is, how it differs from you know, the machines
we're using to record this episode.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Today, right right, Well, bet let me tell you something amazing,
which is that every computer is quantum.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Oh man, what this has to do with the processing power? Right?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Yeah. Basically, so the way microchips were sort of invented,
you know, we're talking about transistors in like silicone chips
and all that, that was all due to quantum physics.
So some dudes in Bill Labs back in the fifties
sixty seventies they're like, oh, there's this thing called quantum physics.
I wonder what we can do with that. And then
(36:47):
they thought, well, maybe we can make tiny little transistors
the size of several atoms. And that is the only
reason that we have iPhones and Internet and that we're
talking and people are listening to us right now.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Oh my gosh, guys, we're quantum. We just went quantum
of this episode. We have quantum left.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
It's true. We quantum left the shark.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
But when people talk about quantum computing, isn't that sort
of a stand in that maybe is a little bit
of a misnomer, but about just more and more exponentially
powerful processors.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Yeah, yeah, so I said, every computer is quantum, but
quantum computers are a different kind of computers that are
also quantum. But so it's a computer in which the
circuits are so so small that they're actually down like
at the single atom, single electron, or single sort of
quantum particle level. And so it turns out that when
(37:42):
you make a circuit with quantum particles, then you can
do quantum maths like you can do the math that
happens in the quantum universe, the quantum world, and that
math is really good at solving certain things. So it's
not probably not good for like video calling or listening
to podcasts, but it's like super incredibly good at, for example,
(38:06):
like breaking passwords cryptograph.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Because it can do it can just run so many
patterns like to the point where it'll it'll it'll more
or less process of elimination down to the correct solution
because of how quickly it can run all of these
you know scenarios.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Right, exactly right. Like, if I wanted to guess your
password right now using like an iMac or a computer,
I would probably have to program the computer to like
guess every number from here to ten trillion, and that
would just take a really really long time. But like
a quantum computer, because it can do quantum math, it can,
like you said, kind of feel things out all in parallel,
(38:44):
and once you do the math and the quantum kind
of notation, then like the answer kind of like bubbles
up to the surface and then you sort of get
your your password almost right away.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Cryptography is one of the one of the big applications
that a lot of people talk about, right, breaking codes, encryption, decryption.
What are some other potential uses of this this kind
of new gen of computing.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, now that's about it. That's what that we know
of that we know of so so like we just
happened to randomly in the nineties, some computer scientists was like,
you know what, this breaking of password is really hard,
but maybe we can use quantum computer. Then you figured
out that you can use quantum mass to break that problem.
(39:41):
Now scientists think that there may be other problems like that,
like who knows, like you know, you know, finding the
nearest habitable planet maybe could be solved by a quantum
computer faster or something like that. You know, I'm totally
making that up. But the idea is that there might
be like big, big problems out there that we don't
know about yet that quantum computers are really good at solving.
And the other thing that people say quantum computers are
(40:03):
good for is just simulating physical nature, you know, because
the world is quantum once you get down to Adams,
and so you kind of need a quantum computer to
be able to simulate that better.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
That's fascinating because then that implies that humanity has created
or discovered a thing that can potentially solve problems. Humanity
has not yet figured out how to ask. Yeah, exactly right, Okay,
that's that's why that that leads us to another thing
(40:37):
where we're gonna have to I think, no, we're gonna
have to hang out with Jorge more often on the
show if you'll have us Whorge.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
And also I was gonna just really quickly last thing
about the quantum computing stuff as pertains to another show
that Ben and I do together that I think you'd
also be a great guest on for this topic. Specifically,
stuff they don't want you to know is is that
there seems to be a sense that the escalation of
quantum computers and their ability to do these things could
(41:06):
potentially lead to a future where you can't have a
secret password anymore. It's just like that is passe at
this point because there is no security because of how
powerful these machines are.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
And just by the fact that they exist.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Right, Like think of your bank accounts that that's anyone
can get it into that. Even if you have like
cryptocurrency like bitcoin or dougecoin, the fund of computers could
break that up and basically that would all be meaningless.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
So what's the solution.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
There is this like nuclear power type stuff where you
have to keep it under wraps, where you got to.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Decide who gets it. Like it's just I don't know.
It's scary when you talk about I.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Think everyone has to walk around naked. That's the only
solution is no more secrets. Okay, fair, no more secrets.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
See Atlanta Police Department.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I'm not a criminal. I'm ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
No fully on board. I think there's a lot more
to discuss here. We had some other topics that we
were considering, but I think there was just so much
here in Big Bang and quantum physics and now into
quantum computing that we may well just book a part
two for this soon down the road and explore some
of these other topics that we had, like the history
of neuroscience.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
For brain science. We were talking about this, and this
feels like a natural I mean, the scary way to
get into it for us would be to immediately ask
you or hey, will will human civilization arrive at a
point where without using the word AI, which I find problematic,
(42:36):
will human civilization arrive at a point where one could
create something as complex and as recognizable in function as
an organic human brain?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Like, is that where we're headed?
Speaker 4 (42:50):
That might be where we're at right now.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
So the crazy thing is that a lot of these
AI models that people use every day, they're super creative
about like how how big they are or how complex
they are. Like if you try to find out like
how many notes, which is kind of like the basic
unit in an AI neural network, Like how many notes
is Chad GPT four have or five Chad Chad GIPT
(43:15):
five or any like nobody will tell you because they're
all you know, trade secrets, and so some estimates out
there are that these might be getting close or at
least kind of like in the same order of magnitude
or getting there to like how many neurons you have
in your brain or how many connections you have in
your brain, and so, like, you know, we were not
too frustry to do later. You're both talking to an
(43:43):
AI right now. I am an AI.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It's getting creepily, I mean, speaking of exponential you know improvement.
Remember when AI slop was just so obvious and was
like pixelated and weirdly stretched and just bizarro, and it
just seemed like kind of like a novelty, right yeah,
But now it's just it's too good and I don't
(44:06):
particularly like it. And also I was seeing that some
of the most popular pieces of content now on the
internet are AI generated are you know, machine learning generated.
That's problematic in and of itself, and it's like, you know,
we struggle with this whole idea of like we don't
want to be luddites and get left behind or be
old man screaming at cloud. But it does feel like
(44:29):
there's a real inflection point where you can't turn the
clock back anymore, and it's not a good thing. I
certainly think that there is excellent, positive, life, world changing
uses for these kinds of things, but it seems like
corporations just trot this stuff out without really thinking about
the knock on effects.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
They don't. I don't think they do it all. They're just
rushing to be the first. And I think we are
definitely an inflection point, as you mentioned, like there's things
are definitely different now. But I kind of think that.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
This was only a handful of years ago.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
No, it was Will Smith eating a bowl of spaghetti,
you know, and it looked like absolute pixelated garbage. And
now you can make stuff that looks like the news.
