Are We Alone? Fine-Tuning the Universe, with Barnes, Keating, and Richards | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution - Uncommon Knowledge

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Peter Robinson (00:00):
Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea,pretty and blue, was the Earth.
I didn't feel like a giant,I felt very, very small.
In the vast immensities of space,we humans are mere specks, or are we?

(00:22):
Uncommon Knowledge now.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge,I'm Peter Robinson.
A senior lecturer atWestern Sydney University in Australia,
the astrophysicist Luke Barnesreceived his doctorate from Cambridge.

(00:44):
Dr. Barnes is co-author ofA Fortunate Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos.
The cosmologist Brian Keatingcompleted his doctoral work at Brown.
He now serves as professor of physics atthe University of California at San Diego
and as director ofthe Simmons Observatory in Chile.

>> Brian Keating (01:03):
Simons Observatory.

Simons Observatory, did I mispronounce both?
It's the Simons Observatory in Chile.

I'm the principal investigator of the Simons Observatory
in Chile.

I will never forget.

[LAUGH] >> Peter Robinson
will anybody else.

>> Jay Richards (01:14):
Keating is the author of Losing the NobelPrize, a story of cosmology, ambition and
the perils of science's highest honor.
Jay Richards holds a doctorate fromthe Princeton Theological Seminary.
He serves as senior research fellowat the Heritage foundation and
as a senior fellow atthe Discovery Institute.
Dr. Richards is the coauthorof The Privileged Planet,

(01:37):
How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designedfor Discovery, a book that will
celebrate its 20th anniversary->> Jay Richards: In August of 2024.

August of 2024, excellent, all right.
Cosmic fine tuning,Luke Barnes in A Fortunate Universe.
The fundamental particles fromwhich everything is constructed and
the fundamental forces thatdictate interactions appear to be
fine-tuned for life.

(02:07):
You have before you a total layman.
What do you mean?

>> Luke Barnes (02:11):
Well, the first thing to realize is that you're made out of
fundamental things, physical things.
And one of the things we'd like toknow as general curiosity about
the universe is why are they this way?
Why aren't they some other way?
And a way that we could start to geta handle on that question is, well,
let's take our best physics andlet's see what would have happened?

(02:32):
Let's, in theory, just change some of->> Peter Robinson: Change the dials?
The fundamental numbers.
Yeah, let's turn some of these dials,
according to our best theoriesthese dials can be changed.
As far as we know,everything's still mathematically fine.
And what we find is that some ofthe dials, not much of a change, but
there's a couple of very importantones that involve the particles,

(02:55):
the forces and the universe as a whole.
Where seemingly rather small changes wouldmake a dramatic effect to the way our
universe would have played out.
So for example,
you're made out of a variety of veryinteresting chemical elements, but
change those numbers, and suddenlyparticles don't stick to each other.
You can't make complexity anymore.

(03:17):
These are the sorts of things that happen.
So suddenly you change this dial, and someparticles that would have held together,
that do held together, andall of us suddenly don't do that anymore,
things decay, things fall apart.
So our universe, the ability of ushere to do this, the ability of stars,
planets, galaxies to form,it's a rare talent.

(03:39):
It's not one that every universe that wecan calculate, that we can imagine, has.

Okay, so am I allowed to leap ahead to the idea
that it is all as if it were designed forus, or is that twist?
That's an unscientific proposition,I suppose, but so what do you want to say?
You want to say we should notjust take it all for granted.
It could have been wildly differentif even a few of how many variables,

(04:07):
by the way, give me some idea.

Within the standard models, there are 31 numbers you need to
describe the way matter works andthe way the universe as a whole works.
Within those 31 a lot of them are justsort of weird properties of neutrinos,
particles you've never heard of andnot made out of, so who cares?
There's a core of, I would say, maybe 10,where interesting, dramatic, and

(04:31):
often catastrophic stuff starts tohappen if you mess with those dials.

All right, from the fortunate universe,
again, we go fromthe universe to this planet,
or the difference between this planet andthe universe.
We usually take air for granted, butthe density of the air you are breathing
is 10 to the 27th times the averagedensity of material in the universe.

Yeah.

So we just got very, very lucky.

Well, did we?
There's one point of saying,are we in a lucky place in the universe?
And I don't think there's a reasonto treat the surface of the Earth as
a random spot.
Of course, where the matter is,where we're made out of it.
[LAUGH]>> Peter Robinson: Right.
Of course, we can only be in an environment where there is enough

(05:19):
stuff for me to be made out of, andI'm 10 to the 30 times more dense
than the universe, andthat's getting worse with time.
The point is not so much that we'rein a lucky place relative to space in
the middle of nowhere, although there'ssome interesting things about that.
The point is that will the universewhere we change these dials,

(05:40):
will it make a place wherethere can be structure at all?
Because you can make a universe,I can make it very easily,
just turn a dial a little bit.
And everywhere in the universe hasthe same sort of density of stuff we
see in almost every->> Peter Robinson: No galaxy,
no stars, no planet.
Yeah, just a boring hydrogen soup where one
particle hits another particleevery second Thursday.

(06:00):
And that's all that happens inthe history of the universe.

Okay, so there's this obvious problem.
I say obvious because iteven occurred to me, but
it turns out-

the literature everywhere.
But this obvious problem wehave the fish in the sea, and
the fish says to his fellow fish,isn't this just fascinating?
That the weight of the density,the density of the water, the temperature,
the amount of oxygen in the water,it's all just perfect for us fishes?

(06:31):
Isn't that a remarkable discovery?
And the answer is yes, no.
In other words, of course, the universeis designed such that we can live in it,
we live in it, right?
So to some extent, I think that explains part of all the environments
in the universe,why am I on the surface of earth?
Well, I can't be in the middle of the sun.
I can't be an empty space.
But the deeper question is, why is therea life permitting place at all anywhere?

Right.

And so I can easily make a universe where
no one has that conversation, right?
There's no fish going,isn't the water lovely?
Because there's no liquid water anywhere,there's no planet.
I can make really boring universes,if you want one,
change these dials a little bit andnothing interesting happens.

So a funny way, the fish is onto something.

Yeah, there's room for that explanation, but
it assumes that there's already water,right?
There's already an environmentin which they can live.
But that's exactly what we're trying toget back and step back a second and say,
what do I have to do to fundamentalphysics, fundamental cosmology.
The deepest level of realitywe know about today,

(07:41):
in order to make a universe where a lifepermitting bit of it is possible at all.

One more quotation from you, but I want help on this one.
This is a quotation from your book,A Fortunate Universe quote.
We have found fine tuningas deep as we can go.
Further, we have We found thatfine-tuning follows us down.
It shows no sign ofdisappearing at deeper levels.

(08:07):
What's he talking about?

[LAUGH] >> Brian Keating
to quote the formerpresident Bill Clinton,
it depends on what the meaningof the word is is [LAUGH].
speech, butit would have been much better had you.
But the question of what constitutesfine-tuning is subjective.
And as the Italians saytaste is subjective.

(08:33):
You can't argue in issues of taste.
So what is finely tuned to Luke orto Jay might not be finely tuned to me.
For example, there may be parameters thatcharacterize some of the 31 that Luke
properly accounted for.
That have ability to be tunedthat is stupefyingly coarse and
trivial for a ham handed experimentalistlike me even to imagine.

(08:57):
And I'll give you an example.
If we change one of these constants, whichis the dominant form of energy in our
universe, it's called a cosmologicalconstant or dark energy.
It is the force that's->> Peter Robinson: That's in Newton and
Einstein, correct?

That's in Einstein's theory of general relativity in the modern
age, only discovered despite Einstein'sprotestations to the opposite,
[LAUGH] that he made a blunder.
Actually, we should aspire to this.
When Einstein said that adding in thiscosmological constant to stabilize
the universe was as big as blunder.
That turned out to be a blunder.
So try that on your spouse.
So my biggest error is thatI said I made an error.

