FADE to BLACK host: Jimmy Church guest: Lawrence M. Krauss

Tonight, physicist Lawrence M. Krauss joins us to discuss 3I/ATLAS and the rest of the universe... including Contact with ET... or not!!!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:27):
This Hope Radio for the Masses. Headline of this July eighth,
nineteen forty seven, the Yauni Airport was has announced that
applying the turfy found and there's now in the possession
of the Arda, the game is really changed, the game
Game Changer.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I occasionally think how quickly our difference is worldwide would
vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside
this work.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
This is Day to Black.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's your host, Jimmy Church on the Game Changer Radio Network.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
All right, good evening, how you doing? How you doing Tuesday,
October fourteenth, twenty twenty five. Let's do this may and
I am your host, Jimmy Church. All right, We've got
a great show tonight, another great week here on Fade
to Black. Just let me get this stuff out of
the way really quick. I've got last night. Rick Osmond

(01:31):
was here the history of blost America. Tonight, Lawrence M.
Krause joins us three I Atlas. We're gonna do some
cosmology and some other stuff. I promise Lawrence, we'll keep
the WU out of the show tonight as much as
we had tomorrow night. Lynd Buchanon is with us, an
original gangst Og remote viewer for the military and Project Stargate.

(01:53):
It's a really big deal. Tomorrow night, Lyn Buchanan is here,
and then Thursday night we have screenwriter and director d
Selig is Here's got a great series out on Netflix,
and we're going to be talking about how he creates
science fiction based on fact and his version of facts
and why he may be a whistleblower because of the

(02:16):
way he does his stuff. And that is Thursday night,
great week here on the show. I do have seven
events coming up. Twenty twenty six is upon us. I've
got the Conscious Life Expo, the largest conference in the world,
February twenty through the twenty third at the lax Hilton,
twenty five thousand people. I have been the host of
this event for the last twelve years, so we'll see

(02:38):
you there. Sedona Ascension Retreat March twenty through the twenty
second in Sedona, Arizona. The Contact Modalities Expo May first
through the third at twenty twenty six in Delavan, Wisconsin
at the Dulavan Lake Resort. I'm back out here for
Contact in the Desert May twenty eight through June first,
tickets on sale this Thanksgiving Day, and then I head

(03:00):
south to Peru for the Inca Celebration of the Sun
with Brian Forrester. That is June twenty third through July first.
After that, I head over to Scotland for the Monty
Python Tour of Scotland and that is August first through
the ninth, twenty twenty six hosting. This is going to
be really really cool and we've got some amazing surprises

(03:22):
that are going to happen. Use your imagination. I come
back from that and I head back south to Peru
and Eastern Island, and that is in November of twenty
twenty six. All right, kids, let's get started tonight. Lawrence
Kraus is with us. We're going to be talking about
three I Atlas, which is upon us, and some other stuff.

(03:43):
I want to get into physics and cosmology and in
his work and history, and I'll try to get everything
out of his head and into mind so I can
get my edge mccationin on tonight. Yes, not only the
insights of three I Atlas, but and the possibility and
some of the claims out there and how we look

(04:06):
at that. There is a lot of attention focus, censored data, telescopes.
Everything is focused on this object right now? What is it?
What is it? Well, tonight we're going to try to
peel back that onion layer. Professor Lawrence M. Krause, theoretical physicist.
We know that. Cosmologists, we know that too. Also best
selling author known for his groundbreaking work on the intersection

(04:29):
of science, philosophy, and public understanding. He's a former professor
at Yale Case Western Reserve and Arizona State University. And
his books which I have read. Now. We talk about
dark energy, dark matter, and all of that stuff for
the universe every night on this show, but it's his
books that have changed me. The physics of Star Trek.

(04:50):
I've got it the Universe from nothing. I have read
that book so many times. We're going to talk about
that tonight too as well. He's the president of the
Origins Project, a foundation and continues to bring together leading
thinkers to explore the deepest questions about the universe and
humanity's place within it. And I would like to welcome

(05:12):
for the first time defeated blackies right there, Lawrence M. Kraus. Lawrence,
how you doing tonight, young man?

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (05:18):
I feel very good to know my books have actually
affected you. That makes me feel even better than I'm
glad I agreed to do this, So that's great. You know,
as you can see has not you have to move into.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
And it'll be Professor Lee soon. Yeah, I feel comfortable
in saying that I want to start with a couple
of things. Actually, hold on. You get the first time
guest disclaimer, So we've got to get that out of
the way. It's a tradition and it goes like this, Lawrence.
It's just you and I sitting on my couch having
a conversation as friends. And where the conversation starts, it

(05:53):
starts where it ends, it ends. But we're going to
end as friends. But you have to accept so we
can move on.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well that's what I was planning anyway.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
So okay, fair enough, fair enough. I actually want to
start here before we get into some knowledge stuff tonight.
There is UH and you're going to enjoy this question.
I would say that there is a general public perception
and maybe criticism of science over in physics over the

(06:24):
last three hundred years about the lack of open minds,
and that we've moved into just staying on the highway
and not driving off of it and getting outside of
the box. Is that. Is that criticism accurate?

Speaker 1 (06:40):
No, that One of my favorite, one of my favorite
mantras comes from the former publisher of The New York Times,
who'd like to say, I keep an open I like
to keep an open mind, but not so open that
my brains fallout. And that's always been my model. But
the point is, look look at the change in science
of last year year. Development relativity, quantum mechanics, and discovery

(07:01):
that empty space has the dominant energy in the universe.
These are things that are beyond crazy, yet we've realized
the universe works that way. I don't see how you
could be more open minded than to realize that the
universe operates by the laws of quantum mechanics, which are
truly on the normal, everyday level insane. And as I say,

(07:24):
when we discover something we don't like, and I must
say that the fact that empty space has energy is
something that I proposed it. I hated the idea, but
it looked like it was true, and it is true,
and so we've come to accept it. And whether we
like it or not. And at the same time, if
we're wedded to an incredibly beautiful idea that we just

(07:46):
love and it's central to our being. If tomorrow an
experiment shows that it's wrong, we throw it out like
yesterday's newspapers. So I don't know. That's the great thing
about science is that we learn to throw out cherished
ideas and to accept things that we may not like.
If the universe operates that way. So I think that's
the prescription for discovery. And I don't see yet more

(08:11):
open minded than that.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
It sounds like you've never been asked that question before.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well, not in that, I have to say, not in
that way.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
I think you certainly understand it though, and the public
doesn't understand necessarily. But there's a frustration there and we
hear it over and over again. I ask every physicist
and scientist that I have on this show the same question,

(08:41):
and I think that generally they will force this into well,
it's a funding environment, you know. We can't get into
the WUT, we can't go into consciousness, we can't do
these things because we're in an environment and in a
career path that we just need to stay focused. And
that's it's a political answer. But I understand that answer too. Well.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Look, uh, I I don't even buy that. I think
scientists you know, we're funded by most of most scientists
are funded by the government, and but most most scientists
do what they're interested in. I mean, I always like
to say that grant proposals and exercise in creative lying

(09:28):
in a way, right right, because well, at least in
my case, and some people don't be doing science like
like I do. And it takes all types. But in
a grand proposal, you you you explain what you're gonna
be doing for the next three years or five years,
depending on the length they grant. But if but I
always feel like, if I know now what I'd be
working on in three years, then it's it's just no

(09:51):
fun because they're gonna be discoveries between now and then,
and I'll change what I'm working on. And so I
think that we couch what we're interested in in language
that works within the context of a grant, parameters a grant,
and then then when we do what we want.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
So, you know, I I it's about the most honest answer.
It's about the most honest answer I've ever heard. Oh good, No,
it's spot on.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Okay, No, it is. I try to call them as
I see him.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Now tonight, we're going to be talking about three I
atlas and to lay a foundation for that discussion. As
we all know nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety four, nineteen
ninety five, when the first exoplanets was verified, and where
we are today, our knowledge of the universe is increasing exponentially.

(10:47):
Like it's just crazy what we know today and what
we didn't know then, you know, thirty just thirty years ago,
it's crazy that we still didn't know if we were
all that there was as far as the star system goes.
And now with confidence we can generally say that every
star in the universe has probably got a planet. And

(11:11):
now we're getting into a numbers game that is very
hard to wrap our head around. Is that an indication
to you that the amount of life out there not
quite infinite, but it's a pretty big number, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, let me say, is that, as I was going
to say, as an astrophysicist, and I do that among
other kinds of physics, we kind of knew, we expected
thirty years ago that every star would have plans around it,
because when you built star systems on computers, you saw
these accretion discs form that would fragment, and so it

(11:49):
wasn't it was a I would say, an expectation that
it could be likely that they're one hundred bllion. Well,
we know there are a hundred billions or so stars
in our galaxy, that there could be one hundred million
solar systems. The huge surprise, which wasn't expected.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
Was it.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
That the kind of planets that can form around stars
were totally different than we'd expected. And we thought, okay, well,
it's reasonable to assume that our solar system is typical.
So there'll be you know, a bunch of planets. They'll
be rocky smaller planets on the inside and gas giants
on the outside.

Speaker 6 (12:27):
Like the Earth.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
And what we discovered is that basically it's far more
interesting than that that that that almost anything you can
imagine exists. There are systems with gas giants that are
close to stars and and and all these things that
we thought were probably not possible to form. We didn't
think they were impossible. It's not that the fundamental sciences

(12:50):
rolled up, but we were crative enough. The imagination and
nature always exceeds our own, and so we discovered that
there that that we're not at all typical necessarily, and
now there's a selection effect because we can only look
at certain stars and look for planets. So, you know,
there's this old line about the if the drunk leaves
the leaves the bar and loses the keys, where do

(13:13):
they look for them? They look for them under the lamppost,
not because they're there, but it's the only place I'll
find them because they can see it, right, And that's
what we do in physics. We look where we can look.
So if you're looking for planets, you have to see
a star and you and one of the ways we
find them is if the planet goes in front of
the star, it dims it a little bit so and
then you can and it has to be close enough
so that it goes around enough times so that in

(13:34):
a year or two or three or whatever observation you
can see that happening. And so that produces what we
call a selection effect in physics. So we're not looking
at all planets. We're looking at the ones we can see.
But even so, we've discovered just remarkable, remarkable things that
we wouldn't have thought were possible. But it has confirmed
that indeed almost all stars solars have planets around them.

