00:00:00
You had Obama make those comments about the subject of aliens. >> They're real, but I haven't seen them
00:00:04
and they're not being kept in Area 51 unless they hid it from the president of the United States.
00:00:09
>> I think he was joking when he said there are aliens. He's just never >> No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Obama is
00:00:13
scientifically literate. But if you have the aliens and you don't want the president to know, the president's not
00:00:17
going to know. >> So, do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe? >> Well, we have whistleblowers saying we
00:00:21
have actual aliens. People have testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts. So, I don't see why
00:00:26
they wouldn't be given the size of the universe. and Neil Degrass Tyson. What is [clears throat] the most pressing
00:00:31
question that people are asking right now about the universe? And the first thing I wanted to ask is why are people
00:00:36
so interested in going to the moon is geopolitical. China says they're going to the moon 50 years after we go to the
00:00:41
moon and we all of a sudden decide we want to go to the moon. >> Is there an economic upside to it?
00:00:45
>> No. Talking about data centers. >> No. No. I already answered you. I said we don't want them to go to the moon
00:00:50
without us going to the moon. >> And there's no laws up there, is there? >> Space law is a is a wild west at this
00:00:55
point. It's like who owns the moon? >> Nobody. Well, they're trying to figure that out. But don't delude yourself into
00:01:00
thinking we ever went to the moon for science then or now. >> Okay. Next. Do you believe that we're in
00:01:05
a simulation? >> I'm whiny about that. And I'll tell you why. >> And then can you [music] explain what a
00:01:09
black hole is? Like if you get sucked in. >> Okay. So, you will see the entire future
00:01:13
history of the universe unfold. And then the difference in gravity between your feet and your head gets greater and
00:01:19
greater and greater. Eventually, you'll snap into two pieces, likely separated at the base of your spine.
00:01:26
And that's not even the worst part, and we'll get to that. >> And then just how small are we? Is there
00:01:31
a most compelling UFO sighting that you can recall? Has your view of religion changed through all that you've learned
00:01:36
about the universe? And what is the point of life? >> Wow, you have a good question. So, let's
00:01:42
get into this. >> This is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many
00:01:48
of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from
00:01:53
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00:01:58
if you are a regular viewer of this show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:02:03
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00:02:09
team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:02:15
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If
00:02:20
you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:25
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:29
promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it.
00:02:34
Let's get on with the show. [music] >> Grass Tyson, >> people come to you to try and understand
00:02:44
the universe. >> Yes. >> What is the most pressing question people are asking you right now about
00:02:49
the universe? Are we alone in the universe? And that's influenced by pop culture is I'll give an example. When
00:02:58
the movie Ghost came out, polls showed that more people believed in ghosts after that movie than before the movie.
00:03:04
So pop culture has a huge is a huge force of influence on our thoughts and feelings and attitudes and what we
00:03:12
believe is or is not true. So when you say what is the most pressing question? Are we alone in the universe? Then they
00:03:18
say, "Have we been visited?" And uh, "How will it all end?" That's another one. Usually God shows up in there. Is
00:03:26
there God? >> Uh, there's an assumption, I think it's a naive assumption, but an interesting
00:03:31
one nonetheless, that people who study the universe might stumble upon God because we're told, or at least in our
00:03:39
artwork, uh, gods live in the sky. So, people then study the sky. When the Apollo astronauts came back, people
00:03:45
said, "Did you see God? Did you see heaven? What is the essence of why people are so curious about these
00:03:50
subjects? >> My best speculation and this is a wild speculation and I you know my ego is not
00:03:56
based on whether this is true >> but it's fascinating for me to think about the fact
00:04:01
>> we are completely comfortable sleeping on our backs. Ask yourself how many other animals do
00:04:08
that >> at all. Does a beetle say I'm going to turn over and go on my back and go do
00:04:14
spiders just go on their back? Think about it. That's quite vulnerable. You're asleep and your belly is exposed,
00:04:21
right? We sleep at night typically. Okay. If you're outdoors, us sleep on your back at night and you wake
00:04:32
up, what's the first thing you see? The universe, the sky. You'll see, you know, comets
00:04:40
and meteors and the moon and and brighter stars which we call planets eventually. And from night to night,
00:04:50
wait a minute, the moon had one shape and now it's a different shape and it's a different part of the sky. And these
00:04:54
lights are moving. And how could we not be curious when in the middle of the night you wake
00:05:02
up and the universe presents itself to you? So I think that's sort of in our DNA,
00:05:12
the curiosity about the night sky. I didn't make people interested in the universe. In
00:05:19
fact, when I was a kid, my first encounter with the night sky was a planetarium, the Hayden [clears throat]
00:05:23
Planetarium here in New York City. I said, "Wow, I want to study the universe, but the universe is so
00:05:28
interesting. Everybody's going to want to study the universe. There'll be no room for me." And as I as I got older, I
00:05:34
realized there are other things people are interested in. Not everybody wants to study the universe
00:05:40
professionally. However, whatever you choose as a profession, it doesn't change the fact
00:05:47
that somewhere in you, you're going to look up and say, "What does that replace in the universe?" I thought you were
00:05:52
going to say when you talked about sleeping on their backs that we are now so comfortable being the sort of apex
00:05:57
predator that we're able to sleep on our backs and actually if but we we want we're so interested in aliens because
00:06:04
it's the only thing that would threaten our place is being able to sleep on our backs as the apex predator.
00:06:09
>> Oh yeah. I'm I don't know that ancient people were dreaming up aliens. [laughter]
00:06:15
>> It's just just the night sky itself. Well, okay. Uh let's not use the term alien. Let's just use the term gods.
00:06:21
>> Where are most people's gods? They're in the sky. >> Yeah. >> Uh even in ancient Greece, they're Mount
00:06:27
Olympus. Not in the sky, but they're in high places. You look at posters with religious sayings on them.
00:06:36
Typically, it's a sunbeams coming through clouds and a beautiful landscape. You're looking at
00:06:42
the sky. And by the way, what are our images of deity? Many of them could pass for aliens.
00:06:51
>> Like the [clears throat] gorg guns, for example. Look at look at Medusa. Snakes
00:06:54
for hair. Medusa. That's as alien as anything you would ever conjure. What else? Images of Jesus. He's floating.
00:07:01
He's got beams coming out of him. If he's not floating, he's walking on water. These are these are things that
00:07:07
go beyond anything that's earthly. So now people imagine aliens with all these same powers and weirdnesses. So I don't
00:07:17
know that alien is something specific that's in our DNA to think about but to imagine things beyond ourselves
00:07:25
>> is and and so I would lump them together in that respect. >> One of the things that made me I guess
00:07:30
more curious about aliens and meaning and purpose and gods and all these things was watching Cosmos which was
00:07:36
your series around the universe and specifically it was >> and Carl Sean did it first my series.
00:07:42
>> Well I watched both >> a series I happen to host. Yes. Okay. They both they both had the same impact
00:07:47
on me which was >> they made me feel insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos.
00:07:54
>> I think when you realize how insignificant we are or small we are should I say in this grand scheme of
00:08:00
even this Milky Way galaxy that's on the table in front of us >> the delta in the size of me and my world
00:08:07
versus all of this is mystery. And I and I almost feel called to fill it with something. There's is it Parkinson's law
00:08:14
you like you you you fill the space provided. It's it's the same thing with the universe. Just how small are we Neil in
00:08:22
the grand scheme of the universe? >> Well, if you don't think in terms of metric size, how big are you? Are you
00:08:31
this big? This big? This big? If you think in terms of powers of 10. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, the things 10 times bigger
00:08:38
than us, 10 times bigger than that, 10 times bigger than that. Just keep doing that. Mhm.
00:08:43
>> We're small compared with the universe, >> but we're huge compared with atoms
00:08:50
>> and molecules. >> Now, instead of going 10 times bigger, go 10 times smaller. One/10enth to be
00:08:56
precise. What's onetenth our size? Well, that's this big. One/10enth that is that
00:09:00
big. 1/10enth that. You keep going down, you enter the realm of molecules and that atoms and then particles. So, there
00:09:07
are things much smaller than we are. In fact, I addressed some of that in I I wrote an alien book recently, Take Me to
00:09:18
Your Leader. There's a lot in there about changing your perspective on what you might expect life forms to
00:09:25
be like out there. So, you can ask the question, are the life forms the size of a galaxy? Or are the life forms the size
00:09:32
of atoms? Are we just biased by what our senses can >> drink in from our own size scale? And
00:09:40
that's an interesting fact. And so you know who would feel small if you were a life form the size of molecules. Okay.
00:09:46
[laughter] Then you're feeling small. There's not much smaller than you if you're
00:09:51
molecularized life. Now we don't know how you would make that because life by our own understandings and definitions
00:09:59
has a metabolism. There's things that happen. You ask a biologist what is life? They'll give you a list of
00:10:04
criteria which are hard if not impossible to be fulfilled by life that's extremely small. And they still
00:10:12
debate whether viruses are alive, right? Based on some criteria, but some had speculated that life could be the size
00:10:21
of nucleons. So a nucleon is the size of the particles in the nucleus of an atom.
00:10:28
>> Things happen very quickly on that scale. So they might wonder, how is it that we live so slowly? [laughter]
00:10:36
>> So, so inverting your expectations is a time-honored exercise and keeping you
00:10:42
honest, keeping your ego in check. >> You can go the other way, right? We this whole universe could be something in a
00:10:49
another life form's gut microbiome. >> Yeah. Okay. So, that was briefly addressed in the in the film um Men in
00:10:57
Black. Okay. Uh what I can say is the laws of physics manifest differently on different scales. So you can't just
00:11:08
scale everything up. Which is why you don't have humansized insects. Their legs would break under their own
00:11:17
weight. It's why heavy animals have thick chunky legs. >> It's why if you fell off the roof,
00:11:25
you're dead. But an ant can just land and keep walking. Okay. Forces don't interact in the same way depending on
00:11:35
your scale. One of my favorite scenes in the film A Bug's Life, which I think that was a Pixar film. Pixar, they must
00:11:43
have a room full of scientists working for him. There's a mosquito at a bar. So, mosquito orders a drink. So, what
00:11:48
drink does he order? >> Uh, a mjito. I don't know. >> [laughter] >> a Bloody Mary, of course it's
00:11:58
okay. Uh, how big is a mosquito? It's this big. And it's a bar. It's like an insect bar. And so the bartender brings
00:12:05
over the Bloody Mary and just puts a blob of the liquid in front of it. It's not in a glass, not in a jug. It's just
00:12:15
there it is. Because surface tension is something that manifests in ways that insects care about greatly and we don't.
00:12:25
Unless you're waxing your car and then this water gets on and it beads up. >> Okay. Surface tension is a property of
00:12:34
fluid liquids where the outer surface the molecules are a little more tightly gathered because they don't have forces
00:12:43
above them to pull them into the solution that is the liquid. So transitioning from the liquid itself
00:12:49
into air creates a kind of a film. All right? And it holds the liquid in place. Mhm.