It's pristine. Sorry interrupt It blows my mind.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
It's totally mind blowing. Yeah, But I think back to
the time when photoshop became popular. M remember that, like
before you could trust a photograph with a photograph, but
at some point it's like, no, you can't trust any
photograph at all. I think it's just going to be
the same for like video now, and you can't really
trust any video that you see out there.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Well, it could go wrong. Well, and like with photoshop,
you know you have experts.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
As it got better and better, who can be like, okay,
these are the red flags, these are the things to
look for it. So you know this photoshop and there
certainly still are big signs of AI AI generated stuff,
But as it gets better and better, those signs are
going to be fewer and fewer and harder and harder
to see. And you really are going to require experts
or we've even talked about on stuff that I want
you to know how there would need to be some
(45:57):
validation form like of of footage, some sort of watermark
or something to show that this was captured in real
life through a telephone photo device, through a photographic device.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Yeah, it's going to come down to trust, like who
do you whose camera do you trust that was not
tempered with AI? You know, whose motivation you feel is good?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
And that gets even trickier because then when we were
forced to resort to trust, which can sometimes be a
subjective exercise, or force this uh to to resort to
trusts as a currency or authenticator, then we we re
enter the world of absolute wing nuts. It makes me
(46:42):
remember when we were working previously on some of the
most popular conspiracy theories in Western culture, one of which
being landed on the moon. Right, that old, that old
workhorse gets trotted out all the time. I was talking
with people who were Noel and our pal Matt. We're
talking with people who would genuinely bring up trust, and
(47:04):
they would say, well, have you met any astronauts?
Speaker 4 (47:09):
And we have.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I was like, yeah, I met some astronauts there, yeah, yeah,
and that they said, well do you trust what was
your vibe check on those astronauts?
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And I'm like, they're kind of busy. And that's extra
tough though, Ben, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
As trust has just eroded so far in terms of
trust of the media, in terms of trust of literally
what is before your very eyes. So these two things
do not, unfortunately align particularly well do that.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
And we're still arguing if the Earth is round? There
are people guys who are convinced shut.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Out Bob right right, airplanes and the night sky. Have
you ever met an astronaut? They're the only ones you
could see it. Did you trust them?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
But this is this is where we get to, uh,
maybe if we want to put a potter on it,
we could say I love your point there, Orge, about
how this feels like a new iteration of similar inflection points,
And no, I think you've nailed the perfect phrase for that.
Here's hoping humanity can address these same breakthroughs, the way
(48:19):
that civilization was able to soldier through and adapt to
previous huge game changers. It all goes down to brain science.
And we don't want to put you on the spot, Orge,
but we'd love to have you back on a future
episode where we can we can learn from you about
(48:40):
the very strange historical saga of humans attempting to study themselves.
Two questions, First, are you okay with that? Would you
like to hang out with us?
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Absolutely? Does this super fun?
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Awesome? Yes? Okay, great?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
That would have been an awkward day, yeah, if you
were if you were too busy.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Second, w I know?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Secondly, one of our ending questions here, just as a
tease for the wild history ridiculous, dare I say at
times a brain science? What's what are your favorite brain
science like anecdotes or maybe quack science in that pursuit.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Oh yeah, there's a lot. I've read a book with
a neuroscientist about just the whole brain, the history of
the brain, what we know about the brain. You know,
one of the most fascinating stories we have on there
is the story of someone called patient HM, Henry Moulayson.
And basically have you seen the movie Memento, which was
Christopher Nolan's basically first breakout movie. This guy who could
(49:45):
only remember thirty seconds at a time, Like, that's real,
Like that's something that happens out to some people out
there in the world, And it's actually something that happened
to someone named Henry Moullayson a while a little while ago,
and he was basically test subject for the rest of
his life. And that's uh, and through him is how
(50:06):
we know a lot about how our memory works. Like
before we didn't know think that there were things like
you know, mortar memory, short term memory, long term memory, uh,
different kinds of memories and where they were in the brain.
But thanks to like basically the momental guy, we kind
of figure all all of that out. And it's fascinating
to see like what he could remember and what he
couldn't remember.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Amazing lots of perfect ties.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
For the next episode where we have you back, where
we talk more about the history of brain science, and
I do just want to point out really quickly, to
circle back to something that was said quite a while ago.
Max pointed out in the chat here that we do
on Ridiculous History have multiple episodes about bird poop, not
just one.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
We went didn't get to the bird poop.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got Uh that's gonna sound weird
out of context, but yeah, Noel, you're correct.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
We went through a burth phace. Oh my gosh. So hey,
where can folks find your work?
Speaker 2 (50:59):
We know we have science stuff still, episodes of Daniel
and Jorhicks for the Universe. You're a published author on
many fronts of polymaths, has been put it, but give
us the scoop. Where can ridiculous historians out there check
out your work?
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Yeah? The best way to find me is just search
for science stuff. One word on your iHeartRadio app or
wherever you're listening to this, and please describe. We tackle
super fun, super fascinating questions. We talk to experts, and
we keep in light and fun and easy to understand.
So that's my thing. And then if you're interested in
some of my science work, I do have several books published.
(51:33):
There's one about kind of what we don't know? About
the universe. There's one about the brain and what we
don't know about the Brain. And I also have a
series of kids books called Oliver's Great Big Universe. But
please check out Science Stuff That's wow a.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
Question about it.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
It is a classic how stuff works style science exploration
and Jorge is a.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Ace science communicator.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
So we can't thank you enough for hanging out with
us today on Ridiculous System.
Speaker 4 (51:58):
This is super fun. It was ridiculously fun.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
YEA glad to hear you know what that's that's our
ultro do. I think it must be what a ride?
Can't wait for Part two?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Big big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams
Alex Williams who composed this track.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh Yes, and.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Huge thanks to Jonathan strick Land aka the quist Or
A J. Bahamas Jacob's aka the Puzzler Big Oh.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I can't imagine you know how fun it would be
to get Bahamas and Jorge.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
In a room together. Unbelievable. I think a singularity would occur.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Time space as we know it would break down, but
like in the most fun way.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Imaginable and big big thanks to the Rude Dudes a
Ridiculous Crime. Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coat
and Noel Big thanks to.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
You, man on you as well. Let's see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Rock.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
We've got someone throwing up some hands there in celebration.