(13:57):
But having said that, there's no evidence yet that any
other planet is even habitable. You'll read about that in
the newspaper, and then you should always read, like everything
in the newspaper you should read with a grain of salt,
especially in the case of astrobiology. I'm afraid to say,
which is a new area of astronomy, which which is

(14:18):
almost a science, and maybe one day it'll become one.
In my opinion, there's a lot of hype and you
hear about all these new discoveries of you know, potential
life here or there, and the problem is we don't.
Not only we don't even know how life formed on Earth, right,
I mean, we have good ideas, but no, no, no
direct way know that. And so anything we speculate about

(14:42):
other planets and their origins of life on those planets
is pure speculation. Now when we when when when you
read a newspaper that a planet, a habitable planet, has
been discovered, all it means is that it's you can
tell how big, how far away it is from its star,
and how half the star is, and how likely it
is therefore that the surface temperature on that planet is

(15:04):
such that what liquid water could exist. That doesn't apply
that liquid water exists.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
You know what you're the most fascinating part about that statement, though,
is that we can now actually have this discussion based
on data.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Exactly, and we have a lot of data of a
lot of stars. Is over I don't know what every year,
it's different, but they're probably over four thousand extra solar
planets that have been discovered, and some of them are
in this Goldilocks zone, which is where liquid waters. Now,
by the way, we don't know. We know of what
we would have one example of life, and that's on Earth,

(15:40):
and then we're trying to extrapolate to the universe. So
what we do first is look for life like Earth,
and liquid water on Earth we think was pretty essential
for the evolution of life here. Is it always essential
for the evolution of life? We don't know. But the
first thing to do is look for that. And if
you don't find any life on those kind of planets,
maybe then you'll you'll you'll broaden your search to other

(16:02):
more exotic kinds of life.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Let me ask you this. I just interrupted you, Lawrence,
I apologized. I indropped other people, some very interested. You
know what you've got. You've got a poker chip. You
can use it on me. Next is this, and then
we'll get to three high atlas. The the scoop that

(16:26):
we got from asteroid Benu, which, as you know, crashed
in the deserts up in Utah and we retrieved it.
And what we found in one scoop off of a
random asteroid, We've got twenty amino acids that make up
RNA and the five the five proteins that make up

(16:48):
DNA in one scoop of a random asteroid. That says
a lot of things to me.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Well, you know, what has been again a big surprise
over the last forty years is even before we scooped
that little bit when and you've got it right on,
is that we were able to look we were actually
able to look at comets and asteroids and look at
the spectrum of light emitted by those things, and that
spectrum tells us what materials are there, the same way

(17:19):
a spectrometer on Earth is used to determine what the
makeup of you know, of chicken soup. But and we've
discovered and what was really a big surprise was that
complex organic materials, complex you know, even complex hydrocarbons existed
on those objects, which was a surprise to some extent

(17:40):
that those things could exist. And now, as you say,
we discovered that amino acids and and potentially the nucleids
the basis of DNA are synthesized on those objects, and
there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of light,
and chemistry can happen, and so it does lead to
the possibility not quite uh panspermia, which was suggested by

(18:08):
Francis Crick a long time ago, who suggested that, you know,
one of the things that's amazing is life evolved on
Earth about as soon as the laws of physics would
have allowed it to. Within a few hundred million years
of the evolution of the Earth. Life was here, and
you probably could have existed earlier because the heavy bombardment
of asteroids and comets before before Jupitery that kicked them
out of the Solar system or ate them, and so

(18:29):
life formed really quickly. And that that now, that could
be due to one of two things. Could be that
it's easy for life to form, or it could be
that maybe life was seated, you know, and he suggested
it was DNA from other civilizations or something else. This
isn't that this is saying that in interstellar space there's
wild chemistry. There's chemistry happening, and it forms the basis

(18:51):
of the kind of materials that make up the DNA,
which is essential for the replication of life here on
Earth and RNA as well, and and so that is
that is very exciting because it does increase the likelihood
that life may exist elsewhere. It suggests perhaps that if
those building blocks didn't have to if you didn't have

(19:13):
to wait to get to the Earth to build up
those things, then you jumpstart. You're one step ahead. It's
still hard from there to make life, but not you know, impossible,
And so you're absolutely right. It's an amazingly important discovery.
It makes it more us more optimistic that there's life
elsewhere in universon. By life, I mean mycrobial life, not
necessarily intelligent life. But I do want to point out

(19:36):
that that there's no evidence in most in most of
the so called habitable planets that people have looked for,
it's not even clear that their atmospheres, much less organic materials.
And so you'll hear about these things and oh, maybe
this is a clue, and maybe that's a clue, and
maybe on Mars' evidence, it'd be wonderful. But we have

(19:58):
no evidence of it so far, and it's still possible,
although I would bet against it that we are alone
in the universe. Now by alone, I mean as a
life form. I'm not I don't know about intelligent life.
I'm actually willing to I'm betting that in our solar
system there will be discovered other examples of life originating,

(20:20):
not probably not on Mars, but in the oceans of
Europa Ensladis underneath the ice. And those are more interesting
because why why are they more interesting than Mars. They're
more interesting because Mars, you know, if you're old enough,
and you are, and I am to remember Ninete I

(20:40):
think it was nineteen ninety six, I think it was.
It was when Clinton was president, and you remember that
he held a press conference in the White House saying,
we discovered evidence that there's life on Mars, that there
was extent life on Mars. A Mars meteorite for Mars,
which was discovered in the Allen Hills in in Antarctica,

(21:01):
had been carefully examined by some chemists at Stanford, and
there are these little nodules will look a lot like
the oldest fossils of life on Earth. In Australia for
a billion year old fossils. It turns out they're fifty
times smaller, and it turns out there's other ways than
to make them in organic materials, and so now that's
kind of that supposition has been largely discredited. But what

(21:28):
it did point out is that no planet is an island.
You know that Mars meteorite was not discovered on Mars,
was discovered in Antarctica, and that means that materials from
Mars is regularly ejected and cod makes it weight to Earth.
And we now understand that extremophiles can live within rocks
for a long time. And so the interesting suggestion is
the interesting possibility is and my friend Andy Nole, who

(21:51):
works on these things as an expert on early life
he's at Harvard, has said, if we find evidence for
extinct life on Mars, the biggest surprise would be that
it isn't our cousins, because Mars has polluted us, and
lesser probably we polluted Mars. So if you want to

(22:11):
look at what see what a Marsian looks like, you
might want to just look in the mirror, because it's
quite possible that in the early history of our Solar
System when Mars was hotter and wetter, that the first
forms of life could have evolved on Mars and then
and then polluted the Earth. So so if we discover
life on Mars, it would be it would be surprising

(22:31):
in some sense if it were different. Now, how do
we know would be different? Well, if it didn't contain
the four you know, the four nuclei for in DNA,
the ones we use and and and all of that,
and I suspect it would if it were discovered. Now,
the more interesting thing about Anceladas or Europia is that

(22:51):
there are vast oceans underneath this thick layer of ice.
So those oceans have been separated from the environment of
the Solar System. And if we will to drill down
and there are missions suggested to do just that over
the over the course of the next decade or two.

(23:12):
And if we were to discover organic you know, evidence
for microbes, that would be much more definitive evidence of
a second genesis of life and our socialism. And if
life arose separately twice in our Solar system, then that
would basically tell us that the galaxy is just teeming
with them.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, it's full of it. Well, that's where octopus come from.
They come fromentally, that's that's it could be.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
That's certainly worthy oct I think, is it octopus or octopied.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Well, I'm only talking about one, so talk.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
To pupe octopus. So anyway, I'm I have bets with
people about this. I think it's likely if you were
to ask me, I wouldn't be surprised if there's life
in the oceans of Europa Enceladus. But by the way,
I also have VET with my friend Richard Dawkins, and
famous biologists is also a friend of mine. I the

(24:04):
institute I ran at a su look ran a bunch
of scientific meetings, and one was on the origin of life,
and I became convinced listening to chemists there that I
suspect life chemistry. Life is governed by chemistry and physics,
and basically chemistry found the what I think maybe the

(24:25):
unique road to a self replicating system with metabolism. And
so I think that the nature of DNA as we
now know it, and ATP as a molecule that is
the chemistry, the store of energy and energy transfer in
biolological systems. I wouldn't be surprised if that's almost unique.
If it was kind of the best that you know life,

(24:49):
you know, and by not not intelligently searching, but just
by random processes seeking out all the different mechanisms to
to to to exist, found the best mechanism. And if
that's really true, I've got a bet that if we
find life on your OPA, which is a second generous
I wouldn't be surprised if you had the same for
base pairs and atp and all the rest.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
For sure, for sure, and I'd love.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
To be proven wrong.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
No, you would be. Let me tell you why. Let
me tell you why you're spot on by the way
I write a Harley. I don't have a PhD. But
but I got a pretty good grip on this stuff.
And it's this, there are only so many particles, period.
There's not infinite particles. They only combine so many different ways.

(25:36):
It's finite. That's it. It's the same on the other
side of the universe as it is here. And ben
U certainly showed us just that that these particles can
combine in certain ways to allow the possibility of the
creation of life. And if it.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Happened, it's just because chemistry is governed by physics and
the laws of physics or universal everyone that's right. That's
right as protons, neutrons and electrons, and you put those
two things together and only certain configurations can exist. That's it.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
That's it. And so it's it's a numbers game. And
so I'm kind of I'm betting on the Vegas side
of this, where there's so much out there. The universe
is so big that we are now, especially with the
James Web, where we've achieved this point of the ability

(26:30):
to understand and know things that we can now peer
into the atmospheres of exoplanets. Well, if there's life out there,
they are doing the exact same thing that we are.
They're looking right, So why and we're this beautiful blue gem,
We glow, we have lights, and you know, we have

(26:51):
stuff here and and we're pretty easy to spot, and
we're out there looking for it and they would be too.
And so I think that there's advanced life out there.
Whether they've been here or not, I don't know, but
I would say that they're certainly aware of us. And
as a betting man, I think that's the safe bet.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Well, I'm not so certain. I wrote about it in
the Physics of Star Trek actually.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Because great book, by the way, great.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
But it's it's like, here's the analogy I gave then
and when when cable TV started. You know, I'm old
enough to remember, there were like six stations when I
was growing up, maybe four, so it was in Canada,

(27:38):
and you know that was easy. And then and then
cable came out. There's only two hundred stations and by
the time I found the program I was looking for
was over and and in the real universe, theyre an
infant number of frequencies to listen to. And so you
can have some ideas where you might broadcast what frequencies.
But even even if you knew exactly even if you

(28:06):
were in an alien planet, civilization, or other planet, and
someone told you exactly where to look at, say look
at that star there and look at the third rock
from that sun, there'll be life on there, well, even
then it'd be extremely hard to find life because first
of all, we've only been let's say their advanced civilization,
and we took four and a half billion years to

(28:30):
evolve here. But let's says most civilizations are sun you know,
the Solar System, and the galaxy is twelve billion years old.
We're only four and a half billion years old. So
let's say these advanced forms of life have been around
for billions of years longer than us. Okay, let's just say,
so they could be looking at the Earth for billions
of years and only during the last hundred years or

(28:53):
so would they find evidence of intelligence. Because we've been
admitting I Love Lucy and all of that stuff. So
if you work it out, that's it's like a one
in fifty million chance of finding life on Earth, even
if they were told, even if they were told where
to look, and and that's if you knew what frequency
listened to.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
But we don't even know that. So and you would
have to be one hundred light years away to even
see I Love Lucy exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
If you're a thousand light years away, too bad you
don't see any evidence. Well, I mean you might see green,
you might look at the Earth and say there's life there,
but no evidence of intelligent life. And so it's a
lot harder than you might think. And so I am
my suspicion. I'm pretty well convinced that the life the
universe is teeming with life. And I'm also reasonably convinced

(29:38):
that there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But I
also think it's a reasonable likelihood that we'll never know
about it. That will that that you know, And the
other possibility, of course, and which I think is maybe
even more likely now, especially looking at the at our
society right now, is that intelligent life doesn't exist for
very long.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
That's the question I would ask et. I swear Lawrence
on all that I love. I'm my daughter. You know
what comes out of my mouth? How did you guys
do it? How did you survive? That's it? How did
you guys? How did you guys do it? Because we're
you know, we need we need that advice that that's

(30:19):
that would be my question. How did you do it?