(09:33):
So if you change that value bya factor of two, ten, hundred,
nothing would happen to lifeas we know it right now.
It's true in the future,as Luke has pointed out many times.
Something will happen in the future.
But as I say, that's a trillion yearsfrom now, keep paying your taxes.
So it's not necessarily the casethat I would call that or

(09:53):
even believe that thatnumber is finely tuned.
In contrast, if you were all old enoughto remember AM radios in your car, right?
And so you would have to get the dialtuned to a precision of half a percent.
And that was hard withchubby fingers as a kid.
That is more finely tuned.
But even that would notbe speak of the need and

(10:16):
essential nature of a designer to say,I got the station tuned in
properly because I have this abilityto finely tune the radio dial.
So, yeah.>> Peter Robinson: Okay, no,
I'm coming to you in a moment.
But first, I asked him what you meantby fine-tuning as follows us down.
And I thought we were going to get somereally deep, almost mystical moment.

(10:37):
And Keating over here says,mm-hm, so what do you mean?

[LAUGH]. >> Peter Robinson
fine- tuning following us down?
What I meant by that was our understanding of what's
the fundamental stuff we're madeout of changes with time, right?
We keep doing physics.
Now, if you gone back 70, 80 years,
we wouldn't be talking about quarks,which what we think we're made out of.

(11:01):
We'd be talking about protons andneutrons.
And we'd say, okay,what if I change those numbers?
And this discussion would still look like,if you change this number a bit,
something would go wrong.
And all I'm saying there is, okay,
it's possible that tomorrowa new theory comes up.
And when I change those dials,in that theory,

(11:21):
in that understanding of the universe,maybe everything's fine.
However, that's not been the course.

That's not been our experience over.

So far.

The last seven decades or century.

So one of the things to remember is the dial.
There's a difference between how muchcan I change it relative to where it is
right now.

Right. >> Luke Barnes
that way, and
how much can I change it relativeto all the possible dial settings.
So is the cosmological constant,is it fine-tuned?
Well, in the sense of relativeto where we are now, no,
cuz you can make it 100 times larger.
But I would argue fine-tuning needsto consider all the possibilities.

(12:00):
That's what we're trying to do.
And relative to all the possibilities,that change of a factor of 100 relative
to the whole thing is actually very,very small.
Okay.

That's my point of view, Brian has his point of view.

Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet,
your almost 20 year old book.

Yeah.

Simply stated, the conditions allowing for
intelligent life on earth.
Barnes world here.
Also make our planet strangely well-suitedfor viewing and analyzing the universe.
Habitability seems tocorrelate with measurability.
Explain that one.

So couple of things that Luke said that are crucial to understand.
So think about all the cosmicfine-tuning conditions, right?
So things like called constants.
There are within that,
a constant is saying some numberwithin something we could call law.
And then these initial conditions, sort ofthe way things would have had to have been
at the beginning of the universe, assumingthe sort of temporal beginning, all right?

(12:59):
That's fine-tuning that sort of describesthe macro structure of the universe.
The way I would describe that isthat sort of necessary conditions.
If you're gonna build a universe for life,there's a bunch of necessary conditions.
It's not necessarily sufficient.
And we know this by lookingaround at different locations.
So not every location, of course,within the solar system or the galaxy or

(13:20):
the universe is compatible withthe existence of complex life,
chemical life, all right?
And so the question is, okay,is it fine-tuned or not?
So in other words, there's somethingthat suggests a kind of specialness,
a sort of surprise, right?
We do this all the time when we're tryingto decide, is something the result
of a random process or an impersonalprocess, or it's a setup, right?

(13:42):
Is it a coincidence or a conspiracy?
The intuition, initially, at least, withfine-tuning, is that, well, fine-tuning,
does that mean there's a fine-tuner?
You don't have to go that far.
But at the very least, the idea thatthings seem to be suspiciously sort
of oriented forthe production of conditions where life
can exist somewhere in this universe,right?

(14:03):
The question to be asked to the answer is,should we be surprised that
we're in a place that'scompatible with our existence?
That's the trivial kind of fish andwater question.
No, of course not.
We can only observe some placecompatible with our existence.
The question is, what are the conditionsthat allow for places like that?
And is there something unusual about that?

(14:24):
What we found, I would say, over the last.

Should we be surprised?

Yeah, should we be surprised?

In the layman's understanding.

Yeah, and should the surprise suggest that there's some maybe
purpose of explanation for this, right?
What we've discovered is that as we havelearned more about the conditions needed
for life at the planetary level,think about H.G Wells War of the Worlds.
Some decades ago, it was plausiblethat Americans could think that they

(14:49):
were hearing a newscast onthe radio of an invasion from Mars.
Now, why is that?
In part because we didn't have a reallygood sense of how precise things had to be
planetarily forchemically-based life within our universe,
with its periodic table,the elements make sense.
And then we looked at Mars.
Gosh, as close as it is to Earth,it's lifeless.

(15:11):
Every place else we found sofar, it's lifeless.
So that there's this sensethat things have to go.

Just right.

Just right, there's a bunch of ingredients beyond the macro to
need a planetary level toget a habitable planet.

Right.

Right, then you say, okay, well, is that suspicious?
Should we say, okay, this is like.

Right. >> Jay Richards
resting on a heath.
You see the parts allperforming a function.
Does that mean there's a watchmaker?
Not so fast.
The reason is that there's lots ofoptions within the universe, right,
for building planets.
So imagine they'll say, ten to the 22planets in the observable universe,

(15:48):
or I'm just making up a big number.
Right.

That means there's lots of opportunities.

What about this notion that habitability correlates with
measurements?

That is the second part.

All right. >> Jay Richards
the habitability part,I don't think Guillermo Gonzalez and
I don't think there's a verygood design argument.
Specifically to be made if you'rejust focusing on the fact that, gosh,
lifelike conditions are rare in theuniverse cuz you might have a big cosmic
lottery running, right?
And so as long as it's possible,that could happen once.
[INAUDIBLE] from the privileged planet.

(16:18):
The fact that our atmosphere is clear,that our moon is just the right size and
distance from the Earth and that itsgravity stabilizes Earth's rotation.
That our position in our galaxyis just so, that our sun is,
its precise mass and composition.
All of these facts, and many more, are notonly necessary for Earth's habitability,
but also have been surprisinglycrucial to the discovery and

(16:39):
measurement of the universe by scientists.
And, of course,the operative word there is surprisingly.

Yes, imagine that you've got this list of conditions needed for
a habitable planet, right?
So the right kind of star,right kind of structure, right size,
right atmosphere forchemically based life, all these things.
And we spent 100 years sort of coming upwith a list of local ingredients, and
this is what chemical life needs.
And then someone else decided, okay, let'scompare different kind of conditions with

(17:06):
respect to making fundamentalscientific discoveries,
being able to detect the cosmicbackground radiation.
To figure out that we're in a galaxy,to see beyond our solar system or
beyond our atmosphere to the otherplanets of the solar system, right?
That's like what you would need fordoing science.
And then you discover,you sort of overlap those places, and
you find out they're the same place.
So the best places for life overall endup being the best places overall for

(17:30):
doing a wide range ofscientific discoveries.
That's what we argue is a kind of,
is a suspicious kind of conspiracyrather than coincidence.
And, of course,there's a bunch of details.

Back to Brian, for another.
Yeah.

And I love both of your writings, and
I think you guys are geniuses.
And so the life big, but.

There's a big old but coming [LAUGH].

But, Peter, here, over here.
No, but let me give you an example, so oneof the coincidences you point out in your
book is that the apparent size of thediameter of the moon is exactly the same
as the apparent angular size of the sun.

Which we all in the United States,
we all saw this in the solar eclipse.

That's right. >> Jay Richards
And the relevance of this is that the element helium was
discovered during a total solar eclipse.
Not, as I tell my students sometimesthat helium was discovered on the sun.
They ask, how was that done?
And I say they went at night because thatwas the time for which they could go.
But no, indeed, it was only possible dueto that beautiful apparition that we saw

(18:28):
in the United States of the coronaof the sun, and that was absurd.
So that was a contributing factor due tothe remarkable unique in our solar system.
I believe that our moon, there's 200 moonsin our solar system, or minor bodies.
None of them perform an exact total solareclipse from the surface of the planet,
as you point out in your book.
So to quote the late tame Emda,this is spooky.