You were Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen, and we
are please this punch over the Moon to have a
very special episode today. Noel, we are exploring some heady
concepts that no offense to us. We're not qualified to
explore on.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Our own Well sure when I qualified to explore much
on our own weekend by Yeah, today we're talking about
one of our favorite topics, which is mind science of
the mind or brain science or mind science of the brand.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I know there's a band called mind.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Science of the Mind, and I just always thought that
was fun and a nice catch all for these types
of explorations.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
But it's true.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We're joined by our buddy or hey cham from Science
Stuff of Science Stuff, Fame of Daniel and universe, and
he's coming to us from the void, the emptiness that
is the origin of all.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Things in the universe. Yeah, we're gonna.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Talk about Hello, Hello, or hey, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
How are we feeling today?
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Oh, I'm feeling pretty good. It looks like I'm in
a black hole, but that's just mind recording booth.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
With a soud proofing now, or hey, you are a polymath.
We were talking earlier, not too long ago, when we
were asking you to hang out with us on air.
I just want to give your bona fides for the audience.
I'll keep it brief so it's not, you know, too
embarrassing or anything. But you have to be away for this,
(02:26):
fellow ridiculous historians, our pale. Jorge doctor cham is not
only the creator of the fantastic web comic strip Piled
Higher and Deeper short name PhD Comics, but is also
a PhD grad from Stanford University has published multiple books.
(02:47):
You've worked with in PR You created the PBS Kids
series Eleanor Wonders Why. Most recently, you have masterminded the
new podcast Science Stuff, which ask deep questions in a
I think one of the things that amazes me the
most personally about it is how you are able to
(03:08):
take very complex concepts and break them down into an approachable,
understandable way, which is really we always say it right
in science. That's the hallmark of that's the hallmark really
knowing what you're talking about, being able to elegantly explain it.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Yeah, you know, it's a super fun show. Signce stuff.
We just try to make science fun and accessible.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
We start with very interesting and fascinating questions that you know,
we think everyone wants to know the answer. Do you
like is your dog lying to you?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yes? Really definitely? Is? That's right?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
That's right? It might be pet dependent or questions like
do you really have to wait thirty minutes after eating
to go swimming? You know, I think we all need
to know.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
That yes, yeah, do you have pets?
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Do I have pets?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Sort of?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
I have kids? Does that count? Oh wait, I'm sorry,
I forgot. I'm also true?
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Also true. Well, you know it's funny.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
We we actually come from a similar background that we
didn't go to Stanford uh and we are not PhDs,
but we did come from the stuff world of Internet
explaining edutainment as we like to call it, the house
stuff works family of you know, articles and podcasts that
are other podcast stuff that I want you to know
is one of and ridiculous history really is spiritually is
(04:32):
kind of like a continuation of that.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Whole sort of de mystification through exploration, you.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Know in podcast form, and you know, science stuff is
absolutely a continuation of that de mystification exploration.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Yes, yes, on this podcast as well.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Now or hey, as we're as we're diving into some
of these big questions history of brain science, the history
of the the Big Bang theory not the TV show
and other heady concepts, could you tell us a little
bit about your your own origin story in your words,
(05:14):
because I think it's something that would be quite amazing
for our audience.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Yeah. Yeah, sure, what's the ridiculous history of forehead champ?
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Here we go.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
So I was born and raised in Panama. Actually my
grandparents were from China, but they emigrated there. My parents
were born there. They worked for the Panama Canal. I
worked there one summer. Superb Yeah, okay, actually it was
really bored. I worked in like the AC, like the HVAC,
(05:45):
you know, design department.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
I feel like they probably do need a lot of
air con.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
They did, that's right, it is critical to keeping us cool.
But yeah, then I came to the US. I went
to actually Georgia, tig to study engineering which is near
where you all are. And then I went and then
I decided I wanted to study robotics. I was like,
wait a minute, you can get a job making robots.
I was like, yeah, sign me up.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
If I could just interject really quickly, I'd love to
get your hot take on the state of robotics and
specifically some pretty funny pr let's say kerfuffles involving Elon
Musk's company, and like robots that are supposed to be
sentient and self propelled but are actually being remote controlled
by interns from other rooms.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Any thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
That, poor he Yeah, I think we're all doomed. Friends,
these are the ones pulling the strings. Robots look pretty
pretty amazing. I have to say, I didn't think we
get there so quickly. You know, It's part of the
reason I kind of changed fields. But yeah, it's pretty
amazing what they can do now and how they can
(06:57):
basically move with humans around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, I guess what I was getting at those is,
you know, they are definitely mechanically amazing, but I don't
know that they're fully there yet in terms of you know,
the singularity and all of that, because you know, Elon's
having them kind of serve drinks as bartenders with the
impression that they're actually doing all of this on their own.
But then there are actually folks like remote controlling piloting
(07:22):
them from other places. And I just don't think that's
it's a funny.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I think it might be a little over hype right now,
but I think we're almost there, you know, Like just
imagine taking all that AI that's happening online and then
putting it on a robot, and you're gonna have robots
drawing us as studio ghibli in.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Like a week probably, yes, And then they'll also be
able to set up on you know, the boardwalk of
your local tourist attraction New age. Right now, what we're
talking we're talking about how I'd love that you mentioned there, Orge,
(08:00):
that these breakthroughs and innovations arrived much more quickly than
previous scientific consensus had concluded. When we tell the story
of robots, Noelt's see if I can pull off this segue.
We're talking about a culmination of a vast, vast chasm
(08:24):
of history, and it's fascinating to me, and I think
to all of us that human beings are now creating
technology that arguably human beings themselves don't fully understand. And
that question only becomes more interesting when we think about
the origin story, not just of you, Orgey, not just
(08:46):
of our silly little show, but the origin of what
we call the universe. And I must confess not being
the brightest crayon in the box, I have often been
amazed by how how much scientific rigor goes into understanding
the history of the universe until you get to a
(09:07):
certain point, and some of the smartest people in the
world will say, yeah at one point, and then the universe,
so what is.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
The Big Bang?
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Yeah? The Big Bang is this theory that like everything
that you see in the universe right now, like all
the stars and planets and galaxies, everything out there, and
all the stuff that you can't even see or field,
all that, at some point about fourteen billion years ago,
was crammed into a space smaller than a pinhead. So
(09:41):
imagine all those trillions of stars out there crammed the
small space like that, and actually should be smaller, but
a pinnate is usually the smallest thing people can imagine.