00:12:57
>> Unless there's too much liquid, then gravity becomes stronger than the surface tension
00:13:03
>> and it just flies. Exactly. But below a certain amount, the surface tension is
00:13:07
greater than the gravity >> and it beads up. So they knew this in that movie >> and I thought that was brilliant. My
00:13:14
only point of this is to communicate that you can't just scale things up and expect everything to be happening in
00:13:23
exactly the same way. But I want to get back to your point when you said you felt small after you saw Cosmos. You
00:13:29
only felt small because you went in there with an ego that was unjustifiably too large to begin with.
00:13:35
>> Probably. >> I'm accusing you of that. >> Probably. >> Yeah. >> However, I go in there with no such ego. Okay. I
00:13:43
look up at the stars and I learn from modern astrophysics that the elements in our body were forged in
00:13:53
stars that exploded that the elements the the the oxygen the carbon the nitrogen the
00:14:00
the iron that courses through our blood was forged in stars that at the end of their lives exploded scattering that
00:14:08
enrichment into the galaxy out of which the next generations of stars and planets are formed.
00:14:14
Early in the universe, we didn't have these ingredients. We could not exist as in our current form.
00:14:20
So when I look up, I don't feel small. I feel large because I'm connected to the cosmos
00:14:31
chemically. And that connectivity, let's let's make it a little more poetic. Not only are we alive in this universe,
00:14:43
the universe is alive within us. And that fact borders on the spiritual. It is a astrophysical fact
00:14:55
that gives you a pathway of relevance to the universe. We are part of this great
00:15:02
unfolding cosmic story. The fact that we are made of elements forged in the stars.
00:15:09
Next time you go out and look up, I want you to feel large, not small. Because we are not only made of what
00:15:18
stars have produced. We are solar powered. What do I mean by that? Okay, if you're
00:15:27
if you're omnivorous, you maybe had a steak last night. Okay, that you're getting calories from the food you eat.
00:15:34
And the steak was once a cow. Okay, what did the cow eat? Cow ate plants. What do
00:15:40
plants eat? Well, they don't eat. They just sit there and receive sunlight. So, a cow, I said this once on the
00:15:46
internet and freaked people out. Uh, you know, I I should not shy away from speaking truth just cuz it freaks you
00:15:51
out. A cow is a machine that we invented because cows don't exist in the wild. It's we it's domesticated.
00:16:00
A cow is a machine that we invented to turn grass into steak. So because at the end of that chain is
00:16:09
grass that has photosynthesis essentially 100% of our caloric value comes is traceable to the to stars
00:16:22
specifically the sun. So you are solar powered and the universe is alive within you. So don't
00:16:29
ever sit across from me again and say I feel small in the universe. [laughter] Sorry, you have a a lower pitch voice in
00:16:35
that smaller universe. [laughter] >> It's strange, isn't it? This idea of like significance as a concept like
00:16:43
trying to understand one's significance and I think religion often gives us a sense of significance.
00:16:47
>> Well, it does. Yes, of course. Hence it its value to people and its persistence
00:16:53
[clears throat] >> uh throughout time and across cultures. Has your view of religion not changed
00:16:58
through all that you've learned about the universe in any way since you were this I've got this photos of you as a
00:17:02
young man. >> What's that? Oh, you did some homework there. What did you do? >> I've got certainly got so many photos. I
00:17:06
mean, I've got this one here of you and your I mean this one's a fascinating I love that one. That
00:17:10
>> my hair was like this when I was that age. >> Oh. >> So, >> uh Oh, yeah. So, this one was my first
00:17:16
telescope and that's my father helping me put it together. If I think about this young man here and what he thought
00:17:23
about religion, >> are you more religious, less religious? If so, why? >> So, you know, by the time I was eight,
00:17:33
it was nothing was making sense that people were telling me about religion. What I didn't know is that belief
00:17:40
systems don't have to make sense. That's why they're belief systems. If they were
00:17:44
made complete sense, it would just be objectively true. If it's a belief system, then it it's beyond
00:17:54
critical analysis. It's just a belief system. Okay? So when I say beyond critical analysis, what I mean is if
00:18:03
something in your belief system lends itself to be tested, we can test it. And if what we test shows that what you
00:18:09
believe is false, are you going to stop believing? Generally not, because it's a
00:18:14
belief system. Okay? Most people want to engage you ultimately with some kind of
00:18:21
spiritual religious conversation. I have found especially given my access to the
00:18:25
universe. And in the early days there were easy answers. It was like this is this is religion you know go ahead I'm
00:18:34
doing science here. Then I thought I owe people who are religious a more informed
00:18:41
and nuanced engagement because of the power and force that religion has exercised on the history of
00:18:49
the world. It's not just cultural, it's political, it's economic, it's so I started reading religious tracts and now
00:19:01
when I'm engaged in a conversation, I have a full-up conversation with people on their beliefs, whatever intersection,
00:19:12
if any, with the objective universe and what those beliefs do for the person who
00:19:19
holds them. And there are many places on the internet that claim me as an atheist.
00:19:27
And it's like I've never embraced that title. >> So you're not an atheist. >> The only I am is a scientist. Okay.
00:19:36
Let's start there. Now titles are lazy. I'll tell you why. Once you hand a title
00:19:41
to someone, that gives you license to not have to think anymore about who and what that person is regarding that
00:19:48
subject. And that has never ended well in my experience. So first, it's odd that such a word as atheist exists at
00:19:57
all. Think about it. It's a word that says what you're not. Is there a word for non-golfers?
00:20:06
Is is there a word for non h ask yourself how many things do we have words for for which are not? Very few.
00:20:16
And so this exercise of saying you're either with us or you're against us. And if you're against us, I have this word
00:20:22
for you that says you're not this, like I said, that never ends well. It ends in
00:20:26
war and bloodshed. Typically leading atheists today who write books on this. Okay? Richard
00:20:34
Dawkins is among them. Uh he wrote a book called The God Delusion. That's fighting words if there ever was one.
00:20:40
These are people who reject God, reject its influence on politics and society and lives and and would just assume see
00:20:50
a world without it. I'm not that guy. I have behavior that would be rejected by any modern
00:21:00
atheist thinker. So what am I that we pick? The next word would be agnostic. Okay.
00:21:07
>> Okay. So let's pick that next word which I also relate to. I would consider myself to be agnostic as well.
00:21:11
>> Agnostic. Um, sure. I I kind of I just don't know. What's your leading view of
00:21:15
where all of this stuff came from? >> It's consistent with observations and experiment. The Big Bang.
00:21:20
>> The Big Bang. >> Oh, it is so thoroughly supported. As fantastical as it is. >> Explain the Big Bang to me like I'm 15.
00:21:29
>> I'll explain to you like you're 12. >> Okay, please. Even better. [laughter] >> So, approximately 13.8 8 billion years
00:21:37
ago, everything that you see and interact with in this universe began in an infinite decimal point. That is the
00:21:51
birth of the space and time of our universe. We have been expanding ever since. Now, how does something that big
00:21:59
ever become that small? Well, it's not matter trying to occupy the same space as itself. energy can be essentially any
00:22:09
size compacted and then you can measure what's there by what the temperature is and so it's very hot fireball basically
00:22:17
and as it expands it cools and the cooling energy makes matter it's equals mc^ squ energy on one side mass on the
00:22:25
other side this c^² is just the speed of light just a constant but Einstein came
00:22:29
up with this in 1905 and it made so much of the universe make sense at at that point and so uh and it would take a
00:22:38
while we expand the we cool enough to make stars and galaxies and we're still expanding to this day. There are
00:22:46
mysterious forces operating that we don't yet understand what we call dark energy
00:22:52
that's a pressure in the vacuum of space making us expand faster than what would
00:22:59
be allowed by the collective gravity of all the galaxies. That's a frontier question that is not
00:23:06
yet resolved. Then there's sources of gravity that we don't know what's causing it. We call that dark matter.
00:23:14
If you add up dark matter and dark energy, it's 95% of what's driving the universe. So
00:23:21
everything you and I know and love about the biology, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, forces, food, calories,
00:23:28
molecules, solids, liquids, gas, it's 5% of what's going on in the universe. That's amazing.
00:23:37
And this is why when I began, I said to you, sometimes I wonder whether we are smart enough to figure out the entirety
00:23:47
of the universe. or do we just figure out our little our little fraction of it and and live happily ever after within
00:23:55
it? Now that scenario, you have full rights to ask what was around before that. So ask me that.
00:24:04
>> What was around before the >> We have no idea. [laughter] >> We have suspicions there might have been
00:24:09
a multiverse which has come out of latter-day mathematics related to quantum physics and Einstein's
00:24:17
relativity. What comes out of those equations is a multiverse. >> What's a multiverse?
00:24:22
>> Just it's it's this medium that is pumping out universes. We are just one of them.
00:24:27
>> What caused the multiverse? >> We don't know. >> Eventually, >> it's it's a frontier. There's no crime
00:24:34
in asking the question at the frontier of our knowledge. There are people who have to have answers. They don't make
00:24:40
good scientists. The urge to have an answer can be influenced by their bias, by their culture, by their just take a
00:24:49
look at all around the world. The origin stories, the origin stories flow out of
00:24:56
the cultures from which they emanated. What are your untested, unverified, untestable ideas about where all of this
00:25:06
universe stuff might have gone? Cuz I know you must sit at home sometimes and just mull. You do a lot of mulling about
00:25:12
the origins of the the big bang and those things. >> Well, we all do. I just So when you when
00:25:17
you confront the unknown, you write the recipe for more data. >> That's all it is.
00:25:23
>> And what are those recipes that you've written? >> We need a telescope. We have telescope.
00:25:27
I haven't written I mean my field has written them. We have telescopes specifically designed right now to get a
00:25:33
better understanding of dark energy and its manifestation throughout time in the
00:25:38
history of the universe. Explain dark energy to me. >> No, it's just it's a it's something in
00:25:42
the vacuum of space that's making the universe accelerate in its expansion. >> Okay.
00:25:50
>> From that original explosion, we have all the galaxies, all the matter, all the gravity.
00:25:55
You expect the expansion to be slowing down at some rate based on the gravity. >> Oh, but it's speeding up.
00:26:01
>> It's like tossing something in the air. Gravity of Earth slows it down and actually makes it reverse. So, we expect
00:26:07
that. We went to make that measurement and we got the opposite answer. The universe is accelerating. That won a
00:26:14
Nobel Prize. 1998 Nobel Prize. It's a term in Einstein's equation that he rejected. There can't be a negative
00:26:21
gravity. What the its value in his equation must equal zero. And so let's move on. Then we discover it. We we come
00:26:30
up with a term for it. I think it's a bad term. Bad because it's it leaves the witness. We don't know what it is at
00:26:36
all. So, don't call it dark and don't call it energy. Call it Fred. Okay. Something.
00:26:42
[laughter] And dark matter. We don't know what that is either. Okay. Let's call that Wilma.
00:26:48
We got Fred and Wilma. We don't know what it is. There should be a button just down below
00:26:54
here. And if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet.
00:27:00
And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you
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know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button.