(18:51):
It's spooky, but the point is notjust that it's spooky, it's that
it allowed us to discover the elementhelium, which is part of the learnability.
But let me ask you a question.
Would we not have discovered it butfor the fact of this coincidence?
Presumably we would have discovered it,eventually,
we would have launched spacecraft andthey would have done other things.
Or we would have had spectroscopes thathave very narrow band filters that could

(19:13):
filter out everything butthe helium signature.
So how do you react to that?
Yes, it's true that we have this, but thatis not the only means by which we come to
learn about the physicaluniverse around us.
So does that diminishthe plausibility from design,
that we are living in a design planetwhere part of the design is for
us to appreciate the designer,I would assume.

(19:34):
And that appreciation leads to gratitude,which then leads to worship, perhaps.
But if we can get about it throughperhaps a different pathway,
a counterfactual history,does that not undermine slightly.

So would you go for this, that the notion of fine tuning?
Fine tuning for life,fine tuning for measurability,
this strange overlap between the two,would you go for this?
That that set of facts is suggestive butnot probative?

I would say it's a component,
I wouldn't even say it necessarilyrises to the level of suggestivity, but
I would say->> Peter Robinson: You are hard.
Well, you wanted somebody
to->> Jay Richards: That's why we're doing
this together->> Brian Keating: You want controversy,
right?

You get a D in your class,
you probably are a hard grader, too.

No, that's not true, I'm a soft touch.
But let me put this,fine tuning is in the eye of the beholder,
it's a subjective thing, right?
There is a notion, we can agree,that there are certain aspects of the 31
parameters that Luke very->> Peter Robinson: That's a subjective
science.
There's 31 parameters, but how tunable are they?
Some are not tunable at all, I mean,almost not tunable at all, and

(20:35):
some have factors ofseven to 100 variability,
in which case we can stillhave this conversation.
So what you choose toconstitute a fine tuning
argument is a type of filtration process.
You are compressing, you are condensing,you are editorializing and redacting.
And what goes into that process sometimesis done for teleological reasons,

(20:57):
to aim at a specific goal,which is perhaps to motivate a designer,
which I'm sympathetic to.
But I don't necessarily agree that it's anobjective criterion by which we can say-

Okay.

Falsity of- >> Peter Robinson
but I wanna get to the Big Bang.
Fine tuning, fine tuning, kaboom.
Yeah [LAUGH].

I listened to a podcast between the two of you, and
you asked Luke whenthe fine tuning took place,
as the stars were forming,as life was first emerging.
And Luke replied,if you had to nail me down on something,
Luke replied in a slightly evasive way,actually,
if you had to nail me down on something,I'd say it was the initial conditions.

(21:39):
So you are asserting that at the verymoment of Big Bang, it was all there.
I was about to saythe universe had us in mind.
I wanna step back from this,but it was all there.
You buy that?
That's sensible,that's scientifically coherent?

With deference to my dear friend Luke, no, I don't.
In that it's->> Peter Robinson: It's get a little
closer andtake a swing [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK].
You're in the middle of two, cosmology.
The reason is the following, I think,again, you have a stop condition.
You have a start condition, which Lukeis instantiating at the big bang.

Right, and
that condition is actuallyterribly complicated [CROSSTALK].

But he gave a brilliant lecture recently that I had the privilege
of listening to, which he stops.
I want to get out of the Big Bang DNAflagella or something like that.
But can you not say more?
If indeed you postulate the existenceof a designer with that teleological
purpose of creating DNA, why stop there?

(22:40):
Why not stop at slavery orchildhood leukemia?
At what point do thosehave to be encrypted and
encoded into the initial conditions?
I don't know that that's part of science.

Wow, here we go.
So, free will,it was also fine [CROSSTALK].

As well.

And permissive, okay, all right.
So, by the way, while I've got you here,and you're going nowhere until we're done.

[LAUGH] That's right.

Is the big bang a theory under pressure?

So, the word theory is a semantically overloaded term, right?
So we talk about that.

You won't let me say a single sentence.
All right go ahead.

So theory is used in a lot of different ways.
You say that I'ma remarkably handsome man.
Someone would say that's just your theory,right?
We use it in different ways,we also talk about theorems.
We talk about the specialtheory of relativity.
We talk about germ theory of disease.
We talk about evolutionary theory.
What do those all mean?
Do they have certain things in common yet?
The Big Bang theory, shall I say thereis indisputable evidence that our

(23:40):
universe in earlier times hadradically different properties.
And the universe leaves fossils behind.
And I brought a prop with me here today,and that's the water in this glass.
If we analyze the water in this glass,it contains fossils of the Big Bang.
And it contains them in a very preciseratio that's predicted by Big Bang
nucleosynthesis processes that Lukehas studied and written about,

(24:00):
but you'll find a ratio ofwhat's called ordinary.

By fossils, you mean the heavy-

Heavy hydrogen yes, so
there's ordinary hydrogen H2O,and then there's a small,
tiny fraction of what's called DTO2,Deuterium oxide, or just heavy water.
There's also another one that's calledtritium, that's even more dangerous
because it's radioactive, butdeuterium is fine, you can drink it.
The exact ratio is predicted only asa result of the fact that the universe

(24:26):
was an alchemistic fusion reactor at thevery first moments of this period of time.
Which some people conflate withthe beginning of time, but
it's not necessarily so.
And furthermore, the properties ofeverything that comes after all
the fossils, including us,including galaxies.
Including the cosmic microwavebackground that I study,
are other instantiationsof fusion processes and

(24:47):
fossil relics that we can study thatall point to the same conclusion.
Universe was much hotter and denser thanin the past, but it says nothing about
a singularity, a multiverse and thingslike that that we can discuss further.

I need to give him multiple choice questions instead of essay
questions.

You need to swear me in, yeah.

Okay, this is sort of mandatory because this is.
I'm a layman, I wanna know what you guysthink about things that you probably,
I'm asking you to condescend to me.

Well, I wanna respond to Brian, you know?
Yeah, let me respond,>> Peter Robinson: Please.
He's right.
So he.>> Peter Robinson: And I'm wrong.
And I'm waiting for my Australian friend here.
Yeah, and he's->> Peter Robinson: Keating keep saying-

That's what happens when
you have a New Yorker with two gentlemen.

And so Brian keeps saying.
I respect both of you, your geniuses.

You know, it's coming, right?

I've never heard worse insults.

[LAUGH] And so he's, of course, right.
So he gave one example we use in the bookis this production of perfect solar
eclipses, this weird magic, totallydifferent bodies, right in our skyd,
that are intrinsicallyinteresting by themselves.
But it also, as Brian notes, has allowedus to make certain scientific discoveries.
We never say in the argument or inthe book that would have been impossible

(26:01):
otherwise, but rather that itmakes it much easier than less
habitable places if you sortof compare all these things.
One thing was, of course,the discovery of helium, but
of course it was a confirmationof Einstein's general theory.
There were other kindof scientific values.
But the argument is what philosopherscall a cumulative case argument.
So it's not a deductive logical argumentthat sort of proves its conclusion.

We will bury Keating- >> Jay Richards
just as we evaluate things like more orless habitable locations, right.
Where life can exist,it could be kind of hard to quantify, and
some of it's subjective.
We still have a pretty good sense thatthe surface of a star is not going to be
compatible with life in the same waythe surface of the Earth is, right?

(26:43):
One barns dial, another barns dial another,
barns dial the sun lined up.
And we just->> Jay Richards: And a lot of these.
So that if you were to find sort ofthroughout all the kind of well known
conditions needed certainly at the locallevel and compare it with the other types
of places, we can either observe orwe can sort of theoretically predict.
As it turned out, gosh,there's a lot of the things we need for

(27:04):
a wide range of differentkinds of science.
We find them in the best places forobserving overall, but it requires lots
of detail because there's no way anyone example by itself I would agree.
Yeah, maybe it's kind of interesting,but otherwise, yeah.
Are we alone?
Two quotations.
Brian Keating, there are 100 billionstars in the Milky Way alone.