And then at fourteen billion years ago, it all just
kind of suddenly expanded and exploded out into the universe
we see today. That's the basic gist of it.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Okay, now, cool, got it?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sorry, I got some questions, just.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
A couple of.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
How they get everything so small, How they get everything
so small and then then became regular sized or like
way bigger than regular size. I don't understand. I'm sorry,
my pen sized brain cannot.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
This is a This is currently the most widely still
accepted theory right now. How did people begin sort of
coalescing and agree on this? Is there a pivotal moment
where someone particular academic or something found irrefutable proof of
(10:45):
the Big Bang? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Yeah, it's a super fascinating story. It involves like Einstein
being sketchy with this math. It involves people discovering things
through pigeonproof. It's really kind of an interesting story.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
We're in.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Pigeon poop. Yeah, yeah, that usually gets people going there.
But you know, like if you think about like hundreds
of years ago or even before, like the nineteenth century,
when you look down into the night sky, you just
see stars, right, You just pinpoint to stars, and you
actually don't see that many, and they're all pretty static, right,
(11:22):
Like they're not moving like the Earth moves, and so
they move them the sky. But you know, a year
after year you look at these stars and they're basically
the same, like the constellations are still the same. So
I think mostly for the throughout of human history, people thought, oh,
the universe is just the way it is, and maybe
it's always been like that, or maybe it got created
in a snap by some deity, but it's not really changing,
(11:45):
and it's kind of like that's all you can see
a few stars, so maybe that's the whole universe, right,
because like if the universe was had more stars, we
would see them, right yeah. And so that's what mostly
people thought. But then one interesting one, it was moment.
One interesting moment was in the nineteen ten when Einstein
(12:06):
was like working out how gravity works, how physics works,
and he sort of came out with this theory about
the whole universe called general relativity, and the theory kind
of told him something weird, which is that the universe
should be either shrinking or expanding. Those were kind of
the two options. And he's like, whoaha, whoa, that's that's crazy.
(12:29):
I mean, Einstein, but even for me, that's crazy. Either
or right, yeah, or kind yeah, basically that's what the
math kind of told him. And you know, he looked
out at the sky and he thought, we're not shrinking,
we're not expanding. Something weater. So there's something famous called
the Einstein fudge factor. So like he just like added
a number at the end of the equation to make
(12:50):
it seem like the universe was not changing at all.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Hey, God, isn't that kind of bad science?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Like isn't that sort of like an example of someone
having a pre conceived idea about something and just sort
of being like, nah.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
No, let's just fix it so that this is the
result that we get.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's not great. It doesn't look good on Einstein,
And later on in his life he basically called it
like the biggest blunder of his life, of his career.
So he added this fudge factor. And then in nineteen
twenty four, people kind of figured out that the universe
was bigger than it seemed. So like when you look
at into the nice Guy, you see stars, but you
(13:27):
also see these kind of like fuzzy things. They look
like little cotton balls, and people that just thought like, oh,
those are like gas clouds, right, Like there's just like
little fuzzy things in the universe. But then someone called
Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, basically
figured out that these things are not fuzzy clouds of gas.
(13:51):
There are actually galaxies, and so there's this guy is
just full of these galaxies. So basically our universe went
from like we're like about the size of the Milky
Way to like, we're trillions of times bigger than that.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
And think if it is like being able to zoom
in and zoom in and zoom in, and every time
you zoom there's another layer with more stuff and more stuff.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, it kind of blew people's mind. And
that's that's.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The observable universe, right, which we'll come to find. Yeah,
could you tell us a little bit about because I
think it's a phrase that can be misleading to a
lot of lay folk. You hear the phrase observable universe
and you automatically think, yeah, man, I got up earlier today.
I observed all kinds of stuff there. So what is
(14:40):
the observable universe? Why is that an important concept?
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Yeah? Yeah, Basically it turns out that the universe is
so big we can't see all of it yet, like
there are parts of the universe that are so far
away that we haven't been able to see them. A
because the light light has a speed it and b
because the universe is not infinitely old. We figured out
(15:05):
that the universe is fourteen billion years old, so basically
we can only see things that have been able to
get to us in those fourteen billion years.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Because if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at a cool
little pictogramograph of the Big Bang expansion, and it's sort
of a timeline as well, because it's sort of this
cone shaped whether they'm on one end, they sort of
tapers into like this flat circle. And the first stars
are calculated to have formed four hundred million years ago,
and those are the ones that were like, those are
(15:37):
the ones that we are like seeing or those are
the ones that we have not seen yet. I'm just like,
because it is a time travel equation as well, right,
because of the way light works.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
So I'm just trying to wrap my head around there.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So stars are being made all the
time in the universe, and then they have been been
made all throughout the history of the universe, and stars
also die have been dying throughout the universe of stars explode,
some of them just kind of taper on and simmer
for a long time. So the stars you're seeing, they
could have been born, Like, if they're close to us,
they were probably born recently. If they were really far away,
(16:12):
they were probably born a long time ago.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It's it's one of my favorite things to think about
whenever I can get away from the light pollution so
abiquitous in in you know, various human cities. Uh, I
don't know the answers that I think you have explained
it in the best way.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I have heard. Sorry, Carl communications on this one.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how
the concept of dark energy plays into this. I've always
been fascinated with dark matter and dark energy. But isn't
that that's a force that aids or in some way
has contributed to this whole expansion.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah proposition, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Yeah, absolutely, Well, probably the best thing we know about
dark energy is that it has a cool name, and
then and that's about it. It's actually related to the
Big Bang as well. So kind of picking up the
story in the nineteenineteen twenty nine, Hubble not only discovered
that those fuzzy things were galaxies. He also discovered that
(17:23):
they were moving away from us. So, you know, like
if you've heard of the Doppler shift, the fact like
kind of what cops used to measure your velocity when
you're speeding down the highway. Obviously always within the speed limit,
but that's how measure your.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So you can also hear it in an audio form
as sound source moves away from you, it is interpreted
as almost like a pitched kind of envelope, like it
sort of changes in pitch as it moves away, which
I believe is an oral representation of the Doppler.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah, that is exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Is this related to what's called wretch?
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Exactly, That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
So like you know, like when an ambulance is driving
towards you, it kind of sounds like higher pitch, but
it's a move that's a mooves passed you away from you.
It sounds a little bit lower woo woo woo. The
same thing is happening with light because light kind of
behaves like a wave, and so you can tell from
the redshift of the light of galaxies that they're moving
(18:22):
away from us.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
That is both fascinating and frightening for some reason I
cannot I cannot yet articulate.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
In this language.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
So the universe is running away from us. Anybody with
abandonment issues just think about that.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
True?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, well, and how does this affect us in a
functional way? Like it's super interesting and knowing about all
this history, but is this something that that is there
is sort of an actionable you know, effects in our
in our daily lives kinda.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
Yeah, So, so how they measure the galaxies are all
moving away from everything's moving away from each other, but
from our perspective, it looks like it's moving away from us.