00:27:08
Thank you so much. >> So, the key question I think that people are talking about at this moment in
00:27:12
time, because you had Obama make those comments in that interview saying that he he was joking I think he was joking
00:27:18
when he said there are aliens he's just never seen. >> No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. First of
00:27:23
A, Obama is scientifically literate. It's a B. He said because he's scientifically literate, he said, "What
00:27:31
is scientifically defensible that they're probably aliens in the universe? Anyone who studied that problem will
00:27:38
arrive at that conclusion. >> They're real, but I haven't seen them." And and and uh they're not being kept in
00:27:44
uh what is it? >> Area 51. >> Area 51. uh there there's no underground uh facility unless there's this enormous
00:27:53
conspiracy and they they hid it from the president of the United States. That's what he said. But as former president of
00:28:00
the United States and we have sort of alien adjacent culture, it was oh that must mean there are aliens in the
00:28:08
basement of the White House or somewhere in in in government custody. They took his statement that sure there
00:28:17
are aliens out there and turned it on to the US government and when I heard his comments that that's exactly what any
00:28:25
scientifically literate person would say what people did with that information he
00:28:30
he then had to come back and explain. I didn't even think that was necessary but
00:28:34
apparently it was. >> And then Trump responded >> Trump responded okay >> on Air Force One in an interview and
00:28:40
said >> well he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that, you
00:28:45
know. >> No, aliens are real. >> Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified
00:28:49
information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified
00:28:55
information. >> Trump seemed to stoke the idea that there is aliens. And then from that, shortly after, we had the UFO
00:29:05
files announcement. >> Sure, great. Bring them out. I love it. >> They were going to release the UFO
00:29:09
files. And now we find ourselves at a place where the general public is again really really curious about the subject
00:29:14
of aliens. And you see it on the Google trend data which I've got in front of me
00:29:17
here. You see the up, the down, the up, the down based on what people are talking about. So my question to you is
00:29:21
about is this central question which is do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe?
00:29:25
>> So that one of those peaks in May in part was because there were files released that week by the Pentagon and
00:29:32
dare I suggest my book was released in May on May 12th. >> Good timing. Uh yeah, it just turned out
00:29:39
that way. I decided to jump into the ring, not jump in, put a foot into the ring, more accurately, when I saw these
00:29:47
these highranking whistleblowers come forward in in Congress, sworn testimonies,
00:29:56
uh whistleblowers, former intelligence officers, former uh military folk. And I said, "All right, I have to it's
00:30:06
time to jump in because no longer can you discount the testimony the way you might have done so before with the
00:30:15
farmer in the back 40, you know, who saw something and is talking about it but didn't take a
00:30:21
picture of it. All right. all these testimonies that have existed in the past and accounts of UFOs. Now, when
00:30:29
official government people are doing it, then all right, it's time to take it up
00:30:35
a notch. And what is it? What do I mean by that? Bring out the alien. If you're saying
00:30:42
you got an alien in the shed in the back 40, just bring it out. And the moment you do that, no one will ever have to
00:30:50
ask again, do you believe in aliens? That's the question I've been asked. Do I believe in alien? No one has ever
00:30:59
asked me, do I believe in elephants? Why? Because we've shown elephants. Okay, we have elephants.
00:31:09
We've seen elephants. So, >> but do you think there's intelligent life in the universe? I don't see why
00:31:15
they wouldn't be given the size of the universe and the age in the universe and the ingredients of the universe. I mean,
00:31:20
think about it. The early Earth, life got underway within a 100 million years of as early as it possibly could
00:31:28
have. That sounds like a long time, and it is, but that's small compared with the timeline
00:31:35
of Earth itself, of life on Earth. It's like 5% of the timeline of the Earth. Almost as fast as it could possibly
00:31:43
happen, the basic ingredients on Earth, which matched the basic ingredients of the universe, went from organic
00:31:51
molecules to self-replicating life. Whatever our challenges in the lab, Earth didn't seem to have a problem
00:31:57
accomplishing it. And so, look at how quickly that happened. Yes, it would take a long time, much longer to
00:32:04
generate what we're calling intelligent life. But given how many planets are likely in the galaxy, our cataloges now
00:32:14
have 6,000 exoplanets in them. And that's just in a tiny little area. That'd be in a little cir that'd be in a
00:32:21
little, you know, if if the sun is here, draw a little circle around it where we've searched for exoplanets and we
00:32:30
have 6,000 just in that little >> What's an exoplanet? >> Exoplanet planet orbiting another star.
00:32:35
Oh, there's 6,000 in a little. >> Uh, we've cataloged 6,000. Uh, in in 1995, what year were you born?
00:32:41
>> 92. >> 92. So, you were 3 years old when we discovered our first exoplanet. >> Really?
00:32:50
>> Wow. >> And now we're we're rising through 6,000. It was bad headlines back then,
00:32:54
not today. But if life happened on Earth as swiftly as it did, no one of among us who have studied the
00:33:04
problem are given reason to doubt that it couldn't happen frequently elsewhere in our galaxy or in the trillion other
00:33:12
galaxies in the universe. >> This is just the Milky Way galaxy. >> This is a version. Yeah, we This is if
00:33:19
you could step out of our Milky Way, it would resemble this greatly. And >> this is one galaxy, right? one galaxy
00:33:25
containing hundreds of billions of stars. This cloudy thing, you cannot resolve the cloud into the individual
00:33:31
stars. Galileo did this. He said, "I wonder what that Milky Way is. Is that just a cloud?" Took his telescope, put
00:33:38
it on the Milky Way. He saw individual stars. >> And how many galaxies are there in the
00:33:43
universe? >> 100 billion stars in a galaxy. At least 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
00:33:47
>> Is the answer that we just don't know how many there are? >> Let's quantify what it is to not know.
00:33:52
in the universe. Uh things range over such a huge scale that if you're off by a factor of two,
00:34:02
which sounds significant in most everyday life, but if things range over factors of trillions,
00:34:12
then if you can get an answer within a factor of two, you're doing really well. You have a basic understanding of
00:34:19
structure, space, and time. And so our galaxy has several hundred billion stars in it. No, we don't have an exact
00:34:28
count, but that's a very good estimate because we know the total mass of the galaxy and we know how much mass a star
00:34:36
occupies. We know how much dark matter there is. So we can calculate the likely number of stars there are in the galaxy.
00:34:43
>> Planets. So now given our data on planets that we've obtained, we have many star systems with multiple planets
00:34:51
and that's just in our neighborhood. So if that's representative, then you just scale that up. So if you looked in that
00:34:58
little zone everywhere and just up the number, you end up with millions of planets, possibly billions across the
00:35:06
galaxy. That's how you would estimate that. So it's not knowing the exact answer is not
00:35:12
the same thing as having no clue. >> And there might be hundreds of billions of galaxies.
00:35:18
>> Yes. Yes. Not just might be. There's at least that many in the observable universe.
00:35:24
>> In the observable, >> the actual universe goes beyond our horizon. In the same way for a ship at
00:35:29
sea, you have a horizon. >> Mhm. >> Are you saying to yourself, "Oh, that's the edge of the earth or that's the edge
00:35:35
of the ocean." No. You keep sailing and more ocean comes in view. Is it infinite?
00:35:40
>> It might be. We don't know. >> You're asking all good questions and you're going right to the edge of what
00:35:46
we don't know. >> Is it possible for something to be infinite? >> I'm not going to put a prerequisite on
00:35:54
the universe that is not. Just because infinity is kind of hard for the human brain to wrap your head
00:36:01
around, doesn't mean the universe can't or shouldn't be it. We've made assumptions about the
00:36:09
universe just to be consistent with our own philosophies that just turn out to be flat wrong. Capernicus, a religious
00:36:16
man, comes up with an idea that maybe the sun is in the center of the known universe and not Earth. So we go from
00:36:23
geocentric to heliocentric. All right. Well, if you do that, then we don't have epicycles.
00:36:31
All right? Then we just have orbits, simple orbits around the sun. Well, he did that. You know, it didn't match the
00:36:38
observations as well as the epicycles did. So, do you throw out the whole idea? No. We would learn later, 50 years
00:36:46
later. The orbits are not perfect circles. He made them perfect circles because it's
00:36:52
the universe. God created the universe. God is perfect. The circle is a perfect geometric shape. Clearly, anything
00:36:58
moving in the universe is going to be in a perfect circle. That was an assumption
00:37:02
placed on the universe derived from our own philosophical proclivities in that case a religiously philosophical
00:37:10
proclivity. >> So given this exercise this failed exercise in the history of science of
00:37:17
which there are many examples one can give I will not say that the universe can't be infinite.
00:37:23
>> What's in the middle of the galaxy because it looks like a a light >> there's a black hole. Well, this in this
00:37:28
picture, the density of stars is way higher in the middle of the galaxy than out here.
00:37:33
>> Why? >> We're figuring that out. We think in the formation scenario of the galaxy that
00:37:40
most of the mass is near the center and it gets thinner as it comes out. And so,
00:37:44
we're going to have the most stars where the most mass is that you start with. So, it's not it's not a surprise that
00:37:51
the middles of these things have the most stars because they have the most mass. And in the exact middle in the
00:37:57
center is a super massive black hole which we've measured to be there. In fact, a Nobel Prize was given for that
00:38:04
measurement. >> Can you explain what a black hole is like on 12? >> Oh yeah. You know it first you got to
00:38:10
respect black holes. Give them don't ever diss a black hole cuz you will lose. [laughter]
00:38:17
So we're here on Earth and uh the old adage what goes up must come down. You've heard that. I would learn
00:38:26
by the time I was nine that that's just false. No, by the time I was 10 because I was 10 years old cuz that's how old I
00:38:33
am. We walked on the moon and then we left part, you know, rocket parts on the moon.
00:38:40
>> Those are never coming back to Earth. So, there are things that went up that never came back.
00:38:45
>> Okay. All right. Well, what started the adage though? Well, if you take something and toss it,
00:38:54
it actually slows down, comes to a stop, and then speeds up and comes down again.
00:39:00
It's captured by Earth's gravity. Turns out there is a speed with which I can throw this
00:39:07
so that it never comes back. Let's get there. If I throw this a little faster with more energy, it goes
00:39:15
higher before it comes back, right? How about even faster? even faster gets higher and higher and higher and higher
00:39:21
and higher. You can calculate using physics and gravity equations there's a speed with which this will go so high up
00:39:29
it'll reach infinity. If it reaches infinity it's not coming back. That's called the escape velocity
00:39:37
for Earth. How fast is that? It's really fast. Really fast. Uh 7 miles per second.
00:39:46
If I throw this at 7 miles, it'll reach the edge of the universe and never come back to Earth. Suppose Earth had more
00:39:52
gravity than it currently does. Does it make sense that that escape velocity would be
00:39:59
greater than 7 m/s? >> Mhm. >> If Earth's gravity were stronger, it might be 10 miles per second, 100
00:40:06
miles/s. Keep up this exercise, you'll reach a point where your object has an escape
00:40:14
velocity that equals the speed of light. The moment it achieves that, light cannot escape.