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Uh? Yeah, No, well that would be that would be
a great question to ask. I agree, because it would
be really surprised. And that's, by the way, why I
like Star Trek because most science fiction is kind of dystopic.
It presents the future that's awful in science has made
the world worse. And what's great about Star Trek is
it it presents a universe that more or less, at
least for the Federation, where science has made everything better.

(30:46):
You know, it's gotten rid of notions like God and
even money. I suppose and and somehow made made for
better life for everyone, and and and that's a lovely idea,
much how realistic it is, but it's a lovely idea.
And science could do that, right, because science brings people

(31:07):
together in ways that politics doesn't. You look at the
Large Hadron Collider, and you know you have ten thousand
physicists from one hundred different countries, speaking dozens of different languages,
all working together effectively towards a common goal. I don't
think anything unifies humanity better than science, because you know,
where there's common goals that are independent of sort of culture, language, sex,

(31:29):
or regenda and all the rest. And so science should
and could make the world a better place. And I
think it has by the way. In large, I think
science and the Enlightenment have made the world a better place.
And what saddens me, and my last book is about that,
is that there's this anti Enlightenment effort to somehow argue

(31:50):
that you know, objective knowledge doesn't exist and all the rest,
and it's a result of white supremacy or Western whatever.
And I think that's so sad, because science isn't Western.
I mean, it was dominated since the since the Enlightenment
by the West, but it certainly has its origins in
other places, and great mathematicians and great scientists around the world,

(32:13):
and I think it's I think the Enlightenment itself, you know.
And in fact, there's a great example of history is
given that Newton's discovery of the universal law of gravity
was responsible for the ending of the burning of witches.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah, I've heard that too. Yeah, I've heard that, because
you know.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
The idea is, look, if you know, it used to
be that they thought the planets went around at this time,
first song, they all thought they all went around the Earth.
But the Sun was discovered, but you know, angels pushed
them around and all the rest, and then new discovery.
You don't need angels, you don't need any of that. Everything,
even in the motion of the planets, could be predicted
by simple laws. And if that was the case, then
there was a Then then physical effects have physical causes,

(32:53):
and the physical effects have physical causes. You probably don't
can't blame a thunderstorm or a bad year of drought
on on the witch down the road. And so you know,
I don't know if this is speculation, is true. But
but oh, well, well played, Lawrence, well played.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Well, it seems that okay, steering this right into three
i at lists, you know, what if it turns out
to be artificial and or there's something else beyond something natural.
And this is a multi layered question tied into that.
What if what if you saw a flying saucer one night?

(33:38):
Do you apply that to your knowledge base? Do you
apply that to three iye at lists? Does it change?
Is there a paradigm shift for you? Or do you
search for another explanation for what you saw instead of
it being something extraordinary?

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Okay, do your eyeballs apply to that? Is what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
No, my eyeballs are fooled all the time. Right, and so,
as Richard Feineman once said, it's far more likely to
attribute UFOs to the known irrationality of humans rather than
the unknown rationality of aliens. Okay, when and I and

(34:22):
and not installed well in the physics short but the
book I wrote after that, called Beyond Star Trek, I
tried to argue pretty clearly that almost any possible explanation
of what you might see that you think is UFO
almost no matter how wild it is, is more likely
than intelligent aliens coming to visit us. Anything is more

(34:43):
likely than that.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
So you have to give you yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Finished lots of reasons.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
First of all, as I told you the likely why
would they come here? Because they don't know we're here,
and we're not particularly interesting. So you know, as you
just point out, they'd only know where here if they've
been within one hundred light years of here. But in
order to get here, you know, they have to be
traveling near the speed of light and how. And then
as I pointed out, even if you use fusion, or

(35:14):
even if you use matter antimatter as your fuel, then
just to every time, every time you want to start
and go to half the speed of light and stop,
you'd have to find in that case, I think, with
something like sixteen times the mass of the spaceship and fuel.
And there's a lot of antimatter out there, and so

(35:36):
and if you use if you use fusion, you probably
need six thousand times the mass of the spaceship and
fuel just to get to half the speed of light
and stop. If you use conventional fuel like rock shifts,
you would take more fuel than there is in the
entire visible universe to get to half of those these
light and stuff. And so I have a hard time
to give some alien civilization you need to harness the

(36:00):
power output of a star basically to to to do
to take a spaceship that would hold beings that you know,
a big spaceship that would hold beings like us, and
you know, or not like us necessarily, but massive beings.
And I have a hard time thinking that some civilization
would harn even if they could, would harness all of
that energy, just to come to the Earth to abduct

(36:24):
psychiatric patients of some psychiatrists and do weird, kinky experiments
on them. It just seems like an awful waste of energy.
And so just the energetics of coming in a spacecraft
to us make it highly highly highly unlikely that that's happening.

(36:44):
And then there may.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
You're right in that. But this is where and I
don't have the answers lawrence, but this is where I
apply this thought. We understand what we can understand today, right,
that's are not you know, it gets you know, okay,

(37:06):
all right, but E t some extraterrestrial advanced civilization more
advanced than us. Isn't going through a difficult process like
that to do things. They do it because it's easy,
and they figured out stuff that we simply don't know
about period, And that's that's that's my that's my take,

(37:30):
because that's why you're wrong. I don't think so, but
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
The The one of the bigest misunderstandings about scientific revolutions
is that they do away with all everything went before them.
You know, today we think this is true, but tomorrow
it's all gonna be wrong. That never has happened. Newton
is still right. He's been planted by Einstein. At the

(37:57):
large scales of quant mechanics and small scales, a ball
a million years from now, whatever we learn about quantum
gravity and you let it go, and it's going to fall,
just like Newton told us. So whatever we knew we
know about the universe, it's not going to suddenly change
the physics. That's right, that works. It's got to somehow
subsume Newton, like relativity does at large at large speeds

(38:19):
or quant mechanics, as at small scales, it reduces to
Newton on the scales of you and me and cannonballs
and spacecraft so whatever some fancy civilization is going to
come up with, it's not going to be able to
avoid the simple things that we know are true about
the universe, about energetics and motion and the speed of

(38:40):
light and the challenges of moving the speed of light.
So so but a miracle, you know, well, you know
even even you know, take Cosmos and our take Contact,
Carl Sagan's book. Yeah, so maybe they'll find wormholes that

(39:02):
somehow are shortcuts through space. Well yeah, except we just
we've already and Kip Thorne was the first one to
do this calculation. I think, you know, wormholes are shortcuts
through space, and that's what Jodie Foster took in Contact. Wonderful,
except it turns out the laws and physics that we
know to be true tell us that that wormholes in

(39:22):
which you could travel through cants will eat. The mouth
of the wormhole will collapse to form a black hole.
Each mouth at times goes shorter than it takes to
get through it.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Unless an entanglement overcome you know the ideas of mass
and the speed of light can what does an entanglement overcome?

Speaker 1 (39:44):
No, No, that's what that's a misunderstanding entanglement. Nothing nothing,
not even you can't transfer information faster than the speed
of light. Even with entanglement. It's like a cosmic catch
twenty two. It is true. Entanglement says that if I
have elect two electrons that I arrange in a very
specific state, one let's say, pointing up, one counting down.

(40:07):
But they're you know, there are in many possible states,
but they're all whatever state they're in, their their spins
are they're engle mentum or pointing in opposite directions, so
they're you know, it could be one of many different possibilities, right,
and so you know, then you separate them and they're
all they're still correlated like that, right, And then you
measure one. I measure this one, and I find out

(40:28):
it's actually pointing this direction instantaneously that other one. We
can say that that other one will must be pointing down,
not to the right, not to the left, not up
or down. If this one was measured up instantaneously, it
ensures that that other one, if I could do my down,
is pointing down. And that sounds like, hey, you're traveling,

(40:49):
you're sending information faster than light. Well, I can communicate
faster than like, but you can't because what what does
it mean? Well, if if they're if they're doing this,
and you measure one of therons, you're gonna find fifty
percent of the time it's pointing up, fifty percent of
the time it's pointing down. Right, And so it is
true that if I measure this one pointing up, an

(41:12):
observer somewhere else will always measure this one pointing down.
But remember if this observer measures fifty percent of the
time this and fifty percent of the time that, and
this observer will also measure fifty percent of time this
and fifty percent of the time that. So there's no
information transfer. The only way you could get information transfer
is if this observer over here phones this observer over

(41:34):
here and says, guess what I measured that electron, The
one you're about to measure is pointing down. But of
course that phone call has to be at less than
the speed of light right to get that. So entanglement
sounds like, you know, it avoids the causality, the rules
of Einstein and causality, but it doesn't. You can't transfer

(41:54):
information faster than light. Sorry, it's it's it's one of
these cat cosmic cash twenty twos. And so while it
is true that that the claws of quantomic tanks allow
what appears to be instantaneous things, and it's true that
you know, on on Alpha centaury, if one of those
electrons ends up there and you're measured here, it instantaneously
affects what you've met be able to measure about this

(42:15):
electron on Earth. But the reason that seems so strange
is we classically think of those electrons as separated, but
quantum mechanically, they're not. They're just part of one quantum
mechanical wave function. And it's just part of the fact
that we think of the world the wrong way because
we're classical beings and they're not really separated. They're part
of a single object, and that and and and the

(42:36):
properties that object are determined by quantum mechanics.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
But if you change the state of one and you
change its spin from up to down, does this one
then change its spin? So they're not entangled?

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Well, I mean once you once you that's the point.
They're entangled until you do something to this one, right
until until you change and you know, if you knock
in another particle and change of state, it's no longer
entangled with that other one and so, and that's the
other property entanglement. It requires you to very carefully prepare
these states and make sure they haven't been interacted with
anything else on their long voyage across the cosmos. Otherwise

(43:16):
they're no longer entangled. And that's why entanglement is so weird,
because you know, for us, things are interacting all the time,
and these quantum correlations disappear. And that's why in the
classical world you don't see that kind of strange behavior.
And so quant mechanics is very special and it is
very interesting, and we can do neat things with it,
and where if we specially prepare systems and we'll be

(43:38):
able to use it to do kind of really neat
error correction, looking at checking for survey for someone security,
quantum security of systems to see if someone's eavesdropping, all
sorts of neat stuff and quantum computers. But it's not

(43:59):
going to allow us, unfortunately, it's to violate the fundamental
laws of quantum mechanics for physics. So sorry, it would
be nice, but it's not the case.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
In your book a Universe. It is in your book
I'm here to learn. In your book, A Universe from
Nothing really helped me. And I'll tell you why it
helped me in a very fundamental way. When the when
the Big Bang, When the Big Bang is talked about,

(44:30):
I think that most the majority of the people that
don't understand it assume that all matter it was originally
compressed into right, right, and then it came out. But no,
it came from reactions, right. Okay, So if that's the case,

(44:51):
is every particle in the universe entangled? If it if
the original reactions started?