And so that's how they extrapolated the Big Bang. Basically,
like if everything's moving apart, if you just run the
clock back, that means everything at some point was really
scrunched together. And that's kind of the Big Bang. And
(19:14):
that's kind of what dark energy is, which is that
A little bit later, or actually kind of recently, they
found that the galaxies they are not just moving away
from us, They're getting faster and faster. It's like they're
not just moving away from us. It's like they're hitting
the pedal to the medal, trying to get away from us.
As fast as possible.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Wow, well we've all seen Earth.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
We can't play, you know, we will see what's going on.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I'd have to imagine that has to do with some
sort of like exponential curve perhaps, or just some the
way things sort of like over time, you know, kind
of the curve sort of becomes steeper. And I don't
know me trying to put it in. I'm a sound guy,
so maybe I'm thinking of it in those terms. But
can you explain a little bit about why non occurs?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
The soul's speeding up?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, so the universe is expanding faster and faster and
nobody knows why. And that big question mark about why.
That's what scientists call dark energy, because you're like, you
need something to be pressing the pedal on these galaxies,
something's like, you know, pushing them away and the and
so you need some kind of force, some kind of energy,
and so they don't know what it is, so they
(20:23):
just call it dark energy.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So if the if the world's brightest minds, the eggheads
and the boffins, if they're like police investigators on the
case of universe expansion, they've got this big board right
with their suspects. You know, there's there's a little thumbnail
picture of gravity there pictures a strong weak nuclear force.
(20:45):
They've got this one picture that's just a question mark
and they wrote dark energy.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Yeah. Basically, well they call it dark because you can't
see it, and it's an energy because it's like causing acceleration,
it's causing things to move. Uh, And it's kind of
really relevant to us because we since we don't know
what it is, we don't know what it's going to
do in the future. So like in the future, dark
energy might be like, oh, you know what I'm done,
I'm gonna stop accelerating the universe, in which case then
(21:12):
gravity might take over the whole universe and then scrunches
down back into a little tiny spot fun like at
the Big Bang.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, oh no, reverse Big Bang. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
They called it the Big Crunch, very imagination, a big crunch.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Not to be confused with the serial brand.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That's that must be the h that must be what
gave me that terrifying, inexplicable sense of unease.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
So you don't know what it's going to do, yeah,
nor when right or when. Yeah, it might be tomorrow,
it might be in the trillion years, and nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Oh my gosh, everybody be nice to your friends. Just
in case.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Can you tell us a little bit about this guy,
George I believe. I'm sorry, I'm maybe over on saying
his name, but it's my understanding that his paper is
what kind of solidified some of the first discussions of
the Big Bang theory that were then kind of accepted.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Yeah, yeah, sort of. So like if we go back
to the point where we didn't know what those fuzzy
things in this guy were, So we could see these
fuzzy things in the sky, and we could tell that
they were red shifted. So like they because they were
moving away from us. The light kind of gets slower
and so it turns red. When light gets slower, it
turns red, and so they, like we could tell these
(22:31):
things were red shifted and so moving away from us.
And so he was a guy who kind of floated
the idea that maybe means things are moving away from
us and maybe means things are expanding.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And to date, when we're talking about concepts like this, right,
we are able to gather a lot of data.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
We are able.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
To draw or construct our most reasonable national theories about it.
But as anybody reading pop science in the news today
or throughout history knows there for one person that makes
an agreed upon, you know, going theory, there are easily
a rogues gallery of dozens of other people who come
(23:18):
up and say, yeah, but what if I had another idea?
So I would love to hear just from your expertise,
would love to hear some of your favorite alternative explanations
for the universe, because I know, you know, science stuff
has been talking about black holes quite recently. One of
(23:42):
one theory that I think came back into resurgence quite
recently was a group of scientists Now I'll have to
find their names who proposed that proposed an old theory
that the universe was not created by a big bang,
but instead dwells within somehow within a super massive black hole.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
What are you?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
What are your Some of your favorite alternative theories bonus
points were crazy?
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, well, I think that ranks up pretty high. So
we recently did an episode on scigence stuff about what
could be inside of a black hole and we had
we had five theories and this was number five, like
like the most craziest one, and the is that you know,
if you take a black hole and you throw two
rocks into it, Like you throw a rock in one
direction and a rock in the other direction. They're both
(24:32):
going to fall down to the center, but near the
center of the black hole, those rocks are going to
be moving so much that one of them is actually
going to kind of curve around the center of the
black hole inside of what's called the singularity and actually
hit the other rock that you threw in that was
(24:54):
going the other way. Because everything gets warped inside of
a black hole down to a point. So those two
rocks are going to hit each other, and they're going
to hit each other with so much energy that it's
going to have the same or more energy than what
was at the Big Bang. And so scientists think like, oh, whoa,
So these are just two rocks hitting each other inside
(25:14):
of a black hole, and it's probably happening all the
time in every black hole that we know out there,
and it's energy as big as a Big Bang. Maybe
that's how our universe started, Like our universe could just
be two rocks hitting each other inside of a black hole,
and that's where that's that's where we are right now,
and inside of our universe you can have more black
holes with more universes and instead of those universes, you
(25:37):
can have more black holes with more universes inside of them.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Not to get too like sci fi about it, I guess,
but given that potential for all of these infinite you know,
other universes, doesn't it seem a little bit kind of
I don't know, self centered to think that this is
the only universe that supports life and that this is
the only universe that has like, you know, stuff going
for it. Always kind of had a hard time accepting that. Like,
(26:02):
I don't know if I believe in extraterrestrials and not
much more of an atheist and agnostic than any kind
of religious person, but I have a hard time believing
that this is all there is, given these infinite possibilities. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
Yeah, and that's not even getting into like the multiverse,
which is like this, yeah, his ex version of multiple universe.
This is like the actual just in our universe, there
could be other universes and other people in those as well,
a world.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
In a grain of sands, right, as they used to say,
this is okay, this is fascinating. First off, again, not
being an expert, I love the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide
vibe of explaining the universe as two rocks bumped together
and then everything happens. This, also, I think, leads us
(26:49):
to a fantastic and natural segue on something that has
been an area of fascination for ourselves and a lot
of our audience members for a long time, quantum physics.