(27:28):
And there are 100 billiongalaxies like the Milky Way.
So what are the odds?
Jay Richards,
the more we learn about how much must goright to get a single habitable planet,
the more it reduces the hope offinding intelligent beings elsewhere.
I note that that is premised on the notionthat we are intelligent beings,

(27:51):
which I take the flattery.
Thank you.
So we have 100 billionstars per galaxy and
100 billion galaxy, let's put it this way.
The SETI project, search forextraterrestrial intelligence gets founded
just after the second world war andthere are different names and
it's taken place privately andit's publicly funded for a while,

(28:15):
NASA funds it for a while,Congress gets sick of it and cuts it.
But it's been going on, listening forsignals has been going on for
going on seven decades now,and there hasn't been a peep.
Are you surprised?

What I love about this question is,
I get it more than any other question.

Everybody's going to want me to ask, so I'm asking.

I go and talk to school students, amateur astronomers,
even in churches andI talk about what I wanna talk about.
And then they ask me questions about,is there life elsewhere?
And there's two questions there.
One, is there life out there somewhere?
But the SETI thing is,
is their life close enough thatwe can hear their radio signals?
And those are two verydifferent questions.

(28:59):
What I'm thinking of, the SETI one'san interesting one, but on the other one.
So, you know->> Peter Robinson: I love this.
Ordinarily, I ask you a question,I get an answer.
Here, I ask a question, I lose ground.

Well, these are hard questions.

I don't have an alien in my pocket man I'm so sorry.
How many planets are there out ofthe universe that life could have a go at
hanging out?
Maybe they won't have the right moon, but
they could try that numbersprobably multiply those.
It's ten to the 22, maybe.

It's a very big.

It's got, okay, but here's the thing.
I'm an astronomer.
I have big numbers, plenty of those.
What I wanna do with that number is.
And I don't go, that's big.
So there must be life out there.
I go, no, no, ten to the 22.
There's another number I need,which is, what are the chances?
What's the probability thata life permitting universe,
the life permitting planet,will develop, actually develop life?

(29:49):
And that question is a biology question,right?
I've made a lovely planet out there.
It puts all sorts of chemicals on it.
I'll just heat it up for a bit.
With a star, will anything startjumping around at any point?
Right, will a cell form, will anythingthat we could call life be there?
And that's the really hard question.
I feel the astronomers did their job andthe biologists.

You are telling me that answering that question is not your job?

It's a very hard question, and it's definitely not my job.

Brian Keating, I'm quoting you.
Consider a planet right next toa planet that's teeming with life.
This second planet sharesthe same solar system.
It has an atmosphere,it has a magnetic field.
It has all sorts of the conditions forlife.
Now, let me tell you that thatsecond planet already exists.
Brian, explain.

That's right. I use this analogy quite frequently when I
ask the question of what isthe probability once life gets going,
once we have n equals two?
Two examples of life in the universe.
Should it be not possible to predictthe spread, the rapid spread?
As Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic park,life finds a way.

>> Jeff Goldblum (30:59):
Life finds a way.

And in that case, the question has to be asked.
The non observation of life should countto reduce our probability space that life,
once it gets kicked off, is inevitable.
But the lack of life on Mars,as far as we can tell or
anywhere else in our solar system,is not this positive.
I mean, evidence of absenceis not absence of evidence or

(31:23):
whatever Carl Sagan would say.
He says everything andnothing at the same time sometimes, but
to the point that Luke was addressinganother thing I brought up.
I've had the privilege to go tothe South Pole, Antarctica, twice, and
at least the two of you paid in part forit,
cuz it's only possible to go through theUS government National Science foundation.
And you get a ride down through Australiaor through New Zealand, you end up at

(31:46):
the South Pole after about a week, andit's the most desolate, boring, lifeless
place in the universe outside Palo Alto,where I've spent some of my time as well.
And once you're there, there's nothingthere, and yet you're on a continent.
So what if I told there's seven continentson a planet, and you knew nothing else.
And you say, what are the odd there's7 billion people on this planet, too.

(32:07):
We haven't been to every continent,we've been to six of them.
What should be the odds,just based on probability,
that life exists in Antarctica and whatshould be the population of hominids and
Antarctica, birds and monkeys andwhatever else you like?
And you'd say one in sevenshould be a billion people.
There's literally 200 people there.
It's possible foryou to go there, Peter, and

(32:28):
be the tallest person onthe continent at one point.

Could I be the smartest?

You could be. >> Peter Robinson
You could be, yes as long as [CROSSTALK].

[CROSSTALK] Table like Jr is there.

So the point is, possibility is not probability.
Just saying this number, and by the way,the number is worse than what Luke
suggested even I'm takingyour side in this.
That number, 100 billion squared,roughly ten to the 24th,
that's in the history of the observableuniverse, which has a radius of
some 43 billion light years, andexisted for 13.8 billion years.

(33:01):
I'm also not an astronomer,
but I would like to knowthe answer in our lifetime, right?
In a lifetime, my grandkids oryour great grand graduates.
And that number is exquisitely small,and I think Luke hinted at that.

So, but can't you guys deal with numbers?
I'm coming to you,you guys deal with numbers all the time.
This is the number of planetsin the universe we think, and
to an order of magnitude, we can get it.
To find intelligent life, we believe youneed this condition times the number,
this condition times the firstcondition times the number.

(33:37):
And we end up getting, okay, sohere I come to the privileged planet.
In other words, I am accusing the twoof you of being very slippery on this
question that's in everybody's mind.
Just because it's in everybody's minddoesn't make it beneath you, or okay, so
Jay's book, again,the privileged planet, compared to,
I don't even know what this means,but you'll explain it.

(33:58):
Compared to the giant planetsbeing found around other stars,
the planets in our solar systemhave more circular orbits.
If we assume that all planeteccentricities are uniformly distributed
between 0 and 0.8,then the probability that our solar system
was selected at random for life,is about one in a billion.

(34:22):
So that's quite a reasonable calculation,isn't it?

Well, that's one thing.

Yeah, but one thing times one thing times one thing.

Some of the numbers we can get kind of rough handle on others we
don't.
But you did describe it correctly,I mean, it's a famous Drake Equation.
It was kind of initial stab atthis in which you just say, okay,
how many->> Peter Robinson: The
Drake Equation, that's right.
Drake- >> Peter Robinson
What's the Drake Equation?
Frank Drake astronomer that there's kind of an initial discussion
of this some decades.

Just after the war, 50s maybe early 60s.

Yeah, but basically it was, okay, how many stars do we have?
How many planets do we think thereare around each star, right?
And so that's sort of the set.

It was the kind of first cut of the number of variables.

Absolutely [CROSSTALK].
It's been said that, yeah,
it's a really efficient way of compressinga lot of ignorance into a small space
because we didn't know the valueof almost any of these variables.
And so your initial intuition, ten tothe 22 stars with planets around them,
and that's got huge number ofopportunities [CROSSTALK].
You get lots of people that say,yeah, it's just sort of inevitable.

(35:21):
It just completely depends uponwhat the other numbers are.
And as Luke said,the question about the origin of life,
that is just such a difficult question.
That's where we stop inthe privileged planet, in fact.
So we thought, okay, well, let's justfocus on given what we know so far,
how prevalent do we think Earth-likeplanets are in the observable universe?

(35:42):
Setting aside the origin of life question,
because it turns out simple lifealso makes a planet more habitable.
There's a chicken and egg question there.

Sorry, what life makes it more habitable.

So simple life living on a planet for
long periods of time can make the planetmore conducive to life or complex, right?
So a little bit of chicken andegg, let's forget that.
And just like, what do you need to getsomething like a planet that has liquid
water on a lot of its surface?
So a nice circular orbit,it's not freezing up and
boiling off during itsorbit around the star.

(36:10):
That's one of the important factors.
Our argument is essentially this,that the more we have learned so far,
the more precise the conditions seemto be for having a habitable planet.
And as Brian said,we're comparing Mars, right?
If you wanna know what's the most Earthplanet other than Earth that we know
about still 5000 extrasolarplanet discovery then, it's Mars.