Speaker 1 (44:57):
No, because uh, it's certainly not. No, it's not entangled
because it was a hot, dense universe, and that meant
there were interactions happening all the time. In any quantum
correlations in a thermal bath get completely wiped out. There's
no information left. That's just got a temperature. You can't
imagine a less a less entangled.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Now you're breaking hearts. Now you're breaking hearts.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Well, then then then I've done my job.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
And now let's uh, let's steer this into three I atlas.
It's uh, without bringing up Abby Lobe and we will later.
But yeah, some of the I like abb I like ab.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Well, I've known Lobby for maybe longer than you. But
I think he likes it anyway.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Okay, Okay, I'm leaving Dawkins alone, so we'll leave Abby alone. Okay,
the attack, But here we have an opportunity to observe
and collect data on an interstellar object. There's a lot

(46:08):
of claims right now that are going on with these observations.
So what is what is your take at the moment?

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Well, my take is that it's, you know, it's it
seems to be a comet, you know, and like anything else,
and it's from outside our socialism, which is neat. But
it's certainly emitting a lot of water, which comments do
when they you know, maybe there's a lot of Maybe
these people are drinking a lot and being a lot
on the spacecraft, but it's emitting a lot of water
like a comet does. And and and once again, extraordinary

(46:41):
claims require extraordinary evidence. It's much more likely that it's
a comet than it is. I mean, there's no evidence
that it's anything intelligent. Sure as to be having a
little normalcy here or there, but that happens all the
time when you see things, because you know, you know,
we learn how things behave in space in it and
there are lots of anomalies, and so to jump to

(47:03):
the conclusion, to jump, as I said once again with
referring to finement in a way, to jump to the
least likely conclusion of all the possibilities, and there are
so many of them, to pick the one that we like,
but it's probably the least likely, is the least scientific, Okay,
And to assume that, you'd have to have a sliver

(47:25):
of evidence, not just a sliver, but a mountain of evidence,
because it's so extraordinary, and there isn't any So why
take this object, which is like their objects in the universe,
and it's and and we know of lots of comments
in our solar system, and we know lots of objects
can be expelled from their solar systems. Why to immediately

(47:48):
jump to the possibility that it is an alien spacecraft
deciding somehow that are our solar system is interesting enough
to explore among the one hundred billion solar systems in
our galaxy. Why to jump to that conclusion is like
it is like it is like jumping to the conclusion

(48:08):
that there's a teapot, that there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter.
I can't disprove it, but it's i'd suggest it's highly unlikely.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
What we want contact, and it's all fun, fun thing that.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Takes the that's the X files, right, the X files mantras.
I want to believe and we should realize. And this
is what science teaches us. We all want to believe.
I would love there to be like I'd love contact,
I'd love it. We all want to believe that. And
if when it's when we want to believe something, that
we should be most suspicious of our beliefs because we'll

(48:44):
look for anything to confirm our beliefs. It's the way
humans are. And science teaches us that the things we
believe in the most are the ones we should be
most skeptical of because we're so willing to believe. And
and and good scientists have learned that. I don't know
how many experimental scientists have published wrong papers because they

(49:05):
saw an an almost result and decided it was significant
instead of saying, maybe it's an accident, and may let's
look at the possibilities. And again, to take Fireman, who
was just a great scientist. He used to go to
people and say, you won't believe, you won't believe it
happened to me today, just won't believe it happened to me.

(49:26):
And people can want and you go absolutely nothing right right,
just because you know you can dream. You can have weird,
nutty dreams for a thousand nights and then one night
you dream that your friend breaks their arm, and the
next day they've broke their leg. But you don't forget
that you had ten thousand dreams and they were all nonsense,
and one of them happens to correspond closely reality. It's

(49:47):
an accident, but none of us like to believe what
happens to us is accidents. Let me give you another
example that relates to say religion. Take the miracle Lords,
you know Lords France, where the people are cured of
things by the Virgin Mary which appeared who appeared in
this fountain or waterfall or whatever. So every year there

(50:09):
are literally millions and millions of pilgrims to go to
Lord France to be cured, and their own Catholic church
keeps good, good, accurate records. This. I learned this from
Carl Sagan years ago, so you can they worked out
over the past. You know, I forgot how many end years,
one hundred and fifty forget the number there was one

(50:30):
hundred and twenty million pilgrims that had come through Okay,
no one ever regenerated an arm or like okay, you know,
but there were maybe twenty cases. They couldn't explain if
people who say, had their cancer ended, okay, twenty out
of one hundred and twenty million spontaneously the cancer went intermission.

(50:53):
But it turns out in the background, in the background population,
spontaneous remission of cancer occurs at a higher rate, say
two hundred every every one hundred million people. So in fact,
if you go to Lords it look in the cystics,
you have less of a chance of But if your
if you go to Lords and your cancer goes in
our mission, there's no way in hell that I'm ever

(51:15):
going to be able to convince you as an accident.
You're going to say it was a miracle.

Speaker 5 (51:19):
Yea.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Do you believe? Do you believe in ghirlsts?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Do I don't believe in anything that's I don't like,
you don't like or believe? It means nothing. Things are
either luckily or unlikely, And certainly ghosts are unbelievably so
unbelievably likely that that we we can say with reasonably,
certainly certainty that they don't happen. But uh, But so
that's the way to think of things. What are the
likelihoods and what are the like gooods. But as I say,

(51:46):
if something strange happens to you, you automatically think it's significant.
If you see something in the night sky, if you
see something out of the corner of your eye or something,
it's got to be ghosts or aliens or in the
ancient world, fairy I mean, that's the other thing that's
really interesting. You know, if you go two hundred years ago,
when people saw weird things was fairies, because that was

(52:07):
the culture of the time. Now when people see weird things,
it's always the aliens that look like on your face
to black, you know, except for the hair. You know,
always a big forehead, big eyes. Why does everyone see
the same thing, because you know they've seen it on
the internet and somebody when they dream or whatever, that's
what they see. So people don't see fairies anymore. What

(52:27):
happened all the fairies? Well, culture changed, and the weird
things people now attribute to something else highly suggestive that
these are creations of the human mind and not of nature.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
I write a Harley. But fairies are real, so check
this out. I want to run this by you. I
was up in the Pacific Northwest. I met Mount Adams,
which is a dormant volcano beautiful right.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
My house here in the Pacific North so you.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Know where it's at. So I'm up there. I'm about
fourteen miles away, just outside of the Indian Reservation with
three hundred of my friends, and I'm doing a Fade
to Black conference up there. And while the conference is
going on, I'm outside, and I know this is going
to sound crazy. I'm just going to tell you what happened.
So I'm outside with about thirty people. I'm sitting at

(53:23):
a picnic table with a pair of binoculars on a
small tripod. I'm looking at birds and it's beautiful up
there right, it's beautiful, and in the background is Mount Adams.
But I'm looking at the birds and then all of
the sudden, So only time this has ever happened to me,
I still can't explain it. From behind Mount Adams. Here's

(53:44):
the peak. From behind Mount Adams, it's fourty miles away.
Comes this giant beer can. And I'm gonna say if
I'm going to guess it's fourteen miles away, but I
can see it to the Banoca. It's big. I'm gonna say,
five hundred feet tall, and it's it's like this Lawrence

(54:05):
and it's spinning and it's moving through the clear blue sky.
I was like, what the heck is that? And it's black,
and it's like a silver top and a silver bottom,
and it's gin it's the size of the Empire State Building.
It's like crazy big, and it's from behind Mount Adams,
and it's moving really slowly, and I observe it. I

(54:26):
jump up and I yell to everybody, pictures, pictures, video, video,
and I come back five seconds later. I come back
and I look at it again in the binoculars, and
I really and it's in focus. The sun is shining
on it. I can see it spinning. It's like a
circle on it, and and I'm and I just look

(54:46):
at it from top to bottom, and I put it
on my frontal lobe and I come out and I
look at it and it's just a little dot, but
I could see it spinning and the sun reflecting off
of it. Everybody's freaking out. And and as I come
back to the binoculars to look at it. The person
sitting to my right says, it phased out, it disappeared.

(55:08):
What now, look and it's gone. I thought it was
going to be up there for about an hour, as
slowly as it was moving across the sky. And I
come back, it's gone. It's gone. Now, I don't know
what I saw. I don't I have no clue. I
can just tell you what it wasn't right, wasn't a plane,
wasn't a helicopter, wasn't a rocket, wasn't a balloon. It

(55:30):
wasn't this, It wasn't that. It wasn't anything like that.
In fact, it was so strange, you know what I mean.
It wasn't like a flying saucer or some mothership or
independence state. No, wasn't any of those things. It was
this thing, right like this, spinning across the sky. And
I came away from that saying to myself, I don't know.

(55:53):
I'm a member of the media. I'm in a position
to talk about these things, and I am going to
try to figure this out that I can't explain. And
So when you observe something like that as a physicist
or a scientist, how do you turn around and try
to explain that and rationalize it so you don't jump

(56:15):
in the deep end of the pool like me.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Well, it's hard not to, because once again, what happens
to you're convinced a significant The first assumption is that
somehow your eyes were fooled. I do magic. I could
do end magic tricks for you right now. That would
astound you. But of course there are all tricks, but
you wouldn't. You would see things that are impossible. You
would see them. You watch me do something that is impossible.

(56:40):
So we're easily tricked, and our eyes particularly are tricked
all the time. I see weird things, and so once
again I can say to you that way that there's
lots of possible wild explanations of what you saw that
aren't what you saw. But as a scientist, what I
would do is say, well, this is really weird and
I can't explain it, but I don't understand what it is.