We've been circulating this clip from a fantastic professor named
Rama Murty Shenkar, and he had this line where he's
(27:13):
speaking with his students and it's the day they start
studying quantum physics, and he says, here's my goal. Right now,
I'm the only one who doesn't understand quantum mechanics. In
about seven days, all of you will also be unable
to understand quantum mechanics.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
The famous physicist Richard Feinman is famously quoted as saying, like,
if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand
quantum physics basically, like, not even the smartest people in
the world really understand it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, And I guess that's what I was getting at
in terms of, you know, there comes this crossover point
where you have to accept the things that you don't
know and Ben and I have often talked about, is
that the point where things become in the realm of
spirituality or in the realm of magic or all of that.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
You know, it just seems like.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
There has to be room for the things we don't know,
and what is the scientific communities perspective on that. The
guy that I mentioned earlier, this dude La maitre Belgian
astronomer or cosmologist. Rather, he was also deeply religious person
and you know, had a lot to do with talking
about this Big Bang theory stuff, but also kind of
(28:27):
looked at it in a way that reconciled it with
the creation of the universe, like in a religious sense.
I just wonder what your thoughts are around around that
and where those worlds meet and if there's room for
these worlds to coexist.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yeah, yeah, well well I should I say, well, I
should sort of clarify so people don't understand quantum mechanics
because it's like it's based on math that's very unintuitive
to us, Like we're not trained, like our brains get
involved to really kind of have an intuitive feel for
like things that are random and things that are in
two places at the same time, or they have probability
(29:00):
of being at the same place at the same time
in this universe. And so most of what people know
about quantum physics comes from experiments. So like, if you
run experiments, this is what the universe tells you. That's
how things are. And so when people say they don't
understand it, it's like people are saying, like, well, it's
(29:20):
crazy that it is that way, but that's you know,
if you poke at the universe, that's what it shows
you how it is. And so it's experimentally based. This
is what I wanted to just clarify. But yeah, I
think science is very clear, and scientists are very good
at saying only things or believing in things, only in
(29:43):
things that they know they can prove with experiment. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, we've often I try to condense that thought down,
often by explain it this way. Science attempts to answer
how thing occurs, right, and spirituality metaphysics, who could call it,
attempts to address why that occurs. So the how and
(30:09):
the why can sometimes seem quite separated. And then when
you get to the bleeding edges of physics and our understanding,
the two things get weirdly combined, you know. And I've
do it since we'd audio podcast, I'm doing little hand gestures.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yeah, and I think that just the last thing on
this la maitre dudes and just fascinating to me. I
want to dig more into him. He had this to
say about exactly what you're talking about. As far as
I can see, such a theory, talking about Big Bang
remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves
the materialist free to deny any transcendental being. For the believer,
it removes any attempt at familiarity with God. It is
(30:50):
consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
The beginning of the universe. I just think that's a
badass quote.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely things that are
beyond what scientists can say or even understand, and and
there are things that may possibly never be able to
be understood by scientists. But until then, you know, we
just gotta use our best approach to understanding the world,
which is science. It's better than making things, so it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Is, no doubt it is.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
It's it's that even if you add a little bit
of fudge.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
To your equation, Yeah, yeah, it happens, you know. It happens.
We're just humans.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
I love these It happens while.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
We're on much happens.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Or a could you tell us about the history of
quantum physics. We know that there's something afoot right with
the double slit experiment. The other the other concept and
popular culture would be like Schrodinger's cat. For instance, when
did people really start clocking onto this idea of quantum
(32:04):
physics and later quantum mechanics, Like was there was there
a light bulb moment? Was there like one guy or
one person who stood up and said, eureka, I'm in
two places at once.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yeah, what's rarely like one guy or girl? You know,
it's usually a group of people. But what's fascinating about
quantum physics is it all? It also happened within the
same like ten years, ten, fifteen, twenty years at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. So the way I think
of physics is like think of coke, Coca Cola coke. Right,
there's classic coke and then there's New Coke. I guess
(32:37):
if you're old enough to remember new Cooke of Coke
zero didn't. New coke didn't do super super well. People
love Coke zero. I think that's better. Okay, there's classic coke,
there's a coke zero, and so classic coke is what
people call classical physics, like think of Newton and f
eicals Ma, And the best analogy is to think of
(32:59):
like a old table, like how the billiard balls knock
on each other, how they bounce each is how you
can like aim one and hit one at an angle
and know that which angle they're both gonna come off from.
That's like classical physics, and that's kind of how the
whole world around this to our eyes and ears works,
Like if I throw a ball at you, you're gonna
(33:20):
basically know where it's gonna go and you're gonna be
able to catch it right. And so that's classical physics,
very pretty simple stuff. But around the beginning of the
nineteenth century, the physicists started kind of looking closer at
things and noticing weird things, like they notice that the energy,
like the light that comes from something that's hot, it's
kind of weird, like there's some weird things about it.
(33:42):
They notice that like if you shine a light on
some metals, electrons will kind of pop off, but only
like it's certain frequencies of light or certain settings of light,
or it's not proportional to how much light you shine
on it, and so there are all these like weird
things at the microscopic level. So the thing about quantum
physics is that it really only sort of applies to
(34:04):
things at the quant the really really tiny like atomic
or close to atomic sizes. That's when you really see
the weird quantum stuff. Like in our everyday lies, we're
not gonna like your cat is not gonna be in
two places at the same time, if it's a live
or it's dead. It's one of those two things. But
if you get down to like atoms and you like
you ask, like, is where is this atom? You're gonna
(34:24):
get some weird answers like sometimes the atom is here,
but then you measure it a little bit later on
it's over there. And sometimes you measured a little bit
before where you thought it would be, but no, it's
over here. And that's when you get these weird quantum effects.
Reality seems negotiable. That's spooky, uh, because that's what we
call it, right, spooky Actually.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Is this is this where quantum entanglement comes in. Forgive
me if I'm jumping the shark here.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when people talk about like quantum physics,
they usually mean like a couple of like two or
three weird things of how things behave. One of them
is this idea that like things can be in two
places at the same time, or they can be up
and down at the same time. A quantum entangum quantum
entanglement is another one where like if you have two
(35:10):
fuzzy things, they can sort of and make them interact.
Now they're sort of coupled in this weird thing where
like if you take one cat that's maybe a labor
dead and another cat's maybe a labor dead, and you
have him interact, now you have like four possibilities, like
both cats could be delave, if both cats could be dead,
and so things just get kind of like complicated, and
all those possibilities are now happening at the same time.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
So this is.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
This is something that for a lot of people might
be dismissed as an academic truth. There's a series of observations.