00:40:24
It's not moving fast enough. And if light can't get out, it's black. If you fall in,
00:40:34
you are never coming out because you can't ever reach the speed of light. There's no greater definition of a hole
00:40:42
than that. Hence, black hole. By the way, Einstein could have predicted them, but he was it was too
00:40:52
weird for him to go there with with his equations. We would learn about black holes mathematically in the 1960s, make
00:41:00
our first discovery of one in the 1970s, a famous uh source of X-ray energy called Signis X1.
00:41:09
And and then now there's they're common and we've even discovered them in the centers of galaxies that have super like
00:41:15
a million times the mass of the sun. Monstrous black holes dining on anything that comes close.
00:41:22
>> Just things that come close. >> Yeah. It's not going to reach out. So, if the sun were to become a black hole
00:41:28
now, it won't reach out and grab us and suck us in. >> It'll have the same gravity as a black
00:41:35
hole as it does as a as a star. >> But it's if you go close. >> Yeah. If you get Now, you can get really
00:41:40
close to it and then you're not coming out. >> Is there a certain distance? Wait.
00:41:43
>> It turns out there is there's a distance around every black hole. I I think it's
00:41:48
called the ergosphere. It's got a it's got a a name where there are no stable orbits around it. If you
00:41:58
get closer than that, you you will fall in no matter what. Whereas beyond it, you can maintain a stable orbit and look
00:42:05
at black holes from a distance. >> And where'd you go if you get sucked in? >> Well, you crushed or you
00:42:11
>> Well, depends how big the black hole is. >> Small black holes just That's all she
00:42:16
wrote. Okay. >> This one. >> Oh, that one you just you'll fall in. And then where do I go? I'm just
00:42:21
collapsed. >> Well, there are books. I have one on my shelf and I've even read it. Uh it's a
00:42:29
graduate textbook that describes the mathematics of space and time on the other side of a black hole. And it shows
00:42:38
that a whole new spaceime opens up in front of you. >> What? >> Inside the black hole, the whole
00:42:44
universe. The math shows that given the general theory of relativity which gives
00:42:49
us black holes in the first place. If you follow the math, you get a whole spaceime that opens up inside the black
00:42:56
hole. And as you fall in, your time changes. So time ticks more slowly for you relative to the universe.
00:43:04
It's called time dilation. And so as you look out in the universe, the universe will unfold faster and faster and
00:43:09
faster. And you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold as you descend into the black hole.
00:43:18
>> When you say descend, because I I thought of it as like, you know, if you go close to black hole, you're going to
00:43:22
be crushed into a small mass. >> Well, I didn't get to that part yet. I'm describing what happens to space and
00:43:28
time as you descend through what's called the event horizon. That's the region out of which you don't escape.
00:43:35
That's the functional size we give to black holes. How big is its event horizon? you cross over within that
00:43:42
volume. That's where the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light and you're not coming out. So, it has taken
00:43:48
the fabric of space and time and folded it back on itself. So, there's no pathway you can take to get out of a
00:43:55
black hole. You're in there forever. And for the small black holes, here's an interesting fact. Uh you don't think
00:44:03
about this, but it's true. When you stand, your feet are closer to Earth's center than your head is.
00:44:11
>> Okay. >> Mhm. >> You can calculate what the force of Earth's gravity is at your feet and the
00:44:17
force of Earth's gravity is at your head. And there you'll get two different numbers. They're very close to each
00:44:22
other. So, we don't think about this. It doesn't matter to us. M >> but as you descend a black hole
00:44:30
the difference in gravity between your feet and your head gets greater and greater and greater.
00:44:36
They're called tidal forces and they end up stretching you head to toe and initially it probably feels good,
00:44:44
right? You just sort of stretch and then you realize, oh my gosh, this is unrelenting and it's getting stronger.
00:44:50
Eventually you'll snap into two pieces likely separated at the base of your spine. If you sort of look at the
00:44:57
structural integrity of human physiology and then you you're still falling and now those same tidal forces will operate
00:45:04
on your torso and on your lower half. They'll stretch and they'll snap into two pieces. So go from one to two to
00:45:12
four to 8 to 16 and you'll bifurcate in pieces all the way down to the center of
00:45:18
the black hole. The worst part is, well, maybe equally as worse is you are occupying a narrower and narrower volume
00:45:28
of spaceime as you go down to the singularity that is the center of the black hole.
00:45:35
So, not only you get stretched head to toe, you're getting extruded through the fabric of space like
00:45:43
toothpaste through a tube. Have a nice day. [laughter] >> So, yeah, you don't want to test that.
00:45:52
All of our equations tell us that's what'll happen to you. >> What's at the heart of the black hole?
00:45:56
You said you >> we don't know. So, here's a problem. General relativity that gives us the
00:46:03
black hole in the first place. If you follow the equations, the center of the black hole is infinitely dense
00:46:10
and infinitely small. How does that even happen? We don't know. Maybe something prevents that, but that is the limit of
00:46:17
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at heygen.com/dac. That's h e y gn.com/doac. See you there. So, aliens um in our galaxy. Is that
00:48:44
possible that there's intelligent life in our galaxy? >> I don't see I have no reason to doubt
00:48:47
it. >> Really? You think it's on a balance of probability? You think it's it's more
00:48:51
probable than not? >> Oh, yeah. Just given the size, like I said, given the age, the size, the
00:48:56
ingredients, the uh how quickly life got underway. By the way, when you say intelligent,
00:49:04
um, there's intelligent life on Earth, like do you know where we are in brain size
00:49:13
>> relative to other animals? Yeah. >> Uh, we're not the top. >> Yeah, we're definitely not the top.
00:49:17
>> I have no idea. >> Yeah, we're like fourth. >> Okay. >> There's the whale. >> Mhm.
00:49:21
>> And then the dolphin >> and then the or the porpus and then the the elephant >> and then us. So, if aliens came to Earth
00:49:31
and they knew that brains are important, we'd be like fourth on their list for who they want to talk to. Just chew on
00:49:39
that for a moment. Second, what we were told in school was, "Oh, but if you take
00:49:45
the ratio of the size of your brain to your body weight, we're at the top." Well, that's our ego speaking there. We
00:49:54
We didn't have the biggest brain, but we want to believe that we're smart. And so
00:49:59
we is there some math magic we can perform on brain size to put us back at the top of that list? Yes. Ratio the
00:50:07
size of your brain to the to the the mass of your brain to the mass of your body. Then we're at the top. However,
00:50:12
what they didn't say is that no, we're not at the top of that list. We're only at the top of that list among
00:50:20
mammals. They're midsized birds like the magpie and the parrots where the ratio of their brain size to
00:50:30
their body weight is greater than that of humans. So look at the efforts we put in to just
00:50:37
distinguish ourselves from all these other animals. And it's quite the exercise in ego stoking.
00:50:47
You you want to think you're special in the tree of life that there are birds that fly and we can't fly. Nes can
00:50:56
regenerate their limbs and we can't do that. And so badly do we want to especially with with military veterans,
00:51:05
right? >> Mhm. >> Uh with missing limbs and things. You want to regenerate that. We can't do nes
00:51:10
can do that. Crustaceians can do that. We can't do that. So, might an alien consider whales to be
00:51:19
intelligent? Probably. But we add new extra elements to this. Do you have technology?
00:51:29
The whale is not building telescopes, but we are. The whale doesn't, you know, have art, but we do. All right? So, we
00:51:38
are a thing. We have what we call civilization. So if you want to ask are there intelligent aliens that have
00:51:44
civilization that's yet another layer of that question is there intelligent life in
00:51:49
the universe then you can ask is there intelligent life that has civilization that has technology
00:51:58
because the Roman Empire they didn't know anything about electricity or computers or AI or anything and if
00:52:05
aliens were sending them radio signals they're not sending radio signals back so the oper Operational definition of
00:52:12
intelligence might include your ability to communicate across space or your ability to build a spaceship to move.
00:52:20
The Romans were not building spaceships. So would they count as intelligence if that was an alien species somewhere else
00:52:26
in the galaxy? >> But is it plausible that there is intelligent life in this universe that
00:52:31
hasn't got the capability of visiting Earth? >> Yeah, sure. Why not? Sure. That's
00:52:36
probably the standard. >> How far can we have we gone? That's a great question. The fastest spaceship
00:52:43
ever launched was the New Horizon's mission to Pluto. And one thing in space exploration,
00:52:52
there's an unwritten rule. However you design the spacecraft, make sure it gets to your destination
00:52:58
before you get old and die. Mhm. [clears throat] >> Okay. >> So, this spacecraft that went to Pluto
00:53:04
was on the most powerful rockets available and they made the payload as light as possible so it could accelerate
00:53:12
and so it got to Pluto quickly. If you instead took that and directed it to the nearest star, the Alpha Century system
00:53:21
instead of going to Pluto at those speeds direct the nearest star take you 50,000 years to get there.
00:53:28
>> 50,000 years. The nearest star >> to Earth. >> Yes. To the sun. >> And how many stars did you say there was
00:53:33
again? >> Well, 100 billion. Hundreds of billions. >> And the nearest one took would take
00:53:36
50,000 years. >> 50,000 years to reach. >> Gosh. >> Because space is empty. Right. So maybe
00:53:41
there are intelligent aliens out there, but space travels too hard. So they haven't come to visit us. This is one of
00:53:48
the uh hypotheses because if aliens are everywhere, well then where are they? I think they came to Earth and they saw
00:53:56
all of our debris orbiting the Earth. There's a lot of space debris and they said, "I'm not coming. [laughter] I'm
00:54:04
not going to risk my life." They just passed us by looking for another planet. >> I've wondered about this space debris
00:54:09
thing because it seems that every nation, >> it's worse than you think. >> But what I was going to say is every
00:54:15
nation now seems to be racing to throw tens of thousands of pieces of metal satellites into our orbit. Is it a
00:54:23
problem? >> Well, >> there's no laws, is there? >> No, you have you have to ask who is it a
00:54:29
problem for? Is it a problem? Yes. Who is it a problem for? Not the people who want high-speed internet in the middle
00:54:37
of the ocean or in the Arctic or in the middle of the desert? Because these satellites, the SpaceX Starlink
00:54:43
satellites are providing that in these remote places of the world. So, it's not a problem for them. It's a blessing.
00:54:51
It's a problem if you're just trying to observe the night sky the way we've done
00:54:55
as astronomers since time in memorial and I'm trying to get images of the night sky and I see satellites crossing
00:55:03
back and forth. This amounts to visual noise in my data and if I'm trying to track an
00:55:10
asteroid that might be headed our way and have thousands of other streaks of light in my image, there's a chance I
00:55:17
might miss the asteroid. Also, uh, if there's some object of interest and a satellite passes right in front of
00:55:26
it, that will contaminate the data that I seek. I don't know if this is reversible, but what it tells me is that
00:55:33
the future of telescopes are going to have to be spacebor telescopes, which they we've already made that transition,
00:55:40
and or the moon telescopes on the moon. They've launched five roughly 5,000 satellites, objects into orbit in 2025.
00:55:53
We're on track to launch even more than that this year. >> That's correct. We probably already
00:55:56
launched that by now. We're we're this we're being recorded midyear 2026. I I we're already high up there. I So
00:56:06
[clears throat] So the last number I saw SpaceX had 10,5 10 satellites. There'll be 100,000
00:56:15
active satellites in orbit by 2040. >> Probably more. This is the utility of space, not only for reconnaissance, for
00:56:25
surveillance, basically military security, but also commerce. There is no Uber without GPS.
00:56:36
So, it's not the value of the satellites themselves that matters here. It's the value of the economy, the economies that
00:56:43
they enable. And that's why we have a space force now. A space force which had been
00:56:47
percolating for decades. Uh Trump in Trump won decided let's make this official. And so he did. So now we have
00:56:54
a space force. And people say does that mean there's going to be like Star Wars and everything? There already was a
00:56:59
space force. They didn't call it that. It was called the Air Force Space Command. It was a sector within the Air
00:57:06
Force. And so you pull that out. Now the the mission is a little more pure about
00:57:12
what its goals are and what it needs to accomplish. >> Have you heard about Kesler syndrome?
00:57:17
>> Oh yeah, of course. >> Could you explain Kesler syndrome? >> Oh yeah. Uh so 1978
00:57:24
uh I don't remember he's a physicist or a mathematician named Kesler who saw the
00:57:29
increase in satellite launches that had been going on and he did a calculation and he said hm
00:57:37
there must be some threshold of satellites orbiting the earth where if one of them gets destroyed by any means
00:57:47
maybe two collide with each other or one intentionally taken out by a missile which has been happened three times now.
00:57:55
Three or four times. Uh China's done it, India's done it, Russia's done it, and we've done it four times. We've done it
00:58:01
to our own satellites, which means what? Think about it. If you can do it to your
00:58:07
own satellite, you can do it to anybody else's satellite. It's a demonstration of your
00:58:14
sovereignty in a way of your powers over what you might perceive as an aggressor.
00:58:20
Anyhow, if you destroy a satellite, let's say it breaks into 10 pieces each going orbital speed. Orbital speed
00:58:31
is is 17,000 miles an hour. That's way faster than a rifle bullet. So little pieces of
00:58:39
satellite can be far more devastating than a high-powered rifle bullet shot into another satellite. All right, so
00:58:47
these pieces scatter. If any one of them hits another satellite, breaking it into
00:58:53
10 pieces, you go from one to 10 to 100 to a thousand. Within just a few orbits,
00:59:04
100% of the satellites can be taken out. if you have enough satellites for that thresholding to take place. So in other
00:59:12
words, if space is most if low earth orbit space is mostly empty and you destroy a satellite, the particles are
00:59:18
not going to take out another satellite. They they'll orbit harmlessly or fall to
00:59:23
earth harmlessly. But if you have another satellite in that path, then that destruction is going to take
00:59:29
out other satellites. So he warned us of these thresholds. I don't think we're there yet, but we need to keep it on our
00:59:37
radar. And the movie Gravity, it portrays exactly that scenario. >> Objects in orbit travel at blistering
00:59:44
speeds, 17,500 m per hour. >> Correct. And at that speed, >> that's 5 miles per second.
00:59:50
>> At that speed, even a fleck of paint carries the destructive power of a bullet,
00:59:55
>> a rifle bullet >> or a exploding grenade. >> Correct. Correct. >> A a fleck of paint.
01:00:00
>> Yes. Yes. >> Okay, that makes sense. [clears throat] So if if there's one collision and
01:00:04
there's lots of them up there, it's like a shrapnel. Is that >> correct? >> Yeah. A shrapnel is the is the is the
01:00:10
best analog to that because it comes out and it damages other things beyond the target that was intended.
01:00:18
>> And there's no laws up there, is there? >> Well, they're trying to, you know, space
01:00:23
law is a is a wild west at this point. Forget orbit. It's like you go to the moon. Who owns the moon? Who owns a plot
01:00:30
of land on Mars? Nobody. >> Who? Well, they're trying to figure that out. If I go to an asteroid and I want
01:00:37
to mine it for its minerals, who owns those minerals? >> So, they're trying to figure out who
01:00:41
owns the moon. >> Well, owns anything in space. Anything in space. >> Isn't it just who gets there fast?
01:00:47
>> Yes. M. [laughter] That's what I mean by the Wild West. [snorts] >> At the moment, it seems like there's a
01:00:52
race to go to the moon. A lot of companies are interested in that. We've got this Arteimus program happening. The
01:00:57
US seem interested. Why are people so interested in going to the moon? And is there merit in their motivations?
01:01:02
>> Well, we could have stayed in the moon in 1972, but we didn't. Could have gone in 1980,
01:01:08
but we didn't. 1990, we didn't. 2000? No. 2010? No. Well, what happened in the 201s? Oh, I know what happened. We
01:01:18
learned that China wants to put astronauts on the moon. Tyonauts they call them. We then say, "Hey, wouldn't
01:01:25
it be good if we went back to the moon? That's an interesting idea. Let's do that." happened under the first Trump
01:01:30
administration. So the Artemis mission gets birthed. Artemis, do you remember who Artemis was in in
01:01:37
Greek mythology? Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo. That's good. That he's going to name a
01:01:44
program. That's good. Twin sister of Apollo. So we say we're going to go back to the moon.
01:01:50
My read of that landscape is that China put a flame under our ass. >> Mhm. No different really from when Russia
01:02:02
first launched the satellite. Sputnik, put a flame under our ass. Within a year, we created NASA. By the way, it
01:02:10
may take just such a thing to bring Congress together for a unified uh project. Do [snorts] you remember when we had the
01:02:18
testimonies in Congress of the whistleblowers? We had Republicans sitting right next to
01:02:24
Democrats asking questions about aliens. And I So there's everyone paying attention to the aliens. I I said, "Wow,
01:02:32
Republicans and Democrats are agreed on some process in Washington." I thought that was that was a beautiful fact.
01:02:42
>> So what what what are our motivations now to go to the moon? Is there an economic upside to it?
01:02:46
>> No, it's geopolitical. China says they're going to the moon 50 years after we go to the moon and we all of a sudden
01:02:52
decide we want to go to the moon. Let's be real about that. And while that came out under Trump, Biden comes in, we keep
01:02:59
the program. Biden could have said, "This is a Trumpist thing. I don't want to do, you know, he could have done that
01:03:04
and what would have anyone said?" But he didn't because NASA has is a geopolitically
01:03:11
responsive organization. >> So what if China get there first? Why does that matter?
01:03:18
>> They're geopolitical egos. >> Just ego. >> Yeah. I mean, did did you see the the
01:03:25
hearings in Congress with the head of NASA when they're asking why did China land on the far side of the moon? What
01:03:31
do they know that's there that we don't? Okay, this is the competitive urges that
01:03:38
we have. And don't delude yourself into thinking we ever went to the moon for science
01:03:46
then or now. >> What about resources? Is there resources on the moon? >> We're looking for them. NASA has an
01:03:52
entire branch of itself called insitu resource utilization is SRU. You go there. We think there's water at the
01:03:59
South Pole. So you go get the water. Maybe if you get a 3D printer, you can take, you know, the silicates from the M
01:04:07
from the moon's surface, dump it in on top and make tools, whatever. That would be interesting. Um there's a whole piece
01:04:15
of space exploration that concerns itself with that because you can't take everything with you. Is it cold on the
01:04:20
moon or hot? >> It depends on if you're facing the sun or not because we we say is it cold,
01:04:27
you're generally referring to the temperature of the air around you. That's what you mean. Oh, fix the
01:04:32
thermostat. Change the air temperature. Where there is no air, your temperature comes from any source of or absence of a
01:04:41
source of energy. So if you face the sun, >> this side of you will burn up and the
01:04:45
side of you on the other side will freeze. So what we really need are rotisseries [laughter]
01:04:51
or a highly insulated space suit. >> Do you think in my lifetime we'll it's three days away, isn't it? The moon.
01:04:58
>> Yeah. But so you can get there quicker, but to the minimum energy to do so will
01:05:03
take you 3 days. >> Don't you think that would be a great tourist destination? >> Of course. Completely.
01:05:08
>> Three days. >> I I would save up multiple years of vacation money to go to the moon. Yes.
01:05:13
>> Completely. If you can bring the price of that down, make the moon our backyard. So So what I I wanted to be
01:05:19
clear earlier when you say is there economic reason to go to the moon? Not initially until you set up bases and
01:05:26
hotels and restaurants and this sort of thing. And if you have restaurants, there'd be really weird food that they
01:05:33
would serve, right? Like in moon gravity. >> I travel all the time. So I made a rule
01:05:38
in my life that I'll only travel with a cabin bag. The problem with this is there's not much space. And here's the
01:05:44
solution. It is called an extra 1% travel pack. And I teamed up with Exta to make this. Typically, I can only
01:05:50
bring some of my black shirts. And it's a trade-off of which black shirt should I bring? How many of these do you think
01:05:55
I can get in here? So, let's try 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. Let's try 15.
01:06:07
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Okay, so that's 24 black t-shirts. Here's where the magic comes in. Zip it
01:06:17
up. Make sure it's nice and sealed. And then you use this little contraption. Stick it on there. I can now take more
01:06:23
than 20 black shirts with me, which will last me 3 weeks. So, if you travel frequently and you want to get one of
01:06:29
these so you can save more space and be away for longer, go to extra.com and use
01:06:33
code DOAC for 10% off our collection. the UFO files. I'm presuming you've seen all the footage that's been released.
01:06:40
You've >> most of it. There's there's a redundancy after a certain point. >> I mean, it's it's this kind of stuff
01:06:45
where they're showing objects flying through space. >> Typically, it's monochromatic and very
01:06:49
low resolution as this is. That's correct. >> Was any of it compelling to you? >> No. It's something that we don't know
01:06:56
what it is. It's Let's back up. Even UFO enthusiasts of the most severe kind would agree that
01:07:06
most sightings of what we call UFOs have natural explanations >> that you just didn't know what you were
01:07:11
looking at and then you figure it out later. Is it cloud formation? Is it lightning? Is it twilight conditions?
01:07:20
Sure. But then there's some that no one knows how to explain. I I don't have a problem with that.
01:07:26
There's some that are sort of interesting. I like the tic tac. Tic tac is fun. >> Oh, yeah. The tic tac.
01:07:31
>> The famous tic tac. >> What's interesting about that? >> Well, cuz I don't know what it is. I'm a
01:07:36
scientist. We are attracted to things with that we don't know or understand. Attracted to
01:07:42
them. It's cool. Yeah. That's There it goes. Mhm. Yeah. And you can see it move in one of the frames. And you can see it
01:07:51
a sort of gimbal in one of the frames. So, let's see. It's coming up in just a second.
01:07:58
That's And of course, it's combined with the statements of the pilots, how shocked they are and how surprised.
01:08:06
There it is. That's kind of fun. It looks like one of the alien spacecraft that Steven Spielberg showed in Close
01:08:15
Encounters of the Third Kind, but that's not what intrigues me. What intrigues me
01:08:18
is we have whistleblowers saying we have actual aliens. So, I'm Give Give me the actual alien.