(57:02):
But then I don't. Then I jump to the most
likely possibility, not to the most unlikely possibility, and I
try and rule out you know, and I look and
try and try and understand how I can rule out
the likely of all the likely possibilities before I get
to the most unlikely possibility, and I think that's the
bortant thing. But everyone bypasses all those steps. It says, no,

(57:24):
I want it. It's it's obviously it's obviously the product
of intelligence, and it's obviously the problem. And if it's
obviously the product of intelligence, it's not some intelligence here
on Earth. It's got to be some intelligence out in
the universe. And how you make those leaps of faith
are they're not beyond me because I understand how people
do it, but it's it's not scientific to do it

(57:45):
that way. And I understand, and so I see lots
of things I can't explain every day, and that's why,
and that's wonderful. That's why it's worth doing science, because
there's But I guess the big, other, big mistake people
have about science is that because we don't understand everything,
we understand nothing. And that's not true. We understand an

(58:08):
incredible amount and whatever we don't understand has to somehow
fit into what we do understand, and we have to
reduce to it. It can't predict things that or disagree
with the experiments we've already done, and so you have
to use that as a guidepost, and it's strong, strongly constrained.
Science is imagination in a straight jacket. That's where it

(58:30):
differences in science fiction because the straight jacket is reality
and experiment, and you're constrained by that much as you
would like. And that's why may scientists may seem not
open minded. But once again, the constrain within the straight
jacket of the vast mountain of knowledge, of experimental knowledge

(58:51):
we have about the universe over the last five hundred
years of the Enlightenment, and whatever we see can't disagree
with the results of what we've of that body of
knowledge of how the universe actually works. So I can't
tell you what that was, and I can't even tell
you that you were wrong, that it wasn't a you know,
something weird and extraterrestrial.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
But all I can say is I'm not saying I'm
all im saying.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
All I'm saying is understand that you don't understand what
it was, and then start thinking about the possibilities, and
then try and figure out how you do an experiment
to distinguish between the different possibilities. And only when you
ruled out all nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred
ninety nine, nine ninety nine other possible explanations. Can you

(59:36):
then say, oh, well, I've yeah, it's extraterrestrial intelligence. And
that's the problem of this commet, jumping to the least
likely possibility with no evidence whatsoever, simply because you can't
explain all of its motion. You know, this has happened before.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
What about the self illumination or with.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
And it's happened before with AVI, with that other yeah, yeah,
oh or whatever that I can never pronounce right, Oh, look,
it's it's behaving strangely until people explain the strange behavior.
And and so you know, you think once burned twice shy,
but that not lobby.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Have you read his book Extraterrestrial about No.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
I've known AV for a long time and we were
on breaks with start Off together where's we were working
along with Stephen Hawking. And if you're trying to develop
us a little teeny teen starship that will go twenty
percent of speed a light to get the nearest office
centaury in ten years. So I know AUV, but I
think I also yeah, so I and I know some

(01:00:43):
of the claims, and I know a lot of the counterclaims,
and I have a certain amount of time to read things,
and I decided that that wasn't one of the things
worth reading. And I and I'm very you know, I'm
happy for Avi if it helped him buy a new
house or whatever it did. But but and I know,
and look, Ovy is Obvy's full of lots of interesting ideas,

(01:01:03):
wild ideas in science, and some of them been right
and some of them have been ridiculous, and he produces
all of them. And that's great, good for him.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
You know, the one thing, we need to take our break,
and we'll jump into that right now. The one thing.
And you know, like you just said, you know Av.
I know AV, and I broke bread with AV, and
I've had a lot of conversations with him. He will
not he doesn't go woo woo oh. Yeah. He will
constantly say, look, man, it's just the data. When I

(01:01:35):
say something, it's based on the data.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
I'm not well, but well, he's basing on the data
that something's unusual. And then he then he makes a
claim based on the data, which unfortunately has turned out
enough times to be wrong. So what can I say?
I think, as I say, Auvi is attracted to lots
of interesting explanations of lots of stuff, and sometimes they're

(01:01:58):
right and sometimes they're wrong. And I think he's very creative, imaginative,
capable man, and so I think he looks at the
data and sometimes comes up with claims that are not right.
And the great thing about science about making such claims
is that you open yourself up to other people to

(01:02:20):
explore them, and that's how science progresses. So it's fine
if his claims cause other people to do work that
then demonstrate that explanation does work. Fine. The problem is,
especially with the media, is that the is that the
claim gets the media attention and the counter result doesn't.

(01:02:41):
And so, you know, the way science works is, you know,
extraordinary claims are made and people look into it and
find out that they're wrong, and you too often finding
out they're wrong just never gets reported. And I think
in this in this case, in all the cases that
obvious been talking about, from the existence of this uma
mu or whatever it is, a nailan space draft, to

(01:03:01):
the evidence that somehow, you know, nodules, you know, extraterrestrial
nodules are discovered on the ocean floor, all of those
claims haven't panned out. So so it's it's suggestive. Let
me put it that way.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Well, we'll pick this up when we come back. Lawrence,
who stay right there. Our guest tonight, Lawrence M. Krause
talking about cosmology, the universe, physics, and of course three
I Atlas, all of that and much more. Lawrence, stay
right there. I am your host, Jimmy Church. This is
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(01:05:55):
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Speaker 7 (01:06:01):
Okay, November twenty twenty six, we're going to have our
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Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
All right, welcome back Fade to Black. I am your host,
Jimmy Church. Tonight, our guest is Lawrence M. Krauss. A
great conversation tonight physics, cosmology, science and of course three
I Atlas and what is going on out there in
the universe. Very interesting conversation about entanglement earlier too as well.

(01:07:47):
And I have said many times on this show, I
have changed. I have changed doing now, you know, approaching
three thousand episodes and having the best and the brightest
on this show. For me, it's like going to college.

(01:08:08):
I have spent two three four hours a night for
the last fifteen years interviewing the very best and the
very brightest, and all I do is learn more and more.
And I have changed. I have changed over the years.
And it's guests like Lawrence that I can access and

(01:08:32):
get into a conversation just sitting around, you know, at
dinner table, having a conversation and getting my knowledge on.
I really appreciate all of that, and Lawrence just thank
you for your contributions and everything else. And we really.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Say it's a lot more fun than I thought it
would be.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Well, well, okay, we're not done. Though, we're not done.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
But now, yeah, but it's good. I'm not spending all
my time explaining why ghosts are anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Go on, Well, I remember seeing you. I don't want
to jump into this, but I remember seeing uh, you
and and Dawkins and a couple of others. You guys
were doing a thing. You guys were on tour or whatever,
and and I remember Dawkins said on stage in front

(01:09:22):
of you, he goes, well, man, I'm afraid of ghosts.
I won't go into a haunted house, right, And I
remember him saying that, Well, you kind of can't have
it both ways, but but I understand, don't take you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
I don't remember that, but I might have blocked it out.
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Right, right, right, right, Okay, I'm going to go down
a few points and get your insight on this. On
three I atlas the first point, it appears to be
self illuminating and everything that we know about comments, right right,
This isn't fitting into those things. It's not to say

(01:10:05):
that the universe is. You know, it's ginormous, and there's
all kinds of things we haven't discovered or observed yet.
But that's self illuminating portion of this. What do you
make of that?

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
I'm skeptical, Well, how do we know it's self illuminating?
I don't know because someone told you it's self illuminating?

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
I mean, how do you know?

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I'm extremely skeptical. I mean, you know, you have to
know a lot to know it's self illuminating. You have
to know it's albedo. You have to know it's albedo
to see what you know, what what light is being
reflected from it? You have to know what processes are
happening on it. I mean, here's another there's a miss.

(01:10:46):
There are lots of mysteries that we don't understand. Jupiter,
for example, seem to be it still is. I think
I don't think this has yet full been fully discovered.
I once came up with a ridiculous possible expulation, which
I don't think is right. But I'm Jupiter is emitting
more energy than it should. You know, it seems like
there's energy being generated. Jupiter isn't a star. You know,

(01:11:08):
the Earth generates a lot of heats, you know, is
heating up the space around it and releasing a lot
of energy. But we understand it because this core is hot.
But Jupiter has this hot core, but it seems to
be a minting more heat than you would think comes
from this core. So that's an anomaly. We don't think
there's We don't think the Wizard of Oz is the

(01:11:28):
center of Jupiter generating that energy. But so, you know, yeah,
I think you have to be skeptical. Here's an object
that's difficult to measure, and you're first looking at it
and you don't know exactly what it is or what
it's obido is, and so I'm skeptical of the statement
that it's self illuminating. I'd like to know what the
evidence is, and no one's given. I mean to be frank,

(01:11:51):
I haven't spent all of my time trying to study
it because I think it's the likely of it that
it's anything but in common is so small, and I
know that a lot of people doing this anyway, But
I do I think that the likelihood that the claim
that it is self illuminating, is is true, is highly

(01:12:12):
is very small.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
The other claim staying on this part of the question
is that it seems to be I'm just this is
just what I have read, that the light is on
the front of the object and not from its tail,
and that seems to be anomalous and a bit strange

(01:12:37):
too as well. And again, where this data and how
these conclusions are there? I don't think we've collected enough
data yet too.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Yeah, I'm actually looking at it, you know, because you
I knew we're gonna ask I was looking at some
of the I mean, I actually in this further moment
because I didn't know what the program is going to
be about, but I kind of guessed. But you know,
I'm looking at it, and the Mars orbiter UH is
looking at it, and and and I look at it
says it says that that, uh, there's not enough data

(01:13:09):
to be able to even determine its composition or makeup
and and uh of of the of the object. And
so it's it's it's very tentative. The Mars Express images
are not yet captured as captured with its cameras, and
it's it's it's it's looked at the specter of the

(01:13:30):
commet using its two spectrometers. It's not yet clear whether
the two orbiters gathered enough light for a proper characterization
of the comets composition. So it's great, it's gonna we're
gonna learn a lot. But but the claim that we
know all these features of an object that we're just
beginning to see, it's just I think people jumping to
their what they want to believe rather than what may

(01:13:53):
actually be there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
Now, what about And you understand comments and cosmology certainly
more than I do, But these other the early spectra
analysis is indicating a high composition of iron and aluminum
and and other things, and that the comment tale may
be comprised of of aluminum and metals. Does that represent

(01:14:21):
what you know of that is typical of a comet?

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
No? But why do things have to be typical?

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
But that's what makes it so fascinating, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
And again, the information I have, which is not a lot,
and I could be wrong in this, but when I
look at this sort of reasonable scientific complications, what I
get is it's tentative and we don't even know the
real composition. So so my attitude about this is, let's

(01:14:57):
wait and see you brought up I don't understand. Let me,
let me give you a perspective. Sure the the you know,
so take quantum electronamics, which is the world's best, our
best theory of nature. It's the best tested theory. We

(01:15:20):
predict things to twelve thirteen de'cinal places and they agree
with observations. There's nowhere else in signs we can do that.
The first experiments that were done in quantma electronamics. So
I've almost always disagreed with the predictions by two sigma.
And so the very first time you do something, when
you're just learning how to do it, you're it's quite

(01:15:43):
possible that you're wrong. And and therefore you have to
be very careful when you when when people are doing
complicated observations for the first time, to suspect that claim
that are claims that are made are right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
You brought up Carl Sagan earlier and the movie Contact,
and the first couple minutes of the film to me
are the most special, which is a pullback from Planet Earth. Right,
They pull back, pull back, pull back, and then you
see how insignificant you know, we turned out to really be,

(01:16:26):
and how the Milky Way just turns into a dot.
And now we know what Hubble did and the telescope
and the deep field observations and everything about how many
galaxies are out there. But in that you see very
quickly how large the universe is. And that's one of
the things that was so magical about the movie Contact.

(01:16:48):
But based on that, in the last five or six years,
suddenly we have two interstellar objects that have come in
and found us and our Sun and orbited on our
elliptic and then left. And the odds of that seemed

(01:17:11):
pretty extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Based let's let's step back. Why why are the odds
of that seemed pretty extraordinary?

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
I just told you it. The movie Contacts showed. I
mean the odds.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
There's lots of there's lots of stuff going. Where are
our son, our solar sisters traveling at two hundred kilometers
per second through the galaxy? Okay, and it'll take you know,
a few hundred million years to go around the galaxy? Okay,
And at that rate, and so we're moving through the galaxy.

(01:17:46):
There's lots of stuff. And let's think about the selection effects.
So let's say an object pass through it perpendicular so
fast that you know, and it's going so fast that
we don't have enough time to detect it. What's the

(01:18:06):
selection effect? Selection effect is your life. If you're looking
for things, the things you're going to see are those
that are likely to be on a trajectory to keep
them in the solar system for the longest time. So
you put that selection effect in and then you say,
isn't it amazing that the things I'm seeing are that?
So I think when one argues that the odds of

(01:18:30):
something are very small, you have to think about what
that really means. What's what what is the what are
the total We got to ask what are the total
locus of possibilities? What selection effects are you putting on them?
For example, the odds if you actually worked out the
odds that you and I are having a conversation today,
and did it by probabilities, well, it's impossible, you know,

(01:18:51):
I had to I was driving, damn the stoplights happened
to happen exactly the right times. I get home in
time to be and you know, and then you know
I and the day before that, the day before that,
my birth and your birth. At that instant, you know
it's impossible, right, But rare things happen all the time
in the universe has big and old and so. But
when you know and there are people you and Richard

(01:19:13):
and I have had to do with a lot that
people are arguing it's it's it's impossible that life could
have ever evolved naturally. Just think of how impossible it is. Well,
who says it's impossible? And there's been four and a
half million years, and so when someone says that the
odds are are are are so unlikely? I asked them,

(01:19:34):
how do you do? How do you determine those odds?
And what do you know that I don't know in
order to determine the locus of possibilities. And as I say,
let's think about what you can see. It's like talk
about those extra solar planets. What we've discovered are these
are this remarkable fact that there are a lot of
grass giants that are far away from the star but

(01:19:54):
are are close to their star. Isn't that weird? Well, yeah,
except the easiest plan is to discover would be gas
giants that are close to their star exactly. So, hey,
it's not too surprising that that's what we're seeing. If
those things exist now, what's surprising is that they exist.
But now you know they exist, it's not too surprising.

(01:20:16):
Those are the ones we see because the selection effect
will give us that. So you always have to think
about first background probabilities and what your selection effects are,
and you must be you have to be willing to
say that what seems very strange and odd is just
an accident. That's not too surprising.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
Well, Lenny Suskin said, well, many people have said this,
but he says it in such a way that I
just enjoyed it a lot. Which is this likely? Any
anything that can happen will You're crazy, You're craziest thought, right,
Your craziest, most insane thing that you can think of,

(01:20:56):
will happen, could happen tomorrow, because it happen as long
as it is long.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
As it doesn't violate the known laws of physics.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
That's right, That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
Well, anything that can happen does happen. I've said it,
and you know I've said it as well. In the
universe that's big and old, rare events have happening all
the time. I mean, in our galaxy, a star explodes
once every two hundred years, and there are one hundred
billion stars in our galaxy. It's very rare. But if
you look at but you look at the universe, a
star is exploding every second.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
That's right. So then isn't it equal then the the
Dawkins version of how life started and an extra terrestrial
spiritual intervention created life? Don't they weigh the same? Then?

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
No? No, because one requires a lot more assumptions than
the other.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
After all, the one, the natural side, is the one
you have to take all this here's.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
The big flaw with that argument, And Richard, it's point
this is out. So let you know we're created by aliens,
by advanced aliens. Okay, but then you got to ask
the question who created the advanced aliens? There are a
lot more complex than us. So did they evolve naturally?
Were they created by yet more advanced aliens? And it

(01:22:06):
is it advanced aliens all the way down? I mean,
it begs the question. And and when you think about
it that way, you say, well, you know, maybe there's
a problem with that picture because if they evolved naturally,
then why couldn't we evolve naturally when we're less complex?
So once again, I think if you think about that correctly,
you find and then I use that argument for the

(01:22:27):
matrix as well, and all the rest. I mean, you know,
if we're if we're if we're in some some video
game of advanced aliens where they are they in a
video game of yet more advanced aliens? And is it?
Is it elephants all the way down? You know the
famous example, you know the story, Yes, of the world
has been held on the back of an elephant. Well,
what's holding up to the elephant? Another elephant? And then

(01:22:49):
what happened? What is it? It's elephants all the way
down anyway? So you see, once again, I think that
that argument, I think doesn't hold water when you think
about it correctly. In my opinion, I.

Speaker 3 (01:23:01):
Just stay objective. I stay in the middle. I don't
have all the answers, so I'm objective.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
I'm asking what's likely and what isn't, and I'm willing
to be proven wrong. I love being wrong. That's what
the property of the scientist is. I love being wrong
because it means nature. Has I told you the imagination
Nature is greater than that of human beings. That's why
I do science, because nature is you know. I like
to say every day I'm surprised if I'm not surprised,

(01:23:27):
and so it's great to be wrong. But at the
same time you've got to say you got to look
at something and say what's more likely and what's less likely,
and analyze things that way before you can discover you're wrong,
or before you discover that the least likely possibility is true.
It's like it's like Sherlock Holmes. You get rid of

(01:23:48):
everything that's wrong and what remains is right. So I
think to think it's I don't think I'm being closed
minded or not objective. I think I'm ultimately willing to
accept any possibility as long as but but but waited
according to some app set of priors of what's likely
and not likely based on what we know are ready
to be true, and then to explore ways to find

(01:24:10):
out if I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:24:12):
So it's an object appearing, well, two interstellar objects that
we know of, uh, so closely, you know on a calendar,
you know so tight.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Well, now you have to ask, wait, you've been hold on,
let's stop. But then you have to ask what we
have been able to see these objects without the technology
that we have today.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
Exactly? My point is that surprising.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
That we can now that they're happening when we can
see them. No, it's exactly what you'd expect.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
So do you think it has been common over the
last four billion years that this is happening all the time.
We just were never able to observe it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
You know? All I know is it's not surprising that
when we can see them that they exist. If they exist,
then we can when we can see them, that's when
we see them. So once again, thought thinking in that way,
what seems to be a mystery or suspicious is not
is not. You know, it's not that surprising at all.
It's again, it's it's looking under the lamp post, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
If okay, So let's let's suppose something okay, uh three
I Atlas turns out to be artificial. It even sends
us a radio signal says, hey, what's up. We love
I love blues? Right, okay, So that happens do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
You By the way, let me just point I can't
can't resist if it really were artificial, why does it
have to be in our solar system to send a
radio signal? Because it can send It can send a
radio signal from its own planet or even halfway here
or third of the way here, or or or five
times a distance of the You know, if I'm on
a plane, I don't wait till right over the over

(01:25:56):
the runway to send a signal to the to the
ground control of that I'm here. And so well, we
would do it because Moorrow were the reasons. As I
argued in in in the Beyond Startrek book, if you
think about how much effort and work and energy and
money would be required to send an extra trustrial object

(01:26:16):
here of any reasonable size, it's just so much cheaper
to send send the telegram, you know, and so uh,
it's much easier for me, as I used to say,
I think in that in that in my book, to
download the plans of a Ferrari than to download the Ferrari.

Speaker 3 (01:26:36):
Well, but they would know that we are the trailer
park of the universe, right, and so they would have
they would they would know that it would be they
would have to come by and say hello to us.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
Why because as soon as there are one hundred light
years away, they know where then they know what our
technology is.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Yeah, so would we How would they observe this though?
Do they observe this as backteria or do they observe
as as being somewhat intelligent.

Speaker 1 (01:27:05):
Well, obviously, I think, you know, let's go to Star Trek,
one of my favorite episodes that you know they're listening
for for they hear a tapping and and and the
tapping comes up to be the first six prime numbers,
which is, by the way, the first thing that said
he was listening for was prime numbers. Because why because
if you know the prime numbers, it means you know mathematics.
If you know mathematics, you're intelligent.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
You look for something that demonstrates intelligence, and one of
the ways is mathematics. So I think you know, or technology, right,
radio waves? Radio Demonstrating radio signals requires that you know
the laws of electromagnetism and you and you can generate,
you know, a generate a ten I and modulate signals

(01:27:47):
and do all sorts of things that requires intelligence. So
I think it wouldn't be pretty hard, would it would
be pretty easy to distinguish intelligence, at least in the
form that we normally think of it on Earth, from
non intelligence?

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
Right, but says to us, though, ah, that math thing
that that's old, don't we don't really deal with that anymore?
It's about colors and consciousness.

Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
Now, I think I would say to them, well, it's
pretty weird that math seems to not only it seems
to be the language of nature, And isn't it a
weird coincidence? Somehow it's a cosmic conspiracy that every law
of physics is described in terms of mathematics, and that
mathematics allows us to unambiguously predict how the universe works,
and it works and its continued to work. But it's

(01:28:34):
just a complete conspiracy. It's really not mathematics. Well maybe,
but again you'd have to convince me that that's that
there's a conspiracy. And and you know, in colors, after all,
are really nothing other than mathematics, right, because colors are
just frequencies, so we see them as colors, but of
course they're just different frequencies of electromic radiation, so they're
really described by mathematics not And then the fact that

(01:28:57):
we see them as colors is an as an accident
of our evolutionary existence. You know, you say, here's another thing,
here's another remarkable coincidence. The sun emits the temperature sun
is such that it emits most of its great deal
of its energy, if not most of it in this

(01:29:17):
visible spectrum, and that's isn't it amazing that we're sensitive
to visible light? Well, yeah, obvious answer is that evolution
would you know, have a system that would be sensible
to the light that's coming in from the sun. So
it's not too surprising that we're sensitive to the and
moreover radiation and the extremes is screened out by the atmosphere,

(01:29:42):
so high X rays are and cause a lot of
casic rays, and and you know, and and so it's
not too surprising at all that evolutions.

Speaker 3 (01:29:50):
You almost sound spiritual right now, Lawrence. I'm just letting
you know that sounds very spiritual.

Speaker 1 (01:29:56):
Let me fine, let me but find I'm just saying,
if Brandon, if you have if a system, if if
life is going to explore configuration that allows it to reproduce,
then having sensory systems that effectively allow it to detect
the dominant forms of radiation so that it can it

(01:30:17):
can look at understand, it's explore its surroundings is pretty
probably evolutionarily preferred. And so if lots of other you know,
organisms developed that weren't couldn't do that, and ones developed
that could they're most likely to out compete the ones
that couldn't, and in that sense of natural selection, it's

(01:30:39):
not very surprising at all that that now. Of course,
as we also know, certain lighte forms are sensitive to
much broader spectrums of light than humans, so it's not
unique in that sense. But what's true I think, and
I could be wrong here, but I believe that even
you know, bees and other things that can detect ultra

(01:30:59):
violet light and other things, it's not that they can't
detect visible light. It's that they see a much broader
spectrum of light. And so it would be interesting to
see if there was a it would be surprising, but
not impossible, to find a life form that could detect
only non visible radiation. And you know, I mean that

(01:31:24):
had us obviously there are such systems probably, you know,
single self molecules probably can detect heat, you know, and
avoid hot things. But ones that have sophisticated sensory organisms,
you'd think, what if they're if they're sophisticated enough to
quote unquote see then it'd be hard to imagine that
they couldn't at least see visible light as well as

(01:31:45):
other things beyond visible light. But that's a that's a speculation,
and you can test that speculation, and that's great because
if it's wrong, that tells you something you don't understand,
and that's what's great outside. So I'll make that hypothesis
and I think it's very reasonable and I want to
believe it to be true. But if I go out

(01:32:05):
tomorrow and find a life for them that doesn't do that,
then I know it's wrong. And then that tells me
something more interesting. It tells me that something about my
hypothesis is wrong and there's something I didn't understand, and
I need to understand more. That's what's great about.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
Sign Eventually our sun, eventually, I think it'll be sooner
than later, but it's going to be unstable and we're
gonna have to blow this popsicles hand.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
Well, it's gonna yeah, it's not sooner, let and later.

Speaker 3 (01:32:32):
My favorite well and.

Speaker 8 (01:32:38):
Right, heard me say this on stage many times, but
my favorite science joke is someone like me says the son, Okay,
the Sun's gonna last five billion years before it exhausts
its hydrogen fuel.

Speaker 1 (01:32:49):
It's going to become a red giant. It's going to
golf Earth. And some puts up their hands says, did
you say five million years right? And I say five
billionaires and they go wow, Okay. I mean the point
is that you know it's a why, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
A ways away now, whatever that time scale is, whether
it's a hundred billion years or five billion years or
one billion years or one hundred millionaires, eventually we have
to split. And when it does become unstable, our atmosphere
is blown away and the temperature here is two thousand

(01:33:23):
degrees and there's no water or anything left. There's going
to be nobody here to observe a red sky that
is full of the sun. We're going to be gone.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
Well, I mean only it will be full of the sun,
but this will be inside the sun.

Speaker 3 (01:33:36):
It will be inside the sun. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Anyway, unless we decide, unless there's enough time for us
to figure out how to move the Earth to where
Mars is right now, it's not very hard to do.
If you have a few billion years, there's simple ways
to slowly move the Earth out. So if civilization survives,
I think the Earth could could actually move its orbit.
But anyway, that's or at least humans could move the
orbit of the Earth, or until or robot we.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
Have to do something no matter what, we have to
do something. So now if just based on what we
know now, in what I have understood about our future,
is that life out there depending on what their star is, right,

(01:34:20):
but life out there that is going through the same
experience of instability in their son or has already gone
through that, then they would have left their planet too,
and eventually we are going to do that. So why
in the size of the universe, why is it such

(01:34:42):
a crazy thought that there may be life out there
that has left their planet just like we will have
to do one day. I don't think that that is
just some crazy, extraordinary thought. I think it's probably happening
a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:34:59):
What may or may not. I mean, first of all,
once again, we have to do that once every five
billion years. Okay, our galaxy is twelve bill billion years old,
so it doesn't happen if life evolves around stars like

(01:35:21):
our son, whose life cycle is ten billion years and
it's ten billion years, right the life cycle of the Sun,
and the Sun well it's before it becomes red giant.
Then that's basically once in the history of the galaxy
that people have to move. So it now could be
that most the interesting thing is that most stars are

(01:35:41):
smaller than our Sun, and the lifetime of a star
of hydrogen burning in a star goes as the inverse
cube of the mass of the star. So a star
that is one tenth the mass of our Sun lives
not ten billion years, but ten trillion years, And so
civilization with that never have to leave. Okay, at least

(01:36:01):
in the history of our universe, which is only fourteen
billion years old. So it's not obvious that that's required
a lot. But even if it were true, you gotta ask, well, maybe,
wouldn't it make sense instead if a civilization was sufficiently
advanced to move their planet out to a distance so
that around the Red Giant, their their their planet was

(01:36:27):
in the habitable zone.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
Why but that?

Speaker 1 (01:36:30):
But that is nothingness of space. When you've got all
these good real estate around you, You're you're right, there
is hold on, let's go on. Let's but then let's
say that you do decide to travel out there. Well,
I mean, if it's random, our galaxy is few and

(01:36:52):
far between. If you if you actually take a bow
and arrow and shoot it, you're gonna you're gonna miss.
You're the likely going to hit a star or a
planet is very small in our galaxy, okay, and in
the universe as a whole, most of the time you'll
just you'll just keep going. So you have to know
where you're going to be heading. And and once again

(01:37:15):
you know why here. So look, all of these things
are possible. I can't say they're impossible, But but uh,
why why wouldn't you build if you if you have
those infinite resources or large why don't you build a
dice in a dice sphere, or why why don't you
build something it's self contained. It doesn't have to travel

(01:37:36):
out in the universe that can that can just exist
in the region nearby your star.

Speaker 3 (01:37:43):
Well, we wouldn't do that with our star, though. Our
star at the end of five billionaires is going to
be a black lump of coal with no.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
End, no reason. Well, let's know, it's going to be
a red giant for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):
Yeah, for five billionaeres. But after that, once it goes
through its oxygen and the helium state and everything else
that it goes through, it's gonna it's gonna be nothing.
And so there's no reason to move the planet.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
As far as art star is not going to become
a neutron star. Or a black hole.

Speaker 3 (01:38:10):
It's too small, sump hole, not a black hole, a
lump hole.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
It's gonna be a white dwarf for a hall el
of a long time, for maybe for maybe one hundred
billion years and so uh and now all of that
is longer than the current age of the universe. So look,
all of these things are fascinating. But but and they

(01:38:35):
don't preclude the possibility of the other life forms have
had to leave their their solar system. But certainly if
they did it, it's hard to imagine they'd be doing
it a little ship like like thirty one Atlas. It
seems pretty pretty small for a whole civilization to I mean.
And so once again, just examine the possibilities.

Speaker 3 (01:38:59):
Why not. Here's the problem that that I have personally,
I think that we're being visited. But that's that's neither
here nor there.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
But you'd have to tell me why. But anyway, we.

Speaker 3 (01:39:13):
Can circle back to that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:14):
But this is an evidence for intelligent life on Earth.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
Yet I haven't I haven't met it yet on Earth
yet either. Is this though with our ability to peer out,
what we haven't seen is we haven't seen evidence of
like interstellar trade routes, or or ships passing between We
haven't seen anything like that. And I would assume that

(01:39:44):
we would see I don't know if it would be
nuclear trails or or whatever it would be, but we
haven't seen any evidence of that between stars yet. That's
that's the one thing where I step back and go, huh,
or are they doing it? You know you mentioned wormholes?
Are they folding space like the movie done? I don't know,

(01:40:06):
and we wouldn't see evidence of that. But that's the
one thing. We haven't seen. Any interstellar activity, interstellar trade routes.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
Well, there's lots of things we haven't seen. In particularly,
we've seen not a single bit of evidence for any
extraterrestrium in any way, in any form, any shape, any size.

Speaker 3 (01:40:24):
You haven't seen.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
More evidence of in any of the four thousand plants
have seen even evidence of microbial life, which are undoubtedly
a lot more frequent. You know, if life can evolve,
it took four and a half million, four billion years
on Earth to get it to us. So if life evolves,
if it's not, if it isn't unique here on Earth,
if it's ubiquitous, ninety nine percent of it is microbial. Right,

(01:40:49):
hardly anybody is going to be able to get to
the point of intelligence. So, but we haven't even seen
evidence from microbial life anywhere else in the universe, much
less intelligent life.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
So have you seen the the the U, A, P
and UFO hearings in Congress? Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:41:08):
Why would I spend watching time? I've seen little clips
from it, and what I've seen is absolute and complete nonsense. Obviously,
people who are lying and don't know what they're talking about.
Because they hear people saying we've reverse engineered and it
has to do with you know, string theory, loah blah blah,
And I listened to it, and I know they're babbling
about complete physics nonsense. And when I hear someone making

(01:41:28):
claims about stuff they clearly is wrong but they don't understand.
I find the rest of their claims highly suspicious. I
know it's fallacious nonsense.

Speaker 3 (01:41:38):
There were four four military witnesses US ago.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
Four Yeah, four woo oe. That's great. I've seen more
witnesses at a trial that get things wrong in a
in a legal case. Moreover, these are people you.

Speaker 5 (01:41:55):
Gotta ask yourself, hmm, what's the vested interest in how
I'm making a claim that you can't just proved, but
gets them a lot of a lot of notoriety, maybe
even a book deal. What's the likelihood that there's some
self interest in that? And that, by the way, that's
the for me, the biggest argument against having been visited
is I know the way governments work, and if someone.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
Had real evidence, real evidence of extra trest with having visitors,
the likely the money making possibilities of that are so
great and you can't. Governments are not good at hiding things.
They're not. These vast conspiracies are hiding that we think
we have. Almost everything comes out. But here's one where

(01:42:37):
a single person can make a gazillion dollars if they
if they here's an alien artifact, let's look at it. Here,
here it is, here's an alien, here's a dead alien. Okay,
So the fact that that hasn't happened is extremely good
evidence for me that it hasn't happened, because if it had,
I'm convinced that at least one person would just come

(01:42:59):
out and say, not talk about things that can't be proved,
but would actually present something that actually was real evidence.
And so the fact that it hasn't happened, because it's
so lucrative, to me, is the best evidence that it's
never happened, because they'd go on every program and they
would you know, they would instantly become rich.

Speaker 3 (01:43:18):
And that's always been mine that's always been my argument
within for sure. And then we have something like at
the last UAP hearing last month, Congressman Representative Burlison out
of Tennessee showed a video, a military video of an

(01:43:38):
object shooting across the screen that they fired a hell
fire missile at and the hell fire missile bounced off
of it, and the object just kept flying and cruising.
And then when the hell fire missile bounced off of
it's pretty I don't know what's going on in the video,

(01:44:00):
but it's interesting to watch that three objects came out
of the back of this object and then continued on
its way. It turned into four one big one in
three small ones. And so I step back and I
look at something like that, and I don't know what
we're looking at, but Congress is interested in that, and that,

(01:44:23):
to me is the interesting part about this, where Congress
is looking for answers to these objects that are being
detected in our sky by our own military. And when
the military doesn't have an explanation for it. That's what
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:44:40):
A good friend of mine, a colleague of mine, David
spergil was the head of the commission, the scientific commission
that examined all of the evidence, including the enomous evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:44:49):
Of things you're talking about for an arrow.

Speaker 1 (01:44:52):
You know whatever, the scientist commission from the National Academy
of Sciences that was set up. I think it was
National Gapemy Sciences might be the eirforst but David Spergol
it wasn't. Princeton. Now I'm at ahead of a foundation.
They examined all of this and said, you know, once again,
no evidence. And so when some congressman presents a video,

(01:45:16):
that's nice and it's great that Congress is investigating things,
I think they probably have better things to do with
their time, in my opinion, a lot better things to
do with their time. A lot of other problems that
are for more pressing that they could actually spend time
trying to solve. But fine, but you know, once again,
it's nice that congressmen show these videos, but videos are

(01:45:38):
I can show you a million videos on x every
day of things that are more exotic and also wrong.
And so there are lots of things that are unexplained.
There are lots of things that are not easily explained.
But once again, that doesn't mean, first of all, that

(01:45:58):
we don't understand any of them at all, or that
we can't understand it anymore. And it also doesn't mean
the first postulation should make is the least likely postulate.
Once again, it seems to people that when when you
see something it's so strange you can't explain it, it
must be due to aliens. But that's just some. That's
just some. That's a supposition that's been invented by Hollywood

(01:46:24):
or something like it. As I told you two hundred
years ago, the answer was it was fairies. Two hundred
years before that, it was demons. You pick your And
so it's great that, you know, it's Congress invested investing
in all the things we see that we don't understand.
They can spend all their time doing that, forget just

(01:46:45):
UFOs and anything, and it's great, and we call that science.
And science tries to investigate things we don't understand and
try to explain them. And that's what we spend our
time trying to do. And by the way, we don't
we try and prove our colleagues wrong. Well, the other
thing people don't understand by side, it's not as if
we all get a PhD and we do this private
pledge with black hats on saying we all agree to

(01:47:06):
this reality and none of us are going to allow
anything else. Instead, we actually try and prove each other wrong,
because only then do you get some kind of if
you're right, some kind of notoriety and fame or whatever
else scientists seek. So so, you know, some congressman presenting

(01:47:26):
a video means does nothing for me. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:47:29):
Well, what I find so interesting about all of this
is suddenly, and I can't I don't have an explanation
for this, but suddenly the media, Congress, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon,

(01:47:50):
where this subject was always taboo and funny and tinfoil
hats and everything else, that suddenly, since twenty seventeen, it's
an oak k subject to talk about and it's okay now,
and the public is not that the Vatican didn't collapse, right,
Wall Street didn't collapse, All of these predictions about all

(01:48:12):
the no society is okay, and suddenly it's a subject
that anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah, right right right, I overstepped.
But suddenly it's it's a subject that's okay to talk
about without being laughed at. Not having the X files
of music.

Speaker 1 (01:48:28):
Yeah, and you know, and it's hard to know the
sociological reasons for that except that except I think you've
you've got a few things. You've got social media, which
is now extremely powerful, and Congress people know that social
media has a big audience, and so social media tends
to be, I hate to say it dominated by fringe
groups and who like things like this, And so it's

(01:48:50):
not so surprising that Congress follows its knows to please
a set of people. So that's it's maybe not surprising.
It didn't happen till the rise of social media. But
and there, you know, and and there are lots and
there's new technology, so there's lots of ways of people
to demonstrate, to present these weird videos and other things.

(01:49:11):
So yeah, it's kind of interesting that it's an okay subject.
But I think but having said that, what surprises, what
maybe is it's not very surprising, is commerce says we're gonna,
we're gonna, we're gonna give this group of scientists access
to all the data, including top secret data. Right, and
we're gonna let them look at this and they're gonna

(01:49:33):
come to some collusions and the result was not too interesting.
And but then, but then that doesn't stop any of it.

Speaker 3 (01:49:41):
Isn't it. You're you're right though it what what was
fringe is now normal. It's exactly how do we get here?
I like the old version, when it was just us
in our little freaky world.

Speaker 1 (01:49:55):
Yeah, no, it was a lot more fun. My one
of my favorite faculty members, most brilliant guys I knew
when I was at Harvard, was now dead, Sydney Coleman,
smarter than any of my other colleagues. Law won the Littlebel
Prize at Harvard. But he used to love crave the
old days when science fiction was kind of sleazy and scuzzy,
and he'd get these old science fiction magazines which he loved,

(01:50:17):
and he'd go to these science fiction conventions which were
fringe and weird people. He loved that kind of stuff.
And I think, yeah, maybe we harken back the old
days when science fiction was a little less mainstream.

Speaker 3 (01:50:30):
Let me let me ask you one thing before we
wrap up tonight. I had the opportunity to go into
this zone. Is the is the intellectual world as competitive
as anything else sports or entertainment? Is it? Is it competitive?

(01:50:50):
Is it a world of ego where you know, you
guys are trying to outsmart each other.

Speaker 1 (01:50:56):
Of course it's more compared. Well, it's at least as competitive. Yeah,
it's one of the most competitive. And you know why,
there's so much There's so much chaff and so little wheat.
You know, the low hanging fruit has been got taken.
And it's hard, and it's really hard to make an impact,

(01:51:16):
and there are a lot of people doing it more
than ever. It's incredibly competitive, and as it should be.
You know why, because it's a privilege to be able
to It was a It's been a privilege for me
for most of my life to be supported, to be
able to do whatever the hell I want and ask
whatever hell of questions I want. It's not something I
think society can afford to allow most people to do.

(01:51:38):
And it's a privilege I feel fortunate to have had.
And I think, and I like to think I got
it because I was able to do it well. And
I think it should be rare and it should be
competitive so that only the people that do it well
succeed at it because society can't afford for everyone to
be doing it. Not now maybe when ai Is dominates

(01:51:59):
and we all of us have a lot of spare time,
all of us. But anyway, so I think it's it's
it's it's it's it is competitive, and it should be competitive,
and people shouldn't expect that they should have a free
ride in that regard and not everyone should be able

(01:52:20):
to do it, and we should. And that's part of
the content I can't help but show my decent book
The War on Science. One of the reasons why why why,
I think merit is the important factor that should determine
who's who succeeds in academia and not and not and
not other things, and we can't afford Science is too important.

(01:52:41):
It's it's the way it would allow us to address
the challenges of the twenty first century and ensure the
health and welfare and economic well being of our society.
It's too important to to not to not have science
proceed on the basis of merit, because we all depend on.

Speaker 3 (01:53:02):
What I enjoy. But at the same time, I kind
of ahod these thoughts is that some I'm not going
to name any names. I don't do that on this program.
But there are some big brains out there that have
become rock stars, and I'm not sure if they're whiteboarding
or doing any algorithmic research at all, and instead focus

(01:53:29):
on clicks and their audience and they speak to that
and have ignored actual research. And that's where that's what
scares me. Where too many now the audience has grown
so big where it's become a money thing for some

(01:53:50):
of these rock stars, And that's what scares me because
people focus on it being gospel and the truth to them.

Speaker 1 (01:53:59):
Yeah, well, I mean there's a big attraction to that,
and I think it's good happens, but I suspect it's
happened a lot of times. Some people, you know, used
to say that about Carl Sagan, But but I think
he was a good scientist and and uh and and
he and he got a lot of flak for reaching
out to the public and but and that was unfortunate.

(01:54:20):
But you're right, I mean, the lure of money and
the law of attention is great, and so you should
be suspicious of everyone, including me, and heaven forbid. And uh,
I think when you ought when the internet, which when
I've been around the Internet longer than most people because

(01:54:40):
it began with physics and the physics community, and I
used to think it was great. It was going to
be allow people access to more information than than they
would ever possibly have, which is true, but it also
now allows people access to more misinformation. So the important
way to learn in the modern world is to learn
how to tell the week from the chaff, and be
skeptical of what you read and test it and see

(01:55:02):
which sources seem more credible on the basis of them,
finding out which ones I agree with the evidence of
reality more often, and even then they can be wrong.
And so we have to learn not facts aren't important
because you can you can get them. You have to
learn how to tell the facts from the non facts.
And that's a different way of thinking, and science, for

(01:55:24):
better or worse, is the way to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:55:26):
I love woo woo. I love to let my imagination go,
but but what keeps me grounded is science. Right, So
I'll go and out look into and science grounds me again.
But science is starting to get more woo than the
woo woo.

Speaker 1 (01:55:46):
Well sometimes it is.

Speaker 3 (01:55:47):
Yeah, I love it, though I loved I loved that
part of it where the crazy stuff that I used
to imagine. Let's go to your Star Trek books, right
that science is being pushed to look into things because
of these ideas and some of the woo that's out there.

(01:56:10):
And I love that part of it. I truly do.
Where as crazy as my thoughts can be sometimes and
I go to science to help ground me, and then
suddenly I've got quantum computers and quantum mechanics and cubits
and eleven dimensions and the multi multiverse and multi worlds

(01:56:32):
and these crazy where our woo woo community is not
that nut sciences out there really pushing it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:43):
I find the craziness of science to be so much
more imaginative than the craziest of woo woo. That's what
makes it interesting, and that's why I find science much
more fascinating than science fiction, because once again, the imagination
of nature is far greater than the imagination of human beings,
and so the universe will keep surprising us, and I
love that, and that's what has kept me at being

(01:57:04):
a scientist for as long as I have been, and
I hope it will continue to keep surprising me. I
see no evidence of the contrary, and I love being
surprised and as just like I love being wrong the
one or two times in my life that that's happened.

Speaker 3 (01:57:17):
So dark energy, the expansion of the universe. I figured
it out.

Speaker 1 (01:57:23):
Oh good, I was going to say, we have one
or two minutes left.

Speaker 3 (01:57:25):
Again, I figured it out. Okay, this is what I
think it is. Are you ready? I think it is
information and consciousness. That's what it is, and I think
that's what dark energy is.

Speaker 1 (01:57:39):
Great. It doesn't behave like information or consciousness.

Speaker 3 (01:57:42):
That's right, and nobody knows.

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
But it doesn't have the gravitational properties of information or consciousness.
So I would argue that there's strong evidence that can't
be either because thoth those things are gravitulationally attractive and
not repulsive.

Speaker 3 (01:57:56):
So next time you're on the show, we'll discuss it deeper.

Speaker 1 (01:58:01):
It is just why that idea is wrong. That's my job, Lawrence.

Speaker 3 (01:58:05):
And thank you for everything man and your contributions, and
what a great conversation tonight, and I really appreciate it.
Your books have moved me and motivated me and will
continue to do so. So just thank you on behalf
of our community. Thank you for everything that you have
brought to us.

Speaker 1 (01:58:22):
It's wonderful. I really appreciate that. And it's been as
I say, it's been fun. And keep up the good
work yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
I appreciate it. Lawrence M. Krause, everybody. His links are below.
Thank you so much, sir, have a great night.

Speaker 1 (01:58:35):
You take care.

Speaker 3 (01:58:36):
Thanks, Thank you so much. What a perfect conversation that
right there is a perfect conversation, so much fun, and
what a great week on the show. And having Laurence
on the show with us tonight really meant a lot
to me. And it's about me learning. And if I learn,
you learn right along with me. All right. I do

(01:58:56):
want to remind everybody what is going on tomorrow night.
Let me see what is going on tomorrow night. Oh yeah,
tomorrow night. Lynn Buchanan is on with us a part
of the Stargate program with the United States Military and
remote viewing, and yes he is one of the og
remote viewers for the United States Army. So tomorrow night,

(01:59:17):
Lynn Buchanan joins us. Thank you, Lawrence M. Kraus, What
a great conversation. I am your host, Jimmy Church. This
is fade to black, and you know what I've got,
that's nothing but Go Beckley, Teppe Bade de Black is
produced by Hilton J. Palm, Renee Newman and Michelle Free.

(01:59:39):
Special thanks to Bill John Dex, Jessica Dennis and Kevin
Webmaster is Drew the Geek. Music by Doug Albridge. Intro Spaceboy.
Aide to Black is produced by kJ c R for
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(02:00:00):
twenty twenty four by Fade to Black and the Game
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