You might read this in the paper or I guess
see it online or on your phone now, and then
you say, Okay, that's cool, but how does that apply
to me? And it feels like, the most immediate answer
(35:56):
to that now would be the ongoing breakthroughs in what
we call quantum computers. Could you tell us a little
bit about what a quantum computer is, or what quantum
computing is, how it differs from you know, the machines
we're using to record this episode.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Today, right right, Well, bet let me tell you something amazing,
which is that every computer is quantum.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Oh man, what this has to do with the processing power? Right?
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Yeah. Basically, so the way microchips were sort of invented,
you know, we're talking about transistors in like silicone chips
and all that, that was all due to quantum physics.
So some dudes in Bill Labs back in the fifties
sixty seventies they're like, oh, there's this thing called quantum physics.
I wonder what we can do with that. And then
(36:47):
they thought, well, maybe we can make tiny little transistors
the size of several atoms. And that is the only
reason that we have iPhones and Internet and that we're
talking and people are listening to us right now.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Oh my gosh, guys, we're quantum. We just went quantum
of this episode. We have quantum left.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
It's true. We quantum left the shark.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
But when people talk about quantum computing, isn't that sort
of a stand in that maybe is a little bit
of a misnomer, but about just more and more exponentially
powerful processors.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Yeah, yeah, so I said, every computer is quantum, but
quantum computers are a different kind of computers that are
also quantum. But so it's a computer in which the
circuits are so so small that they're actually down like
at the single atom, single electron, or single sort of
quantum particle level. And so it turns out that when
(37:42):
you make a circuit with quantum particles, then you can
do quantum maths like you can do the math that
happens in the quantum universe, the quantum world, and that
math is really good at solving certain things. So it's
not probably not good for like video calling or listening
to podcasts, but it's like super incredibly good at, for example,
(38:06):
like breaking passwords cryptograph.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Because it can do it can just run so many
patterns like to the point where it'll it'll it'll more
or less process of elimination down to the correct solution
because of how quickly it can run all of these
you know scenarios.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
Right, exactly right. Like, if I wanted to guess your
password right now using like an iMac or a computer,
I would probably have to program the computer to like
guess every number from here to ten trillion, and that
would just take a really really long time. But like
a quantum computer, because it can do quantum math, it can,
like you said, kind of feel things out all in parallel,
(38:44):
and once you do the math and the quantum kind
of notation, then like the answer kind of like bubbles
up to the surface and then you sort of get
your your password almost right away.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Cryptography is one of the one of the big applications
that a lot of people talk about, right, breaking codes, encryption, decryption.
What are some other potential uses of this this kind
of new gen of computing.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, now that's about it. That's what that we know
of that we know of so so like we just
happened to randomly in the nineties, some computer scientists was like,
you know what, this breaking of password is really hard,
but maybe we can use quantum computer. Then you figured
out that you can use quantum mass to break that problem.
(39:41):
Now scientists think that there may be other problems like that,
like who knows, like you know, you know, finding the
nearest habitable planet maybe could be solved by a quantum
computer faster or something like that. You know, I'm totally
making that up. But the idea is that there might
be like big, big problems out there that we don't
know about yet that quantum computers are really good at solving.
And the other thing that people say quantum computers are
(40:03):
good for is just simulating physical nature, you know, because
the world is quantum once you get down to Adams,
and so you kind of need a quantum computer to
be able to simulate that better.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
That's fascinating because then that implies that humanity has created
or discovered a thing that can potentially solve problems. Humanity
has not yet figured out how to ask. Yeah, exactly right, Okay,
that's that's why that that leads us to another thing
(40:37):
where we're gonna have to I think, no, we're gonna
have to hang out with Jorge more often on the
show if you'll have us Whorge.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
And also I was gonna just really quickly last thing
about the quantum computing stuff as pertains to another show
that Ben and I do together that I think you'd
also be a great guest on for this topic. Specifically,
stuff they don't want you to know is is that
there seems to be a sense that the escalation of
quantum computers and their ability to do these things could
(41:06):
potentially lead to a future where you can't have a
secret password anymore. It's just like that is passe at
this point because there is no security because of how
powerful these machines are.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
And just by the fact that they exist.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Right, Like think of your bank accounts that that's anyone
can get it into that. Even if you have like
cryptocurrency like bitcoin or dougecoin, the fund of computers could
break that up and basically that would all be meaningless.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
So what's the solution.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
There is this like nuclear power type stuff where you
have to keep it under wraps, where you got to.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Decide who gets it. Like it's just I don't know.
It's scary when you talk about I.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Think everyone has to walk around naked. That's the only
solution is no more secrets. Okay, fair, no more secrets.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
See Atlanta Police Department.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
I'm not a criminal. I'm ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
No fully on board. I think there's a lot more
to discuss here. We had some other topics that we
were considering, but I think there was just so much
here in Big Bang and quantum physics and now into
quantum computing that we may well just book a part
two for this soon down the road and explore some
of these other topics that we had, like the history
of neuroscience.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
For brain science. We were talking about this, and this
feels like a natural I mean, the scary way to
get into it for us would be to immediately ask
you or hey, will will human civilization arrive at a
point where without using the word AI, which I find problematic,
(42:36):
will human civilization arrive at a point where one could
create something as complex and as recognizable in function as
an organic human brain?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Like, is that where we're headed?
Speaker 4 (42:50):
That might be where we're at right now.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
No.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
So the crazy thing is that a lot of these
AI models that people use every day, they're super creative
about like how how big they are or how complex
they are. Like if you try to find out like
how many notes, which is kind of like the basic
unit in an AI neural network, Like how many notes
is Chad GPT four have or five Chad Chad GIPT
(43:15):
five or any like nobody will tell you because they're
all you know, trade secrets, and so some estimates out
there are that these might be getting close or at
least kind of like in the same order of magnitude
or getting there to like how many neurons you have
in your brain or how many connections you have in
your brain, and so, like, you know, we were not
too frustry to do later. You're both talking to an
(43:43):
AI right now. I am an AI.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It's getting creepily, I mean, speaking of exponential you know improvement.
Remember when AI slop was just so obvious and was
like pixelated and weirdly stretched and just bizarro, and it
just seemed like kind of like a novelty, right yeah,
But now it's just it's too good and I don't
(44:06):
particularly like it. And also I was seeing that some
of the most popular pieces of content now on the
internet are AI generated are you know, machine learning generated.
That's problematic in and of itself, and it's like, you know,
we struggle with this whole idea of like we don't
want to be luddites and get left behind or be
old man screaming at cloud. But it does feel like
(44:29):
there's a real inflection point where you can't turn the
clock back anymore, and it's not a good thing. I
certainly think that there is excellent, positive, life, world changing
uses for these kinds of things, but it seems like
corporations just trot this stuff out without really thinking about
the knock on effects.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
They don't. I don't think they do it all. They're just
rushing to be the first. And I think we are
definitely an inflection point, as you mentioned, like there's things
are definitely different now. But I kind of think that.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
This was only a handful of years ago.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
No, it was Will Smith eating a bowl of spaghetti,
you know, and it looked like absolute pixelated garbage. And
now you can make stuff that looks like the news.