01:08:26
Do you think if we did we would tell the public? >> Uh, we people have testified we have
01:08:31
aliens, that we have alien crash parts, that we have reverse engineered alien technology, that we have no end of
01:08:37
movies portraying aliens. Uh, and somebody say, "Oh, we're not ready to see an actual alien." Of course, we're
01:08:44
ready. Hollywood has prepped us for decades for this day. I think it'll be charming. What would surprise me most
01:08:55
is if the alien were humanoid. >> Most Hollywood renderings of human of of aliens are humanoid with a head, two
01:09:04
eyes and nose, mouth, ears. Oh. Oh, they're bald. Okay. Or they have pointy ears. Or they've got but they're still
01:09:10
walking and they still got elbows and fingers and knees and like this. >> And >> I mean, we've got ones like this as
01:09:16
well. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we've got there's a good ET. This looks like the
01:09:22
xenomorph. And this one looks like predator. Okay. So, notice uh they all have eyes. There's a mouth. There's a,
01:09:30
you know, teeth cuz teeth are scary. And this is humanoid. >> These are humanoid. This is a little
01:09:37
more reptilian. I would say it's definitely vertebrate, but has a tail. So, these these are
01:09:44
humanoid characters. I would be most surprised if the alien was humanoid. What would you expect that them to be
01:09:50
based in the atmosphere of the universe? >> I would expect it to not be humanoid.
01:09:53
Most life on Earth is not humanoid. And we have DNA in common with all life on Earth. And most life is not human. Oak
01:10:00
trees, worms, uh lobsters, none of those life forms are humanoid. And so here we
01:10:07
are. We have, you know, oh, by the way, the the xenomorph is not building spaceships. So if this comes to Earth,
01:10:14
it's because we brought it here, not because it flew. Okay. uh based on its conduct. It looks like
01:10:21
he's just want to be parasitic. Uh ET has fingers and you know it looks like ET can build a space spaceship. And this
01:10:29
is just a hunting hunting mission with the alien. Notice that its eyes are even the same separation of our eyes. And not
01:10:38
so this is there's an actor in this costume and the actor is human. That's really what this comes down to. Yeah,
01:10:45
that's good photos you got here. Oh, he so in the book I stumbled on I didn't come up with these. I stumbled on
01:10:56
the fact that people who care about sightings, uh, alien, not UFO sightings, alien sightings, people who have said
01:11:04
they've seen aliens. By the way, like I said, that whole exercise didn't reach the fever pitch until you
01:11:12
had whistleblowers saying they've met aliens under oath in Congress and not the drunkards coming out of the bar at
01:11:20
2:00 a.m. Okay. So they divide into archetypes. So little green men that's, you know, we had a lot of those back in
01:11:29
the 50s and 60s. And uh, of course, the fact that we would even use the adjective men meant they're
01:11:38
humanoid. Okay, little green men. So that's one variety. Another one, what do we have here? Uh,
01:11:46
this one is much more common today, the grays. Okay, the gray alien. color. These also
01:11:53
tend to be bald. So these are the two most common. And then there are others. Arcturans, they're from the star
01:12:01
Arcturius. Uh Liens from the constellation LRA, the harp in the sky. >> We'll put these on the screen for
01:12:08
anybody. >> Sirius is uh aliens from the star system. So yeah, in my book there's a dozen of
01:12:16
them. Oh, the tall whites. Oh, insecttoids. This is a good one. I love this one because
01:12:22
we hate insects. Not I can't speak for everyone. Insects are ugly to most humans, right? So if you have a creature
01:12:30
that resembles an insect, you don't want to become friends with it. >> If you listen to people that have done
01:12:35
DMT, um they often >> DMT. Yeah. >> They often site seeing or meeting these types of
01:12:42
>> Yeah. And the commonality of that is intriguing rather than jump to a conclusion that
01:12:51
they're all having some common interdimensional experience. It's easier for me to think that they all have human
01:12:59
brains and the chemical is exciting the same part of each one of their brains and thereby sharing in some experience
01:13:09
that and plus people I don't know if they've done this across cultures the English- speakaking cultures have
01:13:16
reported many more alien sightings than other cultures vastly more sightings which is a little
01:13:22
weird so either aliens just like visiting English speaking countries or we just know better how to report what
01:13:29
we see which is probably what it is but you go to other countries they don't have this alien fixation.
01:13:35
>> Have you ever done psychedelics? [clears throat] >> Never. >> Are you curious about it?
01:13:39
>> Not really. >> Because the human brain barely works as it is. >> Barely. Just open up any any book of optical
01:13:55
illusions. Turn to any page. Oh, is it bigger? Is it smaller? Is the line in the page, out of the page? I can't
01:14:02
figure it out. Simple drawings confound your perceptions of reality. >> But doesn't that mean reality is
01:14:10
fragile? >> Yes. And so if I want to now stir chemicals into my brain as a scientist
01:14:16
who values what is objectively true since my brain barely works as it is to put in chemicals.
01:14:22
It's not clear to me that that gets me closer to any reality at all and it's reality that I value in this world.
01:14:29
>> What >> so that's why that's why I haven't done psychedelics. >> What I think about is if if I can inhale
01:14:33
something and suddenly my subjective experience of reality is entirely it's 4K and I'm somewhere else. Does that not
01:14:40
then mean that my current subjective experience of reality is as fragile as an inhale?
01:14:47
>> Sure. >> And then >> well well it's chem it's it's chemicals. So yeah it's a reminder that your brain
01:14:52
functions based on electrochemical signals. But [clears throat] and to put some other chemicals in there to disrupt
01:14:58
it to rechan it sky is the limit. >> But does that mean that reality itself is just a bunch of chemicals?
01:15:05
>> There are philosophers who like thinking about that and debating it and arguing
01:15:09
it. I tend to be way more practically minded in that conversation. Okay? In that
01:15:17
I can perform an experiment outside of your five senses and it will get a result that everyone coming
01:15:25
together to look at that result will agree on. >> That's one of my senses though looking.
01:15:29
>> Sure. But you're if you don't have that sense then you can't participate in that
01:15:33
exercise. I I'd find some way for you to then be able to identify it. But I can create a measurement of ultraviolet
01:15:40
light. You can't see ultraviolet light, but I have a detector that fires and you
01:15:45
can look at the detector firing. Okay? And so there it is. I've measured ultraviolet light and I didn't need your
01:15:52
eyes, your retina or your brain to make that measurement. So when Einstein said E= MC²
01:15:59
and that became the foundation of atomic weapons that we then drop in warfare killing tens of thousands hundreds of
01:16:06
thousands of people. You can't tell me oh that's just our our imagination or that's just chemical
01:16:12
things. That is a real phenomenon based on real physics drawn from an objective reality that we established while not
01:16:20
doing drugs. And so that's why it took so long to develop science to separate measurements of an objective reality
01:16:29
from the neurochemical synapses of your brain. >> Isn't it rule though observation? Isn't
01:16:34
that what science is? >> Yeah. So if I can have a device that makes a measurement
01:16:40
and most people look at that can agree what that thing is. If I'm a betting person,
01:16:47
I would bet that that is a representation of objective reality. >> So, we can measure our
01:16:52
>> if I bring a completely crazy person to it, they're not going to know how. And
01:16:56
so, do how do I value their interpretation of the data? And or and is it subjective? Are we the crazy ones?
01:17:05
And is that person the the the normal one? Right? So these are legitimate questions, but they're answerable
01:17:12
using the methods and tools of science for what is repeatable in this world and what is not.
01:17:17
>> And this world is a experience manifested by the chemicals in my brain. So we can we're measuring
01:17:23
this reality that we live in. >> You inhale something and there's a whole other reality. Well, you're right now
01:17:29
inhaling oxygen and you have this reality. How many other realities can you visit? Yeah.
01:17:33
>> And which which is the real reality? And >> all I would say is I make mention of it
01:17:37
in in the book. >> People on DMT have these shared experiences. >> So let's do experiments on that to see
01:17:45
if can can one person experience an insect insectoid, glean information from that that
01:17:54
psychedelic alien that matches someone else's information. That's how you would probe this. Otherwise, you say, "Oh,
01:18:00
it's real." And then we make start a new religion. I can tell you that if there was a drug
01:18:08
>> that if you embibed it by whatever means if it got me closer to an objective reality I would do it.
01:18:18
>> An objective reality. Yeah. >> Yes. Like I said the brain barely works. Now can is there a better objective
01:18:25
real? Well that's why we have science. I have tools that measure infrared and ultraviolet and x-rays and gamma rays
01:18:32
and magnetic anomalies and electrical currents and I can measure all these things
01:18:39
>> and and you your brain is irrelevant to those measurements. >> I had a physicist come on and he said
01:18:45
that we can only we can only see that which we need to see in order to survive. >> Mhm.
01:18:50
>> And thus if you look at a bat or another species of animal even here on the earth
01:18:53
or a dog >> well evolutionarily. >> Yeah. Yeah. So there could theoretically there could be spirits in this room now,
01:18:58
but because they're inconsequential to my survival, I actually don't even need to be able to see them. I didn't need to
01:19:02
develop the senses to be able to know that they were here. That's why science has dozens of senses.
01:19:10
We've gone beyond human physiology in the sciences. So that's why I don't have to have that conversation
01:19:18
about my reality versus any other alternative reality and which one is real. That's why science exists.
01:19:26
We have the microscope that gets us into the realm of the small, the telescope that gets to the realm of the large.
01:19:32
Your senses have no access to either of those places. The dead sea in the Middle
01:19:37
East was called dead because there were no macroscopic fishes there because the salt level is so high. But they're
01:19:45
microbes doing the backstroke. Okay. And salt resistant microbes. So they couldn't see those. So his their reality
01:19:53
missed something. Yes, your reality is going to miss things that are not otherwise going to put your health at
01:20:01
risk evolutionarily, but science changed that forever. Deal with it. I was going to say, yeah,
01:20:14
I mean, a lot of it's predicated on, you know, believing in my observable experience and
01:20:21
>> you don't have to because like I said, we have tools. That's why I can look in
01:20:26
the sky, say, "Wow, what is that? I don't know what I pull out binoculars. Tools.
01:20:29
>> Oh my gosh, it's a drone." >> Now I can see it better with higher resolution and it's brighter.
01:20:34
>> Oh, what is that over there? I don't know what that is on the horizon. Oh, it's a it's a bear crawling on the side
01:20:40
of the thing. It's not some alien. You bring out the tools, supplement your your senses.
01:20:47
>> And these are all observational tools, >> those that I just mentioned. Yes. >> But there are others that uh you can
01:20:53
test things without observing them. You can look at what effect they have on something else. For example,
01:20:59
>> if a couple of chemicals are responsible for this entire experience, like the
01:21:03
things that I feel, touch, smell, hear, is it plausible then that actually >> it's more than a couple, but it's your
01:21:09
sentiment is accurate? Yeah. Is it then plausible that we are just a bunch of chemicals in a
01:21:16
petri dish somewhere that are creating a subjective experience and that subjective experience manifests as a
01:21:21
universe that I can see, this iPad that I can touch, but actually we are just a chemical reaction in a petri dish that
01:21:28
some aliens are doing. Because if chemicals are my entire subjective experience,
01:21:32
>> it's way more likely that we are just a simulation. >> Yeah, I think we probably are a
01:21:36
simulation. I think I've completely >> based on what you just said. It's if we have to be in a petri dish with it's
01:21:42
more likely that we're simulated by some snot-nosed kid in in its alien parents'
01:21:49
basement. >> That was a biological simulation I described. >> Yes, it was. So, uh, like I said earlier, the laws of
01:21:55
physics are different on different scales. You can't just put us in a petri dish and have us behave the way
01:22:01
chemicals and or and microorganisms would behave like bacteria that sort of thing would behave in a petri dish.
01:22:08
Petri dish is ideal sized for bacteria not for us in some larger petri dish. No, we function differently with our
01:22:16
environment than microbes do in in a petri. You can't just scale it up as much as people would want to. That
01:22:25
would make everything easier. They were just nested dolls. >> Do you believe that we're in a
01:22:28
simulation? >> Do you think it's plausible? >> I don't want to believe it. >> You don't want to believe it?
01:22:34
>> I don't I don't I'm whiny about that. >> Why? [laughter] >> No. I Nobody wants to be a simulation.
01:22:43
My best argument that we're not, or rather my best way to improve the odds that we're not, is just just to remind you
01:22:52
how the simulation argument works. You have some universe and then they have computers that are very powerful. They
01:22:59
simulate a a world within the computer and the life forms in that world believe they have free will. So there they are.
01:23:09
It's like a video game, right? And then they are and then they say, "I'm bored. I'm going to make computers." So they
01:23:14
invent computers and then they create a video game inside their computers and then it's video games all the way down.
01:23:21
Okay. Okay. So, if I close my eyes and throw a dart, which universe am I most likely to
01:23:29
hit? The one that started them all or the 999 bajillion that followed? Probably one of the ones that were
01:23:38
manufactured, which argues strongly that we're in a simulation. However, the only universes that could create
01:23:49
other worlds are the ones that have the capacity to create other worlds. Okay? So each one
01:23:59
of these in this sequence had the computing power to create a whole other world. That's why it continued the
01:24:04
sequence. We humans on Earth do not yet have the power to create an entire other universe
01:24:15
with people in it who have what they believe is free will. We don't have that power yet.
01:24:21
Because of that, we are not one of the ones in the sequence cuz everyone in the sequence has the power to create another
01:24:27
universe. And they did. We don't have that power. Which means we are either the very first universe in that sequence
01:24:35
or the very last that has yet to achieve the power of simulation. So we go from, you know,
01:24:45
100 bajillion to one likelihood that we are to maybe one and two. And I I like those odds.
01:24:54
>> Does this not assume that the creators of the simulation modeled their universe
01:24:59
as being a onetoone copy of our own and they wanted us to have >> No, they can make any kind of universe
01:25:03
they want. Who cares? Not one to one copy. This universe happens to have like planets and stars and people in it. The
01:25:10
other one could just be Mario characters. [laughter] >> Probabilistically, I think I've heard
01:25:16
Elon Musk say that he thinks probabistically this is a simulation, which I thought was compelling. And he
01:25:21
did reason that, you know, they've got these three potential options. Either humanity just blows themselves up before
01:25:26
they get to this technological advancement. Either this is a simulation or either this is base reality.
01:25:33
Those are the three plausible outcomes. And one would say, hm, it [clears throat] being based reality is
01:25:37
highly improbable. Do we blow off? Why is that highly a problem? >> The size and scale of the universe and
01:25:42
the speed in which we've gone from being like frankly relative speed of cavemen to being able to do large language
01:25:48
models of vast intelligence and VR simulations. This that's it's like this in the I mean Cosmos taught me this.
01:25:54
It's like this. >> Well, it's it's actually not like that. >> It's not. Can I explain why? Sure.
01:26:03
>> Okay. >> So, it's simply exponential growth. Mhm. >> That's all it is. Exp. So if you plot
01:26:13
earth's population, very common encounter with an exponential curve. Okay. So you have a plot and you have
01:26:21
time. Go back. I don't I don't care how much time you go back and it's like almost flatline and then it goes up.
01:26:28
This is what you're talking about. Happens like this. >> That is the plot of an exponential on
01:26:32
linear graph. >> Okay. >> Mhm. Here's what all exponentials have in common. If you truncated it somewhere
01:26:42
here, let's say, so go back 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, and then replotted it, it would do this.
01:26:52
>> Mhm. Go back again, replplot it, it would do this. >> Yeah. >> Everybody in an exponential thinks
01:26:59
they're living in special times. >> Yeah. >> They think that all the greatest, most
01:27:03
important discoveries happened recently. Yes, that is true. But it's true for everybody along the exponential.
01:27:11
When we invented the car, the automobile, no one is saying, "Look how backwards we are." They're saying, "Look
01:27:16
how advanced we are. We now have an automobile, and we have railroads that cross the across the the lands, and we
01:27:22
have steam ships that cross the ocean. Look at how advanced we are. Look how far we've come in just decades." If you
01:27:27
imagine any rate of improvement at our current trajectory, we get to a point at some at some stage in the future where
01:27:33
we can create simulations. >> Yes. Yes. It's a natural. >> Yeah. We get there, >> but we're not there now. And since we're
01:27:40
not there now, we're not one of these middle universes. >> But if you I mean whether it's 100 years
01:27:45
or a thousand years or 10,000 years, we eventually get there. And then if you layer that over with what you said about
01:27:50
there being 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars, >> um it's conceivable that we are not at
01:27:56
the front of that race. And if we're not at the front of that race, it means that
01:27:59
someone else theoretically got there at some point and therefore we might be their simulation.
01:28:05
>> Yes, of course. >> Yes. >> And that seems way more >> No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is
01:28:09
>> Yeah. >> Yes. We could be their simulation, but we can't simulate anybody within our
01:28:16
world yet. >> Yeah. Not yet. >> That's why we are either the last one in that list
01:28:23
created by some other civilization that can't yet create the next civilization or we're the first one that's authentic
01:28:31
>> or it could be a tree though. It could be like they did one they did they did
01:28:34
500 then this person here did 300. >> Yes. So I'm taking the the very straight line model. Yes. It could be fully
01:28:41
branched out. Yeah. And >> sure. All I'm saying is we're nowhere in the middle of that. We have to be at the
01:28:50
end because we don't we can't make another universe yet. So that greatly reduces the total number of universes
01:28:58
your dart can hit when you toss it against the wall. Either the first universe or the last
01:29:03
one. And I had it gave it in a line, but it could be the last of any of these. >> Yeah, it could be the last of a tree.
01:29:07
Like I think a family tree. You don't have to. >> That's fine. So how many is how many
01:29:10
would the last be? 500, a thousand, whatever that is. There's countless other ones that came before us leading
01:29:17
up to that >> and we could have cousin simulations that >> sure went on and >> it seems that seems more probable in the
01:29:24
balance of I can't think of a singular argument that's more convincing that okay if humans eventually get to tech
01:29:30
technological advancement thus so that they could create their own simulation then it's conceivable that in such a
01:29:37
vast universe other other living intelligent life got there first. Do you agree that there's intelligent life in
01:29:42
the universe? Um, it's quite I think it's quite arrogant of us to think that we are the most technologically advanced
01:29:47
in the universe, >> right? No one should be thinking that. >> So, thus it's a simulation, Neil,
01:29:53
>> unless we are not the simulation and we're the original universe that hasn't started the ball rolling yet.
01:29:59
>> And could you imagine the odds of that? What would the odds of that be? >> This is my point. The simplest way is
01:30:04
the look the in the line in the straight line example which we can spread out in
01:30:09
just a moment. We're either the starter universe who hasn't figured out how to make a universe yet.
01:30:13
>> Yes. >> Or we're the last in that line which have yet to evolve the capacity to make
01:30:20
a universe because it doesn't happen instantly. They have to invent computers and they have free will and so they're
01:30:25
doing their thing. Yeah. >> Okay. So, however many universes are in between, it goes from that number of
01:30:32
possible universes we could have been to a one in two chance that we're real. One
01:30:37
and two. We're the original or that we're this one which is simulated. That's a one in two chance. Now you have
01:30:43
branches. Fine. I don't mind branches where each one creates 10 universes. Fine. You have branches. Once again, we
01:30:52
are either the last one in a branch or we're the first one that started it all. >> Here's my here's my drawing of how it
01:31:00
might look. So, we could be that one or we could be that one, that one, that one, that one, that one, that one, that
01:31:05
one, that one, that one, that one, that one. Why is why is that not plausible? It's kind of like a family tree. Some of
01:31:10
them have kids. >> Okay, so in that case, only one of them evolved to make another universe.
01:31:19
This one did here, but also this one did here. >> Right. That's the only one in that
01:31:22
generation that made another universe. Correct. >> And this up here at the top, >> that one made a whole made 10 of eight
01:31:29
of them. And only one of them made another universe. >> Okay. Now, two of them made another
01:31:35
universe. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. That's fine. >> Okay. So now, >> and one of them made another universe as
01:31:41
well. >> Okay. Correct. So you keep doing that. If we're early in the game, >> yeah,
01:31:48
>> then we could be any one of those at the edges of the line. That's correct. Okay,
01:31:54
we could be any one of those. And we're plotting along. But if all the rest make more universes, we know we're
01:32:02
not them because we don't have that ability yet. >> Mhm. [clears throat] So in your top row example,
01:32:12
if one of them continues to not be able to make another universe and the others do,
01:32:18
once again, it in that case is one out of three chance that we are real, that we're the starter universe because you
01:32:27
have two other places that have yet to make if in in another drawing that you could draw. All the rest make new
01:32:35
universes, but two don't. in the simulation scenario. Yes, you could do that, but that's not what anyone is
01:32:41
thinking about. They're thinking that it's simulated universes all the way down. And you you just drew a whole crop
01:32:48
of universes that are not simulating other universes. >> So, do it's not very fertile in the
01:32:53
simulated universe universe. >> Maybe this is what the multiverse is. Maybe this is what infinity is. Maybe
01:32:59
this was what the big bang was was a universe creating the next universe. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what we call
01:33:05
the multiverse, creating universes. >> And maybe that's what it is. Maybe the civilization becomes so advanced in
01:33:10
their technology that they're able to create one of those big bang moments. And >> yeah, I mean, that would be interesting
01:33:15
if they just summon it up at will. Yeah, that'd be weird. >> Maybe the point in which we as a civiliz
01:33:23
as an advanced civilization can come together with, I don't know, AI and build a a new universe is the next big
01:33:31
bang. There's no reason to say it couldn't be that, right? Um, but what's interesting though
01:33:41
is that the laws of physics we measure on Earth apply across the universe and across time. So that's just an
01:33:48
interesting maybe that's just the programmer's rules for the universe they just created. So
01:33:54
I have no way to step to the side of that argument. So do I get a Nobel prize? What happens
01:34:03
now? [laughter] >> So the difference is in our big bang we went through single-sellled life then
01:34:11
multisellular organisms and then intelligence then technology. So if if if the technology
01:34:20
we have technology that enabled all that and the in a simulation let me back up. So,
01:34:28
in a simulation, are they starting you from the beginning of the universe? Is there a big bang in the simulation or
01:34:34
they just people just showing up fully formed as an intelligent species in the simulation? And maybe they're implanted
01:34:42
with a memory that's not real. This is very matrixy. What is um what is the point of life? What is the point of all
01:34:49
of this stuff? You got you got you got to live, I don't know, 80, 90, 100 years, whatever it is. What is the
01:34:54
point, Neil? The point >> the point of all of this. Why are we here? >> So that question asked by many people
01:35:05
will keep religion in business for a long time. >> Uh for many the purpose in life is to
01:35:12
serve God. Okay. And that's a little odd to me because if I created a universe, I would not need
01:35:24
people to praise me. that just feels weird. I would just create it and have fun, you know? Let me work on the next
01:35:31
universe. Now, personally, I wouldn't feel that need. So, it's odd that a all powerful, all knowing
01:35:39
entity seeks your submission and obedience. And it's just I I've never fully wrapped my head
01:35:50
around that that idea. But the meaning in life is was really what you're asking. What
01:35:58
is meaning? I derive meaning from life. I I create meaning from life. When I say when I say I derive it, I
01:36:07
create meaning in life. I don't look for meaning. Many people look for meaning. Is it under a rock behind a tree? I'm
01:36:13
still in search of the meaning of life. You realize you have the power to create
01:36:17
meaning. Create meaning. We all have the power to do so. Add it to the meaning that you're
01:36:24
looking for. But right now, you can create meaning. One way is I this might not be the recipe for everyone.