(36:35):
It's around an otherwise habitable system.
Its orbit is very similar to ours.
It's sort of comparable in size.
I can tell when our book first came outin 2004, every new extrasolar planet
discovery a science writer would call andsay, what about this?
You'd said we had a privileged planet, and
we'd say, our argument is not thatthere's only one Earth-like planet.
That's not it.

(36:55):
This kept happening.
If I like to remember, I told a reporter,call me when we find a planet outside our
solar system that's at least as Earth likeas Mars is, we still haven't done it.
And so that's, in some ways,it tells you the conditions for
habitability seem to be fairly narrow.
It doesn't follow that Earth isunique in our argument, at least.

(37:16):
We argue that if there are otherplanets where there is
life like us in the universe oreven in our galaxy,
it will be very much like the planet andthe system that we're on.
That's our [CROSSTALK].

Now you're looking skeptical.

Mm-hm. >> Peter Robinson
a book on fine tuning,and now you're, what's up.
Yeah, the general level, so.

Okay. >> Luke Barnes
needs to go into this.
It's easy to find a planet whenit's bigger for fairly obvious.
Exactly.

So the way you actually find them,
how do you find a planet around a starthat's an awfully long way away?
Well, there's two ways.
One is the planet goes between you andthe star, and
you get a sort of an eclipse, but justthe light goes down and then up again.
Or as the planet goes around, actually,the star of the planet wobble each other,
so you can observe that little wobble.

(38:04):
The bigger and the closer the planet is,the easier it is to see those two things.
There's a couple of other methods.
What that means is there's a biasjust from our methods that will find
planets bigger than Earth andcloser to their stars than Earth.
So it's actually very hard to find.
Mars is just really hard tosee around any other planet.
But we're in an era where we've gotwhopping great big space telescopes

(38:28):
going up.
We've got wonderful newobservatories coming on board.
We're still going on this one,so stay tuned.

That's exactly right.
And this is crucial, though, Peter,because these are testable claims, right?
But we're just now getting to the pointwhere we could really discover Earth like
planets around planets other than.

These are testable claims.

Yeah, they're testable claims, but we're just now, I mean,
just the technology just coming onlineto really nail down just that one
number, right?
Like Earth-sized planets andthen now we'll look for
Earth-sized planets around similar stars.

So could I ask, this one really does not fall within your
purview, except as people who have toget this question asked all the time.
Why are people fascinated bythe question of whether we're alone?

I think it's an ultimate question.
People, I'll ask you this.
I love to ask this question.
People, what's the->> Peter Robinson: I ask
the questions around here.

prerogative here.
What is your favorite day on the calendar,Peter?

Christmas.

Christmas, okay?
What is Christmas?
It's an origin.
It's the origin of Jesus Christwho's your savior, right?
So what does that mean?
That means people are fascinatedby origin stories.
What's the ultimate origin story?
The universe, perhaps.
How did it get here?
What's the next mostinteresting origin story?
How did life come to exist?
What is the origin of life?
We have whole research programs dedicatedto both of those great and grand topics.

(39:50):
People love origin stories, why?
Because it marks a demarcationbetween things that you could have,
in principle, experienced andobtained empirical evidence.
It's about namely your life, and thingsyou have to trust other people about,
other theories, other hypotheses,which are provisional and could be wrong.
In other words, you only knowwho your father is, as they say,
cuz your mother told you right?
But after that, you can say a lot ofthings about things you experienced.

(40:13):
So, it's a fascinating thing to ask,where did the universe come from?
Because we don't know if there was a dayfor which there were no yesterdays, and
that's the branch of science that I study.

I grant every bit of that, but
this is just occurring to me as we speak.
So, yeah, I mean,it's an unusually unformed thought,
most of my thoughts are unformed.
This one is unusually unformed, but
that Neil Armstrong quotation at thebeginning, isn't it a question of meaning?
Are we just specs?
Are we just motes of dust floating aroundin a big empty room like this one?

(40:45):
Or is there some meaning to I don't know.
So, why are people fascinated by it?

Well, I'm no psychologist- >> Peter Robinson
you get all the time.
I know, I'm no psychologist, but
it's so common,I think there must be multiple answers.
I don't think there's one general,but I think Brian's answer is right.
I think there's sort of a feeling ofI think Earth is kind of amazing,
are there more of that out there?
Or is this place special in some senses,are we typical?

(41:13):
Or maybe the whole universeis teeming with life, and
it's gonna be all right if this planet,we have to move somewhere.
I think all of this gets mixed incuz it's such a common question.
Everyone comes at it differently, andI think movies are part of it as well,
obviously [LAUGH].

But actually, I'm not front-

Whatever number of body
problem.

The name of the show is 3 Body Problems, it is, in fact,
a full body problem.

Is it? >> Brian Keating
indulgence that is, we already know howthe movie plays out because this actually
happened in 1996 again, President Clintonduring his administration.
There's a scene in the movie contact,written by Carl Sagan and Andrine
as his widow that depicts an actual speechby President Clinton, and it's not CGI.

>> President Clinton (41:59):
I'm glad to be joined by my science and
technology advisor.
This is the product of years ofexploration by some of the world's most
distinguished scientists.
Like all discoveries, this one will andshould continue to be reviewed,
examined and scrutinized,it must be confirmed by other scientists.

This discovery, if confirmed,
will go down in the history of annalsof greatest discoveries ever, okay?
That was a discovery of putativelife found on a martian meteorite.

That's right I remember that.

Landed on the ice caps of Antarctica,
where I've had the privilegeof going twice.
And it is a claim that was madethat was not refuted for decades.
And in fact, it's sort of ambiguouswhether or not they made a mistake,
if it was actually some systematic error,or some effect that was, but
my point is this, did life change forthe average layperson,

(42:55):
did you stop getting these questions?
We found life, right?

You got to take just one moment to describe what form of life,
if it was a form of life,
I think that this was nothing thatwould grow up to play the piano.

Correct but that would be a huge advance, if true.

Some microscopic something.

It was a respiratory process or
some microtubule structure of a bacterium.

And now it's in doubt or disproven?

It's essentially been disproven.

Yeah, though it's still, I would say ambiguous, but
certainly it's not unambiguous proofof life, but it hasn't been ambiguous.

So, that means for 30 years we've lived with the specter of
having made this discovery, and yet,I stipulate, did anyone's life change?
Did we start treating each other better?
So, this is a glimpse into the futureof if we make contact tomorrow,
I predict almost nothing would change.
And the setting maximalist, the people->> Peter Robinson: Jay would see,
if they're interested in his book.
[LAUGH].

Jay would immediately start thinking [CROSSTALK].

I would wanna know if they saw a perfect solar eclipses from
their home world,that would be the question.

All right, so science, science, science, worldview,
geochemist Ross Taylor, quote,Copernicus was right after all.
Copernicus, of course,is the fellow who persuasively said,
actually, the sun doesn'torbit around the Earth.
We're not at the center of everything,it's the other way around.
Copernicus was right after all,the idea that the sun,

(44:18):
rather than the Earth was at the center ofthe universe caused a profound change in
the view of our place in the world.
That seems to be historically accurate.

No.

[LAUGH].

No, it isn't.

It's backwards, it's textbook orthodoxy.

It's a myth from the 1800s.

Yeah.

It's a myth from?

The 1800s.

Yeah, it came from the 19th century, so think about this.

I just go throw out the rest- >> Jay Richards
because this is actually.
So, let me finish this, and then you guys correct it.

Yeah, I know we pounced before you finished.

Yeah, Republicans' pounces so, Copernicus was right,
the idea of the sun, rather than,I did ask, was that the center of
the universe caused a profound changein the view of our place in the world.
It created the philosophical climatein which we live okay, it is not clear
that everyone has come to grips with theidea, for we still cherish the idea that
we are special, and that the entireuniverse was designed for us right, go.

Okay, so notice what he's doing, is he's arguing that there were,
before Copernicus,the pre-Copernican cosmology put humans in
a position of privilege by puttingit in the center of the universe.
And the general argument is that science,everything we discovered,
just shows how insignificant we are.