It's pristine. Sorry interrupt It blows my mind.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
It's totally mind blowing. Yeah, But I think back to
the time when photoshop became popular. M remember that, like
before you could trust a photograph with a photograph, but
at some point it's like, no, you can't trust any
photograph at all. I think it's just going to be
the same for like video now, and you can't really
trust any video that you see out there.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Well, it could go wrong. Well, and like with photoshop,
you know you have experts.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
As it got better and better, who can be like, okay,
these are the red flags, these are the things to
look for it. So you know this photoshop and there
certainly still are big signs of AI AI generated stuff,
But as it gets better and better, those signs are
going to be fewer and fewer and harder and harder
to see. And you really are going to require experts
or we've even talked about on stuff that I want
you to know how there would need to be some
(45:57):
validation form like of of footage, some sort of watermark
or something to show that this was captured in real
life through a telephone photo device, through a photographic device.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
Yeah, it's going to come down to trust, like who
do you whose camera do you trust that was not
tempered with AI? You know, whose motivation you feel is good?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
And that gets even trickier because then when we were
forced to resort to trust, which can sometimes be a
subjective exercise, or force this uh to to resort to
trusts as a currency or authenticator, then we we re
enter the world of absolute wing nuts. It makes me
(46:42):
remember when we were working previously on some of the
most popular conspiracy theories in Western culture, one of which
being landed on the moon. Right, that old, that old
workhorse gets trotted out all the time. I was talking
with people who were Noel and our pal Matt. We're
talking with people who would genuinely bring up trust, and
(47:04):
they would say, well, have you met any astronauts?
Speaker 4 (47:09):
And we have.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I was like, yeah, I met some astronauts there, yeah, yeah,
and that they said, well do you trust what was
your vibe check on those astronauts?
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And I'm like, they're kind of busy. And that's extra
tough though, Ben, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
As trust has just eroded so far in terms of
trust of the media, in terms of trust of literally
what is before your very eyes. So these two things
do not, unfortunately align particularly well do that.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
And we're still arguing if the Earth is round? There
are people guys who are convinced shut.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Out Bob right right, airplanes and the night sky. Have
you ever met an astronaut? They're the only ones you
could see it. Did you trust them?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
But this is this is where we get to, uh,
maybe if we want to put a potter on it,
we could say I love your point there, Orge, about
how this feels like a new iteration of similar inflection points,
And no, I think you've nailed the perfect phrase for that.
Here's hoping humanity can address these same breakthroughs, the way
(48:19):
that civilization was able to soldier through and adapt to
previous huge game changers. It all goes down to brain science.
And we don't want to put you on the spot, Orge,
but we'd love to have you back on a future
episode where we can we can learn from you about
(48:40):
the very strange historical saga of humans attempting to study themselves.
Two questions, First, are you okay with that? Would you
like to hang out with us?
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (48:53):
Absolutely? Does this super fun?
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Awesome? Yes? Okay, great?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
That would have been an awkward day, yeah, if you
were if you were too busy.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Second, w I know?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Secondly, one of our ending questions here, just as a
tease for the wild history ridiculous, dare I say at
times a brain science? What's what are your favorite brain
science like anecdotes or maybe quack science in that pursuit.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
Oh yeah, there's a lot. I've read a book with
a neuroscientist about just the whole brain, the history of
the brain, what we know about the brain. You know,
one of the most fascinating stories we have on there
is the story of someone called patient HM, Henry Moulayson.
And basically have you seen the movie Memento, which was
Christopher Nolan's basically first breakout movie. This guy who could
(49:45):
only remember thirty seconds at a time, Like, that's real,
Like that's something that happens out to some people out
there in the world, And it's actually something that happened
to someone named Henry Moullayson a while a little while ago,
and he was basically test subject for the rest of
his life. And that's uh, and through him is how
(50:06):
we know a lot about how our memory works. Like
before we didn't know think that there were things like
you know, mortar memory, short term memory, long term memory, uh,
different kinds of memories and where they were in the brain.
But thanks to like basically the momental guy, we kind
of figure all all of that out. And it's fascinating
to see like what he could remember and what he
couldn't remember.
Speaker 3 (50:27):
Amazing lots of perfect ties.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
For the next episode where we have you back, where
we talk more about the history of brain science, and
I do just want to point out really quickly, to
circle back to something that was said quite a while ago.
Max pointed out in the chat here that we do
on Ridiculous History have multiple episodes about bird poop, not
just one.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
We went didn't get to the bird poop.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got Uh that's gonna sound weird
out of context, but yeah, Noel, you're correct.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
We went through a burth phace. Oh my gosh. So hey,
where can folks find your work?
Speaker 2 (50:59):
We know we have science stuff still, episodes of Daniel
and Jorhicks for the Universe. You're a published author on
many fronts of polymaths, has been put it, but give
us the scoop. Where can ridiculous historians out there check
out your work?
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Yeah? The best way to find me is just search
for science stuff. One word on your iHeartRadio app or
wherever you're listening to this, and please describe. We tackle
super fun, super fascinating questions. We talk to experts, and
we keep in light and fun and easy to understand.
So that's my thing. And then if you're interested in
some of my science work, I do have several books published.
(51:33):
There's one about kind of what we don't know? About
the universe. There's one about the brain and what we
don't know about the Brain. And I also have a
series of kids books called Oliver's Great Big Universe. But
please check out Science Stuff That's wow a.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
Question about it.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
It is a classic how stuff works style science exploration
and Jorge is a.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Ace science communicator.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
So we can't thank you enough for hanging out with
us today on Ridiculous System.
Speaker 4 (51:58):
This is super fun. It was ridiculously fun.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
YEA glad to hear you know what that's that's our
ultro do. I think it must be what a ride?
Can't wait for Part two?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Big big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams
Alex Williams who composed this track.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh Yes, and.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Huge thanks to Jonathan strick Land aka the quist Or
A J. Bahamas Jacob's aka the Puzzler Big Oh.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
I can't imagine you know how fun it would be
to get Bahamas and Jorge.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
In a room together. Unbelievable. I think a singularity would occur.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Time space as we know it would break down, but
like in the most fun way.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Imaginable and big big thanks to the Rude Dudes a
Ridiculous Crime. Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coat
and Noel Big thanks to.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
You, man on you as well. Let's see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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