01:36:31
I want to learn something today that I didn't know yesterday. I want to learn something tomorrow that
01:36:38
I didn't know today. Thus growing my awareness of the objective realities of the world. That's my first.
01:36:48
And as I grow my awareness, I have new uh nuanced informed perspectives. So you can grow in wisdom,
01:36:59
wisd knowledge, wisdom, and insight that wouldn't otherwise be possible if you didn't keep learning. Second,
01:37:06
I want to do something today that lessens the suffering of others. >> Why? Because if I have the power to make the
01:37:17
world a better place for me having lived in it, I value that. >> Why? >> I value happiness
01:37:26
>> because people like apparently people like being happy unless you're clinically depressed. Happiness
01:37:35
is something that I valued my whole life. it brings joy to being alive in at all. So
01:37:43
that's how I think about it. Uh and in in my podcast, the humor is an important element of the
01:37:56
podcast. There's a braid of science, pop culture, and humor. people return. They come back to the podcast because
01:38:06
they were they laughed, they smiled, they felt good at the time they learned the thing that they learned and they
01:38:13
want to reproduce that feeling. So we should not be surprised that we want to do things that make us feel
01:38:19
good. And again, why does helping another person make me feel good? It's not I don't do it for me. I do it for
01:38:26
the person. [laughter] Okay? I I don't help the person across the street so that I feel good about myself.
01:38:35
I help the person about across the so the person feels good that they made it across the street,
01:38:39
>> which in turn makes you feel good. >> Well, except I I don't want to be needlessly semantic.
01:38:47
There are things that I could do that make me feel good that I don't do because it doesn't spread the goodness.
01:38:54
Mhm. >> I can live in my own this feels good. But when you spread it, then other people can share in your
01:39:03
emotions. And so I don't do it so much for myself. I just do it because I think we should
01:39:14
spread more joy in the world. Here's here's a way to do that. Again, it's not about you, right? It's
01:39:21
I do you a favor and you say, "Thanks. I really needed that. I'll repay that favor one day."
01:39:28
And I'll say, "No, pass it forward." Do that favor for someone else. Ideally, a stranger. Okay?
01:39:38
A stranger who will never remember your name. Do it for them. And you know what'll happen? That favor and you tell
01:39:46
them to pass it forward. that favor will work its way through society, through cultures, through civilization,
01:39:55
never being closed back. The moment you say, "Hey, I'll repay you the favor." That closes it off and make and it's no
01:40:02
longer available to anybody in civilization. If you don't close it, send it forward.
01:40:09
Then there are these tributaries of favors working their way through civilization
01:40:16
and everyone is better off for it. >> Neil, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the
01:40:22
next not knowing who they're leaving it for. >> Oh, sure. >> And the question left for you is,
01:40:26
>> do they know it was me? >> They didn't know it was you. >> Okay. >> Um, what is it that you would like us to
01:40:30
write on your gravestone if we were the authors of the message? Let me back into
01:40:36
that by saying I don't want I don't need anything that memorializes my life because it's not as an educator. It's
01:40:50
not about my life. It's about the life of those who I've touched. It's about their life. It's not about my
01:40:57
life. No statues, no plaques, nothing. I don't need that. I don't seek it. I've had photographers come up to me say,
01:41:05
"Oh, I I I'm a fashion photographer and I photograph all these famous people. Do
01:41:08
you want to be a part of that?" No. It's not about me. I don't need you to look at a picture of
01:41:14
me in a book. I What I want you to do, open up a book that I wrote and read what I wrote in
01:41:22
the book and you read that and you will learn from it. You'll be enlightened because as an educator, it's about you.
01:41:29
It's not about the educator. So, so I don't want memorials or anything, nothing. But I know what I want on my
01:41:37
tombstone. There's the full quote which I will begin with, but it's the end of the
01:41:46
quote that fits the tombstone. It's by Horus man, the educator, American educator of the
01:41:54
early 19th century. He was a university president. schools named after him, Horus man school, an educator.
01:42:03
For one of his farewell addresses at a university, he said, "I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts
01:42:14
these my parting words. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."
01:42:26
That's what I want on my tombstone. >> Be ashamed to die until you have won >> some victory for humanity.
01:42:38
And as educator, that's my goal. Humanity is better off for me having been in this world. That's my goal.
01:42:50
Because all too many there too many people where humanity is worse off for them having [laughter] been in this
01:42:54
world. Well, not too many. There's a few key people in the history of the world for whom that's true. And if we can do
01:43:02
our little bit to improve the world, >> you've most certainly done that. You've done it for arguably hundreds of
01:43:11
millions of people. Um, I think if I I was probably thinking then of like what is the net impact you've had on my life
01:43:17
from >> on your life >> on my life from you know all of the content and information and movies and
01:43:22
books and documentaries and so on that you've written and I think like the net impact if I crystallized it down to a
01:43:27
word was about curiosity and I'd say it's like expanding my mind um to what is to wonder to wonder more
01:43:39
>> unfortunately That does not exist in most schools. >> Yeah. >> The kids in their class, they can't wait
01:43:47
until the end of the period. They see the clock. >> They can't wait till the end of the
01:43:50
school day. They can't wait till it's Friday. They can't wait till it's vacation. They can't wait till school's
01:43:56
over. >> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Can't wait till graduation. >> All of these sentiments are
01:44:04
are I don't want to keep learning anymore. It's a chore. I don't enjoy it. I don't
01:44:11
like it. >> Well, >> there's even a rock anthem celebrating that fact >> by Alice Cooper says, you know, it
01:44:19
schools out for the summer. >> I think this photo and what you said about your >> school's out forever.
01:44:26
>> I hated school. >> I But it's my point. I don't blame the students. >> Yeah. I'm blaming the system where you
01:44:33
can't wait to get out of school, which means they're not teaching curiosity because if they did,
01:44:40
staying in school would be fulfilling that. And if they did, leaving school would birth the rest of your life as a
01:44:47
curious person where you continue to learn. That's what school should be about. And it's not.
01:44:52
>> And that's what you're doing for others, expanding the curiosity, the aperture,
01:44:56
and allowing them to wander beyond the narrowness of whatever. I want people to say, "Gee, I miss school."
01:45:03
>> I absolutely don't miss school. But [laughter] but do you know do you know what I do miss? Well, I don't miss it,
01:45:07
but we have to make a distinction between school and education or school in learning. And we kind of conflate the
01:45:13
two and think they're the same. >> Well, cuz what? School's got a bad name. It's got a bad uh It's a place where you
01:45:18
go to have curiosity fulfilled. Stoked and fulfilled. That if all schools were that, imagine
01:45:25
how different the world would be. >> We can only imagine. Imagine >> I am have your book in front of me here.
01:45:32
It's, by the way, it's beautiful and the title is great. It's called Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First
01:45:37
Alien Encounter. If you've ever wondered why there are so many UFO sightings, whether aliens might already be amongst
01:45:42
us, Tyson offers an informed perspective that is both factual and fun. Take Me to
01:45:47
Your Leader is a tantalizing exploration of what would be the most mind-blowing experience of your life. The book for
01:45:52
anyone who has ever wondered, as we all do now, are we alone? Thank you so much.
01:45:59
I'm going to link this book below. Um, anybody that's into the subject matter of aliens and wants to wonder and have
01:46:03
some fun >> and and if I can give you just a my favorite example from the book on the
01:46:08
chapter alien to us, there's alien to us and alien to them. Uh, whole chapters, right? Like little things like let's say
01:46:16
you befriend the alien and then you say, "Uh, excuse me. I have to lay down horizontally and go semicomaos for
01:46:23
onethird of Earth's rotation." They'll look at you and say, "What? Uh whoa whoa what do you you guys know
01:46:30
sleep? What's sleep? I mean it it could be that but be ready. The things we take
01:46:35
for granted might not be obvious to an alien. And another one if the alien has some appendage,
01:46:43
right? Don't just reach and grab it and shake it. You don't know what part of the alien that is. And maybe you don't
01:46:51
want to find out after you just shook it. just just and shaking hands is not even earthwide. In in Asia, shaking
01:46:59
hands is not as common as it is in the west. So don't take your own the one of the biggest lessons there is don't take
01:47:06
your own assumptions and apply it to the alien. A and the in the alien to them chapter is a fast one and then we can
01:47:13
wrap. Uh just imagine they landed in Los Angeles, okay? And they're in the median
01:47:21
of the 405, right? and they're just looking around. I'm certain they would conclude that the
01:47:29
dominant life form on Earth was the automobile >> cuz there they are just doing things and
01:47:35
then they'd see like a car hauler go by and they say that one's pregnant. [laughter]
01:47:40
They would see cars inside. Uh if if there's an accident, other car other automobiles come up to take it away and
01:47:48
repair it. Uh these automobile wheels go up to fast food establishments and people don't get out of their car to go
01:47:57
in. They stay in their car, wait in line in a slow line to get fast food, hand it
01:48:03
to them through a window, and then they eat it in the car. So the aliens would say, "Okay, the life form is the car and
01:48:09
the squishy things inside that must be the squishy middle of this life form." What this book tries to do is
01:48:18
reccast all of your assumptions about what an alien would think of us and about what
01:48:24
we would think of an alien. And I try to have fun doing it along the way. So that's all I thank you for bringing it
01:48:30
up. >> Thank you so much, Neil. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know
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