Correct.

And so, the idea is that physical location and
metaphysical significancesomehow correlate.
Hey, here's the first point, no historianthat you ask about this will tell you that
in the pre-Copernican cosmology,the best place to be was in the center.
This was Aristotle's physics, remember?
And so, the center, that's where the heavystuff falls, remember, it was the moon and

(45:50):
everything above it that'smade of this fifth element,
this kind of unchangeable,ethereal substance, right?
That was actually that was the heaven.

The music of the spheres.

The music of the spheres, right?
It's the surface of the Earth,at best, would have been a sort of
intermediate place, right,in which things die and fall and decay.
So, the center of the universein the pre-Copernican cosmology,
if you wanted to kind of give a locationmetaphor, you'd say it's the bottom,
it's the sump in which Detritus.

Even on Aristotle's view, we lived in a fallen world.

Well, a world in which things change and decay.

Imperfect would be [INAUDIBLE].

Imperfect would be, yeah, exactly.

In a typical sense.

And so, if you look at what Galio actually argues, right?
He actually argues ifthe Earth is another planet,
then it can reflect the light of the sun.
So, there's a complete sort of, if youunderstood what the early scientists after
Copernicus were doing, they didn't seethemselves as demoting humanity or
the Earth or anything like this.

(46:48):
It was only in the 19th century thatthere's a kind of reinterpretation of what
actually happened in order to makethis kind of dysteleological argument.
Now I'm making that point,
nevertheless, it's important tounderstand that physical location and
metaphysical significance, they're notdirectly correlated in any obvious way.
But we got to get the history rightbecause it's sort of this textbook

(47:09):
mythology.

So, this is part of Darwin and
the whole Victorian rebellionagainst some religion.
Is that what we have going on here?

So, it probably is sort of bound up in this,
there's a lot of stuff goingon in terms of Darwinism,
in terms of TH actually trying to carveout a place for professional science.
In terms of, especially in the UK, mostscientists are kind of parsons who just
during the week do some observationsof plants out in their garden, and
Huxley wants to professionalize science.

(47:41):
There's a lot going on here,
the point is that there's justnothing before the 1800s on this.

So, if Copernicus didn't invent the Copernican principle,
it just emerges from,but it did get invented.
The worldview does exist,I encounter it every day.

There are discoveries but
there's also this narrativeinterpretation, right?

So that's wrong. >> Jay Richards
what the Copernican principle is, a kindof narrative interpretation that weirdly
reverses things withrespect to Copernicus.
Yeah, but the worldview exists.

Yes, but it's almost self refuting.
I mean, we call it the worldview now,the Copernican principle and so forth.
But it was almost immediately selfrefuted because although the Earth wasn't
the center of the solar system,
immediately it was discovered thatthe sun was the center of the galaxy.
And this was due to misperceptions, due tothe fact that we live in the dusty galaxy.
And it wasn't immediately found thatwe are actually in the outskirts of

(48:32):
an ordinary spiral galaxythat we call the Milky Way.
But that wasn't enough because ouregos had to be solved somehow.
And that way to solve it was thatwe are the center of the universe.
And that was the most simpleinterpretation of the observation that
every galaxy that we see, with the sevenexceptions out of 100 billion,
are all moving away from us.
Now, either we didn't put on our cosmicdeodorant, or we are in a special place.

(48:56):
That is the most efficient, economical,
parsimonious interpretationof the observations.

That we are in a special place.

That is the naïve interpretation.
Obviously, we don'tbelieve there is a sense.

I thought I had you at last.

Tenure revoked.
Yes, try harder, Peter.
So the point being that scientistsdidn't even adopt this, and
it's sort of in revisionist history thatwe all then became the Copernican victims.
I call it the ultimatebig brother principle.
All those of us with a big brother know,if you have one, you're not that special.
You're not unique.

(49:29):
But as these two gentlemen said,
it really had no effect onthe practicing cosmologists.
And the ultimate refutationof it was that eventually,
when the Big Bang model came tobe much more seriously taken,
cosmologists reverted to what was calledthe perfect cosmological principle.
Where cosmological principle is thatit's a generalization of Copernican

(49:51):
principle to galaxies andto our position in the universe.
But then the perfectionwas achieved by saying,
we're not only not special in space,we're also not special in time.
And the only way to get rid ofa special point in time called
the Big Bang is to havean eternal universe.
So you could argue that the Copernicanprinciple almost stifled scientific

(50:13):
progress, at least if it was takenseriously, thank God, or whoever you like.
It wasn't taken seriously,as these two guys just said.

Okay, so you just raise one more point.

Yeah. >> Peter Robinson
the Copernican principle,
on which I think all three of you areproving remarkably slippery or evasive.
But of course, surely I'm mistaken,because you all know more than I do.
We'll get back to myfinal agony in a moment.
The Big Bang,when I mentioned a moment ago,

(50:42):
is the Big Bang a theory under pressure?
I put it crudely, butwhat about this notion of the multiverse?
This notion, it seems,to layman Robinson, excuse me.
Let me stipulate that everythingI say is the naïve view.
I don't know enough to giveyou any other view, but
the Big Bang implies thatthe universe had a beginning.

(51:06):
Implies that.

I mean, if you just intuition, something must have begun it.
Now, we immediately spin off into notionsof an intelligent design or stop that.
Well, I can stop myself.
But still, it's one moment in time, and
the universe as it existsis the only one we have.

(51:28):
Up comes the multiverse,as far as I can understand it.
A, the math does hold together.
It's extremely sophisticatedmath to say that, no,
the Big Bang didn't justproduce this universe.
It bubbled through to a gigantic numberof universes, so the math holds.
B, there is not one shred ofphysical evidence for it.

(51:50):
C, however, it's a way out.
It's a way of there's no God.
There's an infinite regressionof you get to lead your life
an infinite number of times in different.
What do you make of the multiverse?

So, first of all- >> Peter Robinson
seriously, and what do you make of it?
It's absolutely, it's deadly serious.

It is. >> Brian Keating
it's taken extremely seriously.
Because the math does work.

So seriously that there's not one multiverse.
There are multiple multiverses.
There are multiple [CROSSTALK].

Different series- >> Brian Keating

You guys get paid for
this stuff?

we get a $0.01 tax.
You ever remember when you were a kid,you could buy a star, and
they named a star after you?
I've said, well, why stop at stars?
Sell universes andKeating Brand Industries, folks.
Go to brandkeating.com.
I need to return one of those.

[LAUGH] So multiple, multiple.
What does that mean?
Well, there are certainly regions ofspace time which we have not had time
to interact with yet.
And tomorrow there may be a universeliterally right next door to ours.
That's one light day away from us.
I'm speaking crudely, but myprofessional colleagues will forgive me.
But effectively, it's a matter of time.
Tomorrow we could discover actually thephysical imprint of the consequences of

(53:02):
there being a neighboring universe thatwe come into contact with tomorrow,
literally tomorrow.
Then there are otherconceptions of the multiverse.
There's the many worldshypothesis postulating.
There are postulates that there are otheruniverses parallel to us in space.
There are other universes.
So these are all differenttypes of multiverses.

These are unfalsifiable.

Not necessarily.
It may be that you could not necessarilyfalsify, but you could motivate to a level
of credulity that would rise to a levelof circumstantial evidence perhaps.

He speaks the truth.

Yeah, I think so.
So the important thing,things about multiverses, things about,
say, the beginning of the universe,
they're not things we can getstraight from observations.
I can't go and look through one of Brian'swonderful telescopes and see that.
So I've got to ask a theory.
And now the question is, who do I ask?
Who do I trust?
With the beginning of the universe,if I ask Einstein's theory of gravity,

(53:56):
I get some rather general conditionswhere actually look, given this place,
there probably is a beginning if wejust stick with that theory, right?
Under fairly general conditions.
But now the question is, all right, but
we went right back to a beginning wherethere's extreme conditions there.
Do I really trust Einstein all the way?
And the answer is now, actually,we've got this other theory about how

(54:17):
things work around herecalled quantum mechanics.
And we didn't ask like,that didn't come into it.
And maybe we should ask that one as well.
But we need to combine the two.
And so we have these clues because thereare different theories we could go
and ask.
And the question of, who do you trust?
Is should, hopefully.
We'd love it if data came along and went,

(54:38):
that guy,ask that theory with the multiverse.
The problem is we've got a wholeroom full of people we could ask,
including the person who says,nope, no multiverse, right?
They're in there as well, that's possible.

That's just in this universe.

Yeah, yeah [LAUGH] and
there's these ideas abouthow it could happen.
And the data's not telling us who to ask.
And so we can try to get clues,circumstantial evidence.
We can try to ask, hey,if I lived in your multiverse,
would I expect to observea universe like this one?
Or are most of the life formsin a different sort of universe?

(55:15):
That's circumstantial,
but that could actually sort ofkick a few people out of the room.
But we're always gonna be, in this case,of here's the data out of that,
I hope there's just one theory to ask,but there's probably more.
And then I ask them, andthey can't quite agree with themselves.
So we just have to live with thistension of we'll have clues,
we'll have circumstantial evidence, but->> Jay Richards: But
Peter, what's interesting is almostevery discovery leads to more questions.

(55:39):
But we're in a differentposition than everyone, and
certainly every scientist was,say, in the mid 19th century.
In fact, you can findscientists telling you in even
the early 20th century that the questionof where the universe came from or
if it has a beginning isnot a scientific question.
In fact, the proper scientific attitudewas to treat the universe as a whole as
just eternal and static given, right?

(56:01):
The fact that we now talk aboutthe universe as having an age,
that's a significant sort of updatefrom a century and a half ago.
It leads to new questions,right, is it unique?
Was there one beginning,can we talk about the beginning, but
that's a different sort of situation.
And so, I think if you'rethinking in terms of worldviews,
I would much rather be a materialist whereeveryone assumed the universe was eternal

(56:24):
than be at a moment in which virtuallyeveryone, whether skeptic or
believer, says well, the universe hasan age, so it's got a finite past.

You'd rather be a materialist in the 1890s-

Exactly.

Than today? >> Jay Richards
I think it's much easier to be atheistin which standard cosmology says well,
the universe hasn't always been here.
It's no longer a kinda good candidate forultimate explanation if it had
a beginning->> Peter Robinson: I like that answer so
much, I'm not even gonnalet you address it.

could I ask you, sort of to me,
this is just kind of a technical questionabout the discipline of physics.
So, Newton is what, 17th century?
Quantum mechanics is late 90s,when is maximum?
1920s.

Okay, so we get quantum mechanics and
relativity are emerging at the same time,and
these are two systems of thought thatdo not, Einstein supersedes Newton.
Everybody seems to get that,but quantum mechanics and
relativity simply exist indifferent boxes, is that right?
They don't refute each other,but it's been a problem for

(57:26):
you guys that they are separate.
The search for some way, the unifiedfield search, has been a problem for
you for a century now.
Is that right?
I mean, for your discipline.

You're absolutely wrong, no [LAUGH].

Thank you very much Dr. Keating- >> Brian Keating
answer you in a second.
What do you have to say about Dr. Lawrence?

[LAUGH] Absolutely right, I think your only mistake is that
you're conflating generalrelativity in quantum mechanics.
In reality, special relativity,the theory of objects, mechanics,
propagation of objects withmass near the speed of light,
mass energy,interrelationship equals mc squared, etc.

(58:05):
That's one of the most, if not the mostquantitatively tested of all theories.
So, the only incorrect thing->> Peter Robinson: That one just holds up
and is confirmed again->> Brian Keating: It's Dirac,
it's Feynman, it's Schwinger,and so on, and
every time there's a collision at thelarge Hadron collider, it's being tested.
What's not been tested or reconciled,or even mandatory that exists is

(58:26):
a theory of quantum gravity of generalrelativity, which is the way that
this fabric of spacetime warps underthe curvature of massive objects.
And the interplay between matter andspacetime,
was first pointed outin general relativity.
But at the microscopic level, at thesubatomic level, how does gravity behave?

(58:46):
And where is that relevant?
To my knowledge, Luke can refute this,but it's only relevant in two situations.
One is at the core of a black hole,the singularity of a black hole,
which is perhaps excluded from our vantagepoint by what is called an event horizon,
a firewall, andultimately impenetrable firewall.
And the other regime at which->> Peter Robinson: We can't see it.

(59:08):
We can't see through the-

We just can't
observe, we cant.

And the other regime at which it may have been required is
at the origin of spacetime itself andthe singularity that existed then.
Which is also quoted from our view,by another type of event horizon that
precludes us from seeingthe actual origin of time.
So, I stipulate we put a lot of effortinto this, and the question is,
is that a good investment for physics?

(59:30):
Cuz to investigate two regimes thathave one or two ultimate applications,
black hole cores andthe beginning of the universe.
And who is to say that gravity and quantummechanics have to be related in what you
already alluded to as a unification ortheory of everything, as it's on his cult?

He said Luke may refute me, I'm begging refute him.

I agree, when do you get something really heavy and really small,
well, center of black hole,beginning of the universe.
What I disagree with is the thought thatif we had a theory of quantum gravity, all
it would do is tell us how the universestarted, and that's a waste of time.

(01:00:13):
No, no, no, that's, [CROSSTALK], yeah,yeah, yeah, no, I'm gonna stick with that.
That's worth->> Peter Robinson: Feel
free to caricature->> Luke Barnes: [LAUGH] That's worth going
after, because we want that,who do we ask?
I can't observe the beginning ofthe universe, and I wanna ask a theory,

(01:00:34):
general relativity, does an amazing jobof predicting what goes on around us.
And so, if we had that quantum theory,I could say,
all right, you've predicted things,you've explained
things, you're all self-consistent->> Peter Robinson: Is that somehow
undevelopable in principle?
No. >> Peter Robinson
It's not my field.

>> Peter Robinson (01:00:54):
Not my job.

>> Brian Keating (01:00:55):
Some people say it's not possible, or it doesn't exist.
There's no mandate from God or nature orwhoever you like that says that
the unification of quantum mechanics andgravity must take place.
It's a desire based on our intuition thatthe laws of nature should be simple, and
elegant, and beautiful.
But that is also projection of taste, andsort of, there's God or mother nature,
it's not under an obligationto unify things so

(01:01:17):
that my theoretical physicistfriends have full employment.

Okay boys, last questions,
it turns out what thisconversation has taught me is
I understood even less thanI thought that I understood.
But what I'd like to get to,[LAUGH], I'm sure this is
a vain attempt butI kind of like to wrap up the notion of

(01:01:40):
the implications of yourfields as they now stand.
So, this Copernican principle I'mgonna read you what my search
engine produced on the Internet.
So, this is the thing that's inthe air because it's on the Internet.
The Copernican principle,which we now know was mistaken, but
it still got invented, is a fundamentalconcept in astronomy and cosmology,

(01:02:04):
pretty strong words.
Fundamental concept thatasserts that Earth and
its inhabitants do not occupya privileged or position in the universe.
The principle has profound philosophicalimplications, maybe it shouldn't,
maybe philosophical implicationsare only imagined in the wider world.

(01:02:24):
But that's what it says,profound philosophical implications
challenging the notion ofhuman exceptionalism, and
suggesting that humans are not unique orcentral in the cosmic order.
And what I would like to know isthe current, not even the present,
not even sort of snapshotof physics at the moment.

(01:02:45):
But the general movements of your careers,
indicate that it's time to wrap up this
worldview that this planetis more remarkable.
And we as humans do indeedseem unusual in the universe,
and maybe that has implications forthe way we feel.

(01:03:08):
Maybe Neil Armstrong shouldn't havefelt like such a little speck.
Maybe he should have thought, gee,we humans are pretty spectacular,
you get what I'm going forhere, okay, Brian?

Okay, so when I hear this, it goes by the name of cosmic
insignificance theory, and this is->> Peter Robinson: Okay,
I got it, that's better thanthe Copernican principle, okay.
Oliver Burkeman, a wonderful book, Four Thousand Weeks.
It's mostly about you have4,000 weeks allotted to you,
how are you gonna spend thatbefore you meet your termination?
And I think it's ridiculous, right,

(01:03:42):
is Jupiter more significantthan a nine-month-old baby?
Is it possible to say that the largemagellanic cloud, because it's so
much bigger.
Nowhere else do we find that sizematters in terms of significance, and
I would say the ultimate difference,between these come from, or the ultimate

(01:04:02):
expression of our significance,which is a humanistic, I think,
very beautiful thing that scientiststend to ignore in favor of materialism.
Come from two things for me that make methink maybe there's something to what
my colleagues here are onto andmaybe I should be more open to it.
And that's these two things.
We share 99.8% of ourchromosomes with apes, right?

(01:04:25):
With bonobos or orangutans or whatever,sometimes wish it was 100% right.
But the fact is it's extremely close.
What is that difference?
Or another one that's my favorite.
If you look at the mass energybudget of the whole universe,
you'll find that what we're made up of,elements on the periodic table,

(01:04:46):
up to iodine orsomething that's useful for life,
makes up something like 0.001% ofall the energy in the universe.
And yet that's the only form of matter orenergy that can contemplate that.
We make up only 0.001.
So there's something in that now,is it evidence of God?
No, I don't think it's proof of God.
I personally don't believe you canprove the existence of God, and

(01:05:09):
I don't operate under those circumstances.
But to say that we're insignificantbecause we don't, aren't as big as
a gas giant planet, or we share the samenumber of chromosomes as a fruit fly,
those are empty, soulless arguments.
And to counteract the late greatStephen Weinberg, who said,
the more we comprehend about the universe,the more pointless it appears.

(01:05:29):
I think the actual opposite, the more wesee how similar we are to everything and
yet how distinct we are, the moreirrational the universe appears to be and
the more resplendent it appears to be,
which may lead some to seekultimate gratitude as well.

Jay. >> Jay Richards
Notice there should be a disconnectbetween the idea of size, scale and
significance there's no one isa sort of measure, physical measure.
It's completely ridiculousonce you frame it that way.
And notice, no one ever says, wow, humansand the Earth are huge compared to quarks.
Wow, we must be very important, right?
The comparison almost goes one way,it's really silly.

(01:06:09):
Significance is gonna hinge on thingsthat are, I think, more subtle than that.
It's the same thing with respect towhether is earthly life unique in
the universe, or is there life,including intelligent life,
elsewhere in the universe?
I honestly think the answer to eitherof those questions is interesting.
As atheist, I think both of those arepossibilities that we should be open to
either of those options.

(01:06:29):
But I don't think the problem withthe Copernican theory is not just it
contradicts the history of science, butit forces natural science to sort of bear
the water for a particular ideologicalcampaign for which it's not well suited.
And the people, including ordinarypeople that aren't scientists,
end up missing the grandeur andthe heroism of science pursued

(01:06:52):
properly to help understand as wellas the universe that we can see.
Luke? >> Luke Barnes
my favorite quote about fine tuningcame from someone, I believe it was
said to Alistair McGrath, but who saidthis was lost to the sands of time, but
it was simply, I'm not religious, butsomething weird is going on here.
There's this impression, I think itwas Freeman Dyson, a famous physicist,

(01:07:16):
who said, it's having reviewedjust the basics of physics,
went, looks like the universeknew we were coming.
And that impression, I think, against the,we're just nowhere particularly special.
There's nothing unique,this is all accidental.
I can make you an accidental universein my computer if you want one, and

(01:07:38):
there'll be nothing interesting going onin there, nothing as interesting as this.
The idea, if you wanna saythe universe is accidental,
go make yourself some accidental universesuntil it happens, it's not like this.
So there's something fightingback against that idea.
I don't think it proves anything.
I think mathematicians prove things,but certainly, I think if

(01:08:00):
you think the universe is accidental,you should be wildly uncomfortable.
Let me close final question.
Just go through with each of you.
I'm gonna give you a fragmentof text that comes to us from
the late Bronze Age andask each of you how you live with it.

(01:08:21):
In the beginning,God created the heaven and the Earth.
Now, what do you do with that?
Does that convey valuable information?
Is it inspirational?
Must Brian Keating, the scientist,
remain blind to it whileBrian Keating the man is permitted?
How do you deal with this?

Well, first let me say I would kill for 1% of God's book sales.
I mean,>> Peter Robinson: [LAUGH]
There's nothing quite
like that.
But in seriousness,you mentioned the Bronze Age, and yet
we read it to this day.
The idea that we'll still be readingStephen Hawking's brief history of time
a hundred years from now, let alone30 centuries from now, is laughable.

(01:09:01):
And it should be something that he,the late, great Stephen Hawking,
should wish to not be true,
because it would mean that almost noprogress in science has been made.
When I read that passage in Genesis 1:1,
it has a lot of overtones to me as a Jew,thinking about the notion,
it's a famous question,why did God begin the Bible with that?

(01:09:22):
After all, it was written forthese Bronze Age itinerant peasants.
Why didn't it begin with, don't eat thatdelicious thing with the curly tail that I
wish I could eat, but I can't?
It should have begun with the laws forthe Jewish people, why did it?
Because it says that orthe famous commentator Rashi says,
because God staked his claim tothe creation of the whole universe, and

(01:09:44):
therefore everything else can follow.
If he had only created stuff, you couldsay, well, it's just for the Jews,
I still don't have to lovemy neighbor as myself.
I can kill my parents,I don't have to honor them, etc.
So when I look at that, I see wisdom.
And always remember,the word science in Latin means knowledge.
It means nothing about wisdom.

When you hear that, you see something that, do you see truth?

For me, I see no scientific content in that,
if that's what you're asking.
After all, the sun and the Earthare created on the fourth day, and
the concept of what that means.
And I struggle and I rebel againstattempts to squeeze the 13.8
billion years of the Bing Bangmodel into that.
I rail against that withmy rabbinical friends.
So, no, I view them as completely,wholly separate.

(01:10:31):
And just as I would not use the Bibleto teach science to my students,
I also would not use Stephen Hawking'sbrief history of time,
teach morality, ethics, and how you treatyour fellow man to my students as well.

Jay, in the beginning- >> Jay Richards
Brian that this is not a science textbook,it's saying something else.
I differ from Brian.
And I think, first of all,I think the claim is true.
I think God did create the heavens and
Earth is just a summary term foreverything other than God.
I also think that by studyingcarefully the natural world around us,

(01:11:06):
the heavens and the Earth, first,
that everything we know about itis consistent with that claim.
And then also we can discoverthings that confirm or
at least suggest something like this.
But I've never imagined that it'ssomething that all the details of
Genesis 1:1 could be proved from doingastronomy or cosmology or biology.

(01:11:27):
Luke, out of sheer affection for down under,
we give you the last word.

>> Luke Barnes (01:11:30):
Thank you very much.
We think it's on top, of course.

[LAUGH] >> Luke Barnes
1 is that there's no antagonist,there's no bad guy.
If you read all the othersort of myths and stories.
Read the Enuma Elish, wonderfulstory cuz there's dragons fighting,
there's no bad guy,no one God just orders, and it happens.

(01:11:55):
And for me, that's not a history,that's not a science, that's not a theory.
But what tells me is whatcame first was rationality.
What came first was a mind.
What came first was that.
And so when I take my mind andtry to understand the universe [LAUGH]
I can take comfort in the factthat the mind got there first.

(01:12:17):
Luke Barnes, Brian Keating, Jay Richards, thank you.

>> Luke Barnes (01:12:21):
Thank you.

For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution and
Fox Nation shooting today in Fiesole,Italy, I'm Peter Robinson.
[MUSIC]

All Episodes

Are We Alone? Fine-Tuning the Universe, with Barnes, Keating, and Richards | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Crime Junkie

Ridiculous History

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Are We Alone? Fine-Tuning the Universe, with Barnes, Keating, and Richards | Uncommon Knowledge | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution