Brian Keating: Cosmology, Astrophysics, Aliens & Losing the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (01:17.200)

had a standard by which they could appraise their eyesight.

Lex Fridman (01:21.040)

So looking at a printed word now,

Lex Fridman (01:22.480)

we just take it for granted, 12 point font, whatever,

Lex Fridman (01:24.920)

and that's what the eye charts are based on.

Lex Fridman (01:26.400)

They're just fixed height.

Lex Fridman (01:27.240)

But back then, there was no way to adjust your eyesight

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if you didn't have perfect vision.

Lex Fridman (01:32.720)

And there was no way to even tell if you had perfect vision

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or not until the Gutenberg Bible and movable type.

Lex Fridman (01:39.000)

And at that time, people realized,

Lex Fridman (01:40.360)

hey, wait, I can't read this.

Brian Keating (01:41.680)

My priest or my friend over here, he can read it,

Lex Fridman (01:43.800)

she can read it.

Brian Keating (01:44.680)

I can't read it.

Lex Fridman (01:45.520)

What's going on?

Lex Fridman (01:46.420)

And that's when these people in Venice and in the Netherlands

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saw that they could take this kind of glass material

Lex Fridman (01:53.320)

and hold it up and maybe put another piece

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of glass material and it would make it clearer.

Lex Fridman (01:57.560)

And what was so interesting is that nobody thought

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to take that exact same device, two lenses,

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and go like, hmm, let me go like this

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and look at that bright thing in the sky over there,

Brian Keating (02:07.180)

until Galileo.

Lex Fridman (02:08.440)

So Galileo didn't invent it,

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but he did something kind of amazing.

Lex Fridman (02:12.480)

He improved on it by a factor of 10.

Lex Fridman (02:14.800)

So he 10X'd it, which is almost as good

Lex Fridman (02:17.040)

as going from zero to one, as going from one to 10.

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And when he did that, he really transformed

Lex Fridman (02:24.880)

both how we look at the universe and think about it,

Lex Fridman (02:28.480)

but also who we are as a species,

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because we're using tools not to get food faster

Brian Keating (02:34.240)

or to preserve our legacy for future generations,

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but actually to increase the benefit to the human mind.

Brian Keating (02:43.700)

Somebody mentioned this idea that if humans

Lex Fridman (02:46.540)

weren't able to see the stars,

Brian Keating (02:47.720)

maybe there was some kind of makeup of the atmosphere,

Lex Fridman (02:52.000)

which for the early humans made it impossible

Brian Keating (02:54.640)

to see the stars, that we would never develop

Lex Fridman (02:56.960)

human civilization, or at least raising the question

Brian Keating (02:59.400)

of how important is it to look up to the sky

Lex Fridman (03:02.120)

and wonder what's out there, as opposed to,

Brian Keating (03:05.680)

maybe this is an over romanticized notion,

Lex Fridman (03:07.960)

but like looking at the ground,

Brian Keating (03:09.680)

it feels like a little bit too much focused on survival,

Lex Fridman (03:12.760)

not being eaten by a bear slash lion.

Brian Keating (03:15.360)

If you look up to the stars, you start to wonder

Lex Fridman (03:17.360)

what is my place in the universe?

Lex Fridman (03:18.680)

You think that's modern humans romanticizing?

Lex Fridman (03:21.640)

It's a little romantic, because they also took the same.

Brian Keating (03:25.720)

They took the same two lenses and they looked inward.

Lex Fridman (03:28.040)

They looked at bacteria, they looked at hairs,

Lex Fridman (03:30.280)

and in other words, they made the microscope,

Lex Fridman (03:32.280)

and we're still doing that.

Lex Fridman (03:33.680)

And so to have a telescope, it serves a dual purpose.

Lex Fridman (03:37.840)

It's not only a way of looking out, it's looking in,

Lex Fridman (03:41.840)

but it's also looking back in time.

Lex Fridman (03:43.440)

In other words, you didn't see a microscope,

Brian Keating (03:44.680)

you don't think, oh, I'm seeing this thing

Lex Fridman (03:46.020)

as it was one nanosecond ago,

Brian Keating (03:47.780)

light travels one foot per nanosecond.

Lex Fridman (03:49.960)

I'm seeing it, no, you don't think about it like that.

Lex Fridman (03:51.860)

But when you see something that's happening on Jupiter,

Lex Fridman (03:54.320)

the moon, Andromeda galaxy, you're seeing things

Brian Keating (03:56.800)

back when Lucy was walking around the Serengeti Plains.

Lex Fridman (04:00.040)

And for that, I think that took then the knowledge

Brian Keating (04:03.360)

of relativity and time travel and so forth.

Lex Fridman (04:06.840)

It took that before we could really say,

Brian Keating (04:08.840)

oh, we really unlocked some cheat codes in the human brain.

Lex Fridman (04:12.200)

So I think that might be a little too much,

Lex Fridman (04:14.120)

but nevertheless, I mean,

Lex Fridman (04:15.800)

what's better than having a time machine?

Brian Keating (04:18.160)

We can look back in time,

Lex Fridman (04:19.260)

we see things as they were, not as they are.

Lex Fridman (04:21.640)

And that allows us to do many things,

Lex Fridman (04:23.200)

including speculate about that.

Lex Fridman (04:24.680)

But one of the coolest things,

Lex Fridman (04:25.740)

I don't know if you're familiar with,

Lex Fridman (04:26.580)

so I'm a radio astronomer.

Lex Fridman (04:27.920)

I don't actually look through telescopes very often,

Brian Keating (04:30.280)

except on rare occasions when I take one out

Lex Fridman (04:33.960)

to show the kids, but a radio telescope

Brian Keating (04:37.800)

is even more sort of visceral.

Lex Fridman (04:39.800)

I mean, it's much less cool because you look at it,

Brian Keating (04:41.240)

you're like, all right, it looks cool,

Lex Fridman (04:42.240)

it's kind of weird shaped thing,

Brian Keating (04:43.760)

looks like it belongs in sci fi,

Lex Fridman (04:45.040)

it's gonna blast the Death Star or whatever.

Lex Fridman (04:48.120)

But when you realize that when you point a radio telescope

Lex Fridman (04:52.080)

at a distant object,

Brian Keating (04:53.560)

if that object fills up what's called the beam,

Lex Fridman (04:55.960)

which is basically the field of view of a radio telescope,

Brian Keating (04:59.420)

it's called its beam.

Lex Fridman (05:00.560)

If you fill up the beam and you put a resistor,

Brian Keating (05:03.600)

just a simple absorbing piece of material

Lex Fridman (05:05.800)

at the focus of the radio telescope,

Brian Keating (05:07.760)

that resistor will come to the exact same temperature

Lex Fridman (05:11.200)

as the object that's looking at, which is pretty amazing.

Brian Keating (05:13.960)

It means you're actually remotely measuring,

Lex Fridman (05:16.160)

you're taking the temperature of Jupiter

Brian Keating (05:17.960)

or whatever in effect.

Lex Fridman (05:20.160)

And so it's allowing you to basically teleport

Lex Fridman (05:23.600)

and there's no other science

Lex Fridman (05:24.880)

that you can really do that, right?

Brian Keating (05:26.040)

If you're an archeologist, you can't,

Lex Fridman (05:27.320)

let me get into my time machine

Lex Fridman (05:29.720)

and go back and see what was Lucy really like,

Lex Fridman (05:32.240)

it's not possible.

Lex Fridman (05:33.080)

So the same thing happens,

Lex Fridman (05:34.840)

this is where I've learned about this

Brian Keating (05:36.240)

from March of the Penguins,

Lex Fridman (05:37.320)

when the penguins huddled together,

Brian Keating (05:40.720)

the body temperature arrives to the same place.

Lex Fridman (05:43.280)

So you're doing this remotely,

Brian Keating (05:45.320)

the March of the Penguins, but remote.

Lex Fridman (05:46.880)

We do it from Antarctica too,

Lex Fridman (05:48.160)

so there are some penguins around when we do it.

Lex Fridman (05:50.480)

Okay, excellent.

Brian Keating (05:51.440)

You mentioned time machine,

Lex Fridman (05:53.480)

I think in your book, Losing the Nobel Prize,

Brian Keating (05:57.080)

you talk about time machines.

Lex Fridman (05:59.680)

So let me ask you the question of,

Brian Keating (06:03.080)

take us back in time,

Lex Fridman (06:04.520)

what happened at the beginning of our universe?

Brian Keating (06:07.480)

Ah, okay, usually people preface this

Lex Fridman (06:09.880)

by saying I have a simple question.

Lex Fridman (06:11.200)

So what happened before the universe began, what happened?

Lex Fridman (06:15.200)

Brian Keating teaching me about comedy.

Brian Keating (06:18.400)

I have a simple question for you, let's take two.

Lex Fridman (06:20.960)

I have a simple question,

Lex Fridman (06:22.080)

what happened at the beginning of our universe?

Lex Fridman (06:23.800)

There you go.

Brian Keating (06:24.640)

All right, good.

Lex Fridman (06:25.480)

So when we think about what happened,

Brian Keating (06:28.160)

it's more correct, it's more logical,

Lex Fridman (06:30.560)

it's more practical to go back in time starting from today.

Lex Fridman (06:34.640)

So if you go back 13.874 billion years from today,

Lex Fridman (06:40.480)

that's some day, right?

Lex Fridman (06:41.640)

I mean, you could translate into some day, right?

Lex Fridman (06:43.360)

So on that day, something happened.

Brian Keating (06:45.640)

Earlier than the moment exactly now,

Lex Fridman (06:49.120)

let's say we're talking around one o clock.

Lex Fridman (06:52.160)

So at some point during that day,

Lex Fridman (06:54.480)

the universe started to become a fusion reactor.

Brian Keating (06:57.200)

It started to fuse light elements and isotopes

Lex Fridman (07:00.120)

into heavier elements and isotopes

Brian Keating (07:01.680)

of those heavier elements.

Lex Fridman (07:03.520)

After that period of time,

Brian Keating (07:05.080)

going forward back closer to today,

Lex Fridman (07:06.600)

less 10 minutes earlier, 10 minutes earlier,

Brian Keating (07:09.680)

or later rather coming towards us today,

Lex Fridman (07:11.960)

we know more and more about what the universe was like.

Lex Fridman (07:14.400)

And in fact, all the hydrogen,

Lex Fridman (07:16.520)

it's a very good approximation in the water molecules

Brian Keating (07:19.080)

in this bottle, almost all of them were produced

Lex Fridman (07:21.400)

during that first 20 minute period.

Lex Fridman (07:23.680)

So I would say, the actual fusion and production

Lex Fridman (07:27.800)

of the lightest elements on the periodic table

Brian Keating (07:30.560)

occurred in a time period shorter than the TV show,

Lex Fridman (07:33.360)

The Big Bang Theory.

Brian Keating (07:34.400)

Well done, sir.

Lex Fridman (07:35.240)

You know, most of those light elements besides hydrogen

Lex Fridman (07:39.200)

aren't really used in your encounter, right?

Lex Fridman (07:41.680)

You don't encounter helium that often,

Brian Keating (07:43.680)

unless you go to a lot of birthday parties

Lex Fridman (07:45.320)

or pilot a blimp.

Brian Keating (07:47.160)

You don't need lithium, hopefully, you know,

Lex Fridman (07:49.360)

but other than that,

Brian Keating (07:50.240)

those are the kinds of things

Lex Fridman (07:51.080)

that were produced during that moment.

Brian Keating (07:52.280)

The question became, how did the heavier things

Lex Fridman (07:54.280)

like iron, carbon, nickel, we can get to that later.

Lex Fridman (07:56.760)

And I brought some samples for us to discuss

Lex Fridman (07:59.720)

and how those came from a very different type of process

Brian Keating (08:02.240)

called a different type of fusion reactor

Lex Fridman (08:04.600)

and a different type of process explosion as well

Brian Keating (08:07.120)

called a supernova.

Lex Fridman (08:08.520)

However, if you go back beyond those first three minutes,

Brian Keating (08:11.480)

we really have to say almost nothing

Lex Fridman (08:13.880)

because we are not capable.

Brian Keating (08:15.880)

In other words, going backwards

Lex Fridman (08:17.440)

from the first three minutes,

Brian Keating (08:18.840)

as famous Steven Weinberg titled his book,

Lex Fridman (08:21.840)

we actually marks a point where ignorance takes over.

Brian Keating (08:25.160)

In other words, we can't speculate on what happened

Lex Fridman (08:28.280)

three minutes before the preponderance of hydrogen

Brian Keating (08:30.920)

was formed in our universe.

Lex Fridman (08:32.360)

We just don't know enough about that epoch.

Brian Keating (08:34.720)

There are many people, most people,

Lex Fridman (08:36.280)

most practicing card carrying cosmologists

Brian Keating (08:38.800)

believe the universe began in what's called the singularity.

Lex Fridman (08:41.400)

And we can certainly talk about that.

Brian Keating (08:44.000)

However, singularity is so far removed

Lex Fridman (08:46.480)

from anything we can ever hope to prove,

Brian Keating (08:49.160)

hope to confront or hope to observe with evidence.

Lex Fridman (08:51.960)

And really only occurs in two instantiations,

Brian Keating (08:54.920)

the big bang and the core of a black hole,

Lex Fridman (08:57.000)

neither of which is observable.

Lex Fridman (08:58.640)

And so for that reason,

Lex Fridman (09:00.160)

there are now flourishing alternatives that say,

Brian Keating (09:02.880)

you can actually for the first time ask the question

Lex Fridman (09:05.280)

that day, Tuesday in the first moments of our universe,

Brian Keating (09:10.280)

there was a Tuesday a week before that,

Lex Fridman (09:12.800)

24 hours times seven days before that.

Brian Keating (09:15.960)

That has a perfectly well understood meaning

Lex Fridman (09:19.360)

in models of cosmology promoted by some of the more eminent

Brian Keating (09:23.640)

of cosmologists working today.

Lex Fridman (09:25.440)

When I was in grad school over 25 years ago,

Brian Keating (09:28.080)

no one really considered anything besides that big bang

Lex Fridman (09:30.600)

that there was a singularity.

Lex Fridman (09:32.440)

And people would have to say, as I said, we just don't know.

Lex Fridman (09:36.320)

But they would say some future incarnation

Brian Keating (09:38.760)

of some experiment will tell us the answer.

Lex Fridman (09:40.800)

But now there are people that are saying

Brian Keating (09:42.880)

there is an alternative to the big bang.

Lex Fridman (09:45.360)

And it's not really fringe science

Brian Keating (09:46.960)

as it once was 50, 80 years ago when these models...

Lex Fridman (09:50.880)

By the way, the first cosmology in history

Brian Keating (09:53.760)

was not a singular universe.

Lex Fridman (09:55.720)

The first cosmology in history goes back to Akhenaten Ra

Lex Fridman (09:59.280)

and the temples of Egypt in the third millennium BC.

Lex Fridman (10:03.720)

And in that, they talked about cyclical universes.

Lex Fridman (10:06.200)

So I always joke, that guy Akhenaten's court,

Lex Fridman (10:09.200)

he'd have a pretty high H index right about now

Brian Keating (10:11.560)

because people have been using that cyclical model

Lex Fridman (10:14.360)

from Penrose to Paul Steinhardt and Aegis

Lex Fridman (10:17.760)

and right up until this very moment.

Lex Fridman (10:20.880)

Can you maybe explore the possible alternatives

Lex Fridman (10:25.120)

to the big bang theory?

Lex Fridman (10:27.400)

So there are many alternatives starting with...

Lex Fridman (10:29.880)

So the singularity quantum cosmologically demanding

Lex Fridman (10:33.640)

singular origin of the universe, that stands in contrast

Brian Keating (10:37.560)

to these other models in which time does not have

Lex Fridman (10:40.160)

a beginning and many of them feature cycles,

Brian Keating (10:44.040)

at least one cycle, possibly infinite number of cycles,

Lex Fridman (10:47.600)

called by Sir Roger Penrose.

Lex Fridman (10:48.880)

And they all have things in common, these alternatives,

Lex Fridman (10:51.920)

as does the dominant paradigm of cosmogenesis,

Brian Keating (10:55.080)

which is inflation.

Lex Fridman (10:56.200)

Inflation can be thought of as this spark

Brian Keating (11:00.120)

that ignites the hot big bang that I said we understood.

Lex Fridman (11:03.000)

So it's an earlier condition,

Lex Fridman (11:04.600)

but it's still not an initial condition.

Lex Fridman (11:06.560)

In physics, imagine I show you a grandfather clock

Brian Keating (11:09.640)

or a pendulum swinging back and forth.

Lex Fridman (11:11.440)

You look away for a second, you come into the room,

Brian Keating (11:14.360)

pendulum swinging back and forth.

Lex Fridman (11:15.440)

Alex, tell me, where did it start?

Lex Fridman (11:17.360)

How many cycles is it gonna make before the era?

Lex Fridman (11:19.560)

You can't answer that question

Brian Keating (11:20.800)

without knowing the initial conditions.

Lex Fridman (11:22.760)

In a very simple system, like a one dimensional,

Brian Keating (11:25.080)

simple harmonic oscillator, like a pendulum,

Lex Fridman (11:27.240)

think about understanding the whole universe

Brian Keating (11:29.160)

without understanding the initial conditions.

Lex Fridman (11:31.320)

It's a tremendous lacuna, a gap that we have as scientists

Brian Keating (11:34.920)

that we may not be able to, in the inflationary cosmology,

Lex Fridman (11:39.280)

determine the quantitative physical properties

Brian Keating (11:42.040)

of the universe prior to what's called

Lex Fridman (11:43.800)

the inflationary epoch.

Lex Fridman (11:45.120)

So you're saying for the pendulum in that epoch,

Lex Fridman (11:47.520)

we can't, because you can infer things about the pendulum

Brian Keating (11:50.960)

before you show up to the room in our current epoch,

Lex Fridman (11:54.320)

correct? Right.

Brian Keating (11:55.160)

Yeah, so if you look at it right now,

Lex Fridman (11:56.680)

but if I said, well, when will it stop oscillating?

Lex Fridman (11:58.560)

So that depends on how much energy it got initially.

Lex Fridman (12:00.920)

And you can measure its dissipation, its air resistance,

Brian Keating (12:03.000)

you had infrared camera,

Lex Fridman (12:03.840)

you could see it's getting hotter maybe,

Lex Fridman (12:05.400)

and you could do some calculations.

Lex Fridman (12:07.120)

But to know the two things in physics

Brian Keating (12:09.200)

to solve a partial differential equation

Lex Fridman (12:10.840)

are the initial conditions and the boundary conditions.

Brian Keating (12:12.920)

Boundary conditions, we're here on earth,

Lex Fridman (12:14.000)

it has gravitational field, it's not gonna excurs,

Brian Keating (12:16.320)

or make excursions wildly beyond the length of the pendulum.

Lex Fridman (12:19.320)

It's not, it has simple properties.

Brian Keating (12:22.960)

So, but this is like, in other words,

Lex Fridman (12:25.200)

you can't tell me when did the solar system start orbiting

Brian Keating (12:28.680)

in the way that it does now.

Lex Fridman (12:29.960)

In other words, when did the moon acquire

Lex Fridman (12:31.400)

the exact angular momentum that it has now?

Lex Fridman (12:34.720)

Now, that's a pretty pedestrian example.

Lex Fridman (12:36.320)

But what I'm telling you is that the inflationary epoch

Lex Fridman (12:40.040)

purports and is successful at providing

Brian Keating (12:43.080)

a lot of explanations for how the universe evolved

Lex Fridman (12:46.200)

after inflation took place and ended,

Lex Fridman (12:48.520)

but it says nothing about how it itself took place.

Lex Fridman (12:52.040)

And that's really what you're asking me.

Brian Keating (12:53.680)

I mean, you don't really, look,

Lex Fridman (12:55.240)

what you care about like big bang nucleosynthesis

Lex Fridman (12:57.800)

and the elements got made and these fusion reactors

Lex Fridman (13:00.120)

and the whole universe was a fusion reactor,

Lex Fridman (13:02.040)

but like, don't you really care about what happened

Lex Fridman (13:04.760)

at the beginning of time, at the first moment of time?

Lex Fridman (13:08.440)

And the problem is we can't really answer that

Lex Fridman (13:11.160)

in the context of the big bang.

Brian Keating (13:12.960)

We can answer that in the context of these alternatives.

Lex Fridman (13:15.760)

So you asked me about some of the alternatives.

Lex Fridman (13:16.960)

So one is Aon theory,

Lex Fridman (13:18.120)

the conformal cyclic cosmology of Sir Roger Penrose.

Brian Keating (13:21.040)

Another one that was really popular in the 60s and 70s

Lex Fridman (13:25.320)

until the discovery of the primary component

Brian Keating (13:28.080)

of my research field,

Lex Fridman (13:29.000)

the cosmic microwave background radiation or CMB,

Brian Keating (13:31.360)

the three Kelvin all pervasive signal

Lex Fridman (13:33.200)

that astronomers detected in 1965.

Brian Keating (13:36.360)

That kind of spelled the death knell in some sense

Lex Fridman (13:39.240)

to what was called the quasi steady state universe.

Lex Fridman (13:43.560)

And then there was another model

Lex Fridman (13:47.640)

that kind of came out of that.

Brian Keating (13:49.200)

You hear the word quasi, so it's not steady state.

Lex Fridman (13:51.720)

Steady state means always existed.

Brian Keating (13:53.200)

That was a cosmology Einstein believed until Hubble

Lex Fridman (13:55.680)

showed him evidence for the expansion of the universe.

Lex Fridman (13:58.960)

And most scientists believed in that for millennia basically.

Lex Fridman (14:02.480)

The universe was eternal, static, unchanging.

Brian Keating (14:05.560)

They couldn't believe that after Hubble.

Lex Fridman (14:07.040)

So they had to append onto it,

Brian Keating (14:09.480)

concatenate this new feature that it wasn't steady,

Lex Fridman (14:12.920)

it was quasi steady.

Lex Fridman (14:14.400)

So the universe was making a certain amount of hydrogen

Lex Fridman (14:16.840)

every century in a given volume of space.

Lex Fridman (14:19.640)

And that amount of hydrogen that was produced was constant.

Lex Fridman (14:22.880)

But because it was producing more and more every century,

Brian Keating (14:25.080)

as centuries pile up and the volume piles up,

Lex Fridman (14:27.000)

the universe could expand.

Lex Fridman (14:28.320)

And so that's how they developed it.

Lex Fridman (14:29.760)

That's slowly.

Brian Keating (14:30.600)

Very slowly.

Lex Fridman (14:31.440)

And it doesn't match observational evidence.

Lex Fridman (14:33.440)

But that is an alternative.

Lex Fridman (14:35.160)

By the way, did Einstein think

Lex Fridman (14:36.200)

the steady state universe is infinite or finite?

Lex Fridman (14:39.360)

Do you know?

Brian Keating (14:41.320)

I would assume that he thought it was infinite

Lex Fridman (14:43.440)

because there was really,

Brian Keating (14:45.320)

if something had a no beginning in time,

Lex Fridman (14:48.240)

then it would be very unlikely we're in the center of it

Brian Keating (14:50.680)

or it's bounded or it has, in that case, a finite edge to it.

Lex Fridman (14:54.000)

I wonder what he thought about infinity

Brian Keating (14:56.000)

because that's such an uncomfortable.

Lex Fridman (14:57.280)

Yeah, it's a silly joke.

Lex Fridman (14:58.520)

I'm sure you're familiar with this silly joke, right?

Lex Fridman (15:00.720)

The silly joke was that there are only two things

Brian Keating (15:02.880)

that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,

Lex Fridman (15:06.600)

and I'm not sure about the universe.

Brian Keating (15:08.560)

Well, me saying I'm not aware of the joke

Lex Fridman (15:10.880)

is a good example of the joke.

Brian Keating (15:12.800)

It's very meta.

Lex Fridman (15:14.080)

Okay, so, all right, sorry.

Brian Keating (15:16.520)

You were saying about quasi.

Lex Fridman (15:17.840)

All the alternatives.

Brian Keating (15:18.680)

All the alternatives in the quasi steady state.

Lex Fridman (15:20.920)

And the most kind of promising,

Brian Keating (15:22.800)

although I hate to say that,

Lex Fridman (15:24.320)

people say, well, that's your favorite alternative, right?

Brian Keating (15:27.120)

This is not investment advice.

Lex Fridman (15:29.480)

Inflation is not transitory.

Brian Keating (15:31.880)

It is quasi permanent.

Lex Fridman (15:34.440)

So, a very prominent.

Brian Keating (15:35.760)

Sorry to interrupt.

Lex Fridman (15:36.600)

We're talking about cosmic inflation,

Lex Fridman (15:38.200)

so calm down, cryptocurrency folks.

Lex Fridman (15:40.280)

That's right.

Brian Keating (15:41.120)

Although the first Nobel Prize,

Lex Fridman (15:43.080)

and one of the first Nobel Prizes in economics

Brian Keating (15:45.160)

was awarded for inflation, not of the cosmological kind.

Lex Fridman (15:48.360)

So, most people don't know

Brian Keating (15:49.200)

that inflation has already won a Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (15:50.520)

It's a good topic to work on if you won a Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (15:54.160)

Doesn't matter the field.

Lex Fridman (15:55.080)

Exactly, it's time translation invariant.

Brian Keating (15:57.320)

So, when we look at the alternative

Lex Fridman (15:59.920)

that's called the bouncing or cyclic cosmologies,

Brian Keating (16:03.080)

these have serious virtues, according to some.

Lex Fridman (16:07.840)

One of the virtues to me, just as a human,

Brian Keating (16:10.040)

I'm just speaking as a human,

Lex Fridman (16:12.880)

one of the founders of the new version

Brian Keating (16:15.640)

of the cyclic cosmology called the bouncing cosmology

Lex Fridman (16:21.320)

is Paul Steinhardt.

Brian Keating (16:22.520)

He's the Einstein Professor of Natural Sciences

Lex Fridman (16:24.760)

at Princeton University.

Brian Keating (16:25.760)

You may have heard of it.

Lex Fridman (16:27.000)

And he was one of the originators

Brian Keating (16:29.560)

of what was called new inflation.

Lex Fridman (16:32.280)

In other words, he was one of the founding fathers

Brian Keating (16:34.400)

of inflation, who now not only has no belief

Lex Fridman (16:38.560)

or support for inflation,

Brian Keating (16:40.000)

he actively claims that inflation is baroque, pernicious,

Lex Fridman (16:45.000)

dangerous, malevolent, not to science,

Brian Keating (16:48.040)

not just to cosmology, but to society.

Lex Fridman (16:50.840)

So, here's a man who created a theory

Brian Keating (16:53.320)

that's captivated the world or universe of cosmologists,

Lex Fridman (16:56.200)

such as it is.

Brian Keating (16:57.040)

It's not a huge universe,

Lex Fridman (16:57.920)

but there are more podcasters than cosmologists.

Brian Keating (17:00.840)

Some do both.

Lex Fridman (17:01.680)

But this man created this theory with collaborators.

Lex Fridman (17:06.760)

And now he's like, I'm like, Paul, you're denying paternity.

Lex Fridman (17:10.520)

You're like a deadbeat dad.

Brian Keating (17:11.960)

Now you're saying like, inflation is bogus.

Lex Fridman (17:14.960)

But he doesn't just attack.

Brian Keating (17:17.360)

See, this is what's very important

Lex Fridman (17:18.680)

about approaching things as an experimentalist.

Brian Keating (17:21.560)

You got a lot of theorists on, and that's wonderful.

Lex Fridman (17:23.560)

And I think that's a huge service.

Brian Keating (17:25.200)

An experimentalist has to say no.

Lex Fridman (17:27.800)

He or she has to be confident to say like,

Brian Keating (17:30.440)

I don't care if I prove you right

Lex Fridman (17:32.840)

or I prove your enemy wrong or whatever.

Brian Keating (17:35.320)

We have to be like exterminators.

Lex Fridman (17:37.120)

And nobody likes the exterminator

Lex Fridman (17:38.640)

until they need one, right?

Lex Fridman (17:39.560)

Or the garbage collectors, right?

Lex Fridman (17:41.400)

But it's vital that we be completely kind of unpersuaded

Lex Fridman (17:45.760)

by the beauty and the magnificence and the symmetry

Lex Fridman (17:48.840)

and the simplicity of some idea.

Lex Fridman (17:50.120)

Like inflation is a beautiful idea,

Lex Fridman (17:52.440)

but it also has consequences.

Lex Fridman (17:54.000)

And what Paul claims,

Brian Keating (17:55.000)

I don't agree with him fully on this point,

Lex Fridman (17:57.320)

is that those consequences are dangerous

Brian Keating (17:59.160)

because they lead to things like the multiverse,

Lex Fridman (18:01.400)

which is outside the purview of science.

Lex Fridman (18:03.720)

And in that sense, I can see support for what he does,

Lex Fridman (18:07.240)

but none of that detracts from my respect for a man.

Brian Keating (18:09.840)

You know, imagine like, you know,

Lex Fridman (18:11.800)

Elon comes up with this like really great idea,

Brian Keating (18:14.440)

you know, space, and then he's like,

Lex Fridman (18:15.520)

oh, actually it's not gonna work.

Lex Fridman (18:18.160)

But like, here's this better idea.

Lex Fridman (18:19.400)

And he's like, SpaceX is not gonna work,

Lex Fridman (18:21.040)

but he's now creating an alternative to it.

Lex Fridman (18:23.280)

It's extremely hard to do what Paul has done.

Brian Keating (18:25.920)

Doesn't mean he's right.

Lex Fridman (18:27.080)

Doesn't mean I'm gonna like have more

Lex Fridman (18:29.240)

and more attention paid to it because he's my friend

Lex Fridman (18:32.000)

or because I respect the idea

Brian Keating (18:33.360)

or I respect the man and his colleague,

Lex Fridman (18:35.960)

Anna Aegis, who works really hard with him.

Lex Fridman (18:38.440)

But nevertheless, this has certain attractions to it.

Lex Fridman (18:41.560)

And what it does most foremost is that it removes

Brian Keating (18:45.640)

the quantum gravity aspect from cosmology.

Lex Fridman (18:49.280)

So it takes away 50% of the motivation

Brian Keating (18:52.160)

for a theory of quantum gravity.

Lex Fridman (18:54.320)

You've talked a lot about quantum gravity.

Brian Keating (18:56.600)

You talk to people, eminent people on the show.

Lex Fridman (18:58.880)

Always latent in those conversations

Brian Keating (19:00.960)

is sort of the teleological expectation

Lex Fridman (19:03.640)

that there is a theory of everything.

Brian Keating (19:06.160)

There is a theory of quantum gravity.

Lex Fridman (19:08.760)

But there's no law that says

Brian Keating (19:10.560)

we have to have a theory of quantum gravity.

Lex Fridman (19:12.800)

So that kind of implicit expectation

Brian Keating (19:16.280)

has to do ultimately with the inflationary theory.

Lex Fridman (19:19.480)

So in cosmic inflation, so is that at the core?

Lex Fridman (19:23.360)

So okay, maybe you can speak to what is the negative impacts

Lex Fridman (19:28.000)

on society from believing in cosmic inflation.

Lex Fridman (19:33.000)

So one of the more kind of robust predictions of inflation,

Lex Fridman (19:37.280)

according to its other two patriarchs,

Brian Keating (19:39.720)

considered to be its patriarchs, Alan Guth at MIT

Lex Fridman (19:41.800)

and Andrei Linde at Stanford,

Brian Keating (19:44.080)

although he was in the USSR when he came up with these ideas,

Lex Fridman (19:48.080)

along with Paul Steinhardt, was that the universe

Brian Keating (19:51.200)

has to eventually get into a quantum state,

Lex Fridman (19:55.160)

has to exist in this Hilbert space,

Lex Fridman (19:57.040)

and the Hilbert space has certain features,

Lex Fridman (19:58.840)

and those features are quantum mechanical,

Brian Keating (1:00:00.040)

Gravity is, you know, we're being pulled

Lex Fridman (1:00:01.840)

towards the Andromeda galaxy at some enormous rate of speed

Brian Keating (1:00:05.360)

because of its massive counter gravitational force

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.840)

to the force we exert on it.

Lex Fridman (1:00:09.680)

So gravity is enormously long range, but incredibly weak.

Lex Fridman (1:00:13.720)

And because of that, we can think about these effects

Brian Keating (1:00:17.720)

of expansion as the relationship between the,

Lex Fridman (1:00:21.920)

as you said, the grid lines on the notebook, right?

Brian Keating (1:00:25.560)

Gravity is a manifestation of the interrelationship

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.720)

between those points, how far they are from each other.

Lex Fridman (1:00:33.160)

And those can change, those point distances can change

Lex Fridman (1:00:36.400)

over time because of the force of gravity.

Lex Fridman (1:00:39.160)

So it's weak and what we experience as gravity

Lex Fridman (1:00:43.040)

is the changing of those trajectories

Brian Keating (1:00:46.600)

from being rectilinear to curvilinear.

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.900)

That's what we experience as gravity.

Brian Keating (1:00:51.200)

You had this analogy when you talked to Barry Barish

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.440)

about bowling ball and a trampoline.

Brian Keating (1:00:55.760)

That's almost right because it's actually,

Lex Fridman (1:00:57.880)

you have to visualize that now in four dimensions,

Brian Keating (1:01:00.120)

like wrapping a trampoline at every point

Lex Fridman (1:01:02.120)

around the object, including on the sides,

Lex Fridman (1:01:04.400)

and it becomes very hard to visualize.

Lex Fridman (1:01:06.240)

So a lot of people use that.

Brian Keating (1:01:08.080)

It's also a fraught analogy because you're using gravity,

Lex Fridman (1:01:11.100)

like the notion of gravity pulling something down

Brian Keating (1:01:13.420)

to explain the notion of gravity.

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.160)

So it's a little overburdening, the analogy.

Lex Fridman (1:01:18.320)

But okay, so you mentioned Barry Barish

Lex Fridman (1:01:20.020)

wrote the forward to your book.

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.400)

How do gravitational waves fit into all of this?

Lex Fridman (1:01:24.800)

How do they, on the emotional level,

Lex Fridman (1:01:26.740)

how do they make you feel that they're just

Lex Fridman (1:01:28.800)

moving space time?

Brian Keating (1:01:30.960)

Yeah, so gravitational waves were,

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.160)

the Nobel Prize for gravitational waves discovery

Brian Keating (1:01:35.560)

the first time, it was discovered twice,

Lex Fridman (1:01:39.140)

indirectly by two men named Halcyon Taylor,

Lex Fridman (1:01:43.900)

and that was given my first year of graduate school.

Lex Fridman (1:01:45.920)

The day I entered graduate school almost,

Brian Keating (1:01:47.840)

they announced these two guys won it,

Lex Fridman (1:01:49.720)

and the guy who won it did the work

Brian Keating (1:01:51.160)

that would later win him the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (1:01:52.720)

when he was my age.

Lex Fridman (1:01:53.560)

Is this in the 40s?

Lex Fridman (1:01:55.080)

This was, no, this is 19.

Brian Keating (1:01:56.880)

That was a joke.

Lex Fridman (1:01:57.720)

Yeah, that was good, that was good.

Brian Keating (1:01:59.120)

I got it, I got it.

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.940)

You know, to a cosmologist, age means nothing.

Lex Fridman (1:02:02.840)

And to a tennis player.

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.920)

Not on Tinder.

Brian Keating (1:02:05.840)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.680)

All right, sorry.

Brian Keating (1:02:07.640)

Gravitational waves do fit in

Lex Fridman (1:02:09.500)

because what we're trying to do now

Brian Keating (1:02:12.080)

is use the properties of gravitational waves,

Lex Fridman (1:02:15.120)

the analogous properties that they have to photons,

Brian Keating (1:02:18.260)

that they travel at the speed of light,

Lex Fridman (1:02:20.100)

that they go through everything,

Brian Keating (1:02:21.180)

they can go through everything,

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.680)

and that they're directly detectable.

Brian Keating (1:02:24.640)

We're using them to try to confirm

Lex Fridman (1:02:28.600)

if or if not inflation occurred.

Lex Fridman (1:02:32.000)

So did inflation, the spark that ignited

Lex Fridman (1:02:34.800)

the fusion of the elements in the early part of the universe

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.200)

and the initial expansion of the universe,

Lex Fridman (1:02:39.520)

did that take place?

Brian Keating (1:02:40.640)

There's only one way that cosmologists believe

Lex Fridman (1:02:43.240)

we could ever see that.

Brian Keating (1:02:44.560)

Through the imprint

Lex Fridman (1:02:46.040)

of these primordial gravitational waves,

Brian Keating (1:02:48.400)

not these old newcomers that Barry studies,

Lex Fridman (1:02:51.440)

the ones that occurred a billion light years away from us,

Brian Keating (1:02:55.080)

a billion years ago,

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.720)

but we're seeing things that happened 13.82 billion years ago

Brian Keating (1:02:59.560)

during the inflationary epoch.

Lex Fridman (1:03:02.000)

However, those, we cannot build a LIGO

Lex Fridman (1:03:05.520)

and put it at the Big Bang.

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.920)

So if you want to measure,

Brian Keating (1:03:09.320)

let's say you have the old time firecracker,

Lex Fridman (1:03:12.520)

let's say there's a firecracker,

Lex Fridman (1:03:13.680)

and you want to see if it went off

Lex Fridman (1:03:15.240)

in the building next door to you,

Brian Keating (1:03:16.840)

you can't see it.

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.040)

So you can't see the imprint of it, but you can hear it.

Lex Fridman (1:03:21.080)

And what we're trying to do is hear

Lex Fridman (1:03:22.960)

the effect of gravitational waves from the Big Bang,

Brian Keating (1:03:25.720)

not by using a camera or even an interferometer

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.320)

like Barry used and his colleagues,

Lex Fridman (1:03:31.760)

but instead using the CMB, the light,

Lex Fridman (1:03:35.280)

the primordial ancient fossils of the universe,

Brian Keating (1:03:37.840)

the oldest light in the universe.

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.600)

We're gonna use that as a film, quote unquote,

Brian Keating (1:03:43.000)

onto which gravitational waves get exposed.

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.040)

And hope you can, so what are the challenges there

Lex Fridman (1:03:48.600)

to get enough accuracy for the exposure?

Lex Fridman (1:03:51.840)

So the signal, as I said,

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.960)

so there's 420 of these photons per cubic centimeter,

Lex Fridman (1:03:56.840)

and there's a lot of cubic centimeters in the universe.

Brian Keating (1:03:59.280)

However, what we're looking for

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.800)

is not the brightness of the photon, how intense it is.

Brian Keating (1:04:04.840)

We're not looking for its color, what wavelength it is.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.480)

We're looking for what its polarization is.

Lex Fridman (1:04:10.200)

And we'll go, let me just ask,

Lex Fridman (1:04:11.800)

are you serious about the per cubic millimeter,

Lex Fridman (1:04:13.960)

420 is the number?

Lex Fridman (1:04:15.040)

Centimeter.

Brian Keating (1:04:15.880)

Yes, cubic centimeter, 420 is the number.

Lex Fridman (1:04:20.240)

I wonder if Elon knows this,

Lex Fridman (1:04:21.560)

and if he doesn't, he will truly enjoy this.

Lex Fridman (1:04:23.680)

Okay, yeah, that's true.

Brian Keating (1:04:26.680)

Oh, okay, funding security, excellent.

Lex Fridman (1:04:30.280)

So I mean, this takes us to this story of heartbreak,

Brian Keating (1:04:34.080)

of triumph that you described in losing the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.360)

So describe what polarization is that you mentioned.

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.360)

Can you describe what bicep one and bicep two are,

Lex Fridman (1:04:46.080)

bicep three, perhaps, the instruments

Lex Fridman (1:04:48.800)

that can detect this kind of polarization?

Lex Fridman (1:04:51.440)

What are the challenges, the origin story, the whole thing?

Brian Keating (1:04:54.960)

Yeah, so well, the origin story goes back again

Lex Fridman (1:04:57.640)

to like a father son rivalry, it really does.

Brian Keating (1:05:00.200)

My father won all these prizes, awards, et cetera,

Lex Fridman (1:05:02.440)

but he never won a Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:05:04.200)

And some parents in America, they compete with their kids.

Lex Fridman (1:05:08.000)

Oh, I was a football player in high school, I'll show you.

Lex Fridman (1:05:10.120)

And whatever, wrestling, whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.640)

And some of us could be healthy too.

Lex Fridman (1:05:13.840)

But with me and my dad, it wasn't super healthy.

Lex Fridman (1:05:17.280)

Like we would compete and he was much more

Brian Keating (1:05:20.560)

of a pure mathematician and I was an experimental physicist.

Lex Fridman (1:05:23.080)

So we had both different ideas

Brian Keating (1:05:25.080)

in what was worth prioritizing our time.

Lex Fridman (1:05:27.720)

But I knew for sure he didn't win the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:05:30.040)

And I knew I could kind of outdo him.

Lex Fridman (1:05:32.240)

So I feel pretty venal and kind of minuscule

Brian Keating (1:05:35.780)

kind of character wise saying that.

Lex Fridman (1:05:37.240)

The only reason you could outdo him

Brian Keating (1:05:38.800)

is because the Fields Medal is given every four years.

Lex Fridman (1:05:41.760)

And only if you're under 40, which he was.

Lex Fridman (1:05:43.920)

So he's working under much more limited conditions.

Lex Fridman (1:05:47.640)

That's right, so even if I had, which spoiler alert,

Brian Keating (1:05:50.800)

the book's called Losing the Nobel Prize, so I didn't do it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:53.560)

But I wanted to do something big

Lex Fridman (1:05:54.920)

and I wanted to do something that would really

Lex Fridman (1:05:58.080)

just unequivocally be realized as in a discovery

Brian Keating (1:06:01.080)

for the ages, as in fact it was

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.840)

when we made the premature announcement

Brian Keating (1:06:04.380)

that we had been successful.

Lex Fridman (1:06:05.760)

So you were from the beginning reaching for the big questions.

Brian Keating (1:06:10.520)

That's all I cared about.

Lex Fridman (1:06:11.440)

As an experimenter you were swinging for the fences.

Brian Keating (1:06:14.480)

That's all I wanted to do.

Lex Fridman (1:06:15.680)

I felt like if it's not, if it's worth spending

Brian Keating (1:06:20.920)

perhaps the rest of my life on as a scientist,

Lex Fridman (1:06:24.320)

it better be damn well better be interesting to me

Brian Keating (1:06:26.600)

to carry me through, to give me the,

Lex Fridman (1:06:29.120)

I always say passion is great when people say,

Brian Keating (1:06:31.480)

oh, follow your passion, but it's not enough.

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.720)

Passion's like the spark that ignites the rocket,

Lex Fridman (1:06:35.880)

but that's not enough to get the rocket into space.

Lex Fridman (1:06:38.520)

So then you swung for the fences with Bicep One.

Lex Fridman (1:06:41.840)

What is this?

Lex Fridman (1:06:42.760)

So Bicep One was born out of

Brian Keating (1:06:45.240)

kind of interesting circumstances.

Lex Fridman (1:06:46.520)

So I had gone to Stanford University for a postdoc,

Lex Fridman (1:06:49.880)

so an academic hunger games.

Lex Fridman (1:06:51.680)

Stanford? Stanford University.

Brian Keating (1:06:54.480)

Yeah, it's this small little school.

Lex Fridman (1:06:56.240)

It's not like that technical college in Massachusetts

Brian Keating (1:06:59.200)

that you're affiliated with.

Lex Fridman (1:07:00.660)

But as I went there, I was working

Brian Keating (1:07:04.160)

for a new assistant professor.

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.760)

She had gotten there only a year before I got there,

Lex Fridman (1:07:08.960)

and she had her own priorities,

Lex Fridman (1:07:10.440)

the things that she wanted to do.

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.040)

But I kept thinking in my spare time

Lex Fridman (1:07:14.500)

that I wanted to do something completely different.

Brian Keating (1:07:16.100)

She was studying galaxies at high redshift,

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.700)

and I wanted to study the origin of the universe

Brian Keating (1:07:19.800)

using this type of technology.

Lex Fridman (1:07:22.200)

And I realized, courtesy of a good friend of mine

Brian Keating (1:07:25.400)

who's now at Johns Hopkins, Mark Haminkowski,

Lex Fridman (1:07:28.320)

that we didn't need this enormous Hubble telescope.

Brian Keating (1:07:30.580)

We didn't need a 30 meter diameter telescope.

Lex Fridman (1:07:33.000)

We needed a tiny refracting telescope,

Brian Keating (1:07:35.280)

no bigger than my head, less than a foot across.

Lex Fridman (1:07:38.200)

And that telescope would have the same power

Brian Keating (1:07:40.080)

as a Hubble telescope, size telescope could have,

Lex Fridman (1:07:43.120)

because the signals that we're looking for

Brian Keating (1:07:44.560)

are enormous in wavelength on the sky.

Lex Fridman (1:07:46.800)

They're enormously long, large area signals on the sky.

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.340)

And if we could measure that,

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.240)

it would be proof, effectively,

Brian Keating (1:07:53.520)

as close as you get to proof,

Lex Fridman (1:07:54.940)

there could be things that mimic it,

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.960)

but that we discovered the inflationary epoch.

Lex Fridman (1:07:58.900)

Inflation being the signal originally conceived

Brian Keating (1:08:01.600)

by Alan Guth to explain why the universe

Lex Fridman (1:08:04.240)

had the large scale features that it does,

Brian Keating (1:08:06.440)

namely that it has so called flat geometry.

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.040)

So there's no way to make a triangle in space

Brian Keating (1:08:12.120)

in our universe that has three interior angles

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.340)

that do not sum to 180 degrees.

Brian Keating (1:08:18.240)

You can do that with spacecraft,

Lex Fridman (1:08:19.600)

you can do that with stars,

Brian Keating (1:08:20.600)

you can do that with laser beams,

Lex Fridman (1:08:21.600)

you can do that with three different galaxies.

Brian Keating (1:08:23.600)

All those galaxies, no matter how far you go,

Lex Fridman (1:08:25.760)

have this geometry, it's remarkable.

Lex Fridman (1:08:27.840)

But it's also unstable, it's very unlikely,

Lex Fridman (1:08:30.880)

it's very seemingly finely tuned.

Lex Fridman (1:08:32.960)

And that was one of the motivations that Guth had

Lex Fridman (1:08:34.720)

to kind of conceive of this new idea called inflation 1979

Brian Keating (1:08:39.160)

when he was a postdoc also at Stanford, Slack.

Lex Fridman (1:08:42.380)

And he was trying to get a permanent job,

Brian Keating (1:08:44.400)

I was trying to like make my name for myself.

Lex Fridman (1:08:46.560)

And so I realized I could do this,

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.600)

but I was also being paid by this professor at Stanford

Lex Fridman (1:08:51.820)

to do a job for her.

Lex Fridman (1:08:53.080)

And I was kind of a crappy employee, to be honest with you.

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.800)

And then one day she couldn't take it anymore

Brian Keating (1:08:58.480)

because I was like sketching notebooks

Lex Fridman (1:09:00.000)

and planning these experiments.

Lex Fridman (1:09:01.300)

And I just, I wasn't, no, I actually.

Lex Fridman (1:09:03.120)

Big ideas in your mind, you're planning big experiments.

Lex Fridman (1:09:06.080)

And that was difficult to work with on a small scale

Lex Fridman (1:09:10.000)

for like a postdoc type of situation

Brian Keating (1:09:12.320)

where you have to publish basic papers,

Lex Fridman (1:09:15.320)

deliver on some basic deadlines for a project,

Brian Keating (1:09:17.800)

all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:09:18.640)

And support your advisors, paying, she was paying me.

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.120)

And so one day I came in and it actually involved

Lex Fridman (1:09:26.040)

another friend of mine, an astronomer named Jill Tarter,

Brian Keating (1:09:28.800)

one of the pioneers in the SETI science business

Lex Fridman (1:09:31.760)

of detecting extraterrestrials,

Brian Keating (1:09:33.480)

which I assume you'd never like to talk about aliens,

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.900)

so I'm sure we won't get into aliens.

Lex Fridman (1:09:37.900)

But Jill was visiting Stanford and I was like,

Lex Fridman (1:09:40.180)

I really wanna meet her, can you introduce me?

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.400)

And she said, no, in fact, you're fired, my boss.

Lex Fridman (1:09:45.240)

So I was like, this is possibly the best thing

Brian Keating (1:09:48.920)

that could ever happen to me.

Lex Fridman (1:09:50.080)

I didn't know where it would lead or what would happen to it,

Lex Fridman (1:09:52.640)

but getting fired from this ultra prestigious university

Lex Fridman (1:09:56.320)

turned out to be the path, I mean, literally,

Brian Keating (1:09:58.440)

that brings me here today, in that because of that,

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.560)

I ended up working for another person in Caltech,

Brian Keating (1:10:05.800)

which is in Pasadena, and she, my original boss,

Lex Fridman (1:10:10.080)

Sarah Church, she got me the job with her former advisor,

Brian Keating (1:10:12.920)

a man by the name of Andrew Lang.

Lex Fridman (1:10:14.980)

And Andrew was like, he was like this, I don't know,

Brian Keating (1:10:17.720)

like he's like Steve Jobs or Elon, charismatic,

Lex Fridman (1:10:23.640)

handsome, persuasive, idea man,

Brian Keating (1:10:27.120)

not the guy always in the lobby and doing everything,

Lex Fridman (1:10:29.260)

but understood where things are going decades from now.

Lex Fridman (1:10:33.960)

And he had been involved in an experiment

Lex Fridman (1:10:35.200)

that actually measured the universe was flat,

Brian Keating (1:10:37.840)

very close to flat, along with a preceding experiment

Lex Fridman (1:10:41.100)

done at Princeton by Lyman Page and other collaborators.

Lex Fridman (1:10:43.440)

So the shape of the universe is flat.

Lex Fridman (1:10:45.240)

The geometry of the universe is flat.

Lex Fridman (1:10:47.640)

How did he do that experiment?

Lex Fridman (1:10:49.400)

So he used the cosmic microwave background.

Lex Fridman (1:10:51.880)

And so what I said is you have to look for triangles

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.760)

in the universe.

Lex Fridman (1:10:55.600)

So you can measure triangles on earth.

Lex Fridman (1:10:56.920)

You can actually, it's hard to show that the earth is curved,

Lex Fridman (1:10:59.960)

but you can show the earth is curved using triangles,

Lex Fridman (1:11:02.000)

mountain tops, et cetera,

Brian Keating (1:11:03.000)

if you have an accurate enough protractor.

Lex Fridman (1:11:04.840)

Allegedly, yeah.

Brian Keating (1:11:05.760)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:11:07.580)

God, you're like auto canceling.

Brian Keating (1:11:09.700)

This is great.

Lex Fridman (1:11:11.120)

My ratings are gonna go up, man.

Brian Keating (1:11:12.400)

This is gonna be great.

Lex Fridman (1:11:13.640)

Take out the cake.

Brian Keating (1:11:14.480)

If you want actual science, go listen to Brian.

Lex Fridman (1:11:17.240)

If you want all of these conspiracy theories

Brian Keating (1:11:19.720)

or AKA the truth about flat earth, listen to him.

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.720)

So what he used was the following triangle.

Brian Keating (1:11:27.360)

There are proto galaxy sized objects in the CMB.

Lex Fridman (1:11:32.280)

The cosmic microwave background has these patches.

Lex Fridman (1:11:34.560)

And so you can make a triangle out of the diameter

Lex Fridman (1:11:37.840)

of one of these blobs of primordial plasma,

Brian Keating (1:11:41.760)

the soup that constitutes the early universe,

Lex Fridman (1:11:43.880)

which is hydrogen.

Brian Keating (1:11:44.720)

It's very simple material.

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.080)

Understand hydrogen electrons and radiation, very simple.

Brian Keating (1:11:48.840)

Plasma physicists, son, understand it.

Lex Fridman (1:11:51.720)

The diameter is one base of the triangle.

Lex Fridman (1:11:54.680)

And then the distance to the earth is the other two legs.

Lex Fridman (1:11:57.340)

So he measured along with his colleagues at Caltech

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.000)

and then University of Rome and that's other group

Lex Fridman (1:12:02.160)

at Princeton, measured the angle,

Brian Keating (1:12:05.740)

interior angle effectively very, very accurately

Lex Fridman (1:12:08.680)

and showed that it added up to 180 degrees.

Lex Fridman (1:12:11.280)

Can you localize accurately the patches in the CMB?

Lex Fridman (1:12:15.080)

Can you know where they could trace them back location wise?

Brian Keating (1:12:19.040)

You can know where they are, but more than that,

Lex Fridman (1:12:21.040)

there's so many of these patches.

Brian Keating (1:12:22.520)

They're about one square degree on the sky.

Lex Fridman (1:12:25.680)

The sky, you may know, a sphere has about 44,000

Brian Keating (1:12:28.840)

square degrees in a sphere.

Lex Fridman (1:12:30.520)

So there's literally 44,000 of these size patches

Brian Keating (1:12:33.960)

over which he could do these kinds of measurements

Lex Fridman (1:12:36.080)

to build up very good statistics.

Brian Keating (1:12:37.680)

That's not exactly how they do it

Lex Fridman (1:12:39.280)

or how they did it in this experiment called Boomerang,

Lex Fridman (1:12:41.560)

but they did measure very accurately

Lex Fridman (1:12:43.840)

the what was called the first Doppler peak

Brian Keating (1:12:46.520)

or acoustic peak in the plasma, the primordial plasma.

Lex Fridman (1:12:49.680)

So the sphere has 44, approximately 44,000 square degrees.

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.000)

So to cover a sphere, that's a very kind of important

Lex Fridman (1:12:59.760)

data collection thing when you're sitting on a sphere

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.880)

and you're looking out into the observable universe.

Lex Fridman (1:13:04.800)

So there's a lot of patches to work with.

Brian Keating (1:13:07.880)

Yeah, and in fact, a lot of the fast kind of algorithmic

Lex Fridman (1:13:11.140)

decomposition of spheres and machine learning

Brian Keating (1:13:13.880)

in the early 2000s still used today

Lex Fridman (1:13:16.000)

was created out of this field by data analysts

Brian Keating (1:13:18.360)

using this thing called hierarchical equal area triangles

Lex Fridman (1:13:21.680)

called heel picks is what it's called.

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.600)

And so just stitch all this stuff together

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.360)

and stitch it together very accurately.

Brian Keating (1:13:29.640)

Yeah, get high statistical significance

Lex Fridman (1:13:32.160)

in order to reduce the statistical errors,

Brian Keating (1:13:34.960)

very clean signal and a measurement device

Lex Fridman (1:13:37.640)

to reduce the systematic errors.

Brian Keating (1:13:39.280)

Those are the two predominant sources of error

Lex Fridman (1:13:41.480)

in any measurement.

Brian Keating (1:13:42.640)

Those that can be improved by more and more measurement,

Lex Fridman (1:13:44.880)

you take more and more measurements to this table,

Brian Keating (1:13:46.480)

you'll get slightly better each time,

Lex Fridman (1:13:48.240)

but you only win as the number of the one

Brian Keating (1:13:51.040)

over the square root of the number of measurements,

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.240)

but the square root of 44,000 is pretty big.

Lex Fridman (1:13:55.560)

So they were able to get a very accurate measurement.

Lex Fridman (1:13:57.600)

Again, it's not exactly how they did it.

Brian Keating (1:13:58.960)

They also have to do a Fourier analysis,

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.920)

decompose that, do a power spectrum, filtration windows.

Brian Keating (1:14:04.000)

There's a lot of work that goes into it, image analysis,

Lex Fridman (1:14:06.920)

and then comparing that with cosmological parameters,

Brian Keating (1:14:09.760)

very simple model, just six different numbers

Lex Fridman (1:14:12.080)

that go into a model that made a prediction.

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.280)

And one of those is the geometry of the universe pops out.

Lex Fridman (1:14:16.780)

And that is the universe has zero spatial curvature,

Lex Fridman (1:14:19.520)

and that was called boomerang.

Lex Fridman (1:14:20.960)

So he had just come off of this.

Brian Keating (1:14:22.540)

Now, let me remind you, who was the first person

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.240)

to measure the curvature of the earth?

Brian Keating (1:14:27.280)

It's a guy named Aristophanes in the whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.880)

lived around Aristotle's time.

Brian Keating (1:14:31.960)

His name is in the history books.

Lex Fridman (1:14:33.080)

So this guy, Andrew Lang, I was like,

Brian Keating (1:14:35.160)

he's like the next Aristophanes.

Lex Fridman (1:14:38.040)

I just wanted to work for this guy.

Brian Keating (1:14:39.960)

He clearly had this brand.

Lex Fridman (1:14:41.560)

He was about 40 at the time, California

Brian Keating (1:14:43.920)

Scientist of the Year.

Lex Fridman (1:14:45.800)

I was sure he was going to win a Nobel Prize for that.

Lex Fridman (1:14:48.040)

And I knew that he, so I went down to Caltech

Lex Fridman (1:14:51.720)

to give my job talk.

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.120)

And he said, I love it.

Lex Fridman (1:14:54.860)

You got a job.

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.020)

And before I could even, before he finished the sentence,

Lex Fridman (1:14:58.480)

I said, I'll take it.

Brian Keating (1:15:00.040)

It was too good to be true.

Lex Fridman (1:15:01.760)

And I started working there at Caltech,

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.680)

and slowly but surely, because Caltech's

Lex Fridman (1:15:05.880)

a rich private university, at that time

Brian Keating (1:15:08.280)

run by a Nobel Prize winner by the name of David Baltimore,

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.440)

he just wrote us a check.

Brian Keating (1:15:12.520)

Baltimore wrote us a check and said, get started on this idea.

Lex Fridman (1:15:15.560)

And so we started coming up with the idea for what I later

Brian Keating (1:15:18.000)

named BICEP, background imaging cosmic extragalactic

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.620)

polarization, which is kind of ironic,

Brian Keating (1:15:23.840)

because we ended up measuring galactic polarization.

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.200)

We'll get to that in a minute.

Lex Fridman (1:15:27.960)

But along the way, the idea was very simple.

Lex Fridman (1:15:30.300)

We're going to make the simplest telescope you can possibly

Brian Keating (1:15:32.800)

make, which is a refracting telescope.

Lex Fridman (1:15:35.080)

Your eyes, you have two refracting telescopes

Brian Keating (1:15:37.160)

in your head.

Lex Fridman (1:15:38.520)

Only way forward is making things more complex, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:41.440)

And when you make things complex in science,

Lex Fridman (1:15:43.280)

you introduce the possibility for systematic errors.

Lex Fridman (1:15:46.240)

And so we wanted to build the cleanest instrument.

Lex Fridman (1:15:48.320)

Turns out the cleanest instrument

Brian Keating (1:15:49.400)

you can build in astronomy is a refracting telescope.

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.080)

We also had to, unlike that telescope or Galileo's,

Brian Keating (1:15:55.240)

we had to use very sensitive detectors that

Lex Fridman (1:15:58.620)

were cooled less than 1 20th of the temperature

Brian Keating (1:16:02.200)

of the cosmic background itself, which

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.600)

is the coolest temperature in the whole universe.

Lex Fridman (1:16:07.200)

So we had to cool these down to about 0.1 or 0.2 degrees

Lex Fridman (1:16:10.080)

Kelvin above absolute zero.

Brian Keating (1:16:12.320)

To do that, we needed to put it inside of a huge vacuum chamber

Lex Fridman (1:16:14.880)

and suck out all the air molecules and water molecules

Lex Fridman (1:16:17.960)

and take it to a very, very special place called the South

Lex Fridman (1:16:21.020)

Pole Antarctica, from which I retrieved for you a patch.

Brian Keating (1:16:24.800)

There it is over there.

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.000)

So when you go there, you get these bright red jackets.

Brian Keating (1:16:30.360)

Bright.

Lex Fridman (1:16:30.840)

Oh, yeah.

Brian Keating (1:16:31.680)

As somebody who was born in the Soviet Union,

Lex Fridman (1:16:34.080)

we obviously like to call it red.

Brian Keating (1:16:35.560)

United States Antarctic Program, the National Science

Lex Fridman (1:16:40.480)

Foundation.

Lex Fridman (1:16:41.560)

And the base is called the Amundsen Scott South Polar

Lex Fridman (1:16:44.360)

Station.

Lex Fridman (1:16:45.400)

So it's a little known fact of geopolitics

Lex Fridman (1:16:47.520)

that whatever country occupies a region has ownership over it.

Brian Keating (1:16:51.840)

Now, there is a treaty in Antarctica.

Lex Fridman (1:16:53.340)

You can't use it for military purposes, for mining,

Brian Keating (1:16:56.160)

et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:16:57.280)

But I don't know if you know, but about 12 years ago,

Brian Keating (1:16:59.400)

Putin sent a submarine to the North Pole.

Lex Fridman (1:17:01.720)

Now, there's no land at the North Pole, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.320)

So what did he do?

Lex Fridman (1:17:05.040)

He stuck it in the ocean underneath.

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.800)

But the South Pole is on a continent called Antarctica,

Lex Fridman (1:17:10.920)

which was first reached about 110 years ago,

Brian Keating (1:17:13.240)

the first time in human history.

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.440)

Antarctica means the opposite of the bear.

Brian Keating (1:17:18.200)

It means no bears there, basically opposite

Lex Fridman (1:17:20.680)

of where polar bears are.

Brian Keating (1:17:21.720)

Arctic means polar bear.

Lex Fridman (1:17:23.200)

That's where in the Greek.

Brian Keating (1:17:24.560)

I did not know that.

Lex Fridman (1:17:25.160)

Fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:17:25.880)

So Antarctica means the opposite place of that.

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.880)

Humans never even saw it, let alone went to the South Pole,

Brian Keating (1:17:30.680)

which is kind of in the middle of the continent.

Lex Fridman (1:17:33.600)

We went to take this telescope somewhere extremely dry.

Brian Keating (1:17:37.360)

It turns out the Sahara Desert, San Diego, Texas,

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.680)

and there's no place like the South Pole or Chile.

Brian Keating (1:17:43.800)

Those are the two premier places on Earth.

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.040)

Of course, you'd like to go into space.

Brian Keating (1:17:47.700)

There's no water in space.

Lex Fridman (1:17:48.740)

So it's not about cold.

Brian Keating (1:17:51.240)

It's about dry.

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.000)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.960)

So that's why, for example, you can take this vodka,

Lex Fridman (1:17:57.760)

and you could put it in this cup.

Lex Fridman (1:17:59.360)

And we could take it over to a microwave somewhere

Lex Fridman (1:18:01.480)

and heat it up.

Brian Keating (1:18:03.080)

After two minutes, three minutes, the water's boiling.

Lex Fridman (1:18:05.960)

You can't touch it.

Brian Keating (1:18:06.700)

Take it from me.

Lex Fridman (1:18:07.240)

Don't touch it.

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.040)

But you can touch the mug and take it out if you want to.

Lex Fridman (1:18:10.400)

Why?

Brian Keating (1:18:10.900)

Because the mug is totally bone dry.

Lex Fridman (1:18:13.000)

But the microwaves get absorbed by the water molecules

Brian Keating (1:18:15.480)

because water molecules resonate exactly

Lex Fridman (1:18:17.480)

at these microwave frequencies.

Lex Fridman (1:18:19.040)

So we don't want these precious photons, 420 of them,

Lex Fridman (1:18:22.800)

traveling per cubic centimeter from the Big Bang itself

Brian Keating (1:18:26.040)

to get absorbed in some water molecule in the Earth's

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.040)

atmosphere.

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.800)

So you take it to a place with the fewest number

Lex Fridman (1:18:30.640)

of water molecules per square centimeter of surface area.

Lex Fridman (1:18:34.480)

And that happens to be either Chile

Lex Fridman (1:18:35.960)

or my other project, the Simons Observatory, is located.

Brian Keating (1:18:38.520)

Or you take it to the South Pole.

Lex Fridman (1:18:40.720)

We took it to the South Pole and spent a couple of months

Brian Keating (1:18:44.760)

of my life down there.

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.080)

And it's like being on Hoth.

Brian Keating (1:18:49.480)

It's a completely otherworldly environment.

Lex Fridman (1:18:52.720)

Ice, planar, flat as a pancake.

Lex Fridman (1:18:55.960)

And the buildings are built up on stilts.

Lex Fridman (1:18:59.960)

They're built because the snow will otherwise cover them over.

Brian Keating (1:19:03.400)

The nearest medical facilities are 4,000 miles away.

Lex Fridman (1:19:06.840)

If you have any issues with your wisdom teeth,

Brian Keating (1:19:08.960)

they yank them before you go down there.

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.200)

If you have any issues with your appendix,

Brian Keating (1:19:12.960)

they'll cut it out of you before you go down there.

Lex Fridman (1:19:15.040)

The Russians at Vostok base, not too far away,

Brian Keating (1:19:17.080)

about 600 miles away.

Lex Fridman (1:19:18.960)

The doctors there, there's a famous picture of one

Brian Keating (1:19:20.960)

of them operating on himself, taking out his own appendix

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.540)

in the middle of winter by himself.

Lex Fridman (1:19:26.480)

So harsh conditions.

Lex Fridman (1:19:27.680)

Science in the harshest of conditions.

Brian Keating (1:19:29.840)

On Earth, at least.

Lex Fridman (1:19:31.200)

And we go to those great lengths because it's

Brian Keating (1:19:33.040)

a pristine environment to observe these precious photons.

Lex Fridman (1:19:36.520)

And we built this telescope.

Lex Fridman (1:19:38.200)

And it weighs tens of thousands of pounds.

Lex Fridman (1:19:40.720)

And it had to scan the sky almost like it's a robot.

Brian Keating (1:19:44.680)

I mean, it's scanning the sky almost unattended.

Lex Fridman (1:19:48.440)

We have a guy who spends a year of his life down there,

Brian Keating (1:19:50.920)

a girl who spends a year of their life down there.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.040)

They're called winter overs.

Brian Keating (1:19:54.360)

They arrive in sometimes as early as November.

Lex Fridman (1:19:56.920)

And they don't leave until the following December.

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.280)

And we always joke, we'll pay you $75,000.

Lex Fridman (1:20:02.760)

You just have to work for one night of your life.

Brian Keating (1:20:04.720)

That's all.

Lex Fridman (1:20:05.240)

But it's a long night.

Lex Fridman (1:20:08.020)

And what BICEP is, and I couldn't

Lex Fridman (1:20:10.660)

bring my polarized sunglasses here,

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.640)

so I brought these actual polarizers here.

Lex Fridman (1:20:14.560)

So if you take this and put it in front of your telescope

Brian Keating (1:20:17.120)

there, you have now made a polarimeter.

Lex Fridman (1:20:21.240)

You have made a polarization sensitive telescope.

Brian Keating (1:20:24.180)

Now, you may not be able to immediately know

Lex Fridman (1:20:26.400)

how you would use such a thing.

Lex Fridman (1:20:27.920)

But one way to think about it, now take this guy

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.460)

and look at a light, look at a light source.

Brian Keating (1:20:33.760)

Put one up to your eye.

Lex Fridman (1:20:34.880)

And now put the other one in front of it anywhere.

Lex Fridman (1:20:37.960)

And now rotate them.

Lex Fridman (1:20:40.000)

What happens to the light source?

Brian Keating (1:20:42.480)

Becomes brighter and dimmer and brighter and dimmer.

Lex Fridman (1:20:45.520)

Yeah, so it's called a quadrupolar pattern, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:48.200)

So it's repeating.

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.080)

It goes bright, dim, bright, dim.

Brian Keating (1:20:51.800)

It rotates twice in intensity for every single physical

Lex Fridman (1:20:55.480)

rotation.

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.720)

And that's because of the property of the photon.

Lex Fridman (1:20:58.720)

The photon is a spin one field.

Lex Fridman (1:21:00.560)

But the polarization of light is the axis

Lex Fridman (1:21:04.880)

at which its electric field is oscillating.

Brian Keating (1:21:07.320)

Its electric field is marching straight up and straight down.

Lex Fridman (1:21:10.560)

And so therefore, vertical polarization

Brian Keating (1:21:12.160)

is the same as negative vertical polarization.

Lex Fridman (1:21:15.040)

And so you get the same pattern as you rotate two times

Brian Keating (1:21:17.600)

for every one physical rotation.

Lex Fridman (1:21:19.240)

This is like a spin two object.

Lex Fridman (1:21:22.800)

So now if you put that in front of the telescope,

Lex Fridman (1:21:26.320)

you can do one of two things.

Brian Keating (1:21:27.560)

Now you're polarizing all the light that's

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.280)

going in because you have one of the polarizers.

Lex Fridman (1:21:31.680)

And then you can analyze it as you rotate the other one.

Lex Fridman (1:21:34.120)

You can analyze it and change the amount of polarization.

Brian Keating (1:21:37.120)

Or you can put this kind of very special crystal in here.

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.040)

There's a crystal.

Brian Keating (1:21:40.840)

It's called calcite.

Lex Fridman (1:21:42.240)

This is from Lex Luthor, not Lex Friedman.

Brian Keating (1:21:44.840)

This crystal, put it on top of your printed notes

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.560)

there and tell me what does it look like?

Brian Keating (1:21:50.840)

There's a, like I could see everything twice.

Lex Fridman (1:21:56.440)

It's a double image.

Brian Keating (1:21:57.280)

It's a double image.

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.440)

That is a special crystal that has two different indices

Brian Keating (1:22:01.080)

of refraction.

Lex Fridman (1:22:02.680)

So light emerging, which is unpolarized from the black ink,

Brian Keating (1:22:06.120)

comes out.

Lex Fridman (1:22:07.320)

And it splits into two different directions.

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.840)

And it could split even more if I made the crystal give you

Lex Fridman (1:22:12.560)

my more expensive crystal.

Lex Fridman (1:22:13.720)

But that's all I have.

Lex Fridman (1:22:14.360)

What is the crystal with this kind of property called?

Brian Keating (1:22:16.240)

It's called calcite.

Lex Fridman (1:22:17.360)

This is crystal.

Brian Keating (1:22:18.240)

It's called birefringent crystal.

Lex Fridman (1:22:20.000)

Bi means two.

Brian Keating (1:22:21.160)

Refringent means refracting.

Lex Fridman (1:22:23.440)

So this is a special type of material

Brian Keating (1:22:25.480)

that separates light based on its polarization.

Lex Fridman (1:22:28.040)

It's a pretty clean bi signal.

Brian Keating (1:22:31.720)

It's cleanly two.

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.120)

I'm seeing two very cleanly.

Brian Keating (1:22:36.760)

It's very crisp, right.

Lex Fridman (1:22:37.600)

So that's yours to keep with every time you host me.

Brian Keating (1:22:40.000)

Now, take the polarizer underneath your left hand.

Lex Fridman (1:22:43.720)

Put it on top of the crystal, and kind of move it back

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.480)

and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:22:48.000)

What's happening?

Brian Keating (1:22:49.400)

This is incredible.

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.680)

You can switch.

Brian Keating (1:22:51.560)

As you rotate, you switch from one signal to the other.

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.760)

So it's one of the refractions to the other.

Brian Keating (1:22:58.680)

Whoa.

Lex Fridman (1:22:59.200)

So that is now you are analyzing the polarization.

Brian Keating (1:23:02.920)

You're confirming the light comes out of the crystal.

Lex Fridman (1:23:05.200)

Two different types of polarization.

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.200)

And effectively, what we do is we have those two things,

Lex Fridman (1:23:11.080)

if you like.

Lex Fridman (1:23:12.040)

But working in the microwave, so that's

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.800)

where the cosmic photons are brightest,

Brian Keating (1:23:16.720)

in the microwave regime in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Lex Fridman (1:23:19.920)

And we're coupling that to a refracting telescope.

Lex Fridman (1:23:22.000)

But your eyes are refracting telescopes.

Lex Fridman (1:23:23.720)

So you are a polarimeter right now.

Brian Keating (1:23:25.520)

The human eye can actually slightly detect polarization.

Lex Fridman (1:23:29.160)

But otherwise, it mainly detects its intensity of light

Lex Fridman (1:23:31.840)

and the color.

Lex Fridman (1:23:32.440)

That's what we call color and intensity, brightness.

Lex Fridman (1:23:34.960)

So you're devising an instrument that's

Lex Fridman (1:23:37.160)

very precisely measuring that polarization.

Brian Keating (1:23:38.840)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:23:39.920)

And doing so in the microwave region with detectors

Brian Keating (1:23:42.680)

not made of biological human retina cells,

Lex Fridman (1:23:46.080)

but of superconductors and things called bolometers.

Lex Fridman (1:23:49.840)

And this has to be done at temperatures

Lex Fridman (1:23:52.360)

close to absolute zero under vacuum conditions

Brian Keating (1:23:55.120)

one billionth of the pressure we feel here at sea level.

Lex Fridman (1:23:58.640)

So why is it that this kind of device

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.320)

could win a Nobel Prize?

Lex Fridman (1:24:03.160)

So when the CMB was discovered, it

Brian Keating (1:24:05.920)

was discovered serendipitously.

Lex Fridman (1:24:07.360)

There were two radio astronomers working at the time

Brian Keating (1:24:11.560)

at Bell Laboratories.

Lex Fridman (1:24:13.040)

Now, why would Bell Laboratories be

Lex Fridman (1:24:14.600)

employing radio astronomers?

Lex Fridman (1:24:16.120)

Bell Laboratories was kind of like Apple,

Brian Keating (1:24:19.560)

or it was like a think tank, or it was Google.

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.920)

Let's say it was like Google.

Lex Fridman (1:24:23.080)

Google has Google X. It has this thing and that thing, right?

Lex Fridman (1:24:26.760)

So they were working there.

Lex Fridman (1:24:28.680)

But imagine if Google was employing radio astronomers.

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.480)

They were actively recruiting them.

Lex Fridman (1:24:32.920)

Why would they do that?

Lex Fridman (1:24:33.920)

Well, it turns out that was the beginning in the 1960s,

Brian Keating (1:24:36.480)

was the first commercial satellite

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.160)

launch for communication.

Lex Fridman (1:24:41.040)

And so Bell Labs, which would later become the telephone

Lex Fridman (1:24:44.400)

part of AT&T, the early telephone company,

Brian Keating (1:24:47.280)

later invent the first cell phone the year I was born.

Lex Fridman (1:24:50.520)

And they would take that, 1946, and they

Brian Keating (1:24:53.200)

would take that telescope technology

Lex Fridman (1:24:56.000)

that radio astronomers had developed,

Lex Fridman (1:24:58.520)

and they would use that to see if they

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.560)

could improve the signal to noise of the satellites

Brian Keating (1:25:02.680)

that they were seeing.

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.600)

And they found they couldn't.

Brian Keating (1:25:05.040)

They found that they could not improve the signal to noise

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.360)

ratio of the first telecommunication satellite.

Brian Keating (1:25:10.160)

It was like the equivalent to one kilobit per second modem.

Lex Fridman (1:25:13.280)

They were bouncing signals from the West Coast

Brian Keating (1:25:16.440)

up to the satellite, bouncing it down,

Lex Fridman (1:25:18.320)

landing it in New Jersey, of all places,

Brian Keating (1:25:21.360)

in northern New Jersey, Holmdell, New Jersey.

Lex Fridman (1:25:25.160)

And these radio astronomers couldn't get rid of the signal.

Lex Fridman (1:25:27.480)

So they said, well, New Jersey's not far from New York.

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.200)

Let's see if the signal's coming from New York.

Brian Keating (1:25:31.600)

No, not coming from New York.

Lex Fridman (1:25:33.040)

Let's see if it changes with the year.

Brian Keating (1:25:34.280)

Maybe it's coming from the galaxy,

Lex Fridman (1:25:35.400)

which was also discovered there by Jansky in 1930 something.

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.680)

So in not being able to reduce the signal

Lex Fridman (1:25:41.480)

or increase the signal to noise ratio, the noise was not good.

Brian Keating (1:25:45.120)

They knew the signal was right.

Lex Fridman (1:25:46.720)

They couldn't get rid of the noise.

Lex Fridman (1:25:48.120)

And there was excess noise over the model that

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.040)

had not only been predicted by them,

Lex Fridman (1:25:52.080)

but had been measured by a previous guy, a guy

Lex Fridman (1:25:54.080)

by the name of Edward Ohm.

Brian Keating (1:25:55.760)

He measured the same signal, found

Lex Fridman (1:25:57.680)

that there was this hiss of static, of radio static

Brian Keating (1:26:00.320)

that he could not get rid of, that had

Lex Fridman (1:26:02.000)

a value of about 3 Kelvin.

Lex Fridman (1:26:04.000)

So you can translate.

Lex Fridman (1:26:04.800)

Remember I said, if you take a radio telescope

Lex Fridman (1:26:07.520)

and you point it at an object that's hot,

Lex Fridman (1:26:10.560)

the radio telescope's detector will

Brian Keating (1:26:12.040)

get to the same temperature as the object.

Lex Fridman (1:26:14.120)

It's a principle of radio thermodynamics.

Lex Fridman (1:26:16.120)

So it's a really interesting thing.

Lex Fridman (1:26:17.480)

It's a thermometer.

Brian Keating (1:26:18.320)

You can stick it into Jupiter from here on Earth.

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.320)

It's amazing.

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.520)

And so we in radio astronomy characterize our signal

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.560)

not by its intensity, but by its temperature.

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.640)

So he found, this guy Edward Ohm, oh, there's

Lex Fridman (1:26:29.960)

this 3 Kelvin signal.

Brian Keating (1:26:31.120)

I can't get rid of it.

Lex Fridman (1:26:32.280)

It must be I did my error analysis wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:26:35.000)

And I would give him an F if he was one of my first year

Lex Fridman (1:26:37.720)

students.

Lex Fridman (1:26:38.840)

But he's just attributed to lack of understanding.

Lex Fridman (1:26:41.560)

These other guys, Penzias and Wilson,

Brian Keating (1:26:43.800)

who are also radio astronomers, they said, no,

Lex Fridman (1:26:46.320)

let's build another experiment, put that inside

Brian Keating (1:26:49.280)

of our telescope, and do what's called calibration.

Lex Fridman (1:26:53.000)

Inject a known source of signal every second that

Brian Keating (1:26:56.800)

has a temperature of about 4 Kelvin,

Lex Fridman (1:26:58.760)

because the signal they're trying to get rid of

Brian Keating (1:27:00.300)

is about 3 Kelvin.

Lex Fridman (1:27:01.480)

And you want to have it as close as possible

Brian Keating (1:27:02.920)

to the pernicious signal as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:27:04.840)

They did that once a second.

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.320)

So they got billions of measurements,

Lex Fridman (1:27:07.560)

millions of measurements over the course

Brian Keating (1:27:08.840)

of several months, years, and even,

Lex Fridman (1:27:11.280)

by the end of, you know, millions of measurements

Brian Keating (1:27:13.040)

for sure.

Lex Fridman (1:27:14.520)

And they found they couldn't get rid of it either,

Lex Fridman (1:27:16.320)

but they measured it was exactly 2.7265 degrees Kelvin.

Lex Fridman (1:27:20.400)

So how does having a 4 Kelvin source,

Lex Fridman (1:27:24.480)

how does the calibration work, just out of curiosity?

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.560)

It could be larger.

Brian Keating (1:27:27.400)

Imagine like you're trying to calibrate the microphone.

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.120)

Like you could do it with like a really loud sound,

Lex Fridman (1:27:31.260)

but the gain would start to compress.

Lex Fridman (1:27:33.560)

So there are amplifiers downstream from the detector

Brian Keating (1:27:36.000)

in every experiment that I've ever worked on.

Lex Fridman (1:27:38.640)

And they only have a linear region over a very small region.

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.400)

And you want to keep it as linear as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.360)

That means you want, if you're trying to get rid of it,

Brian Keating (1:27:45.160)

you're trying to compare like a voice,

Lex Fridman (1:27:47.080)

and you're trying to compare that to a jet engine,

Brian Keating (1:27:49.600)

it's not going to be as easy on the amplifiers

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.520)

as getting a slightly loud gong or something, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.960)

So the idea of the noise is present in both?

Lex Fridman (1:27:59.160)

There's noise present in both.

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.400)

And you measure, what they did is

Lex Fridman (1:28:02.320)

they made a separate measurement just

Brian Keating (1:28:03.880)

of the calibration system, which they measured

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.200)

exactly very well.

Brian Keating (1:28:07.160)

4 Kelvin is the temperature of a liquid helium.

Lex Fridman (1:28:09.320)

That's a temperature that's not going to change.

Lex Fridman (1:28:11.480)

And it's certainly not going to change

Lex Fridman (1:28:12.360)

over a time scale of one second.

Lex Fridman (1:28:14.160)

And so they could compare unknown signal,

Lex Fridman (1:28:16.080)

known signal, unknown signal, known signal,

Brian Keating (1:28:17.760)

like a scale, like a balance.

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.960)

So another way to think about it is like this.

Brian Keating (1:28:20.360)

You've seen these Libra kind of balances,

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.520)

where you put two weights in a pan, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:24.400)

What happens if you put like a one ounce weight on one side

Lex Fridman (1:28:27.040)

and a 20 kilogram weight in the other?

Lex Fridman (1:28:28.440)

You don't get any measurement, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:30.200)

You do get kind of a measurement if they're close in weight.

Brian Keating (1:28:32.320)

That's why they use 4 Kelvin.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.760)

Got it, but just to linger on the fact

Brian Keating (1:28:36.400)

that there's a romantic element to the fact

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.240)

that you're arriving at the same temperature.

Brian Keating (1:28:41.200)

That's kind of fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.040)

And you measuring stuff in terms of,

Brian Keating (1:28:43.640)

you're measuring signal in terms of temperature

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.640)

at the source.

Brian Keating (1:28:46.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:28:47.680)

So you get to, I mean, there's something

Brian Keating (1:28:49.440)

about temperature that's intimate.

Lex Fridman (1:28:51.220)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (1:28:52.060)

It's cool.

Lex Fridman (1:28:52.880)

Yeah, especially since, you know, all life

Brian Keating (1:28:55.120)

is basically, you know, conversion of energy

Lex Fridman (1:28:57.560)

and trying to control entropy,

Brian Keating (1:28:58.920)

which is then related to thermodynamics

Lex Fridman (1:29:01.160)

exactly in that way.

Lex Fridman (1:29:02.600)

And this is very crucial kind of thing to do in science

Lex Fridman (1:29:06.680)

because they weren't looking for the signal.

Brian Keating (1:29:08.640)

They found it accidentally,

Lex Fridman (1:29:10.180)

these two scientists, Penzias and Wilson.

Lex Fridman (1:29:12.720)

And I like to think that those kinds of discoveries

Lex Fridman (1:29:15.160)

are the purest in science.

Brian Keating (1:29:16.540)

Like when you see something, Isaac Asimov once said,

Lex Fridman (1:29:19.080)

like the most important reaction as a scientist is not,

Brian Keating (1:29:22.260)

Eureka, which means in Greek, as you know, I have found it.

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.440)

No, he said, no, he said like, that's weird.

Brian Keating (1:29:29.060)

Like that's a much better reaction

Lex Fridman (1:29:30.720)

or that's freaking cool.

Brian Keating (1:29:31.880)

Like that's a scientist, not like, oh, I found one.

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.760)

Because.

Brian Keating (1:29:35.580)

Surprise.

Lex Fridman (1:29:36.420)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (1:29:37.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:29:38.080)

Because if you find what you're gonna find,

Brian Keating (1:29:38.920)

that's what leads us susceptible to confirmation bias,

Lex Fridman (1:29:43.000)

which is deadly inside, you know,

Brian Keating (1:29:44.720)

as close to deadly as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:29:46.240)

So how does that take us to something

Lex Fridman (1:29:47.960)

that's potentially worthy of a Nobel Prize?

Lex Fridman (1:29:51.120)

So Penzias and Wilson weren't looking for a signal.

Brian Keating (1:29:54.240)

They ended up discovering the heat leftover

Lex Fridman (1:29:56.500)

from the fusion of helium from hydrogen, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.640)

And that was a serendipitous discovery.

Lex Fridman (1:30:03.040)

They won the Nobel Prize in 1978.

Brian Keating (1:30:04.800)

It was the first one ever awarded in cosmology.

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.640)

My reasoning is, what if you could explain

Brian Keating (1:30:09.860)

not only how the elements got formed,

Lex Fridman (1:30:11.720)

but how the whole universe got formed

Lex Fridman (1:30:13.820)

and kill off every other model of science.

Lex Fridman (1:30:16.680)

So if that weren't enough, every scientist, you know,

Brian Keating (1:30:19.760)

worth his or her salt had told me and Andrew Lang

Lex Fridman (1:30:23.440)

and our colleagues, this is a slam dunk Nobel Prize,

Brian Keating (1:30:26.480)

if you could do it.

Lex Fridman (1:30:27.820)

Because it was really explaining, again,

Brian Keating (1:30:29.820)

the stakes of this science is different

Lex Fridman (1:30:31.600)

than like super fluidity, plasma physics.

Brian Keating (1:30:33.900)

When you talk about the origin of the universe,

Lex Fridman (1:30:36.440)

it ties into everything.

Brian Keating (1:30:37.880)

It ties into philosophy, theology.

Lex Fridman (1:30:41.860)

You realize if Paul Steinhardt is correct,

Brian Keating (1:30:45.480)

that the Bible can't be correct.

Lex Fridman (1:30:47.280)

In other words, where the Bible is correct now

Brian Keating (1:30:49.360)

isn't falsified, if you like, if you believe it.

Lex Fridman (1:30:52.120)

I never use the Bible as a science book, obviously.

Lex Fridman (1:30:54.800)

But the Bible speaks of a singular beginning.

Lex Fridman (1:30:57.820)

What if you knew for sure the universe was not singular?

Brian Keating (1:31:00.600)

It would be more like the cosmology of Akhenaten

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.480)

and Egyptians than the biblical Torah, Old Testament,

Brian Keating (1:31:07.120)

if you will, narrative.

Lex Fridman (1:31:08.720)

So in my mind, the stakes could not be higher.

Lex Fridman (1:31:11.400)

And again, it's not an offense, because we need plasma physics.

Lex Fridman (1:31:14.140)

We need every type of physics except maybe biophysics.

Brian Keating (1:31:17.560)

We literally use every branch of physics, thermodynamics,

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.320)

superconductivity, quantum mechanics,

Brian Keating (1:31:22.200)

all that goes into our understanding

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.260)

of the instrument.

Lex Fridman (1:31:25.000)

And even further, if you want to understand the theory that

Lex Fridman (1:31:27.800)

predicts the signal that we purport to measure.

Lex Fridman (1:31:29.760)

So I rationalize that if Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel

Lex Fridman (1:31:34.040)

Prize for this, if Hulse and Taylor won the Nobel

Brian Keating (1:31:37.220)

Prize for indirectly detecting gravitational waves,

Lex Fridman (1:31:39.760)

this is decades before LIGO, by me detecting

Brian Keating (1:31:43.500)

gravitational waves indirectly, detecting how the universe

Lex Fridman (1:31:46.880)

began, detecting the origin of the initial conditions

Brian Keating (1:31:50.840)

for the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which

Lex Fridman (1:31:52.720)

won the Nobel Prize in 1983.

Brian Keating (1:31:55.080)

These are like five Nobel Prizes potentially.

Lex Fridman (1:31:57.920)

For that reason, it seemed as close

Brian Keating (1:32:00.200)

as you could possibly get to being a slam dunk,

Lex Fridman (1:32:02.440)

to outdo what my father did, to do really this impossible.

Lex Fridman (1:32:06.160)

And at that time, Lex, again, it sounds weird.

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.720)

Because people are like, oh, you still want the Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (1:32:15.920)

You're still like greedy.

Lex Fridman (1:32:16.880)

And look, you wrote another book about it.

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.120)

And I always joke.

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.720)

I'm like, well, if you want to see if I'm a hypocrite,

Brian Keating (1:32:21.360)

just get them to give me the Nobel Prize in literature.

Lex Fridman (1:32:23.880)

And if I accept it, then I'm a hypocrite.

Brian Keating (1:32:26.560)

Oh, wait, well, we'll get to your current feelings

Lex Fridman (1:32:29.200)

on the Nobel Prize in terms of hypocrite and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:32:33.040)

So there's this ambition.

Lex Fridman (1:32:35.560)

Let's say this device, this kind of signal

Brian Keating (1:32:38.880)

could unlock many of the mysteries

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.560)

about the early universe.

Lex Fridman (1:32:42.240)

And so there's excitement there.

Lex Fridman (1:32:44.240)

So let's take it then further.

Brian Keating (1:32:47.040)

I mean, there's a human story here of a bit of heartbreak.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.240)

Not only was this possibly worth a Nobel Prize,

Brian Keating (1:32:54.560)

if the Nobel Prize was given,

Lex Fridman (1:32:57.200)

you were excluded from the list of three

Brian Keating (1:32:59.680)

that would get the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:33:01.520)

So why were you excluded?

Brian Keating (1:33:04.520)

Maybe that's a place to tell the story of Bicep 2.

Lex Fridman (1:33:07.600)

Yeah, so Bicep 2, like iPhones,

Brian Keating (1:33:10.200)

or I know you're an Android fanboy,

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.040)

but every year, they get a little bit better.

Brian Keating (1:33:14.480)

They get more megapixels.

Lex Fridman (1:33:15.680)

They get more optics, triple X zoom, whatever, OK?

Brian Keating (1:33:19.680)

We upgraded our detectors as well.

Lex Fridman (1:33:21.520)

The initial detectors were based on what

Brian Keating (1:33:23.560)

are called semiconductors.

Lex Fridman (1:33:24.880)

They have certain properties that

Brian Keating (1:33:26.800)

make them very difficult to replicate at scale.

Lex Fridman (1:33:29.320)

And we wanted to make them into superconductors, which

Brian Keating (1:33:32.120)

had a virtue that you could then mass produce them.

Lex Fridman (1:33:35.360)

Why superconductors?

Brian Keating (1:33:36.680)

Well, again, we're measuring heat.

Lex Fridman (1:33:38.320)

So one thing about a superconductor

Brian Keating (1:33:40.240)

is that it transitions from some finite resistance

Lex Fridman (1:33:43.360)

to zero resistance over a very short span of temperature

Brian Keating (1:33:47.560)

range.

Lex Fridman (1:33:48.400)

That means you can use that very short span dependency

Brian Keating (1:33:51.360)

as an accurate and sensitive and precise thermometer.

Lex Fridman (1:33:54.920)

And so my brilliant colleagues around the world,

Brian Keating (1:33:56.960)

in this case, Jamie Bok, and nowadays, Suzanne Staggs

Lex Fridman (1:33:59.360)

at Princeton, they are just exquisitely

Brian Keating (1:34:02.560)

making these sensors, tens of thousands of them.

Lex Fridman (1:34:05.840)

The initial Bicep 1 instrument, of course,

Brian Keating (1:34:07.960)

we just call the Bicep, that only had 98 detectors.

Lex Fridman (1:34:12.240)

Simon's Observatory is going to have 100 times more just

Brian Keating (1:34:15.880)

in one of our four telescopes.

Lex Fridman (1:34:17.800)

We're going to have 60,000 detectors operating

Brian Keating (1:34:20.840)

full time at 0.1 degree above absolute zero

Lex Fridman (1:34:24.520)

in the Atacama Desert.

Brian Keating (1:34:25.600)

We'll get there.

Lex Fridman (1:34:26.440)

But in the case of getting back to what Bicep did,

Brian Keating (1:34:30.200)

we upgraded and made Bicep 2.

Lex Fridman (1:34:32.600)

In January 2010, we had just installed

Brian Keating (1:34:37.920)

in the exact same location at the South Pole,

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.320)

in the same building, which is ominously called the Dark

Brian Keating (1:34:45.040)

Sector Laboratory, DSL, still operating to this very day,

Lex Fridman (1:34:49.840)

we installed a new receiver on the same platform as before.

Brian Keating (1:34:54.160)

It had very similar identical optics, cryogenics, vacuum,

Lex Fridman (1:34:57.600)

everything, except it went from 98 detectors to 512 detectors.

Lex Fridman (1:35:02.040)

So almost an order of magnitude, very substantial upgrade.

Lex Fridman (1:35:05.440)

And it had certain other features

Brian Keating (1:35:06.840)

that made it even more powerful than just a naive factor of 5.

Lex Fridman (1:35:11.040)

And then we started observing with that.

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.680)

And we knew we'd have years to go,

Lex Fridman (1:35:14.120)

and maybe we'd never see anything.

Brian Keating (1:35:15.320)

Again, we're looking for these tiny little reverberations

Lex Fridman (1:35:17.560)

in the fabric of space time produced

Brian Keating (1:35:19.200)

close to the origin of the universe as we could ever

Lex Fridman (1:35:21.720)

get to.

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.000)

So I was playing a role in that.

Lex Fridman (1:35:24.360)

Obviously, it had upgraded my version of the original idea

Brian Keating (1:35:28.200)

that I had had for BICEP along with Andrew Lang.

Lex Fridman (1:35:32.480)

And in January of 2010, I was at a meeting at UC Berkeley,

Lex Fridman (1:35:37.040)

and I got a call from Andrew Lang's,

Lex Fridman (1:35:39.120)

or I was in a meeting with Andrew Lang's thesis advisor,

Brian Keating (1:35:41.760)

Paul Richards at UC Berkeley.

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.960)

And he said that Andrew was dead.

Brian Keating (1:35:45.880)

He had taken his life by suicide.

Lex Fridman (1:35:48.920)

And this is a man, and I had already lost my father

Brian Keating (1:35:51.520)

at this point in 2010, but he was like a father figure

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.880)

to me, Andrew.

Brian Keating (1:35:55.760)

He would give me advice on marriage,

Lex Fridman (1:35:58.600)

on how I should be with my kids, and what

Brian Keating (1:36:02.140)

was the most important way to move

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.640)

through the academic ladder.

Brian Keating (1:36:04.800)

Again, he was predinaturally suited to win the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.560)

Everyone always thought he would win it.

Brian Keating (1:36:10.800)

If he were alive, he still could win it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:12.600)

In fact, his wife, or his ex wife,

Brian Keating (1:36:14.280)

won it, Frances Arnold, in 2018.

Lex Fridman (1:36:17.760)

And it was this power couple, and it destroyed me

Brian Keating (1:36:22.880)

for a long time, because he was just this magical person.

Lex Fridman (1:36:27.440)

I mean, I couldn't conceive of my career, my life,

Brian Keating (1:36:31.360)

even these aspects of raising kids and being married

Lex Fridman (1:36:35.280)

without him.

Lex Fridman (1:36:37.020)

And to do it in that way, it felt like, again,

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.880)

he's got kids, and I feel terrible for them, obviously.

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.160)

But it did feel like a betrayal.

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.480)

I mean, I'm just being honest with you.

Lex Fridman (1:36:47.160)

It felt like, why the f did you not reach out?

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.240)

I thought we were close, and I couldn't.

Brian Keating (1:36:52.720)

I told him everything, and I felt

Lex Fridman (1:36:54.240)

like he had told me everything.

Lex Fridman (1:36:56.400)

And now he was gone.

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.480)

And then, inevitably, we had to keep running the instrument.

Brian Keating (1:36:59.940)

I mean, there's millions of dollars invested,

Lex Fridman (1:37:01.900)

careers at stake, young people working tremendously hard.

Lex Fridman (1:37:05.720)

And then here we were.

Lex Fridman (1:37:06.640)

And who's going to take over the lead?

Brian Keating (1:37:08.320)

He was the lead of the project at Caltech.

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.920)

And then it turned out that the other collaborators,

Brian Keating (1:37:14.140)

with whom I had been working for years and shared a lot of ups

Lex Fridman (1:37:16.640)

and downs with as well, they had decided

Brian Keating (1:37:19.820)

to form a collaboration in which I was no longer

Lex Fridman (1:37:21.960)

the principal investigator.

Brian Keating (1:37:23.480)

I was no longer one of the co principal investigators,

Lex Fridman (1:37:25.560)

as I was on Bicep 1.

Lex Fridman (1:37:26.920)

So I continued on Bicep 1 as the co leader of it,

Lex Fridman (1:37:29.560)

but not on Bicep 2.

Lex Fridman (1:37:31.040)

And obviously, that was pretty painful.

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.600)

This is all happening at the same time

Brian Keating (1:37:36.280)

as you lose this father figure.

Lex Fridman (1:37:40.360)

Now there's this one betrayal in a way,

Lex Fridman (1:37:45.200)

and then there's another, or something

Lex Fridman (1:37:47.400)

that feels like a betrayal.

Brian Keating (1:37:48.800)

Yeah, and he had been the only one

Lex Fridman (1:37:51.840)

looking out for my interest in the new experiment.

Brian Keating (1:37:54.800)

I had moved from Caltech to UC San Diego,

Lex Fridman (1:37:57.480)

and there were other postdocs in the mix,

Brian Keating (1:37:59.200)

all of whom had come there to work with him

Lex Fridman (1:38:01.240)

to get the approbation that would then lead

Brian Keating (1:38:03.740)

to their careers taking off, as it did for mine.

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.800)

And so there was a competition.

Brian Keating (1:38:09.160)

Science is not free from egos and competition

Lex Fridman (1:38:13.320)

and desires, rightfully or wrongfully,

Brian Keating (1:38:15.880)

for credit and attribution.

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.480)

Was he the source of strength and confidence

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.040)

for you as a scientist, as a man?

Lex Fridman (1:38:22.040)

I mean, we're kind of alone in this world.

Brian Keating (1:38:26.280)

When you take on difficult things,

Lex Fridman (1:38:28.480)

we often kind of grasp at a few folks

Brian Keating (1:38:31.760)

that give us strength.

Lex Fridman (1:38:33.280)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (1:38:34.120)

Was he basically your only source of strength

Lex Fridman (1:38:37.320)

in this whole journey, like primarily

Lex Fridman (1:38:39.320)

in terms of this close knit?

Lex Fridman (1:38:41.840)

As a scientist, there were really two.

Brian Keating (1:38:43.600)

There was one, this Russian cosmologist,

Lex Fridman (1:38:46.080)

Alexander Polnareff, who thankfully is very much alive.

Brian Keating (1:38:48.520)

He was at Queen Mary University.

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.080)

Now he's retired.

Brian Keating (1:38:52.560)

He was kind of a theoretical, cosmological father to me.

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.040)

And then Andrew was this counterpoint

Brian Keating (1:38:58.760)

that was teaching me, you need to have a brand as a scientist.

Lex Fridman (1:39:02.600)

Every scientist has a brand.

Lex Fridman (1:39:04.040)

And some of them don't protect it.

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.640)

Some of them don't burnish it.

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.880)

But some of the skills about being a scientist

Lex Fridman (1:39:10.000)

we don't teach our students involve,

Lex Fridman (1:39:12.360)

how do you cultivate a scientific persona?

Lex Fridman (1:39:16.800)

And he was the exemplar for that,

Brian Keating (1:39:18.760)

in addition to being the avuncular father figure type

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.520)

character that really was the person I would talk to.

Brian Keating (1:39:26.480)

I had issues with when I had issues with my own students.

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.080)

And he would tell me how those were.

Lex Fridman (1:39:30.640)

And he would tell me his misgivings about people

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.480)

that he worked with or things in his personal life.

Lex Fridman (1:39:36.600)

And it was devastating.

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.160)

But again, who the hell am I?

Brian Keating (1:39:40.680)

I'm not his kid.

Lex Fridman (1:39:42.280)

His kid's lost father.

Lex Fridman (1:39:44.440)

So I feel guilty talking about it in that sense,

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.760)

but it's just a reality.

Brian Keating (1:39:48.480)

Well, there is something that's not often talked about

Lex Fridman (1:39:50.640)

is people who collaborate on scientific efforts.

Brian Keating (1:39:55.040)

I mean, that's, I don't, again, don't wanna compare,

Lex Fridman (1:39:58.680)

but sometimes when the collaborations are truly great,

Brian Keating (1:40:03.520)

it sounds similar as when veterans talk about

Lex Fridman (1:40:09.200)

their time serving together.

Brian Keating (1:40:11.360)

There's a bond that's formed.

Lex Fridman (1:40:12.920)

So like comparing family and this kind of thing is,

Brian Keating (1:40:15.960)

you know, it's not productive,

Lex Fridman (1:40:19.920)

but the depth of the bond is nevertheless real

Brian Keating (1:40:25.760)

because you're taking on something,

Lex Fridman (1:40:28.200)

you're taking on the impossible.

Brian Keating (1:40:30.760)

You're trying to achieve something,

Lex Fridman (1:40:32.520)

sort of like there's this darkness,

Brian Keating (1:40:33.960)

this fog of mystery that we're all surrounded by,

Lex Fridman (1:40:37.640)

which is what the human condition is.

Lex Fridman (1:40:40.480)

And you are like grasping at hope

Lex Fridman (1:40:42.880)

through the tools of science.

Lex Fridman (1:40:44.720)

And you're doing that together

Lex Fridman (1:40:46.480)

with like a confidence you probably should not have,

Lex Fridman (1:40:50.080)

but you're boldly pushing through.

Lex Fridman (1:40:51.520)

And then for him to take his own life,

Brian Keating (1:40:57.640)

can I ask you about this kind of moment that combined,

Lex Fridman (1:41:02.880)

I don't wanna say betrayal,

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.920)

but perhaps the feeling of betrayal

Lex Fridman (1:41:05.920)

that Bicep 2 kind of goes on without you,

Brian Keating (1:41:09.360)

even though you're part of it,

Lex Fridman (1:41:11.600)

you're not part of the leadership group.

Lex Fridman (1:41:15.640)

Can you describe those low points?

Lex Fridman (1:41:18.640)

Was there a depression?

Lex Fridman (1:41:19.840)

Or was there a crumbling of confidence?

Lex Fridman (1:41:23.000)

Yeah, I mean, it was so wrapped up

Brian Keating (1:41:26.280)

with my identity as a person.

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.960)

You know, like there's only a few different ways

Brian Keating (1:41:31.200)

to have identity unless you're unhealthy psychologically.

Lex Fridman (1:41:34.800)

One of them for scientists is often that they're a scientist

Lex Fridman (1:41:37.120)

and that sometimes is their primary identity.

Lex Fridman (1:41:39.160)

Now I've got other husband and father,

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.920)

but at that time that was my identity.

Lex Fridman (1:41:44.840)

So to have that kind of taken away,

Brian Keating (1:41:48.440)

you know what, it reminded me of being kind of adopted

Lex Fridman (1:41:52.960)

in a sense like the one who created me

Brian Keating (1:41:55.840)

or that I had played a role in my life,

Lex Fridman (1:41:58.360)

that he abandoned me in the sense,

Brian Keating (1:42:00.800)

it felt like these people are abandoning me.

Lex Fridman (1:42:02.640)

And the only thing I'd correct about the analogy

Brian Keating (1:42:04.320)

that you use is like in the war,

Lex Fridman (1:42:07.080)

they're all working for common good.

Brian Keating (1:42:08.680)

It's not like I want to get the most kills.

Lex Fridman (1:42:11.640)

I compare it more to like a band,

Brian Keating (1:42:13.400)

like think about the Beatles and what they did.

Lex Fridman (1:42:16.440)

And then they ripped apart because of egos, credit,

Brian Keating (1:42:20.160)

they had solo careers,

Lex Fridman (1:42:21.240)

they had relations with their intimates and so forth.

Lex Fridman (1:42:25.360)

And there it's not only for the common good,

Lex Fridman (1:42:27.840)

there is more of a zero sum aspect.

Brian Keating (1:42:30.200)

Like I would say, science is an infinite game.

Lex Fridman (1:42:33.960)

You can't win science.

Brian Keating (1:42:35.840)

You never get to the, oh, we won science.

Lex Fridman (1:42:37.440)

And even the Nobel prize, they don't feel like,

Brian Keating (1:42:38.920)

oh, we're done.

Lex Fridman (1:42:39.760)

They feel like a lot of times they're imposters

Brian Keating (1:42:41.360)

even to that day.

Lex Fridman (1:42:43.000)

However, science is made up of a lot of finite games

Brian Keating (1:42:47.920)

where there is only one winner for tenure.

Lex Fridman (1:42:50.000)

There is only three winners

Brian Keating (1:42:51.280)

or only three winners for the Nobel prize.

Lex Fridman (1:42:53.880)

And because of that, I think it's heterodox

Lex Fridman (1:42:56.040)

and it's very confusing, especially there's no guide.

Lex Fridman (1:42:59.200)

I never got a guide how to be a professor,

Lex Fridman (1:43:00.800)

how to teach, how to lead a research group,

Lex Fridman (1:43:02.560)

how to deal with the death of an advisor,

Lex Fridman (1:43:05.040)

how to deal with an unruly graduate student or two.

Lex Fridman (1:43:08.520)

So we're all like reinventing it,

Brian Keating (1:43:09.960)

which is kind of ironic and insane if you think about it.

Lex Fridman (1:43:12.440)

Cause the academic system that I am a part of

Lex Fridman (1:43:14.360)

and you are a part of is a thousand years old.

Lex Fridman (1:43:16.880)

Dates back to Bologna, Northern Italy, 1088 or so.

Brian Keating (1:43:21.720)

First universities were established.

Lex Fridman (1:43:24.240)

And very little has changed.

Brian Keating (1:43:26.560)

There's some guy or gal scratching a rock

Lex Fridman (1:43:28.920)

on another piece of rock and lecturing in front.

Lex Fridman (1:43:31.960)

And there's only one better aspect nowadays

Lex Fridman (1:43:33.860)

is that back then the students could go on strike

Brian Keating (1:43:36.920)

if they didn't like the professor

Lex Fridman (1:43:38.300)

and then he or she wouldn't get paid.

Brian Keating (1:43:39.960)

Probably mostly it was he's back then.

Lex Fridman (1:43:42.200)

Nowadays that barbaric process has been replaced

Brian Keating (1:43:44.440)

by tenure, so okay.

Lex Fridman (1:43:47.200)

But no, it was a definite kind of feeling of the rug

Brian Keating (1:43:50.120)

getting pulled out from underneath me

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.120)

because he was like my consigliore.

Brian Keating (1:43:55.440)

He was a guy I sought counsel and counseled me

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.060)

and he's dead.

Lex Fridman (1:44:00.800)

And I felt like there is no one

Lex Fridman (1:44:02.460)

who's gonna honor the agreements that we had.

Lex Fridman (1:44:05.560)

And he was a very soulful person.

Lex Fridman (1:44:07.160)

He was so much better at being a scientist

Brian Keating (1:44:09.600)

than I could ever be.

Lex Fridman (1:44:11.440)

And just a loss for the cosmos, it just really hurt.

Lex Fridman (1:44:14.980)

And I thought, oh, it's so sad

Lex Fridman (1:44:17.800)

cause he could have won the Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (1:44:19.960)

I don't think like that anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:44:21.440)

First I think about his kids.

Brian Keating (1:44:23.200)

Felt at first now there goes my chance

Lex Fridman (1:44:25.520)

at winning a Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:44:26.500)

And hence the title of the book was like,

Lex Fridman (1:44:28.840)

I knew I would not win the Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (1:44:31.120)

It also means that there's parts of the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (1:44:33.000)

that have to be done away with.

Brian Keating (1:44:34.200)

It's a double entendre.

Lex Fridman (1:44:35.240)

Like we need to lose aspects of the Nobel Prize

Brian Keating (1:44:37.480)

to help science out.

Lex Fridman (1:44:38.600)

We can talk about that a different time.

Lex Fridman (1:44:40.040)

But in the context of like now thinking back on it,

Lex Fridman (1:44:44.320)

that was such a minuscule part of it.

Brian Keating (1:44:46.220)

Because let's say he did win the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (1:44:49.240)

or I did win the, or any of us did.

Lex Fridman (1:44:52.040)

Would that have changed anything?

Lex Fridman (1:44:53.280)

Would that have brought anything back?

Brian Keating (1:44:55.140)

It's so, we say it's like vanity, it's futility.

Lex Fridman (1:44:58.800)

And I just, for me, the Nobel Prize is like,

Brian Keating (1:45:04.120)

I don't wanna say it's like insignificant,

Lex Fridman (1:45:06.120)

because obviously it has a lot of power

Lex Fridman (1:45:07.680)

and it has influence.

Lex Fridman (1:45:08.680)

And I went back, I had Neil deGrasse Tyson on my show.

Lex Fridman (1:45:11.520)

I'm gonna name drop, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:45:13.040)

And he prepares.

Brian Keating (1:45:14.880)

He prepares like a surgeon before doing surgery

Lex Fridman (1:45:19.080)

when he goes on a talk show.

Lex Fridman (1:45:20.440)

So you see him going on Colbert Report.

Lex Fridman (1:45:22.880)

You think, oh, they just have a banter.

Brian Keating (1:45:24.320)

He's just naturally gifted.

Lex Fridman (1:45:25.460)

No, he said, no, no, no.

Brian Keating (1:45:27.120)

You say that, you're undermining what he does.

Lex Fridman (1:45:29.760)

What he does is he goes back.

Brian Keating (1:45:31.280)

He watches the last month of Colbert Reports

Lex Fridman (1:45:33.680)

or whatever it's called, late show.

Lex Fridman (1:45:35.720)

And he says, how long does Steven pause between questions?

Lex Fridman (1:45:38.520)

How long in the news cycle does he go back?

Lex Fridman (1:45:41.240)

What topics has he talked about with people similar to me?

Lex Fridman (1:45:44.200)

So I took Neil and I did that for you.

Lex Fridman (1:45:46.600)

And I look back, how many times has Lex

Lex Fridman (1:45:48.240)

mentioned the words Nobel and prize?

Lex Fridman (1:45:50.200)

And I put it into Google Ngram and out came

Lex Fridman (1:45:53.440)

exactly the same number of times as show episodes

Brian Keating (1:45:58.000)

as of this moment.

Lex Fridman (1:45:58.960)

So you've said the words Nobel Prize over 240 times.

Brian Keating (1:46:01.680)

Yeah, I mean, it is so strange as a symbol

Lex Fridman (1:46:05.560)

that kind of unites this whole scientific journey, right?

Brian Keating (1:46:10.800)

It's so, it's both sad and beautiful

Lex Fridman (1:46:14.520)

that a little prize, a little award, a medal,

Brian Keating (1:46:19.800)

a little plaque, they'll be most likely forgotten

Lex Fridman (1:46:21.960)

by history completely, some silly list.

Brian Keating (1:46:27.720)

It's somehow a catalyst for greatness.

Lex Fridman (1:46:31.880)

It resulted in you doing your life's work, the dream of it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:37.040)

Would I have done it without the Nobel Prize?

Lex Fridman (1:46:39.720)

I can't necessarily counterfactually state

Brian Keating (1:46:42.080)

that that would have happened.

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.480)

So no, it definitely has a place.

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.480)

And for me, it is valuable to think about it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.320)

But the level of obsession that academics have about it

Brian Keating (1:46:54.840)

is really, I think it is almost on balance

Lex Fridman (1:46:58.520)

becoming unhealthy.

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.140)

And again, I have no, I make no truck

Lex Fridman (1:47:03.280)

with the winners of the Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (1:47:04.840)

Obviously, now I've had 11 on the show.

Lex Fridman (1:47:08.200)

And to think about the one rule,

Lex Fridman (1:47:10.560)

so by the way, right after the denouement of the story,

Lex Fridman (1:47:13.740)

which I'll get to in a bit,

Lex Fridman (1:47:15.480)

how our dreams went down to dust and ashes,

Lex Fridman (1:47:18.280)

I was asked by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Brian Keating (1:47:21.460)

to nominate the winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics.

Lex Fridman (1:47:25.420)

So like the one that I theoretically

Brian Keating (1:47:27.380)

could have been eligible to win in 2016, actually,

Lex Fridman (1:47:31.460)

they asked me to nominate.

Brian Keating (1:47:32.340)

Now imagine if I ask you, Lex,

Lex Fridman (1:47:33.660)

you say, Brian, instead of me inviting myself on the show,

Brian Keating (1:47:37.100)

if you say, Brian, would you like to come

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.620)

on the Lex Friedman podcast?

Lex Fridman (1:47:40.060)

I say, you know what, Lex?

Lex Fridman (1:47:42.140)

You know that guy Rogan?

Brian Keating (1:47:42.980)

I think you might know him.

Lex Fridman (1:47:44.120)

Can you introduce him to me?

Lex Fridman (1:47:46.020)

Like, do you imagine how that would feel?

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.740)

Like you'd be like, ah, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:47:50.020)

So I was asked to nominate the winners.

Lex Fridman (1:47:51.340)

And the one rule that they say,

Brian Keating (1:47:53.420)

of all the rules that Alfred Nobel stipulated,

Lex Fridman (1:47:55.860)

there's only one rule that they maintained.

Brian Keating (1:47:57.760)

In other words, he said one person can win it

Lex Fridman (1:47:59.980)

for something they discovered in the preceding year

Brian Keating (1:48:02.960)

that had the greatest benefit to mankind,

Lex Fridman (1:48:06.140)

made the world better, right?

Brian Keating (1:48:07.900)

None of that was mentioned in the letter.

Lex Fridman (1:48:09.540)

It said many people can win it, worked on long ago.

Brian Keating (1:48:12.380)

They didn't mention anything in the letter to me,

Lex Fridman (1:48:14.040)

signed by the Secretary General.

Brian Keating (1:48:15.740)

Nothing about benefiting mankind.

Lex Fridman (1:48:16.980)

They said, just one thing, can't nominate yourself.

Lex Fridman (1:48:20.220)

So none of these guys nominated themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:48:22.180)

Actually, little known fact,

Brian Keating (1:48:23.820)

they sent that exact letter just to you.

Lex Fridman (1:48:28.060)

That rule was created just for you.

Brian Keating (1:48:29.940)

That's called the Keating Correlate, yes, exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:48:32.860)

Just to like. Good for them.

Brian Keating (1:48:36.140)

Rub it in.

Lex Fridman (1:48:37.640)

I mean, in this particular case, of course,

Brian Keating (1:48:39.980)

there's some weird technicality or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.380)

but in this particular case,

Brian Keating (1:48:43.700)

it's kind of a powerful reminder.

Lex Fridman (1:48:47.180)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (1:48:48.020)

That the Nobel Prize leaves a lot of people behind

Lex Fridman (1:48:51.360)

in their stories behind all of that.

Brian Keating (1:48:54.360)

Yeah, I mean, here's a good example.

Lex Fridman (1:48:55.540)

Again, this is my friend, Barry Barash.

Brian Keating (1:48:57.060)

He's become like a mentor and a friend.

Lex Fridman (1:49:00.220)

He wrote the foreword to my book, Into the Impossible.

Brian Keating (1:49:03.060)

He won the Nobel Prize because a different guy died,

Lex Fridman (1:49:07.060)

and he admits it, and he said it.

Lex Fridman (1:49:09.060)

And actually, it's funny with him

Lex Fridman (1:49:10.300)

because I've heard you talk very rhapsodically

Lex Fridman (1:49:13.500)

and lovingly and romantically about,

Lex Fridman (1:49:15.460)

with Harry Kliff and a wonderful podcast with him,

Brian Keating (1:49:17.740)

by the way, about the LHC and how wonderful it is

Lex Fridman (1:49:21.220)

and how in that we were about to build

Brian Keating (1:49:23.540)

the superconducting supercollider right here in Texas,

Lex Fridman (1:49:27.020)

and it didn't get built and it got canceled by Congress.

Lex Fridman (1:49:30.320)

And I say to Barry,

Lex Fridman (1:49:31.240)

that was the best thing that ever happened to you.

Lex Fridman (1:49:33.000)

And he's like, what the hell are you talking about?

Lex Fridman (1:49:34.300)

I'm like, if that didn't get canceled,

Brian Keating (1:49:35.840)

first of all, even though it did get canceled,

Lex Fridman (1:49:39.420)

the Europeans went on to build it themselves,

Brian Keating (1:49:41.860)

saved the American taxpayers billions of dollars,

Lex Fridman (1:49:44.300)

and we wouldn't have learned anything

Brian Keating (1:49:46.100)

really substantially new as proven by the fact

Lex Fridman (1:49:48.660)

that as you and Harry talked about,

Brian Keating (1:49:50.220)

nothing besides the Higgs particle of great note

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.780)

has come out, and actually, he's had a recent paper,

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.260)

but it's been an upper limit along with his collaborators

Lex Fridman (1:49:57.660)

on LHCb experiment that I'm gonna be talking with him about.

Lex Fridman (1:50:00.500)

But the bottom line is it was really built

Lex Fridman (1:50:02.500)

to detect the Higgs.

Lex Fridman (1:50:03.340)

So the SSC, for twice as much money,

Lex Fridman (1:50:06.280)

would have sucked up Barry's career.

Brian Keating (1:50:07.740)

He would have been working on that, maybe not.

Lex Fridman (1:50:09.780)

And then he would never have worked on LIGO,

Lex Fridman (1:50:11.980)

and then he wouldn't have won the Nobel Prize, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:14.020)

So you look at counterfactual history.

Lex Fridman (1:50:15.500)

That's not actually a big stretch, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:17.000)

If the SSC had still gone on, he would have worked on it,

Brian Keating (1:50:19.140)

because he was one of the primary leaders

Lex Fridman (1:50:20.540)

of that experiment.

Brian Keating (1:50:21.900)

Second thing, imagine the following thing had happened.

Lex Fridman (1:50:26.300)

They won the Nobel Prize because in September 2015,

Brian Keating (1:50:30.480)

they detected unequivocal evidence

Lex Fridman (1:50:32.360)

for the in spiral collision of two massive black holes,

Brian Keating (1:50:35.940)

each about 30 times the mass of the sun,

Lex Fridman (1:50:38.220)

leaving behind an object that had just less than 60 solar

Brian Keating (1:50:42.420)

masses behind.

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.180)

So one solar mass worth of matter

Brian Keating (1:50:45.780)

got massed, got converted to pure gravitational energy.

Lex Fridman (1:50:49.040)

No light was seen by them.

Brian Keating (1:50:51.260)

This particular date, September 14, 2015,

Lex Fridman (1:50:57.060)

that explosion, because of the miracle of time travel

Brian Keating (1:50:59.940)

that telescopes afford us, that actually took place

Lex Fridman (1:51:03.380)

1.2 billion years ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Brian Keating (1:51:07.260)

They actually don't know which galaxy it took place in.

Lex Fridman (1:51:08.900)

Still, then they never will.

Lex Fridman (1:51:10.460)

OK?

Lex Fridman (1:51:11.740)

If that collision between these two things, which

Brian Keating (1:51:13.780)

have probably been orbiting each other for maybe a million

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.460)

years or more, if that had occurred 15 days earlier,

Brian Keating (1:51:20.220)

Barry wouldn't have won the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:51:22.700)

Because it's hilarious to think that there's one

Brian Keating (1:51:25.740)

human that won the Nobel Prize because two giant things

Lex Fridman (1:51:29.780)

collided.

Brian Keating (1:51:31.300)

A billion, 200 million years ago.

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.300)

And if it had happened 18 days, 20 days, 30 days,

Brian Keating (1:51:37.340)

because that was the deadline for the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (1:51:40.100)

to be announced, they announced the findings in February.

Lex Fridman (1:51:43.260)

But you have to nominate the winners in January.

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.340)

So I could have nominated them up until January 30.

Lex Fridman (1:51:48.060)

But they didn't announce anything,

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.860)

and there were just rumors.

Lex Fridman (1:51:53.020)

But the reason that he wouldn't have won it,

Lex Fridman (1:51:54.620)

because there was another guy who was still alive,

Brian Keating (1:51:56.700)

considered to be the founder and father of the three fathers,

Lex Fridman (1:52:00.100)

Ray Weiss, who did win it, Kip Thorne, who did win it,

Lex Fridman (1:52:02.460)

and this third gentleman at Caltech named Ron Drever,

Lex Fridman (1:52:05.180)

who passed away again.

Brian Keating (1:52:07.060)

He was alive in 2016.

Lex Fridman (1:52:08.780)

He died in the middle of 2017.

Lex Fridman (1:52:10.140)

And then he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (1:52:12.660)

And here we are, several billion of hairless apes

Brian Keating (1:52:16.580)

that strangely wear clothing, celebrated three other clothed

Lex Fridman (1:52:23.500)

hairless apes with a medal, with one particular element.

Lex Fridman (1:52:30.620)

And then they made speeches in a particular language

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.980)

that evolved in a...

Brian Keating (1:52:35.180)

Bend down to get those medals in front of another guy

Lex Fridman (1:52:38.780)

who wears even fancier clothes, who is the king of Sweden.

Lex Fridman (1:52:43.140)

And then they got some free food afterwards.

Lex Fridman (1:52:44.860)

They get some reindeer meat, that's right.

Brian Keating (1:52:47.020)

Okay, excellent.

Lex Fridman (1:52:49.860)

Since you mentioned Joe Rogan in that little example,

Lex Fridman (1:52:53.060)

what happened to you in terms of BICEP2?

Lex Fridman (1:52:57.180)

I want to kind of speak at a high level

Brian Keating (1:53:00.940)

about a particular thing I observed.

Lex Fridman (1:53:02.500)

So I was a fan of Joe Rogan since he started the podcast.

Brian Keating (1:53:05.860)

I just listened to the podcast.

Lex Fridman (1:53:07.020)

I'm a huge fan of podcasts in general.

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.540)

And it also coincided with my entry into grad school

Lex Fridman (1:53:15.580)

and this whole journey of academia.

Lex Fridman (1:53:17.580)

So grad school, getting my PhD, then going to MIT,

Lex Fridman (1:53:20.500)

and then Google, and then just looking at this whole world

Brian Keating (1:53:23.900)

of research.

Lex Fridman (1:53:26.540)

What I really loved about how Joe Rogan approaches the world

Brian Keating (1:53:33.660)

is that he celebrates others, like he promotes them.

Lex Fridman (1:53:37.340)

He gets like genuinely, and I now know this

Brian Keating (1:53:39.860)

from just being a friend privately,

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.740)

he genuinely gets excited by the success of others.

Lex Fridman (1:53:47.740)

And the contrast of that to how folks in academia

Lex Fridman (1:53:53.140)

often behave was always really disappointing to me

Brian Keating (1:53:56.660)

because the natural, just on a basic human level,

Lex Fridman (1:54:00.700)

there is an excitement, but the nature of that excitement

Brian Keating (1:54:04.940)

is more like I'm happy for my friend,

Lex Fridman (1:54:08.620)

but I'm really jealous and I want to even outdo them.

Brian Keating (1:54:11.380)

I want to celebrate them, but I want to do even better.

Lex Fridman (1:54:13.940)

So that's even for friends.

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.980)

So there's not a genuine, pure excitement for others.

Lex Fridman (1:54:21.140)

And then to couple that with just you now

Brian Keating (1:54:24.980)

as a host of a popular podcast and all this feeling,

Lex Fridman (1:54:28.220)

which is like there's not even a willingness

Brian Keating (1:54:31.180)

to celebrate publicly the awesomeness of others.

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.260)

People in academia are often best equipped technically

Brian Keating (1:54:40.900)

in terms of language to celebrate others.

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.340)

They understand the beauty, like the full richness

Brian Keating (1:54:48.060)

of why the cool idea is as cool as it is.

Lex Fridman (1:54:50.980)

And they're in the best position to celebrate it.

Lex Fridman (1:54:53.340)

And yet there's a feeling that if I celebrate others,

Lex Fridman (1:54:57.020)

they might end up on the cover of Nature or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:54:59.900)

and not me.

Lex Fridman (1:55:01.740)

They turn it into zero sum game.

Brian Keating (1:55:03.860)

The reason why I think Rogan has been an inspiration to me

Lex Fridman (1:55:08.500)

and many others is that it doesn't have to be that way.

Lex Fridman (1:55:12.060)

And forget money and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:55:15.300)

I think there's a narrative told that academics are this way

Brian Keating (1:55:20.300)

because there's a limited amount of money.

Lex Fridman (1:55:23.180)

And so they're fighting for this.

Brian Keating (1:55:24.500)

I don't think that's the reason it's happening this way.

Lex Fridman (1:55:28.460)

I think you can have a limited amount of money.

Brian Keating (1:55:32.860)

The battle for money happens in the space of proposal.

Lex Fridman (1:55:36.860)

There's networking, there's private stuff.

Brian Keating (1:55:39.340)

Public celebration of others and just actually

Lex Fridman (1:55:42.780)

just how you feel in the privacy of your own heart

Brian Keating (1:55:46.140)

is not have to do anything with money.

Lex Fridman (1:55:48.500)

It has to do with you having a big ego

Lex Fridman (1:55:51.940)

and not humbling yourself to the beauty of the journey

Lex Fridman (1:55:55.020)

that we're all on.

Lex Fridman (1:55:56.460)

And there's folks like Joe Rogan who in a comedian circles

Lex Fridman (1:56:00.540)

is also rare, but he inspired all these other comedians

Lex Fridman (1:56:03.900)

to realize, you know what?

Lex Fridman (1:56:05.540)

It's great to celebrate each other.

Brian Keating (1:56:07.060)

We're promoting each other and therefore the pie grows.

Lex Fridman (1:56:10.300)

Cause everybody else gets excited about this whole thing

Lex Fridman (1:56:12.860)

and the pie grows.

Lex Fridman (1:56:14.060)

Right now the scientists by fighting,

Brian Keating (1:56:16.420)

like by not celebrating each other,

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.620)

are not growing the pie.

Lex Fridman (1:56:19.980)

And now because of that sort of science becomes

Lex Fridman (1:56:23.180)

less and less popular.

Brian Keating (1:56:24.020)

It's a flywheel and exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:56:25.620)

No, and I want to point out two things.

Brian Keating (1:56:26.700)

One is that I remember you went on Joe's show

Lex Fridman (1:56:29.860)

maybe a couple of years ago and then he gave you a watch.

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.460)

He gave you like a Rolex, right?

Lex Fridman (1:56:36.220)

And I tweeted to you and I think it's Omega, sorry.

Brian Keating (1:56:38.860)

Okay, fine.

Lex Fridman (1:56:40.300)

The watch that went to the moon,

Brian Keating (1:56:42.420)

which we will get to in a bit.

Lex Fridman (1:56:44.620)

I don't think he could give you what I gave you though,

Brian Keating (1:56:46.300)

by the way.

Lex Fridman (1:56:47.660)

And we'll get to what that final gift package is for you.

Lex Fridman (1:56:50.540)

And by the way, I also wanted to mention,

Lex Fridman (1:56:52.300)

because when you said Joe Rogan, I would not be upset.

Lex Fridman (1:56:55.180)

And you should definitely go on Joe Rogan.

Lex Fridman (1:56:57.060)

And we had this conversation with him.

Brian Keating (1:56:59.620)

Cause I was like, when I was moving to Austin

Lex Fridman (1:57:05.260)

and had a conversation like, don't you think it's weird?

Brian Keating (1:57:07.300)

Like if we have the same guests at the same time

Lex Fridman (1:57:09.420)

or whatever, he's like, fuck that.

Brian Keating (1:57:12.580)

I want you to be more successful than me.

Lex Fridman (1:57:14.580)

I want, he truly wants everybody like,

Brian Keating (1:57:18.540)

especially people close to him to be more successful.

Lex Fridman (1:57:21.060)

Like there's not even a thought like.

Lex Fridman (1:57:23.180)

But you know why he does.

Lex Fridman (1:57:24.220)

And this is what I tweeted to you.

Lex Fridman (1:57:25.060)

And one of the few things I think you have retweeted

Lex Fridman (1:57:27.340)

that I sent you.

Brian Keating (1:57:28.180)

I said, someday you're going to give that to somebody.

Lex Fridman (1:57:31.020)

And today I wanted that to be me.

Brian Keating (1:57:32.540)

No, no.

Lex Fridman (1:57:35.580)

Joe's Omega.

Brian Keating (1:57:36.420)

No, but the point is he sees in you that same,

Lex Fridman (1:57:40.220)

grandiosity, that same genuine spirit graciousness.

Lex Fridman (1:57:42.980)

And I think that's true.

Lex Fridman (1:57:43.820)

And you do do something very rare.

Brian Keating (1:57:45.460)

I don't want to turn this into too much of a love fest,

Lex Fridman (1:57:47.260)

but I do want to say even back to Andrew,

Brian Keating (1:57:49.980)

who I've almost been hagiographic about,

Lex Fridman (1:57:52.780)

just treating him like a saint.

Brian Keating (1:57:54.220)

He said to me the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:57:55.060)

And in a moment of peak said like,

Brian Keating (1:57:57.980)

God damn it.

Lex Fridman (1:57:58.820)

Like I have to train these guys and women that work for me

Lex Fridman (1:58:02.460)

so that they can be better than me,

Lex Fridman (1:58:04.220)

so that they can go out and compete with me

Brian Keating (1:58:06.320)

for the same limited amount of funding from the Fing NSL.

Lex Fridman (1:58:09.860)

That wasn't his, that wasn't who he was.

Brian Keating (1:58:12.060)

That was just an expression,

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.060)

like I'm doing something which is fundamentally,

Lex Fridman (1:58:16.460)

but you know what, when you have kids,

Lex Fridman (1:58:18.960)

hopefully, you know, please God, you will someday.

Brian Keating (1:58:20.900)

Cause I think, and I hope we can get to talk

Lex Fridman (1:58:22.660)

about that later, but part of investment

Lex Fridman (1:58:26.060)

and part of doing something when you have a kid,

Lex Fridman (1:58:28.580)

like you can get married.

Brian Keating (1:58:30.420)

You can marry someone cause she's rich or he's rich,

Lex Fridman (1:58:33.020)

or you can marry someone cause they're good looking

Brian Keating (1:58:35.100)

or he's good looking.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.300)

You can marry for all these different reasons

Brian Keating (1:58:37.940)

that are ultimately selfish.

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.980)

There's no way you can have a kid and be selfish.

Lex Fridman (1:58:41.860)

Nobody says like, oh, you know what?

Lex Fridman (1:58:43.140)

I really want this thing that's three feet tall,

Brian Keating (1:58:44.960)

that doesn't speak English, that craps on my floor,

Lex Fridman (1:58:47.060)

that wakes me up all hours of the night,

Brian Keating (1:58:48.500)

that interferes with my love life.

Lex Fridman (1:58:50.040)

Nobody says that cause it doesn't benefit you

Brian Keating (1:58:52.120)

for months and months.

Lex Fridman (1:58:53.060)

A friend of mine who actually does the videos for me

Lex Fridman (1:58:55.100)

and does a lot of my solo videos,

Lex Fridman (1:58:57.180)

he's having his first kid, he's like, what do I do?

Brian Keating (1:58:59.300)

Cause it always gets stupid, I'll catch up on sleep now.

Lex Fridman (1:59:01.660)

Like, yeah, I'm gonna store sleep in my sleep bank.

Lex Fridman (1:59:04.340)

Like I don't think Huberman and you talked about that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:06.700)

You can't do that, that's stupid.

Lex Fridman (1:59:08.080)

What you can do, give the kid a bath, feed the baby,

Lex Fridman (1:59:10.840)

let the mother relax.

Brian Keating (1:59:11.820)

Like, in other words, do the things,

Lex Fridman (1:59:14.060)

and this really relates back to what Aristotle once said.

Brian Keating (1:59:16.380)

Aristotle once said, why do parents love kids

Lex Fridman (1:59:18.980)

more than kids love parents?

Brian Keating (1:59:20.780)

As much as you love your dad and your mom,

Lex Fridman (1:59:22.760)

they still love you more.

Lex Fridman (1:59:24.580)

And because you love that what you sacrifice for.

Lex Fridman (1:59:27.140)

Here's a proof.

Brian Keating (1:59:28.780)

I know a lot of families that have kids with special needs.

Lex Fridman (1:59:31.020)

Some with severe, one of my uncles on the Keating side

Brian Keating (1:59:35.020)

had a severe, what they called mental retardation,

Lex Fridman (1:59:37.280)

now it's probably has a different name.

Brian Keating (1:59:39.220)

That, out of the nine other brothers and sisters,

Lex Fridman (1:59:41.980)

he was their favorite.

Brian Keating (1:59:43.580)

Because they had to sacrifice so much for him.

Lex Fridman (1:59:46.100)

And I think of that, you know, in the small case,

Brian Keating (1:59:48.340)

like Joe is kind of mentoring you or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:59:50.340)

you're gonna mentor someone else.

Brian Keating (1:59:51.260)

You love that what you sacrifice for.

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.620)

Sacrifice is reduction of entropy,

Brian Keating (1:59:55.700)

it's storing and investing, and you wanna protect that.

Lex Fridman (1:59:58.740)

And you know, that to me really speaks to this.

Brian Keating (20:00.320)

endowed with quantum mechanical properties.

Lex Fridman (20:02.920)

And then it becomes very difficult to turn inflation off.

Lex Fridman (20:07.400)

So inflation can get started,

Lex Fridman (20:09.120)

but then it's like one of, you know, SpaceX rockets.

Lex Fridman (20:11.960)

It's hard to turn off a solid rocket booster, right?

Lex Fridman (20:14.400)

It continues the thrusting.

Brian Keating (20:16.240)

You need another mechanism to douse the flames

Lex Fridman (20:19.040)

of the inflationary expansion,

Brian Keating (20:21.240)

which means that if inflation kicks off somewhere,

Lex Fridman (20:24.200)

it will kick off potentially everywhere at all times,

Brian Keating (20:27.640)

including now, spawning an ever increasing set of universes.

Lex Fridman (20:32.440)

Some will die stillborn, some will continue and flourish,

Lex Fridman (20:35.920)

and this is known as the multiverse paradigm.

Lex Fridman (20:38.800)

It's a robust, seemingly robust consequence,

Brian Keating (20:41.000)

not only of inflationary cosmology,

Lex Fridman (20:43.480)

but more and more, we're seeing it

Brian Keating (20:44.560)

in string theory as well.

Lex Fridman (20:45.560)

So that, you know, sometimes two, you know,

Brian Keating (20:48.200)

branches coming to the same conclusion

Lex Fridman (20:49.600)

is, you know, taken as evidence for its reality.

Lex Fridman (20:52.320)

So one of the negative consequences

Lex Fridman (20:54.240)

is it creates phenomena that we can't,

Brian Keating (20:57.600)

that are outside the reach of experimental science,

Lex Fridman (21:01.680)

or is it that the multiverse somehow

Lex Fridman (21:04.120)

has a philosophical negative effect on humanity?

Lex Fridman (21:07.520)

Like it makes us,

Lex Fridman (21:10.880)

maybe it makes life seem more meaningless?

Lex Fridman (21:13.200)

Is that where he's getting at a little bit,

Lex Fridman (21:15.960)

or is it not reaching that far?

Lex Fridman (21:18.080)

Well, no, I think those are both kind of perceptive.

Brian Keating (21:21.920)

The answer is a little of both,

Lex Fridman (21:23.000)

because in one sense, it's meant kind of to explain

Brian Keating (21:26.600)

this fine tuning problem,

Lex Fridman (21:28.160)

that we find ourselves in a universe

Brian Keating (21:29.880)

that's particularly facund, that has features,

Lex Fridman (21:32.720)

you know, consistent with our existence,

Lex Fridman (21:34.800)

and how could we be otherwise?

Lex Fridman (21:36.240)

You know, this sort of weak anthropic principle.

Brian Keating (21:39.000)

On the other hand, a theory that predicts everything,

Lex Fridman (21:42.520)

literally everything, can be said to predict nothing.

Brian Keating (21:46.000)

Like if I say, Lex, you know, you've been working out,

Lex Fridman (21:48.320)

you look like, you know, yeah, you haven't,

Brian Keating (21:50.360)

yeah, that's great.

Lex Fridman (21:51.200)

You look like you're, you know,

Brian Keating (21:52.160)

about somewhere under 10,000 kilograms.

Lex Fridman (21:54.840)

Like, all right, yeah, you're right,

Lex Fridman (21:56.520)

but that's horribly imprecise.

Lex Fridman (21:57.840)

So what good is that?

Brian Keating (21:58.960)

That's meaningless.

Lex Fridman (21:59.780)

You don't contribute any what's called surprise,

Brian Keating (22:01.640)

or reduction in entropy,

Lex Fridman (22:03.160)

or reduction of your ignorance about the system,

Brian Keating (22:06.160)

or you know exactly how much you weigh.

Lex Fridman (22:08.360)

So me telling you that tells you nothing.

Brian Keating (22:10.300)

In this case, it's basically saying

Lex Fridman (22:11.920)

that we're living in a universe

Brian Keating (22:13.220)

because the overwhelming odds of our existence

Lex Fridman (22:17.160)

dictate that we would exist.

Brian Keating (22:18.960)

There has to be at least one place that we exist.

Lex Fridman (22:20.720)

But the problem is it's a manifestation of infinity.

Lex Fridman (22:24.120)

So humans, and I'm sure you know this

Lex Fridman (22:26.640)

from your work with AI and ML and everything else,

Brian Keating (22:30.880)

that humans, as far as we know,

Lex Fridman (22:33.600)

really are the only entities capable

Brian Keating (22:36.160)

of contemplating infinity,

Lex Fridman (22:38.360)

but we do so very imperfectly, right?

Lex Fridman (22:40.680)

So if I say to you, like, what's bigger,

Lex Fridman (22:42.320)

the number of, you know, water molecules in this thing,

Lex Fridman (22:45.220)

or the number of real numbers?

Lex Fridman (22:46.760)

Or if I say, what's bigger,

Lex Fridman (22:47.580)

the number of real numbers or rational numbers?

Lex Fridman (22:49.280)

They're all different classifications

Brian Keating (22:50.800)

of the amount of infinities that there could be.

Lex Fridman (22:53.240)

Infinity to the infinity power.

Brian Keating (22:54.600)

You know, when you have kids someday,

Lex Fridman (22:55.500)

they'll tell you, I love you, infinity.

Lex Fridman (22:56.960)

You have to come back, I love you, infinity plus one, right?

Lex Fridman (22:59.400)

So, but the human brain can't really contemplate infinity.

Brian Keating (23:03.360)

Let me illustrate that.

Lex Fridman (23:05.160)

They say in the singularity,

Lex Fridman (23:06.840)

the universe had an infinite temperature, right?

Lex Fridman (23:10.720)

So let me ask you a question.

Brian Keating (23:12.480)

Is there anything that you can contemplate

Lex Fridman (23:14.480)

in the, you know, Einstein's little quip aside,

Brian Keating (23:17.680)

that's infinite, like a physical property,

Lex Fridman (23:20.200)

density, pressure, temperature, energy, that's infinite.

Lex Fridman (23:24.880)

And if you can think of such thing, I'd like to know it.

Lex Fridman (23:27.520)

But if you can, how does it go to infinity minus one?

Brian Keating (23:30.600)

You know, the opposite direction I go with my kids.

Lex Fridman (23:32.920)

How does it go from like to half of infinity?

Brian Keating (23:34.560)

Because that's still infinity.

Lex Fridman (23:35.700)

How did it cool down?

Lex Fridman (23:36.920)

How did it get more and more tenuous and rarefied?

Lex Fridman (23:39.460)

So now it's only infinity over two,

Brian Keating (23:41.600)

in terms of pascals.

Lex Fridman (23:42.440)

Less infinite to more infinite.

Brian Keating (23:44.600)

Yeah, I mean, it's,

Lex Fridman (23:46.400)

that's one of the biggest troubling things to me

Brian Keating (23:49.680)

about infinity is you can't truly hold it inside our minds.

Lex Fridman (23:53.800)

It's a mathematical construct that doesn't,

Brian Keating (23:55.800)

it feels like intuition fails.

Lex Fridman (23:57.840)

But nevertheless, we use it nonchalantly

Lex Fridman (23:59.960)

and then use, like physicists,

Lex Fridman (24:02.720)

they're incredible intuition machines.

Lex Fridman (24:05.440)

And then they'll play with this infinity

Lex Fridman (24:06.960)

as if they can play with it on the level of intuition

Brian Keating (24:10.300)

as opposed to on the level of math.

Lex Fridman (24:12.320)

You know, yeah, maybe it's something cyclical

Brian Keating (24:14.100)

you can imagine in infinity,

Lex Fridman (24:15.320)

just going around the same,

Brian Keating (24:18.580)

kind of like a Mobius strip situation.

Lex Fridman (24:20.540)

But then the question then arises,

Lex Fridman (24:23.780)

how do you make it more or less infinite?

Lex Fridman (24:26.500)

Yeah, all of that intuition fails completely.

Lex Fridman (24:28.940)

And I mean, how do you represent it in a computer, right?

Lex Fridman (24:31.320)

It's either some placeholder for infinity

Brian Keating (24:33.400)

or it's one divided by a very,

Lex Fridman (24:34.780)

the smallest possible real number

Brian Keating (24:38.260)

that you can represent in the memory.

Lex Fridman (24:39.700)

Well, that's basically my undergraduate study

Brian Keating (24:42.500)

in computer science is how to represent

Lex Fridman (24:44.260)

a floating point in a computer.

Brian Keating (24:45.860)

I think I took 17 courses on this topic.

Lex Fridman (24:47.940)

It was very useful.

Brian Keating (24:49.060)

I came to the right place.

Lex Fridman (24:49.980)

But in terms of what a physicist will mean,

Lex Fridman (24:53.580)

and you're right, I mean, physicists will blithely,

Lex Fridman (24:55.700)

nonchalantly subtract infinity, renormalization,

Lex Fridman (24:58.900)

and do things to get finite answers.

Lex Fridman (25:01.220)

And it's miraculous.

Lex Fridman (25:03.020)

But at a certain point, you have to ask,

Lex Fridman (25:05.460)

well, what are the consequences for the real world?

Lex Fridman (25:07.420)

So one of them, you ask, what's the problem?

Lex Fridman (25:10.260)

Does it make us more meaningless?

Brian Keating (25:11.800)

They purport, many of the people that support it,

Lex Fridman (25:14.060)

like Andrei Linde.

Brian Keating (25:15.260)

In fact, Andrei Linde says, you have a bias.

Lex Fridman (25:18.100)

You, Lex, me, Brian.

Brian Keating (25:19.780)

You have a bias that you believe in a universe.

Lex Fridman (25:22.980)

But shouldn't you believe in a multiverse?

Lex Fridman (25:25.980)

What evidence do you have that there's not a multiverse?

Lex Fridman (25:28.620)

So he turns it around.

Brian Keating (25:30.100)

Whereas Paul Steinhardt will say, no, if anything can happen,

Lex Fridman (25:33.500)

then there's no predictive power within the theory.

Brian Keating (25:35.940)

Because you can always say, well,

Lex Fridman (25:37.300)

this value of the inflationary field

Brian Keating (25:39.140)

did not produce sufficient gravitational wave energy

Lex Fridman (25:43.500)

for us to detect it with BICEP or Simon's Observatory

Brian Keating (25:45.700)

or whatever.

Lex Fridman (25:46.420)

But that doesn't mean that inflation didn't happen.

Brian Keating (25:48.540)

It's logically 100% correct.

Lex Fridman (25:50.700)

But it's like kind of chewing Wonder Bread.

Brian Keating (25:55.580)

Apologize if they're one of your sponsors, but you know.

Lex Fridman (25:59.100)

Wonderbread slash lex.com.

Lex Fridman (26:01.740)

Type in code Klebb, right?

Lex Fridman (26:03.620)

Klebb.

Brian Keating (26:04.300)

That's my favorite Russian word is like,

Lex Fridman (26:06.020)

would you like a piece of Klebb?

Brian Keating (26:07.660)

By the way, even that word, Klebb,

Lex Fridman (26:10.940)

which means bread in Russian, as you say it,

Brian Keating (26:13.660)

like you're jokingly saying it now,

Lex Fridman (26:15.920)

it made me hungry because it made

Brian Keating (26:17.500)

me remember how much I loved bread

Lex Fridman (26:19.340)

when I was in the Soviet Union.

Brian Keating (26:20.660)

When you were hungry, that was the things you dreamed about.

Lex Fridman (26:24.380)

I don't know.

Brian Keating (26:24.940)

You know, what's amazing is how many of the Soviet scientists

Lex Fridman (26:28.380)

contributed to so much of what we understand today.

Lex Fridman (26:31.860)

And they were completely in hiding.

Lex Fridman (26:33.360)

There was no Google.

Brian Keating (26:34.220)

They couldn't look up on Scholar.

Lex Fridman (26:35.660)

They had nothing.

Brian Keating (26:36.280)

They had to wait for journals to get

Lex Fridman (26:37.820)

approved by the Communist Party to get approved.

Lex Fridman (26:40.580)

And only then, if they weren't a member of some class,

Lex Fridman (26:43.060)

I'm sure you know, like Jewish scientists,

Brian Keating (26:44.940)

you had a passport that said Jew on your passport.

Lex Fridman (26:48.260)

And Zeldovich, the famous Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich,

Brian Keating (26:52.700)

he was the advisor, one of my advisors, Alexander Polnareff.

Lex Fridman (26:56.300)

And he had to, only because he was like at a Nobel level

Lex Fridman (27:00.460)

and was one of the fathers of the Soviet atomic bomb program,

Lex Fridman (27:03.660)

could he even get his Jewish student, he was Jewish too,

Lex Fridman (27:06.900)

but only by virtue of his standing

Lex Fridman (27:09.420)

of his intellectual accomplishments,

Brian Keating (27:11.100)

would they give him the dispensation

Lex Fridman (27:12.740)

to let his student travel to Georgia or something.

Lex Fridman (27:16.100)

And it makes what we complain about,

Lex Fridman (27:17.860)

and I complain about academia.

Lex Fridman (27:19.460)

And it's like, oh, well, what can I talk about?

Lex Fridman (27:21.980)

We have no idea of how good it is

Lex Fridman (27:24.140)

and that they were able to create things like inflation,

Lex Fridman (27:26.620)

completely isolated from the West.

Brian Keating (27:28.100)

I mean, some of these people didn't

Lex Fridman (27:29.540)

meet people like Stephen Hawking until he was almost dead.

Lex Fridman (27:33.300)

And they just learned this thing through smuggled in.

Lex Fridman (27:36.900)

It's a work of heroism, especially in cosmology.

Brian Keating (27:39.300)

There's so many cosmologists that worked incredibly hard,

Lex Fridman (27:41.780)

probably because they were working the,

Brian Keating (27:43.380)

they could pass off as, well, we're doing stuff

Lex Fridman (27:45.500)

for the atomic bomb program as well, which they were.

Brian Keating (27:47.980)

At the same time, there is interesting incentives

Lex Fridman (27:52.300)

in the Soviet system that,

Brian Keating (27:54.060)

maybe we can take this tangent for a brief moment,

Lex Fridman (27:57.780)

that because there's a dictatorship, authoritarian regime

Brian Keating (28:01.700)

throughout the history of the 20th century

Lex Fridman (28:03.780)

for the Soviet Union, science was prioritized.

Lex Fridman (28:07.780)

And because the state prioritized it

Lex Fridman (28:10.820)

through the propaganda machines and the news and so on,

Brian Keating (28:13.540)

it actually was really cool to be a scientist.

Lex Fridman (28:16.180)

Like you were highly valued in society.

Brian Keating (28:18.020)

Maybe that's a better way to say it.

Lex Fridman (28:19.860)

And I would say, you're saying like, we have it easy now.

Brian Keating (28:23.540)

In that sense, it was kind of beneficial

Lex Fridman (28:27.660)

to be a scientist in that society

Brian Keating (28:29.140)

because you were seen as a hero, as there's famous.

Lex Fridman (28:31.980)

Yes, the most famous hero of the Soviet Republic.

Lex Fridman (28:34.140)

And that, you know, there's positives to that.

Lex Fridman (28:37.100)

I mean, I'm not saying I would take the negatives

Brian Keating (28:40.300)

or the positives, but it is interesting to see a world

Lex Fridman (28:43.780)

in which science was highly prized.

Brian Keating (28:46.140)

In the capitalist system, or maybe not capitalist,

Lex Fridman (28:49.540)

let's just say the American system,

Brian Keating (28:51.580)

the celebrities are the athletes, the actors and actresses,

Lex Fridman (28:57.980)

maybe business leaders, musicians.

Brian Keating (29:02.380)

And, you know, the people we elect are sort of lawyers

Lex Fridman (29:05.620)

and lawyers, so it's interesting to think of a world

Brian Keating (29:12.300)

where science was highly prized,

Lex Fridman (29:13.940)

but they had to do that science within the constraints

Brian Keating (29:18.220)

of always having big brother watching.

Lex Fridman (29:21.020)

Yeah, the same in Germany.

Brian Keating (29:22.260)

Germany had, you know, highly prized science.

Lex Fridman (29:24.020)

I mean, one of the most famous tragic to me cases

Brian Keating (29:26.540)

is Fritz Haber who invented the Haber Bosch process

Lex Fridman (29:29.780)

that allowed us to, I don't know, have you eaten yet?

Brian Keating (29:31.780)

You look, I mean, I know you fast, intermittent fast

Lex Fridman (29:34.580)

every day and you do that.

Brian Keating (29:36.020)

You know, I said chleb and you got, it's a little drool,

Lex Fridman (29:38.460)

but he says I'm lifting and I look slim.

Brian Keating (29:41.420)

This is amazing.

Lex Fridman (29:42.660)

I'm gonna clip this out and put it on Tinder.

Brian Keating (29:44.540)

I think that's a website.

Lex Fridman (29:45.420)

You gotta swipe left or right for that, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (29:48.380)

But when you think about like, you know, what he did

Lex Fridman (29:51.140)

and created the fertilizer process that we all enjoy

Lex Fridman (29:53.500)

and we eat from every day, he was a German nationalist,

Lex Fridman (29:58.140)

first and foremost, even though he was a Jew.

Lex Fridman (2:00:01.460)

So yeah, I don't hold it against.

Lex Fridman (2:00:02.900)

But it is true, like scientists are, you know,

Brian Keating (2:00:05.540)

when they're described again, they're often said

Lex Fridman (2:00:07.580)

to be like children, right?

Brian Keating (2:00:08.420)

You've heard this description.

Lex Fridman (2:00:09.380)

They're inquisitive, they're curious, they're passionate.

Brian Keating (2:00:11.580)

They love that.

Lex Fridman (2:00:12.420)

And I'm like, yeah, and they don't play well with others.

Brian Keating (2:00:13.540)

They're jealous, they're petty, they're selfish,

Lex Fridman (2:00:14.860)

they won't share their ball and they'll go home.

Brian Keating (2:00:17.420)

There's no such thing as a single edge sword.

Lex Fridman (2:00:19.060)

I wish there were, you know,

Brian Keating (2:00:20.780)

because we need some more of that

Lex Fridman (2:00:22.340)

because you gotta dull it up.

Lex Fridman (2:00:23.860)

But in this case, he, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:00:26.500)

I think when you have this kind of investment in science,

Brian Keating (2:00:31.500)

it's gonna be natural.

Lex Fridman (2:00:32.900)

But that doesn't mean we have to like, you know,

Brian Keating (2:00:34.580)

feed the flames of competition.

Lex Fridman (2:00:36.980)

You know, I'm like really venerate.

Brian Keating (2:00:38.460)

If you go to the homepage of the NSF

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.340)

or the Department of Energy

Brian Keating (2:00:41.740)

or the recently released National Academy of Sciences

Lex Fridman (2:00:44.620)

future of science for the astronomical sciences

Brian Keating (2:00:47.980)

for the next 25 years or more,

Lex Fridman (2:00:50.380)

they talk about how many Nobel prizes

Brian Keating (2:00:51.860)

these different science things could win.

Lex Fridman (2:00:53.580)

Exoplanets, life, the discovery of the CMB,

Brian Keating (2:00:56.500)

B mode polarization, the nice, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:00:58.980)

that's figure two in this thing.

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.300)

And I'm like, what message is that sent to kids,

Lex Fridman (2:01:03.140)

like to young people?

Brian Keating (2:01:04.820)

Like that's what you should be doing

Lex Fridman (2:01:06.100)

so that you win this small, as you said,

Brian Keating (2:01:07.380)

this prize given out by one hairless ape

Lex Fridman (2:01:09.140)

to another wearing a fancier costume using reindeer.

Brian Keating (2:01:11.340)

Especially in the case of Nobel prize,

Lex Fridman (2:01:12.460)

it's only currently given to three people.

Brian Keating (2:01:14.780)

At most, which was never one of his stipulate.

Lex Fridman (2:01:16.940)

He actually said one, he could only give it to one person.

Lex Fridman (2:01:19.300)

So they change it.

Lex Fridman (2:01:20.140)

Why did they change it?

Brian Keating (2:01:20.980)

I talk about, I speculate.

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.180)

By the way, the book's only three chapters out of 11

Brian Keating (2:01:24.180)

about the Nobel prize and it's a fact.

Lex Fridman (2:01:26.900)

But you know, one of the things that's been so interesting,

Brian Keating (2:01:28.940)

like I'm speaking, actually this coming up in December

Lex Fridman (2:01:32.420)

is that the Nobel prize is given out

Brian Keating (2:01:34.500)

on the day of Alfred Nobel's death.

Lex Fridman (2:01:37.100)

There's a lot of, and they bring in flowers,

Brian Keating (2:01:39.500)

not from his birthplace, but from his mausoleum,

Lex Fridman (2:01:42.060)

which is in San Romino in Italy.

Brian Keating (2:01:46.780)

It's a lot of like death fascination.

Lex Fridman (2:01:48.700)

Denial of death features heavily in the Nobel prize

Lex Fridman (2:01:51.300)

because it's like, what outlives a person?

Lex Fridman (2:01:53.660)

Well, science can outlive a person.

Brian Keating (2:01:55.220)

My father has a theorem named after him.

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.900)

It's still engraved in many places around the world.

Brian Keating (2:02:00.700)

You or I, we can go to different places around the world.

Lex Fridman (2:02:02.620)

People know who we are based on our publications.

Brian Keating (2:02:05.060)

We engrave things, we want to store things,

Lex Fridman (2:02:06.660)

we want to compress things.

Lex Fridman (2:02:08.220)

And I think there's something beautiful about that,

Lex Fridman (2:02:10.380)

but there is a notion of denial of death.

Brian Keating (2:02:12.140)

Like there is a notion of what will outlast me,

Lex Fridman (2:02:14.780)

especially if you're among the many 90 something percent

Brian Keating (2:02:17.860)

of members of the National Academy

Lex Fridman (2:02:19.140)

don't believe in an active faith and a creator and a God.

Lex Fridman (2:02:24.540)

And science can substitute for that,

Lex Fridman (2:02:27.620)

but it's not ultimately as fulfilling.

Brian Keating (2:02:30.700)

I just, I don't believe it can fulfill a person the way

Lex Fridman (2:02:34.340)

even practicing, but not believing in a religion

Brian Keating (2:02:37.420)

can fulfill a person.

Lex Fridman (2:02:39.260)

So, which is interesting

Brian Keating (2:02:40.860)

because you do bring up Ernest Becker

Lex Fridman (2:02:42.500)

and the denial of death in losing the Nobel prize book.

Lex Fridman (2:02:46.660)

And there is a sense in which that's probably in part

Lex Fridman (2:02:50.780)

at the core of this, especially later dream

Brian Keating (2:02:54.300)

of the Nobel prize or a prize of recognition.

Lex Fridman (2:02:57.100)

I've interacted with a few or a large number of scientists

Brian Keating (2:03:02.140)

that are getting up in age.

Lex Fridman (2:03:04.500)

And there is the feeling of real pride of happiness in them

Brian Keating (2:03:10.180)

from winning awards and getting certain recognitions.

Lex Fridman (2:03:15.180)

And I probably at the core of that is a kind of a mortality

Brian Keating (2:03:18.500)

or a kind of desire for mortality.

Lex Fridman (2:03:23.500)

And that was always off putting to me as opposed to,

Brian Keating (2:03:28.740)

I mean, I know it sounds weird to say it's off putting,

Lex Fridman (2:03:32.340)

but it just, rather than celebrating the pure joy

Brian Keating (2:03:38.460)

of solving the puzzles of the mysteries all around us,

Lex Fridman (2:03:43.460)

just the actual exploration of the mysterious for its own sake.

Brian Keating (2:03:52.460)

Well, that's what I said, it's like a scientist should,

Lex Fridman (2:03:55.940)

okay, you have to be careful and not have any physical,

Brian Keating (2:03:58.860)

it has to be platonic,

Lex Fridman (2:03:59.700)

but you can think of scientists and mentor.

Brian Keating (2:04:03.180)

I have a chart in the book and in my plaque

Lex Fridman (2:04:05.300)

made by one of my graduate students, former graduate students.

Brian Keating (2:04:07.500)

She's now a professor in New Mexico, Darcy Barron.

Lex Fridman (2:04:10.620)

And she made this plaque and it has 17 generations.

Lex Fridman (2:04:13.980)

So here I am, 17 levels down, there's a guy,

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.340)

Leibniz, not the famous Leibniz, different Leibniz,

Brian Keating (2:04:19.620)

1596 he was born and I'm in this chain.

Lex Fridman (2:04:23.100)

And I don't know if you know this,

Lex Fridman (2:04:24.660)

but in the Russian language,

Lex Fridman (2:04:26.020)

the word scientist means someone who was taught.

Lex Fridman (2:04:28.980)

I'll say it very simply, one who was taught, right?

Lex Fridman (2:04:31.300)

Uchony.

Brian Keating (2:04:32.140)

Uchony.

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.980)

So it probably means a guy was taught, right?

Brian Keating (2:04:35.180)

No, uchony, no, no, no, it's a person.

Lex Fridman (2:04:39.180)

Uchony, no, no, no, it's literally someone who was taught.

Brian Keating (2:04:42.500)

Someone who was taught, right.

Lex Fridman (2:04:43.900)

So what does that mean?

Brian Keating (2:04:44.740)

To me, it has a dual kind of meaning, at least dual meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:04:47.540)

One is that you have to be a good student to be a scientist

Brian Keating (2:04:50.780)

because you have to learn from somebody else.

Lex Fridman (2:04:52.620)

Two, you have to be a teacher, you have to pay it forward.

Brian Keating (2:04:55.180)

If you don't, I claim you're really not a scientist

Lex Fridman (2:04:58.580)

in the truest sense.

Lex Fridman (2:05:00.180)

And I feel like with the work that I do in outreach

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.220)

and stuff like that, I'm doing it at scale.

Brian Keating (2:05:04.300)

I'm influencing more than 24 kids I might have

Lex Fridman (2:05:07.140)

in my graduate class or undergraduate class,

Lex Fridman (2:05:09.380)

and potentially could reach thousands of people

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.660)

around the world and make them into scientists themselves.

Brian Keating (2:05:15.980)

Because that's the flywheel that is only beneficial.

Lex Fridman (2:05:19.060)

There is no competition.

Brian Keating (2:05:20.420)

There is no zero sum fixed mindset versus growth mindset

Lex Fridman (2:05:24.940)

because it is an infinite game.

Brian Keating (2:05:26.460)

Imagine a culture that had none of the trappings

Lex Fridman (2:05:29.260)

of the negativity of the Soviet Union

Brian Keating (2:05:30.980)

or pre World War I Germany or Imperial Japan.

Lex Fridman (2:05:35.620)

Science celebrated.

Lex Fridman (2:05:37.380)

And we're just making a nation of scientists.

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.380)

And we're not doing it to become multi billionaires

Brian Keating (2:05:42.900)

or necessarily for any military purpose whatsoever.

Lex Fridman (2:05:47.100)

But if we have that, sometimes I'm flying home at night.

Brian Keating (2:05:50.460)

When you fly into LA, you literally, it's very rare,

Lex Fridman (2:05:53.100)

you can see the number 10 million.

Brian Keating (2:05:55.100)

It's very hard to visualize things.

Lex Fridman (2:05:56.780)

You see a brick wall, you ask how many bricks are there?

Brian Keating (2:05:58.980)

It might be 1,000, 2,000.

Lex Fridman (2:06:00.540)

10 million lights.

Brian Keating (2:06:01.740)

There's 10 million souls.

Lex Fridman (2:06:03.380)

And you can see they're discrete.

Brian Keating (2:06:04.940)

They're not like the Milky Way all blending together.

Lex Fridman (2:06:07.020)

Each lost in their own busy lives, excited, fall in love,

Brian Keating (2:06:11.900)

afraid of losing their job, all that.

Lex Fridman (2:06:13.900)

By the way, people should know that you're a pilot.

Lex Fridman (2:06:16.020)

So you literally mean fly.

Lex Fridman (2:06:17.700)

Yeah, sometimes I get to do it.

Brian Keating (2:06:19.180)

You get to look at the eye of God perspective

Lex Fridman (2:06:22.940)

on these 10 million, on these millions of helpless apes.

Lex Fridman (2:06:26.300)

And I don't think they're like constellations,

Lex Fridman (2:06:28.220)

but upside down, like the city.

Brian Keating (2:06:29.860)

This is like a constellation.

Lex Fridman (2:06:30.860)

Hopefully I'll stay and keep the plane the right way up.

Lex Fridman (2:06:32.580)

But when you think about that,

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.060)

imagine they're all working together.

Lex Fridman (2:06:36.260)

And imagine you always talk about love.

Lex Fridman (2:06:38.340)

But you don't know that they're not worthy of love.

Lex Fridman (2:06:42.260)

So you're looking down on them.

Lex Fridman (2:06:43.500)

And it's just amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:06:44.380)

Because you think, what amazing creation has man and humans?

Lex Fridman (2:06:48.420)

And what can we do?

Brian Keating (2:06:49.580)

It's phenomenal.

Lex Fridman (2:06:50.620)

It's so exciting.

Lex Fridman (2:06:52.140)

And then I get to do it.

Lex Fridman (2:06:53.420)

It's a job I say, don't tell Gavin Newsom,

Lex Fridman (2:06:55.260)

but I do it for free.

Lex Fridman (2:06:56.820)

I love what I do.

Lex Fridman (2:06:58.740)

But to think about, oh, if my student succeeds, then I'm not.

Lex Fridman (2:07:01.620)

No, it is unfortunate that you have experience.

Brian Keating (2:07:05.540)

I've certainly experienced it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:06.820)

And I think there are ways around it.

Brian Keating (2:07:08.980)

I think it is a vexing problem.

Lex Fridman (2:07:11.180)

Because people want to, it's very tempting

Brian Keating (2:07:14.380)

to keep your own garden fertilized.

Lex Fridman (2:07:18.180)

One thing that's interesting is people are like,

Lex Fridman (2:07:20.340)

why are you doing this thing?

Lex Fridman (2:07:21.500)

And podcasts, and you're supposed

Brian Keating (2:07:22.900)

to be a serious scientist leading this huge project,

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.380)

and collaborators.

Lex Fridman (2:07:27.780)

And I'm like, well, most of what I do, as I said before,

Lex Fridman (2:07:30.860)

for you it's Velcro.

Brian Keating (2:07:31.660)

For me it's like, what is the deal with the safety standards

Lex Fridman (2:07:36.220)

on the truck that we're driving up to deliver the diesel fuel

Brian Keating (2:07:38.660)

that will power the generator that

Lex Fridman (2:07:39.780)

will allow the concrete truck to move?

Brian Keating (2:07:40.980)

It has nothing to do with the Big Bang

Lex Fridman (2:07:42.820)

inflation, the multiverse, God's existence.

Brian Keating (2:07:45.140)

It has nothing to do with that.

Lex Fridman (2:07:45.900)

So those are people I say I have to talk to.

Brian Keating (2:07:48.340)

The people that come on the show, those

Lex Fridman (2:07:49.980)

are people I want to talk to.

Lex Fridman (2:07:51.500)

And that's super fun.

Lex Fridman (2:07:52.420)

I mean, it's a real honor that I get to do it.

Brian Keating (2:07:55.900)

I have some unfair advantages.

Lex Fridman (2:07:57.580)

I'm at a top university.

Brian Keating (2:07:58.660)

We have people that's affiliated with the Arthur C. Clark

Lex Fridman (2:08:01.060)

Foundation, brilliant scientists coming through.

Lex Fridman (2:08:04.500)

But I felt like it would be kind of a shame

Lex Fridman (2:08:06.900)

if I didn't allow them to teach at scale,

Brian Keating (2:08:09.820)

because they're better teachers than I am.

Lex Fridman (2:08:11.900)

Let me ask you an interesting, maybe difficult question.

Brian Keating (2:08:16.620)

Have you ever considered talking on your podcast

Lex Fridman (2:08:21.340)

with the people who would get the Nobel Prize for BICEP2

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.500)

if it turned out to be detecting what it is?

Lex Fridman (2:08:28.220)

Yeah, I mean, I'm still friends with them.

Lex Fridman (2:08:30.300)

And they have still gone on to.

Lex Fridman (2:08:32.060)

So we should say why we didn't win the Nobel Prize,

Lex Fridman (2:08:34.580)

and then what happened with the group that

Lex Fridman (2:08:37.940)

is now leading it that I'm completely divorced

Brian Keating (2:08:41.060)

from in a secular sense.

Lex Fridman (2:08:43.580)

We're friends.

Brian Keating (2:08:44.580)

We see each other.

Lex Fridman (2:08:45.940)

We send each other emails and stuff like that.

Brian Keating (2:08:48.220)

I would love to get their sense of what

Lex Fridman (2:08:50.340)

the natural heartbreak built into the whole process

Brian Keating (2:08:54.300)

of the Nobel Prize, what their sense is.

Lex Fridman (2:08:56.140)

I would love to hear an honest, real conversation.

Brian Keating (2:08:58.860)

I understand you're friends, but there's some hard truth

Lex Fridman (2:09:01.780)

that even friends don't talk about until you put a mic.

Brian Keating (2:09:03.340)

They weren't happy I wrote the book.

Lex Fridman (2:09:04.180)

I mean, I remember one of them was like, well,

Lex Fridman (2:09:06.580)

what's this I hear about a book?

Lex Fridman (2:09:07.860)

And I mean, a lot of people told me not to write the book.

Brian Keating (2:09:10.180)

They said it's going to give too much attention

Lex Fridman (2:09:12.620)

to the Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (2:09:13.460)

It's going to look like sour grapes.

Lex Fridman (2:09:15.180)

Again, I say you can prove I have sour grapes or not.

Brian Keating (2:09:17.740)

Just give me the next prize.

Lex Fridman (2:09:19.740)

So if you get a Nobel Prize for literature,

Lex Fridman (2:09:21.860)

you would turn it down?

Lex Fridman (2:09:23.060)

I don't know.

Brian Keating (2:09:24.180)

It's funny, because Sabina Hassenfelder,

Lex Fridman (2:09:26.340)

who is a fellow YouTube sensation,

Lex Fridman (2:09:30.020)

and she's so gracious and so good.

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.300)

She has that German, just gentle and genteelness.

Brian Keating (2:09:40.300)

She's a little too nice for my taste, I would say.

Lex Fridman (2:09:43.180)

I wish she could really say what she thinks and be

Brian Keating (2:09:45.220)

snarky on occasion.

Lex Fridman (2:09:46.420)

So she wrote a review of my book when it came out

Brian Keating (2:09:48.660)

three or four years ago.

Lex Fridman (2:09:49.900)

And she said, well, you know, Brian Keating,

Brian Keating (2:09:53.220)

she said, well, it's interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:09:55.620)

He talks a lot about cosmology.

Lex Fridman (2:09:57.020)

But they can do whatever the hell they want.

Lex Fridman (2:10:00.060)

And he presumably has these problems with it,

Lex Fridman (2:10:02.740)

but it's none of his business, basically.

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.820)

And at the end, she said, but if you want one good thing,

Brian Keating (2:10:08.500)

he's a really good writer.

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.500)

And who knows?

Brian Keating (2:10:10.500)

He could win the Nobel Prize in literature someday.

Lex Fridman (2:10:12.980)

And then she allowed me to publish a rebuttal

Brian Keating (2:10:14.580)

on her blog, which was kind of funny.

Lex Fridman (2:10:16.080)

But anyway, no.

Lex Fridman (2:10:17.380)

So getting back to the guys that we were kind of collaboratimies

Lex Fridman (2:10:21.300)

or frenemies, we're still, look, we

Brian Keating (2:10:24.620)

don't wish each other active ill.

Lex Fridman (2:10:26.380)

I've visited them.

Brian Keating (2:10:27.340)

They're welcome to visit me.

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.540)

They have visited me.

Brian Keating (2:10:29.940)

The thing I have to say is that I just

Lex Fridman (2:10:31.620)

wonder about introspection.

Brian Keating (2:10:33.820)

For me, literally, I don't care about the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (2:10:38.500)

other than what it can do to benefit science.

Lex Fridman (2:10:42.000)

But I no longer, I did, but by the way,

Lex Fridman (2:10:43.740)

I did seriously care about how it would benefit Brian Keating

Brian Keating (2:10:46.460)

early on in my career.

Lex Fridman (2:10:47.460)

I'm just totally honest.

Brian Keating (2:10:48.580)

I'm not proud of it.

Lex Fridman (2:10:50.060)

It's kind of embarrassing.

Lex Fridman (2:10:51.420)

But now I would hope that people would say, like, OK,

Lex Fridman (2:10:53.940)

the guy is like, you know, he's obsessed with it.

Brian Keating (2:10:56.860)

My next book is not about this.

Lex Fridman (2:10:58.580)

It's about something completely different.

Lex Fridman (2:11:00.300)

And I do feel like people lack introspection a lot of times

Lex Fridman (2:11:05.860)

in science.

Brian Keating (2:11:06.460)

We don't think about why we're doing what we're doing.

Lex Fridman (2:11:08.820)

And I think it comes down to curiosity.

Brian Keating (2:11:11.740)

One thing about Joe, and again, I've only listened to,

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.860)

like, I have to confess.

Brian Keating (2:11:16.300)

You know, you're like, my father.

Lex Fridman (2:11:17.460)

Now I'm confessing my sins to you, Father Lex.

Brian Keating (2:11:19.420)

Father Friedman.

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.620)

I haven't listened to, like, that many of your episodes

Lex Fridman (2:11:24.380)

start to finish, OK?

Lex Fridman (2:11:25.380)

I'm with our friend, mutual friend, Eric.

Brian Keating (2:11:27.060)

I've listened to a bunch of recent ones.

Lex Fridman (2:11:30.420)

Einstein, Weinstein, Weinstein, Weinstein, that's what it is.

Brian Keating (2:11:35.420)

I get them confused with the brother.

Lex Fridman (2:11:38.140)

The brothers care about stuff, the brother's wives.

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.180)

And a few others.

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.900)

I haven't ever listened to a full Joe Rogan episode.

Lex Fridman (2:11:43.900)

But from what I've seen with him,

Lex Fridman (2:11:45.860)

he has a preternatural curiosity.

Brian Keating (2:11:48.380)

He doesn't have passion.

Lex Fridman (2:11:49.380)

There are a lot of podcasts that have passion.

Brian Keating (2:11:50.780)

Like, I've been on their show.

Lex Fridman (2:11:52.220)

He has curiosity.

Brian Keating (2:11:53.020)

Like, he's not going to stop talking about something

Lex Fridman (2:11:55.300)

until he hops it, until he understands it,

Brian Keating (2:11:57.300)

until he gets it viscerally.

Lex Fridman (2:11:59.340)

And I respect that.

Brian Keating (2:12:00.340)

Because as I say in this more recent book,

Lex Fridman (2:12:02.940)

passion's kind of like the dopamine hit

Brian Keating (2:12:05.420)

that gets you started, like, oh, I'm going to be great.

Lex Fridman (2:12:07.700)

Maybe I can win a Nobel Prize.

Brian Keating (2:12:08.820)

Like, that's not going to sustain you.

Lex Fridman (2:12:10.780)

The sustenance comes from the passion

Brian Keating (2:12:13.300)

converting to curiosity.

Lex Fridman (2:12:15.300)

And what I want to do is convert as many things as possible

Brian Keating (2:12:18.300)

to things that I can then.

Lex Fridman (2:12:20.180)

Because actually, I've had people that discuss addiction.

Lex Fridman (2:12:24.060)

And there is an addictive quality to doing podcasts

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.740)

or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:12:28.220)

But there's an addictive quality being a scientist.

Lex Fridman (2:12:30.420)

And you get to do things that are very specialized

Brian Keating (2:12:33.380)

in specialized locations with special people,

Lex Fridman (2:12:36.180)

paid for by other people who have no freaking idea what

Brian Keating (2:12:38.820)

you do.

Lex Fridman (2:12:39.340)

I mean, imagine you worked in some job.

Lex Fridman (2:12:41.820)

And Feynman said all these contradictory things.

Lex Fridman (2:12:44.780)

Like, he said, if you can't explain it to your grandmother,

Brian Keating (2:12:49.460)

you don't understand it yourself.

Lex Fridman (2:12:50.980)

Then the day you won the Nobel Prize,

Lex Fridman (2:12:52.220)

a reporter asked him, what did you win it for?

Lex Fridman (2:12:53.500)

He said, if I could explain it to you, bud,

Brian Keating (2:12:55.340)

it wouldn't be worth a Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (2:12:56.500)

So let's leave aside his inherent contradictions.

Lex Fridman (2:12:58.940)

But in reality, there is a kind of like dopamine rush

Lex Fridman (2:13:02.660)

that you get from it.

Lex Fridman (2:13:03.540)

But what is ultimately going to be the sustenance of it?

Lex Fridman (2:13:07.640)

So yeah, I do feel like we have to find a way to nucleate that.

Brian Keating (2:13:12.500)

I don't know, actually, I don't know if it's like,

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.860)

can you turn someone into a scientist?

Brian Keating (2:13:16.820)

I used to ask this question all the time.

Lex Fridman (2:13:18.780)

Can you make someone creative?

Lex Fridman (2:13:21.540)

Can you teach someone to be creative?

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.020)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.900)

Can you teach someone to be curious?

Lex Fridman (2:13:26.420)

I don't know.

Brian Keating (2:13:26.940)

I do know that kids are naturally curious.

Lex Fridman (2:13:29.400)

As they get older, they get less curious.

Brian Keating (2:13:31.460)

Just like I heard from the other forward author, James

Lex Fridman (2:13:34.620)

Altucher, he said, once they did a study,

Brian Keating (2:13:37.980)

kids smile 300 times a day, or smile or laugh.

Lex Fridman (2:13:40.540)

Adults, five or six.

Brian Keating (2:13:42.620)

Five or six.

Lex Fridman (2:13:43.380)

No, I'm trying to get you to laugh, but you're not going to laugh.

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.620)

But anyway, no, it's true.

Lex Fridman (2:13:46.660)

Somewhere you lose 30% to 50%.

Brian Keating (2:13:49.020)

I'm not entertained.

Lex Fridman (2:13:50.820)

But that's because I'm an adult.

Lex Fridman (2:13:52.460)

And then I do remember there's some distribution

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.980)

in those studies with happier adults smile a little more,

Lex Fridman (2:13:57.740)

but still the kids blow them out of the water.

Lex Fridman (2:13:59.820)

Just crush it.

Brian Keating (2:14:02.140)

In other words, should we invest our energy

Lex Fridman (2:14:04.180)

in getting the half life decay constant,

Lex Fridman (2:14:07.300)

stretched out more for curiosity for kids?

Lex Fridman (2:14:09.660)

Or should we try to reset the dopamine hit?

Lex Fridman (2:14:12.300)

And then I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.500)

It's an open question.

Brian Keating (2:14:14.380)

Well, I think it goes to David Foster Wallace,

Lex Fridman (2:14:17.380)

the key to life is to be unboreable.

Brian Keating (2:14:19.300)

I think you could train this kind of thing, which

Lex Fridman (2:14:22.900)

is in every single situation, which I think is at the core,

Brian Keating (2:14:28.780)

at least this correlated with curiosity,

Lex Fridman (2:14:30.860)

is in every situation, try to find the exciting,

Brian Keating (2:14:36.720)

the fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:14:37.740)

Like in every situation.

Brian Keating (2:14:38.860)

You sitting at the, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (2:14:40.980)

waiting for something at a DMV or something like that.

Brian Keating (2:14:43.940)

Find something that excites you, like a thought.

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.020)

Like watch people or start to think about, well,

Brian Keating (2:14:51.420)

I wonder how many people have to go to the DMV every day.

Lex Fridman (2:14:55.780)

And then try to go into the pothead mode of thinking like,

Brian Keating (2:14:59.700)

wow, isn't this weird that there's a bunch of people

Lex Fridman (2:15:02.060)

that are having to get a stamp of approval

Brian Keating (2:15:05.500)

from the government to drive their cars,

Lex Fridman (2:15:07.620)

and then there's millions of cars driving every day.

Lex Fridman (2:15:09.500)

Or like, how can I do this better?

Lex Fridman (2:15:10.460)

Maybe there's some blockchain and they could like VIN transfer.

Brian Keating (2:15:13.180)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:15:13.860)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (2:15:14.360)

No, that is a good thing.

Lex Fridman (2:15:15.660)

And then every situation, I think

Brian Keating (2:15:18.000)

if you rigorously just practice that at a young age,

Lex Fridman (2:15:21.500)

I think you can learn to do that.

Brian Keating (2:15:22.980)

Because sometimes people ask me for advice

Lex Fridman (2:15:26.220)

and to do this thing or that thing.

Brian Keating (2:15:29.780)

I think you, at the core, really have

Lex Fridman (2:15:31.580)

to have this muscle of finding the awesomeness in everything.

Brian Keating (2:15:36.620)

Because if you're able to find the awesomeness

Lex Fridman (2:15:38.580)

in everything, like whatever journey you take,

Brian Keating (2:15:40.940)

whatever weird meandering path that you take through life

Lex Fridman (2:15:47.340)

is going to be productive, is going to end up in a great place.

Lex Fridman (2:15:50.660)

So that muscle is at the core of it.

Lex Fridman (2:15:52.220)

And I guess curiosity is central to that.

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.220)

But you didn't win the Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (2:16:02.180)

The team of Bicep that led the Bicep 2

Brian Keating (2:16:05.660)

didn't win the Nobel Prize because of some space dust.

Lex Fridman (2:16:10.260)

That's right.

Brian Keating (2:16:11.460)

It's like schmutz.

Lex Fridman (2:16:13.940)

Which one is the moon?

Lex Fridman (2:16:15.340)

Which one is?

Lex Fridman (2:16:16.060)

That one's dust.

Brian Keating (2:16:17.820)

Space dust, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:16:20.700)

What are we looking at?

Lex Fridman (2:16:21.660)

So why is space dust the villain of this whole story?

Lex Fridman (2:16:25.940)

Well, it's funny.

Brian Keating (2:16:26.820)

I wrote these books.

Lex Fridman (2:16:27.900)

And I don't know about you, but when you get all these books,

Brian Keating (2:16:29.700)

I'm sure you get books, people sending books.

Lex Fridman (2:16:31.580)

They always come in these dust jackets, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:33.460)

I was always like, what the hell is a dust jacket?

Lex Fridman (2:16:35.460)

How much dust is raining down at any moment?

Brian Keating (2:16:38.220)

I mean, this is immaculate.

Lex Fridman (2:16:39.260)

This room is Russian tidiness galore.

Lex Fridman (2:16:41.500)

But in a normal household, how much dust is raining down?

Lex Fridman (2:16:44.220)

It's not really pretty until I wrote a book.

Lex Fridman (2:16:47.340)

And I realized I'm writing a story about the origin

Lex Fridman (2:16:50.220)

of the universe, the prologue to the cosmos.

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.260)

And dust is going to cover this story.

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.180)

It's actually more a story about astrophysics and cosmology

Brian Keating (2:17:01.820)

than dust.

Lex Fridman (2:17:02.320)

And this is the link between the cosmological and the

Brian Keating (2:17:05.620)

astrophysical.

Lex Fridman (2:17:06.300)

So what does that mean?

Lex Fridman (2:17:07.300)

So astrophysics is, broadly speaking,

Lex Fridman (2:17:09.100)

the study of physical phenomena manifest in the heavens,

Brian Keating (2:17:13.100)

astronomical phenomena.

Lex Fridman (2:17:14.820)

Cosmology is concerned with the origin, evolution,

Brian Keating (2:17:17.200)

composition of the universe as a whole.

Lex Fridman (2:17:18.820)

But it's not really concerned with stars, galaxies,

Lex Fridman (2:17:21.460)

and planets per se, other than how they might help us measure

Lex Fridman (2:17:24.540)

the Hubble constant, the density of the universe,

Brian Keating (2:17:26.780)

the neutrino content, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:17:29.300)

So we have a tendency to kind of look a little bit,

Brian Keating (2:17:31.700)

you know, they're like, not all astronomers

Lex Fridman (2:17:34.180)

and astrophysicists are equal.

Brian Keating (2:17:35.420)

They're all equal, but some are more equal than others.

Lex Fridman (2:17:37.420)

So we have kind of a prejudice, a little swagger, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:40.040)

And cosmologists are studying, you know, we're using Einstein.

Lex Fridman (2:17:42.380)

We're not using, like, you know, Boltzmann.

Brian Keating (2:17:44.420)

We're thinking of the biggest possible pictures.

Lex Fridman (2:17:46.880)

In so doing, you can actually become

Brian Keating (2:17:49.360)

blinded to otherwise obvious effects

Lex Fridman (2:17:52.840)

that people would have not overlooked.

Brian Keating (2:17:55.980)

In our case, when we sought out the signal,

Lex Fridman (2:17:58.620)

we were using the photons that make up this primordial heat

Brian Keating (2:18:02.180)

bath that surrounds the universe,

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.700)

luckily only at three degrees Kelvin approximately.

Brian Keating (2:18:06.380)

We're using those as a type of film

Lex Fridman (2:18:08.260)

onto which gravitational waves will reverberate it,

Brian Keating (2:18:11.220)

make them oscillate preferentially

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.820)

in a polarized way.

Lex Fridman (2:18:14.180)

And then we can use our polarized sunglasses,

Lex Fridman (2:18:16.140)

but in a microwave format, to detect

Brian Keating (2:18:18.860)

the characteristic twofold symmetry

Lex Fridman (2:18:20.520)

pattern of underrotation.

Brian Keating (2:18:22.500)

That's the technical way that we undergo it.

Lex Fridman (2:18:24.220)

I mean, there's a lot more to it.

Lex Fridman (2:18:26.200)

But there are more than one thing

Lex Fridman (2:18:27.900)

that can mimic exactly that signal.

Brian Keating (2:18:29.580)

First of all, when you look at the signal,

Lex Fridman (2:18:31.780)

the signal if inflation took place, big if,

Lex Fridman (2:18:34.240)

but if it took place, the signal would

Lex Fridman (2:18:36.580)

be about one or two parts per billion of the CMB temperature

Brian Keating (2:18:41.780)

itself.

Lex Fridman (2:18:43.140)

So a few nanokelvin.

Brian Keating (2:18:45.460)

The CMB is a few kelvin.

Lex Fridman (2:18:47.020)

The signal from these B modes would be a few nanokelvin.

Brian Keating (2:18:50.540)

It's astonishing to think.

Lex Fridman (2:18:52.180)

Penzias and Wilson, 1965, measured

Brian Keating (2:18:54.700)

something that's a billion times brighter.

Lex Fridman (2:18:58.020)

And that was what, 60 years ago?

Brian Keating (2:18:59.900)

Let's call it 60 years ago, since they discovered it.

Lex Fridman (2:19:02.540)

Moore's law, you're more expert now.

Brian Keating (2:19:04.340)

Let's call it every two years.

Lex Fridman (2:19:05.980)

So you're talking about like 2 to the 30th power doubling

Brian Keating (2:19:09.180)

or something like that at that.

Lex Fridman (2:19:10.660)

Let's call it 2 to the 20th, something like that.

Lex Fridman (2:19:12.740)

So that's like only 2 to the 10th is 1,000.

Lex Fridman (2:19:17.140)

Correct my math, I'm wrong.

Brian Keating (2:19:18.380)

2 to the 20th is a million.

Lex Fridman (2:19:20.380)

2 to the 30th is a billion.

Lex Fridman (2:19:22.020)

So we're outpacing Moore's law in terms

Lex Fridman (2:19:25.780)

of the sensitivity of our instruments

Brian Keating (2:19:27.500)

to detect these feeble signals from the cosmos.

Lex Fridman (2:19:30.380)

And they don't have to deal with,

Brian Keating (2:19:31.860)

in the semiconductor factory in Santa Clara, California,

Lex Fridman (2:19:35.180)

they don't have to deal with meteorites and things

Brian Keating (2:19:38.140)

like coming into the laboratory.

Lex Fridman (2:19:39.780)

It's a clean room.

Brian Keating (2:19:40.460)

It's pristine.

Lex Fridman (2:19:41.140)

They can control everything about it.

Brian Keating (2:19:42.780)

We can't control the cosmos.

Lex Fridman (2:19:44.700)

And the cosmos is literally littered

Brian Keating (2:19:46.420)

with particles of schmutz, of failed planets, asteroids,

Lex Fridman (2:19:50.540)

meteoroids, things that didn't coalesce

Brian Keating (2:19:52.460)

to make either the Earth, the moon, the planet Jupiter,

Lex Fridman (2:19:56.900)

or its moons, or get sucked into them

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.660)

and make craters on them, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:20:00.980)

The rest of it is falling, and it comes in a power spectrum.

Brian Keating (2:20:04.260)

There's very few, thank god, Chicxulub sized impact

Lex Fridman (2:20:07.820)

or progenitors that will take out all life on Earth.

Lex Fridman (2:20:11.900)

But there's extremely large number

Lex Fridman (2:20:13.540)

of tiny dust particles and microscopic grains.

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.580)

And then there's a fair number of intermediate sized

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.940)

particles.

Lex Fridman (2:20:19.740)

And it turns out this little guy here

Lex Fridman (2:20:21.980)

is the end product of a collapsing star that

Brian Keating (2:20:26.900)

explodes in what's called a supernova, type II supernova.

Lex Fridman (2:20:30.140)

So stars spend most of their life

Brian Keating (2:20:31.860)

using helium nuclei protons and neutrons into helium nuclei.

Lex Fridman (2:20:39.180)

And then from there, it can make other things like beryllium

Lex Fridman (2:20:41.820)

and briefly make beryllium and carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,

Lex Fridman (2:20:45.220)

all the way up until it tries to make iron and nickel.

Lex Fridman (2:20:48.780)

And iron and nickel are endothermic.

Lex Fridman (2:20:50.700)

It takes more energy than gets liberated

Brian Keating (2:20:52.780)

to make an atom of iron.

Lex Fridman (2:20:55.900)

When that happens, there's no longer enough heat supplying

Brian Keating (2:20:58.740)

pressure to resist the gravitational collapse

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.420)

of the material that was produced earlier.

Lex Fridman (2:21:03.060)

So the star forms and goes inside out.

Lex Fridman (2:21:04.980)

That's how scientists discovered helium

Brian Keating (2:21:07.460)

was discovered on the sun.

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.580)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.940)

Did you know?

Lex Fridman (2:21:09.300)

That's why it's called helium.

Brian Keating (2:21:10.660)

Yeah, they went there at night.

Lex Fridman (2:21:12.060)

And they went there at night.

Brian Keating (2:21:14.780)

No, helium means Helios is the god of the sun.

Lex Fridman (2:21:16.780)

It was discovered in its spectrum from observations

Brian Keating (2:21:19.380)

of the telescope like 150 years ago.

Lex Fridman (2:21:20.980)

It wasn't discovered like when oxygen and iron was discovered.

Lex Fridman (2:21:25.580)

So it's only a relatively recent comer to the pure activity.

Lex Fridman (2:21:28.460)

So helium came after oxygen.

Brian Keating (2:21:31.220)

Oh, no, first hydrogen forms into helium.

Lex Fridman (2:21:33.460)

So that's the first thing that formed.

Brian Keating (2:21:34.940)

No, in terms of discoveries.

Lex Fridman (2:21:36.340)

Oh, yeah, after oxygen.

Brian Keating (2:21:37.420)

Yeah, I think Priestley and others, Dalton,

Lex Fridman (2:21:41.100)

discovered it in the 1700s.

Brian Keating (2:21:42.660)

No, helium was really only discovered

Lex Fridman (2:21:44.300)

from the spectrum of looking at the sun

Lex Fridman (2:21:45.860)

and seeing the weird atomic absorption called Fraunhofer

Lex Fridman (2:21:49.140)

lines in the solar spectrum.

Lex Fridman (2:21:51.660)

But when it tries to make iron, there's

Lex Fridman (2:21:54.060)

no longer any leftover heat.

Brian Keating (2:21:55.580)

In other words, there's heat left over from fusing,

Lex Fridman (2:21:57.860)

as you know, the son of a plasma physicist.

Brian Keating (2:21:59.700)

You fuse to a hydrogen nuclei, you get excess energy,

Lex Fridman (2:22:03.380)

plus you get helium.

Lex Fridman (2:22:04.340)

So that's why fusion energy could

Lex Fridman (2:22:05.700)

be the energy source of the future and always will be.

Brian Keating (2:22:08.420)

No, no, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:22:09.260)

Hopefully, it'll come much sooner than that.

Brian Keating (2:22:11.420)

In so doing, trying to make iron, it takes more energy,

Lex Fridman (2:22:13.940)

doesn't give off enough energy, star collapses, explodes.

Lex Fridman (2:22:16.740)

And what does it spray out into the cosmic interstellar medium?

Lex Fridman (2:22:20.100)

It sprays out the last thing it made, which is that stuff.

Brian Keating (2:22:22.820)

Luckily for us, because some of that

Lex Fridman (2:22:24.540)

coalesced and made the core of the Earth,

Brian Keating (2:22:26.820)

onto which the lighter, like silica and carbon and the dirt

Lex Fridman (2:22:30.180)

and the crust of the Earth were formed.

Lex Fridman (2:22:31.820)

And some of that made its way to the crust.

Lex Fridman (2:22:33.660)

The iron made its way to the crust.

Brian Keating (2:22:35.420)

Some of that your mother ate and synthesized

Lex Fridman (2:22:38.260)

hemoglobin molecules.

Lex Fridman (2:22:39.540)

And hemoglobin has iron particles in it.

Lex Fridman (2:22:41.380)

It's a quite amazing substance.

Brian Keating (2:22:43.140)

Without it, we wouldn't have our red blood.

Lex Fridman (2:22:44.820)

We wouldn't exist as we are.

Lex Fridman (2:22:47.380)

Is this a very long, complicated mom joke?

Lex Fridman (2:22:51.220)

I've done enough dad jokes.

Brian Keating (2:22:52.260)

My quota's up.

Lex Fridman (2:22:53.820)

So taking this object seriously, not all of it

Brian Keating (2:22:58.220)

gets bound up in a planet.

Lex Fridman (2:22:59.260)

In fact, forming planets is very inefficient.

Lex Fridman (2:23:01.940)

And so there's a lot of schmutz left over,

Lex Fridman (2:23:03.660)

some of which gets in the way of our telescopes looking back

Brian Keating (2:23:07.100)

to the beginning of time.

Lex Fridman (2:23:08.660)

And some of those molecules, like iron,

Brian Keating (2:23:10.420)

is used in compass needles.

Lex Fridman (2:23:12.140)

They're magnetized.

Lex Fridman (2:23:13.380)

And magnetic fields in our galaxy

Lex Fridman (2:23:15.660)

can align them and make the exact polarization pattern

Brian Keating (2:23:18.140)

that we're looking for, as if the compass needles get

Lex Fridman (2:23:21.020)

all aligned.

Brian Keating (2:23:21.740)

That's like the polarization of the dust grain.

Lex Fridman (2:23:24.200)

It's like that polarizing filter.

Brian Keating (2:23:26.260)

That means light polarized like this will get absorbed.

Lex Fridman (2:23:29.060)

And light polarized like this will go through.

Lex Fridman (2:23:30.900)

So it's absorbing.

Lex Fridman (2:23:31.700)

It's making 100% polarized light out

Brian Keating (2:23:33.540)

of an initially unpolarized light source.

Lex Fridman (2:23:35.820)

And that's what happened.

Lex Fridman (2:23:36.900)

And what we ended up claiming on March 17, and I'm sure

Lex Fridman (2:23:43.460)

if you were there, you might remember this.

Brian Keating (2:23:45.380)

At the Harvard Center for Astrophysics,

Lex Fridman (2:23:47.260)

there was an announcement.

Brian Keating (2:23:48.300)

There were like three or four Nobel Prize winners

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.260)

in the audience.

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.980)

And the BICEP2 team, which I was no longer leading,

Lex Fridman (2:23:53.660)

I was still a member of it.

Brian Keating (2:23:55.100)

In fact, in the announcement, the first person they mentioned,

Lex Fridman (2:23:57.980)

besides thank you all for being here,

Brian Keating (2:24:00.260)

is me and my team at UC San Diego.

Lex Fridman (2:24:02.500)

Although I wasn't invited to go to the press conference

Brian Keating (2:24:05.220)

because that was very complicated.

Lex Fridman (2:24:07.700)

Yes, exactly.

Brian Keating (2:24:09.380)

It's a little school up there in the Cambridge area.

Lex Fridman (2:24:12.900)

And so they ended up making this announcement

Brian Keating (2:24:15.540)

that we had discovered the aftershocks of inflation.

Lex Fridman (2:24:18.220)

We detected the gravitational waves shaking up the CMB.

Lex Fridman (2:24:21.900)

And on that day, past Lex Friedman's podcast

Lex Fridman (2:24:24.600)

back when it was called Artificial Intelligence,

Brian Keating (2:24:26.620)

Max Tegmark said, goodbye, universe.

Lex Fridman (2:24:29.220)

Hello, multiverse.

Lex Fridman (2:24:30.300)

And hello, Nobel Prize.

Lex Fridman (2:24:32.380)

He saw that as confirmatory evidence, not only of inflation,

Brian Keating (2:24:36.300)

not only of gravitational waves, but of the multiverse.

Lex Fridman (2:24:39.180)

Goodbye, universe.

Brian Keating (2:24:40.340)

Hello, multiverse.

Lex Fridman (2:24:41.780)

Multiverse is a natural consequence.

Brian Keating (2:24:44.460)

Consequence of inflation, yes.

Lex Fridman (2:24:46.260)

According to its prominent supporters, yeah.

Brian Keating (2:24:49.580)

Yeah, and of course, leave the poetry to Max,

Lex Fridman (2:24:51.900)

which he does masterfully.

Brian Keating (2:24:54.220)

OK, so the excitement was there.

Lex Fridman (2:24:58.340)

I mean, maybe the initial heartbreak for you

Brian Keating (2:25:01.780)

was there, too.

Lex Fridman (2:25:02.500)

That's some of the darker moments you're going through.

Lex Fridman (2:25:04.980)

But broadly, for the space of science,

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.860)

there's excitement there.

Brian Keating (2:25:09.060)

Huge excitement.

Lex Fridman (2:25:09.860)

And I often note that this is a problem in what I call

Brian Keating (2:25:13.500)

the science media complex.

Lex Fridman (2:25:15.100)

Because oftentimes, you'll see things like past guess

Brian Keating (2:25:17.860)

Sarah Seager, Venus life exist.

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.500)

And that will be really, I mean, it's fascinating, right,

Brian Keating (2:25:23.820)

with the work that she's doing or her colleagues are doing,

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.580)

Clara, who's on your show as well.

Lex Fridman (2:25:28.280)

And that will be on front page, New York Times, Boston

Lex Fridman (2:25:31.660)

Globe, San Diego Union Tribune.

Brian Keating (2:25:34.260)

It'll be above the fold.

Lex Fridman (2:25:35.780)

Make headlines around the world.

Lex Fridman (2:25:37.140)

And then six months, 12 months later, as is the case for us,

Lex Fridman (2:25:40.220)

retraction.

Brian Keating (2:25:41.220)

Page C17 of the Saturday edition that nobody reads

Lex Fridman (2:25:45.260)

and underneath the personal.

Lex Fridman (2:25:47.300)

So we have a problem in science, that if it explodes, it leads.

Lex Fridman (2:25:52.740)

And we get this huge fanfare.

Lex Fridman (2:25:54.680)

And this is not unique to my experiment.

Lex Fridman (2:25:56.940)

This happened with the earlier discovery

Brian Keating (2:25:58.620)

of so called Martian life discovered

Lex Fridman (2:26:02.220)

in Antarctica, which was announced after peer review.

Brian Keating (2:26:06.060)

We weren't peer reviewed at the point

Lex Fridman (2:26:07.640)

when we made the announcement.

Brian Keating (2:26:08.500)

We had a press conference.

Lex Fridman (2:26:09.600)

And there are other reasons that the team leaders felt

Brian Keating (2:26:12.100)

it was important to do that so that we don't get scooped

Lex Fridman (2:26:14.460)

by a referee who's unethical.

Brian Keating (2:26:15.900)

We thought we had done everything right,

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.180)

but that's confirmation bias.

Lex Fridman (2:26:18.260)

So there's levels to this.

Lex Fridman (2:26:20.020)

Yeah, there were many levels.

Lex Fridman (2:26:21.860)

And there were people, me warning

Lex Fridman (2:26:23.820)

about how it would be interpreted

Lex Fridman (2:26:25.200)

and wanting to also make sure that we put all the data out,

Lex Fridman (2:26:28.260)

including the maps, which we still haven't released.

Lex Fridman (2:26:30.380)

And so there were a lot of reasons to be skeptical.

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.120)

But the public never knows this.

Lex Fridman (2:26:37.380)

So I've made a rule that if I am ever

Lex Fridman (2:26:39.380)

in charge of doling out large amounts of science funding,

Brian Keating (2:26:43.020)

that you should keep kind of an option.

Lex Fridman (2:26:45.660)

In other words, you should have money for publicity.

Brian Keating (2:26:47.900)

It's fine.

Lex Fridman (2:26:48.720)

Have money for your press conference.

Lex Fridman (2:26:50.220)

But hold in reserve in a bond to be used, hopefully never,

Lex Fridman (2:26:54.180)

but if it's to be used, an equal fund for the retraction,

Brian Keating (2:26:58.340)

if it should occur.

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.860)

So you would like to see,

Brian Keating (2:27:01.700)

because that's a big part of transparency, is the...

Lex Fridman (2:27:06.180)

To me, in the space of science at least,

Brian Keating (2:27:08.580)

that's as beautiful, because it reveals the...

Lex Fridman (2:27:13.100)

It tells a great story.

Brian Keating (2:27:15.220)

There's an excitement, there's a...

Lex Fridman (2:27:18.340)

Humanity.

Lex Fridman (2:27:20.060)

So there's a climax to the triumph,

Lex Fridman (2:27:21.660)

but there's also a climax to the disappointment at the end.

Brian Keating (2:27:25.420)

Because that also eventually leads to triumph again.

Lex Fridman (2:27:29.540)

That sets up, that's the drama that sets up the triumph.

Brian Keating (2:27:32.540)

Like with Andrew Wiles performing Fermat's theorem,

Lex Fridman (2:27:37.180)

I guess it's not the last thing, whatever.

Brian Keating (2:27:41.060)

Like the ups and downs of that, the rollercoaster,

Lex Fridman (2:27:43.580)

the whole thing should be documented.

Brian Keating (2:27:44.420)

That is science.

Lex Fridman (2:27:45.260)

That is science.

Lex Fridman (2:27:46.220)

And when we don't do that, then we cultivate this aura

Lex Fridman (2:27:49.020)

that excludes other scientists.

Brian Keating (2:27:51.060)

Often from minorities or women,

Lex Fridman (2:27:53.140)

that you have to be Einstein.

Brian Keating (2:27:54.460)

Like Einstein came out of the womb,

Lex Fridman (2:27:55.820)

and he was just like this guy with like curly...

Brian Keating (2:27:57.460)

No, he wasn't.

Lex Fridman (2:27:58.580)

He wasn't bad at math.

Brian Keating (2:28:00.220)

That's all nonsense.

Lex Fridman (2:28:01.740)

But he said that he...

Lex Fridman (2:28:02.900)

You know what he said he attributed his success to, Lex?

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.180)

He said, I never asked my dad what happened

Brian Keating (2:28:08.620)

when I ran alongside a light beam as a kid.

Lex Fridman (2:28:11.460)

And thank God I didn't.

Lex Fridman (2:28:12.420)

Because had I?

Lex Fridman (2:28:13.380)

He would have told me the best answer of the day,

Brian Keating (2:28:15.620)

which by the way, he would create 20 years later

Lex Fridman (2:28:18.900)

as a 26 year old in the patent office,

Brian Keating (2:28:21.500)

obviously in Switzerland.

Lex Fridman (2:28:22.740)

And in so doing, by delaying when he asked these questions,

Brian Keating (2:28:26.100)

he said, I approached it with the intellect

Lex Fridman (2:28:28.660)

of a mature scientist, not a little kid.

Lex Fridman (2:28:31.620)

And I wouldn't have accepted the same explanation.

Lex Fridman (2:28:34.100)

So sometimes assuming that scientists are infallible,

Brian Keating (2:28:37.300)

inevitable, omniscient being,

Lex Fridman (2:28:40.220)

I think that really does a disservice.

Lex Fridman (2:28:41.620)

And Jim Gates said, he's like,

Lex Fridman (2:28:42.860)

Einstein wasn't always Einstein.

Lex Fridman (2:28:45.020)

And we cultivate this mystery and allure at our peril

Lex Fridman (2:28:47.980)

because we're humans until we have artificial Einstein,

Brian Keating (2:28:51.740)

which I don't think will ever exist.

Lex Fridman (2:28:54.100)

You've launched the assay or project

Brian Keating (2:28:58.020)

where you hope to assess theories

Lex Fridman (2:28:59.620)

of everything with experiments.

Brian Keating (2:29:01.820)

You have a YouTube video where you were announcing that.

Lex Fridman (2:29:03.860)

That looks super cool.

Lex Fridman (2:29:06.300)

Can you describe this project?

Lex Fridman (2:29:07.820)

And you also mentioned kind of,

Brian Keating (2:29:09.060)

you give a shout out to a little known fellow

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.940)

by the name of Galileo Galilei

Brian Keating (2:29:14.300)

as an inspiration to this project.

Lex Fridman (2:29:17.180)

Yeah, so Galileo is kind of my avatar,

Brian Keating (2:29:20.340)

my hero, the kind of all around scientist

Lex Fridman (2:29:23.060)

that I would love to approach the logarithm of Galileo.

Brian Keating (2:29:27.620)

He was not only a phenomenal scientist,

Lex Fridman (2:29:31.020)

he was an incredible artist, a writer, a poet,

Brian Keating (2:29:35.380)

a philosopher, and back then they didn't have distinctions

Lex Fridman (2:29:38.260)

between a scientist and a physician,

Brian Keating (2:29:40.780)

was like a physicist.

Lex Fridman (2:29:42.940)

And he would indulge kind of these really

Brian Keating (2:29:46.220)

intellectual flights of fancy,

Lex Fridman (2:29:48.180)

thinking about phenomena such as the Earth's tides

Brian Keating (2:29:52.500)

or the composition of the Milky Way.

Lex Fridman (2:29:55.300)

And what's interesting about Galileo

Brian Keating (2:29:57.140)

is that he was almost as wrong often as he was right.

Lex Fridman (2:30:00.860)

And Galileo was not alone like this.

Brian Keating (2:30:03.500)

I always say like Einstein had at least seven Nobel prizes

Lex Fridman (2:30:07.540)

that he could have won for discoveries

Brian Keating (2:30:09.380)

that later became true,

Lex Fridman (2:30:10.660)

but he also had seven huge impossible to believe blunders

Brian Keating (2:30:15.260)

in some sense.

Lex Fridman (2:30:16.940)

That's too bad,

Brian Keating (2:30:17.780)

because he could have had a good career as I would say.

Lex Fridman (2:30:19.500)

And Galileo was like that too.

Brian Keating (2:30:21.300)

In other words, he would fall victim

Lex Fridman (2:30:23.380)

to I think this confirmation bias

Brian Keating (2:30:25.980)

that all scientists have to guard their lives against,

Lex Fridman (2:30:29.140)

their careers, their brands, their reputations against,

Brian Keating (2:30:32.020)

which is the exclusion of evidence that doesn't conform

Lex Fridman (2:30:34.980)

to what you're trying to prove for one reason or another,

Brian Keating (2:30:38.380)

or the radical acceptance of things

Lex Fridman (2:30:40.620)

that do comport with it in order to bolster your confidence.

Lex Fridman (2:30:43.740)

And both are equally intoxicating.

Lex Fridman (2:30:45.620)

It's a confirmation bias is a hell of a drug

Brian Keating (2:30:49.300)

because it really reinforces this notion,

Lex Fridman (2:30:53.060)

which is partially sunk cost.

Brian Keating (2:30:54.540)

You put so much time, effort, money, reputation into it.

Lex Fridman (2:30:57.460)

You don't wanna be wrong and go back on it.

Lex Fridman (2:30:59.540)

And with Galileo, he would be incredibly perceptive

Lex Fridman (2:31:04.940)

about things such as the Earth being not located

Brian Keating (2:31:09.460)

at the center of the solar system

Lex Fridman (2:31:11.060)

and the sun being the center,

Brian Keating (2:31:12.420)

the so called Copernican hypothesis.

Lex Fridman (2:31:15.220)

And he would use as evidence very, very interesting ideas

Brian Keating (2:31:19.260)

that all of which were wrong, basically.

Lex Fridman (2:31:21.020)

And in fact, we weren't able to prove

Brian Keating (2:31:22.940)

that the Earth orbited around the sun.

Lex Fridman (2:31:25.140)

And I ask you, can you prove the Earth is not flat?

Brian Keating (2:31:28.460)

No, well, you're a flat earther anyway.

Lex Fridman (2:31:30.140)

But I ask my practice.

Brian Keating (2:31:31.940)

Proud Flat Earth Society member,

Lex Fridman (2:31:34.900)

T shirts coming out soon.

Brian Keating (2:31:36.900)

Let's stream it.com.

Lex Fridman (2:31:38.340)

Merch.

Brian Keating (2:31:39.180)

Last merch.

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.700)

But it's actually not trivial to do that.

Lex Fridman (2:31:42.180)

But most of my students, graduate students

Lex Fridman (2:31:43.620)

can prove that the Earth is round

Brian Keating (2:31:45.140)

or explain how the Earth.

Lex Fridman (2:31:46.100)

It is actually not trivial to do though.

Brian Keating (2:31:48.020)

It's not.

Lex Fridman (2:31:48.860)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.700)

And much harder is to prove

Lex Fridman (2:31:50.540)

that the Earth goes around the sun.

Brian Keating (2:31:51.660)

In fact, that's extremely hard to prove.

Lex Fridman (2:31:53.220)

And almost none of my students,

Brian Keating (2:31:54.860)

even after they get their PhD and the final exam,

Lex Fridman (2:31:57.260)

I kinda like to just give them a little bit of humility.

Brian Keating (2:31:59.700)

Cause I think to be a good scientist,

Lex Fridman (2:32:01.380)

you need to be humble.

Brian Keating (2:32:02.300)

You need to have a little humility

Lex Fridman (2:32:03.620)

and you need to have swagger.

Brian Keating (2:32:05.140)

You need to feel like a little cocky.

Lex Fridman (2:32:06.460)

Like I could do this.

Brian Keating (2:32:07.380)

I can do this thing that Einstein by definition couldn't do.

Lex Fridman (2:32:10.260)

I'm gonna attempt it.

Brian Keating (2:32:11.340)

I'm gonna attempt to do what was impossible

Lex Fridman (2:32:13.620)

just a generation ago.

Lex Fridman (2:32:15.220)

How do you prove that the Earth goes around the sun?

Lex Fridman (2:32:18.500)

Do you have to, is it by the motion of other planets?

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.180)

So there are many ways to do it.

Lex Fridman (2:32:23.380)

I mean, obviously you could take a spaceship,

Brian Keating (2:32:24.820)

park it at the North celestial pole of our solar system

Lex Fridman (2:32:28.060)

and just watch what happens.

Lex Fridman (2:32:30.140)

But obviously that wasn't how it was discovered

Lex Fridman (2:32:31.820)

in the late 1700s.

Lex Fridman (2:32:32.860)

So it was called aberration.

Lex Fridman (2:32:34.460)

So if you look at stars,

Brian Keating (2:32:36.660)

as the Earth orbits around the sun,

Lex Fridman (2:32:39.620)

the position of the stars will shift slightly

Brian Keating (2:32:41.980)

because of the tilt of the Earth

Lex Fridman (2:32:43.300)

and because the Earth is in motion around the Earth

Lex Fridman (2:32:45.340)

and around the sun.

Lex Fridman (2:32:46.700)

And because the Earth has a non trivial amount of velocity

Brian Keating (2:32:50.500)

compared to the speed of light in its orbit around the sun,

Lex Fridman (2:32:53.700)

the stars will trace out little tiny ellipses

Lex Fridman (2:32:55.900)

and those will correspond to the fact

Lex Fridman (2:32:57.500)

that we're moving around.

Brian Keating (2:32:59.180)

If they're infinite distance,

Lex Fridman (2:33:00.580)

which we assume that they are, they're not really,

Lex Fridman (2:33:02.180)

but for all intents and purposes

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.740)

in the scale of the solar system, they're infinitely far away.

Lex Fridman (2:33:06.100)

So that's called stellar aberration.

Lex Fridman (2:33:08.140)

And that was the first way it was discovered.

Lex Fridman (2:33:10.580)

And actually we still use that.

Lex Fridman (2:33:11.820)

We have to correct for that effect

Brian Keating (2:33:13.260)

when we measure the cosmic microwave background.

Lex Fridman (2:33:16.060)

Because imagine you're inside of an oven,

Brian Keating (2:33:18.340)

it has some temperature three Kelvin

Lex Fridman (2:33:19.780)

and a thousand Kelvin whenever.

Brian Keating (2:33:21.100)

If you're moving towards you,

Lex Fridman (2:33:22.740)

the photons that are coming to me in that direction

Brian Keating (2:33:24.500)

will be blue shifted hotter

Lex Fridman (2:33:26.140)

and the ones behind me will be red shifted.

Brian Keating (2:33:27.980)

I'll artificially impute a greater or lesser amount

Lex Fridman (2:33:30.860)

of matter or energy where you are

Lex Fridman (2:33:32.620)

and it's an extension of the Doppler effect.

Lex Fridman (2:33:34.780)

So we actually make use of that

Lex Fridman (2:33:36.460)

and construct what's called like a local standard of rest.

Lex Fridman (2:33:39.540)

Anyway, so you can do it.

Lex Fridman (2:33:41.100)

But Galileo said, no, no, no,

Lex Fridman (2:33:42.340)

I'm not gonna wait for that.

Brian Keating (2:33:43.860)

I have other proofs for it.

Lex Fridman (2:33:45.780)

One of which is that the earth has tides

Lex Fridman (2:33:47.780)

and the tides come in and out twice a day,

Lex Fridman (2:33:50.100)

high tide and low tide.

Lex Fridman (2:33:51.420)

And he made the analogy,

Lex Fridman (2:33:53.420)

because the earth is moving around the sun,

Brian Keating (2:33:56.180)

say this is the sun here,

Lex Fridman (2:33:57.380)

and it's moving around the sun,

Lex Fridman (2:33:58.860)

but it's also rotating on its axis.

Lex Fridman (2:34:00.460)

See how the water is sloshing up and down

Lex Fridman (2:34:02.380)

inside the vodka bottle?

Lex Fridman (2:34:04.740)

As that happens, he said,

Brian Keating (2:34:05.660)

that's what the tides are caused by.

Lex Fridman (2:34:06.860)

Totally wrong.

Brian Keating (2:34:07.700)

Most people listen to this podcast.

Lex Fridman (2:34:09.260)

Just so you know, if you're listening to this,

Brian Keating (2:34:12.300)

he actually has a bottle of vodka in his hand.

Lex Fridman (2:34:14.780)

Half drunk.

Lex Fridman (2:34:15.820)

And we're both drunk and whatever else is possible.

Lex Fridman (2:34:20.740)

So as it sloshed around,

Brian Keating (2:34:22.180)

he claimed that was what,

Lex Fridman (2:34:23.020)

no, it has nothing to do with that.

Brian Keating (2:34:23.940)

The moon, over there,

Lex Fridman (2:34:26.420)

the moon pulls differentially

Brian Keating (2:34:28.700)

on the earth and the earth's ocean.

Lex Fridman (2:34:30.660)

That causes the oceans to bulge slightly

Brian Keating (2:34:33.060)

towards and away from where the moon is.

Lex Fridman (2:34:35.020)

And the moon is actually the source of the earth's tides.

Brian Keating (2:34:37.420)

It has nothing to do with Copernicus,

Lex Fridman (2:34:39.620)

the orbit of the sun.

Lex Fridman (2:34:40.660)

So he was totally wrong about that.

Lex Fridman (2:34:42.420)

He also thought that the Milky Way

Brian Keating (2:34:44.540)

was comprised only of stars,

Lex Fridman (2:34:46.180)

when we know it's made of gas, dust,

Brian Keating (2:34:47.900)

nebulae, and things like that.

Lex Fridman (2:34:49.740)

So he had his fair share of blunders.

Brian Keating (2:34:51.220)

Now, one thing I always kind of make note of,

Lex Fridman (2:34:53.620)

and I'm actually producing along with Jim Gates,

Brian Keating (2:34:57.420)

Fabiola Gianatti, Frank Wilczek,

Lex Fridman (2:35:00.460)

and Carlo Ravelli,

Lex Fridman (2:35:02.420)

and my friend Lucio Piccirillo,

Lex Fridman (2:35:03.980)

the first ever audio book of Galileo's dialogue,

Brian Keating (2:35:07.220)

the one where he claimed to find evidence

Lex Fridman (2:35:08.980)

for the orbit of the earth around the sun,

Lex Fridman (2:35:11.140)

but it was an error.

Lex Fridman (2:35:12.580)

So you're reading parts of this text.

Brian Keating (2:35:14.700)

Yeah, it's a brilliant book.

Lex Fridman (2:35:16.500)

So this book was written in 1632.

Brian Keating (2:35:19.260)

It was written, and it was the one

Lex Fridman (2:35:20.700)

that caused him to go into house arrest

Lex Fridman (2:35:22.340)

and almost threatened to be tortured.

Lex Fridman (2:35:24.500)

And that book laid out his arguments

Brian Keating (2:35:27.500)

for what was called the Copernican

Lex Fridman (2:35:29.460)

or the nonparapathetic Aristotelian, et cetera,

Brian Keating (2:35:33.860)

notion of the planetary dynamic.

Lex Fridman (2:35:37.140)

And eventually he was forced to recant

Brian Keating (2:35:39.780)

that he believed in it,

Lex Fridman (2:35:40.700)

and allegedly he said he still believes the earth moves.

Brian Keating (2:35:43.740)

Anyway, so we're making,

Lex Fridman (2:35:44.900)

it's written in the form of a trilogue.

Brian Keating (2:35:46.300)

It's actually called the dialogue with his three people.

Lex Fridman (2:35:48.700)

There's one named Salviati,

Brian Keating (2:35:50.380)

who was espousing Galileo's notions

Lex Fridman (2:35:53.140)

about how the heavens were orchestrated.

Lex Fridman (2:35:54.860)

And Salviati means like the salvation, the savior.

Lex Fridman (2:35:58.220)

Then there's a middleman, Segredo.

Lex Fridman (2:35:59.980)

So Carlo Rovelli is playing Salviati, brilliant one.

Lex Fridman (2:36:04.140)

I am playing Segredo,

Brian Keating (2:36:05.540)

who's like an intelligent interlocutor.

Lex Fridman (2:36:07.740)

I'm kind of just, I can appreciate Aristotle,

Brian Keating (2:36:10.740)

I can appreciate Copernicus.

Lex Fridman (2:36:12.380)

Then there's this guy, Simplicio, the simpleton,

Lex Fridman (2:36:15.260)

and he espouses the words of the Pope.

Lex Fridman (2:36:18.260)

So you can imagine like,

Brian Keating (2:36:19.620)

you're working in Putin's government

Lex Fridman (2:36:21.700)

or you're working in whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:36:23.580)

and all of a sudden you're kind of putting the words

Lex Fridman (2:36:27.020)

of like the fool, literally calling the fool,

Lex Fridman (2:36:29.820)

but you're using the words

Lex Fridman (2:36:30.780)

of the all supreme powerful being on earth at that time

Brian Keating (2:36:33.860)

was the Vatican church,

Lex Fridman (2:36:35.300)

especially for an Italian like Galileo.

Lex Fridman (2:36:37.300)

So he wasn't as brilliant politically

Lex Fridman (2:36:41.020)

as he was astrophysically and otherwise.

Lex Fridman (2:36:44.180)

Who's doing Simplicio?

Lex Fridman (2:36:46.580)

Simplicio is a friend of mine in University of Manchester

Brian Keating (2:36:49.780)

named Lucio Picciarello.

Lex Fridman (2:36:51.540)

He's an Irish guy, but he has an Italian,

Brian Keating (2:36:53.300)

no, no, he's a full blooded Italian.

Lex Fridman (2:36:55.420)

They all speak English and Italian, I only speak,

Lex Fridman (2:36:58.580)

and the four words are written by,

Lex Fridman (2:37:00.420)

so one four word in this place has three four words,

Brian Keating (2:37:03.660)

which is like a 12 word.

Lex Fridman (2:37:06.700)

Okay.

Brian Keating (2:37:07.540)

The four words are written by.

Lex Fridman (2:37:08.380)

Can you explain that joke for me?

Brian Keating (2:37:09.220)

Yeah, that was a good one.

Lex Fridman (2:37:10.260)

The four word, three four words.

Brian Keating (2:37:12.580)

One of them is written by Albert Einstein

Lex Fridman (2:37:14.540)

in which he says Galileo was not only

Brian Keating (2:37:17.740)

one of the greatest scientists in history,

Lex Fridman (2:37:19.220)

this is Einstein telling Galileo,

Lex Fridman (2:37:21.740)

but he was one of the greatest writers

Lex Fridman (2:37:23.860)

and minds of all of human history.

Brian Keating (2:37:26.420)

That four word is read by Frank Wilczek, who you've had.

Lex Fridman (2:37:30.580)

Jim Gates, who you've also had,

Brian Keating (2:37:31.700)

he reads the translation, the translator,

Lex Fridman (2:37:35.100)

Stillman Drake, who's a renowned scientific translator.

Lex Fridman (2:37:38.900)

And then Fabiola Giannati,

Lex Fridman (2:37:40.820)

she reads the introduction and dedication

Brian Keating (2:37:43.940)

from Galileo to the Duke of Tuscany

Lex Fridman (2:37:46.780)

and some of the different introductions

Brian Keating (2:37:49.380)

that Galileo himself had.

Lex Fridman (2:37:50.620)

It's just, it's such a thrill to be able to do it.

Brian Keating (2:37:53.060)

I only randomly found out,

Lex Fridman (2:37:54.380)

cause I wanted to study it and it's like 500 pages long.

Lex Fridman (2:37:58.220)

And I was like, let me get the audio book

Lex Fridman (2:37:59.420)

cause I'm an audio medium kind of guy, didn't exist.

Lex Fridman (2:38:02.020)

So I said, let's do it ourselves.

Lex Fridman (2:38:03.660)

And so we did it and hopefully it'll be out

Brian Keating (2:38:05.420)

on Galileo's birthday, which is February 15th, 2022.

Lex Fridman (2:38:09.460)

There'll be a ripe 457,

Lex Fridman (2:38:11.580)

but that's not the only one of his books.

Lex Fridman (2:38:13.500)

Galileo wrote many books,

Brian Keating (2:38:15.660)

one of which is called the Military Compass.

Lex Fridman (2:38:18.020)

And this is an interesting book for my blockchain

Lex Fridman (2:38:20.620)

and your blockchain aficionados.

Lex Fridman (2:38:22.620)

In this book, he talks about a compass,

Brian Keating (2:38:24.980)

which is not a magnetic compass,

Lex Fridman (2:38:26.500)

but an actual like slide roll.

Brian Keating (2:38:27.940)

It's basically a slide roll.

Lex Fridman (2:38:29.500)

And it's a manual.

Brian Keating (2:38:31.500)

It's like, imagine if your phone came with a manual,

Lex Fridman (2:38:34.060)

nowadays they don't, right?

Lex Fridman (2:38:35.100)

But this was a manual for how to use this slide roll,

Lex Fridman (2:38:38.140)

which is like enormously important.

Lex Fridman (2:38:39.820)

And he gives a whole bunch of worked examples.

Lex Fridman (2:38:41.900)

It's a brilliant book.

Lex Fridman (2:38:43.140)

One of the examples is how do you convert money?

Lex Fridman (2:38:45.460)

So he does a currency conversion

Brian Keating (2:38:47.540)

between Ducati and Florentine Ducati

Lex Fridman (2:38:50.820)

and Scuti and whatever, you know, lira, whatever.

Brian Keating (2:38:54.020)

He does all these currency conversions.

Lex Fridman (2:38:55.940)

One copy of this book, or maybe two exist,

Brian Keating (2:38:58.940)

first printings from 1600 still exist.

Lex Fridman (2:39:02.220)

If Galileo had just kept those in his family,

Brian Keating (2:39:06.100)

they're worth a hundred million dollars.

Lex Fridman (2:39:08.740)

Nowadays, you can't get a Scuti.

Brian Keating (2:39:10.180)

A Scuti is worth nothing.

Lex Fridman (2:39:11.460)

Like a Ducati is worth nothing.

Lex Fridman (2:39:13.060)

I mean, maybe some collector wants a piece of paper, right?

Lex Fridman (2:39:15.340)

So it's a lesson.

Brian Keating (2:39:16.180)

Like there are value in physical, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:39:18.780)

nonfungible tokens, this original nonfungible token.

Lex Fridman (2:39:22.500)

But then a third book is called the assayer.

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.500)

So what is an assayer?

Lex Fridman (2:39:26.420)

So assayers were kind of like these alchemists, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:39:29.020)

physicists, chemists that would be around a court.

Lex Fridman (2:39:33.020)

And every so often for the treasurer,

Lex Fridman (2:39:35.300)

they would want to accept pieces of gold from the citizens

Lex Fridman (2:39:37.860)

and convert that to script or, you know, paper money.

Lex Fridman (2:39:40.780)

And to do that, they needed someone

Brian Keating (2:39:42.500)

to verify with a standard of gold

Lex Fridman (2:39:44.740)

that they knew to be gold and do some kind

Brian Keating (2:39:47.540)

of semi non destructive evaluation

Lex Fridman (2:39:49.740)

of the purported object, the metal that

Brian Keating (2:39:51.900)

was supposed to be gold.

Lex Fridman (2:39:53.220)

So they would take these pieces of gold, theoretically gold,

Lex Fridman (2:39:56.420)

and they would rub it on something called a touchstone.

Lex Fridman (2:39:59.180)

Touchstone was a special piece of rock, granite, whatever.

Brian Keating (2:40:01.820)

It has no intrinsic value.

Lex Fridman (2:40:04.020)

It's just a piece of rock.

Lex Fridman (2:40:05.140)

But with that rock, you could assay and determine

Lex Fridman (2:40:08.740)

the content of this thing that could be worth, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:40:11.420)

millions of lira or whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (2:40:13.300)

So it was an incredibly important job.

Lex Fridman (2:40:15.100)

And so this person would take this piece of inanimate rock

Lex Fridman (2:40:18.780)

and use it to do something valuable.

Lex Fridman (2:40:20.740)

What I want to do in the Assayer Project

Lex Fridman (2:40:22.780)

is take this plethora of physical theories

Brian Keating (2:40:26.460)

of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:40:27.020)

I said recently, you know, we should give a Nobel Prize

Brian Keating (2:40:29.660)

to someone who doesn't come up with a theory of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:40:32.380)

Because there's just like, it's just rotten with them.

Lex Fridman (2:40:37.340)

And I think it's great.

Lex Fridman (2:40:39.100)

You know, I often say that theory is kind of like software.

Lex Fridman (2:40:42.980)

And I'm not denigrating software at all.

Lex Fridman (2:40:44.740)

But like, you can create a lot of software.

Brian Keating (2:40:46.540)

You can make a quine, and it'll make its own quine.

Lex Fridman (2:40:49.380)

And you can make infinite amounts of software.

Brian Keating (2:40:51.300)

Look it up, kids.

Lex Fridman (2:40:52.460)

That's one of my favorite videos.

Lex Fridman (2:40:54.340)

And you can replicate.

Lex Fridman (2:40:55.260)

You can't replicate.

Brian Keating (2:40:55.900)

You can't make a telescope that makes a telescope that

Lex Fridman (2:40:57.780)

makes a telescope.

Brian Keating (2:40:58.540)

In other words, hardware's kind of like the nonfungible token

Lex Fridman (2:41:01.020)

that's the ultimate minted, limited edition, the book,

Brian Keating (2:41:03.460)

the compass book, like I talk.

Lex Fridman (2:41:05.420)

And so it's very expensive.

Brian Keating (2:41:07.420)

That means you have to be very careful before you invest

Lex Fridman (2:41:10.300)

decades, billions, and humans into pursuing

Brian Keating (2:41:14.140)

one of these theories of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:41:15.700)

You have to have good intuition for it.

Lex Fridman (2:41:17.940)

And lately, what I've seen is not predictions,

Lex Fridman (2:41:21.180)

but retrodictions.

Lex Fridman (2:41:22.920)

So you see that the Large Hadron Collider will come out

Lex Fridman (2:41:25.580)

with a measurement.

Lex Fridman (2:41:26.780)

And then so and so will say, oh, this

Lex Fridman (2:41:30.260)

is compatible with string theory.

Brian Keating (2:41:32.100)

Or g minus 2 of the muon, it has these bizarre properties.

Lex Fridman (2:41:35.460)

Fifth force, string theory predicts this.

Brian Keating (2:41:38.700)

String theory solves this.

Lex Fridman (2:41:40.860)

Neutrinos, sterile neutrinos, Large Hadron Collider bottom

Brian Keating (2:41:46.020)

or B experiment, blah, blah, blah.

Lex Fridman (2:41:47.820)

They'll say that it's compatible after the fact.

Lex Fridman (2:41:50.060)

And it's not so bad, right?

Lex Fridman (2:41:51.300)

Because what did Einstein do with GR, general relativity?

Brian Keating (2:41:54.980)

The first thing he did was not predict something new.

Lex Fridman (2:41:58.180)

He looked at the anomalous behavior

Brian Keating (2:41:59.900)

of the planet Mercury.

Lex Fridman (2:42:01.400)

And he saw it was behaving strangely.

Lex Fridman (2:42:03.480)

And people had said, oh, that's because there's another planet

Lex Fridman (2:42:05.940)

hiding behind the sun that we can't see that perturbs

Brian Keating (2:42:08.740)

the orbit of the planet Mercury.

Lex Fridman (2:42:10.220)

It's called Vulcan.

Brian Keating (2:42:12.020)

That was one approach.

Lex Fridman (2:42:13.020)

That's kind of like the dark matter approach,

Brian Keating (2:42:14.780)

where it's like there's a clump of matter

Lex Fridman (2:42:16.540)

that we can't see that's influencing the planet that we

Brian Keating (2:42:19.380)

can't see.

Lex Fridman (2:42:20.300)

And we use that to divine and intuit the existence

Brian Keating (2:42:22.820)

of the other planet.

Lex Fridman (2:42:23.700)

That's actually how Neptune was discovered.

Brian Keating (2:42:25.520)

Neptune was discovered because of the anomalous behavior

Lex Fridman (2:42:27.900)

of the planet Uranus.

Lex Fridman (2:42:29.180)

So Neptune was dark.

Lex Fridman (2:42:30.160)

We couldn't see it.

Brian Keating (2:42:30.980)

It was tugging on Uranus in a certain way.

Lex Fridman (2:42:33.100)

And that led to Le Verrier discovering the planet,

Brian Keating (2:42:36.060)

predicting where this planet should be found.

Lex Fridman (2:42:38.380)

So it had a good heritage in physics

Brian Keating (2:42:40.540)

to predict this planet that you couldn't see that worked.

Lex Fridman (2:42:43.180)

But Einstein said, no, it's caused

Brian Keating (2:42:45.300)

by the warping and bending of spacetime

Lex Fridman (2:42:47.700)

due to the presence of matter, who will later become known

Brian Keating (2:42:50.580)

as the Einstein equations.

Lex Fridman (2:42:51.660)

So he explained why Mercury did that.

Lex Fridman (2:42:54.380)

And it was known since the time of Newton

Lex Fridman (2:42:55.980)

that Mercury was behaving in this really freaky way.

Lex Fridman (2:42:58.700)

So he didn't predict it.

Lex Fridman (2:42:59.660)

He retradicted it.

Brian Keating (2:43:00.620)

That's fine.

Lex Fridman (2:43:01.500)

But at some point, you should come up

Brian Keating (2:43:03.180)

with something new that's uniquely

Lex Fridman (2:43:05.140)

predictive of your theory, as I just said.

Brian Keating (2:43:07.300)

The theory of dark matter in the context of Neptune

Lex Fridman (2:43:09.960)

is actually a valid theory.

Brian Keating (2:43:11.060)

It just happens not to make sense

Lex Fridman (2:43:12.340)

in the context of Vulcan.

Lex Fridman (2:43:14.620)

And so if he had kept doing that,

Lex Fridman (2:43:17.860)

maybe perhaps he wouldn't have come up

Brian Keating (2:43:19.920)

with these other predictions that he would later reject.

Lex Fridman (2:43:22.700)

He rejected the existence of gravitational waves.

Brian Keating (2:43:24.980)

You and Barry talked about that.

Lex Fridman (2:43:26.660)

He didn't actually believe it.

Brian Keating (2:43:27.540)

It was the one peer reviewed paper that he had.

Lex Fridman (2:43:29.860)

He used to send back in those days.

Brian Keating (2:43:31.340)

He'd send a letter to Nature, physical review,

Lex Fridman (2:43:33.580)

publish this, and know how much it cost.

Lex Fridman (2:43:36.900)

And he got it rejected,

Lex Fridman (2:43:37.860)

because he said you can't detect gravitational waves.

Lex Fridman (2:43:40.260)

And actually, or they're not real.

Lex Fridman (2:43:41.900)

And the guy showed that they're real,

Brian Keating (2:43:43.020)

because he corrected a math error

Lex Fridman (2:43:45.020)

in Einstein and Rosen's paper.

Lex Fridman (2:43:47.220)

So it's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:43:48.060)

What should the assayer do?

Brian Keating (2:43:49.940)

He or she should look at these theories,

Lex Fridman (2:43:52.460)

look what things they explain that already exist,

Lex Fridman (2:43:54.660)

and look at what new predictions they can claim to explain

Lex Fridman (2:43:58.900)

if we can build experiments to test them.

Lex Fridman (2:44:01.940)

So you have to kind of challenge yourself

Lex Fridman (2:44:03.180)

to think about what kind of predictions

Lex Fridman (2:44:06.140)

can they make such that we can construct experiments?

Lex Fridman (2:44:09.500)

So that's like ultimately back going to the signal,

Brian Keating (2:44:14.420)

to the experimenter's theorist, essentially.

Lex Fridman (2:44:19.220)

So like very experiment centric exploration

Brian Keating (2:44:24.140)

of the fundamental theory of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:44:25.980)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (2:44:26.820)

And the best scientists, the best physicists,

Lex Fridman (2:44:29.060)

were both experimentalists and theorists.

Brian Keating (2:44:31.860)

Or at least if they were experimentalists,

Lex Fridman (2:44:34.380)

they understood the theory well enough to make predictions

Brian Keating (2:44:37.460)

or to explore the predictions

Lex Fridman (2:44:38.620)

and the consequences of those predictions.

Brian Keating (2:44:40.940)

Or if they were theorists, they were like Galileo.

Lex Fridman (2:44:43.260)

Like Einstein has patents for things that he invented.

Lex Fridman (2:44:47.140)

And then some of his work led to the laser and the maser.

Lex Fridman (2:44:50.260)

So he had practically, it wasn't just pure airy fairy,

Brian Keating (2:44:52.940)

quantum reality and expanding universe.

Lex Fridman (2:44:56.260)

So in this case, what I wanna do is look at,

Brian Keating (2:44:58.580)

there's 10 different theories of everything

Lex Fridman (2:45:00.100)

or cosmological models.

Brian Keating (2:45:01.580)

They make predictions, they have advantages

Lex Fridman (2:45:03.260)

and disadvantages, and I'm just asking the question,

Lex Fridman (2:45:05.620)

why aren't we applying Bayesian reasoning

Lex Fridman (2:45:07.900)

with confidence intervals?

Lex Fridman (2:45:09.060)

Why don't we have updates?

Lex Fridman (2:45:10.100)

Every time an experiment comes out,

Brian Keating (2:45:12.020)

we can update our credulity in that experiment

Lex Fridman (2:45:14.260)

or that theory rather,

Brian Keating (2:45:15.380)

based on the results of the experiment.

Lex Fridman (2:45:17.260)

And we shouldn't do it after the fact,

Brian Keating (2:45:18.980)

or as Michio Kaku has said,

Lex Fridman (2:45:20.980)

well, you have to tell me what the initial conditions are.

Lex Fridman (2:45:23.980)

And that's not my job.

Lex Fridman (2:45:24.900)

You're supposed to tell me if string theory is correct,

Lex Fridman (2:45:26.820)

what should it predict if it's true?

Lex Fridman (2:45:29.500)

There's one big problem, which I should say,

Brian Keating (2:45:31.700)

that to be a good ass air,

Lex Fridman (2:45:34.420)

I think you have to be worldly in the sense of,

Brian Keating (2:45:40.420)

worldly and curious, like we were talking about before

Lex Fridman (2:45:42.780)

with you and Joe, and you can't only talk your own book.

Brian Keating (2:45:47.540)

You can't only understand your own pet theory of everything.

Lex Fridman (2:45:52.340)

You can't only say, well, I only understand string theory

Lex Fridman (2:45:55.900)

and I don't have time for these other theories,

Lex Fridman (2:45:58.500)

or as if it's beneath me to even go into Garrett Lisi

Brian Keating (2:46:02.820)

or Eric Weinstein or Stephen Wolfram

Lex Fridman (2:46:05.300)

or aspects of M theory, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:46:08.100)

And there are some that say,

Lex Fridman (2:46:09.900)

why do we give string theory so much of an advanced pass

Brian Keating (2:46:15.980)

when there are actually predictions that's made

Lex Fridman (2:46:18.380)

that are completely anathema to what we observe in physics?

Brian Keating (2:46:21.660)

Like the dark energy should be negative

Lex Fridman (2:46:24.020)

and we see it as positive.

Brian Keating (2:46:25.500)

That's a huge strike.

Lex Fridman (2:46:26.540)

If you told somebody, here's my tenure application

Lex Fridman (2:46:28.940)

and what do you, oh, I've made this pretty,

Lex Fridman (2:46:30.380)

if it wasn't done by Maldacena and Whitten

Lex Fridman (2:46:33.860)

and folks like that,

Lex Fridman (2:46:34.820)

I don't know if it would have had the traction,

Brian Keating (2:46:36.980)

the endurance, the resiliency that it's had.

Lex Fridman (2:46:38.980)

And that worries me because all these men and some women

Brian Keating (2:46:42.820)

are making these fantastic, brilliant, beautiful ideas

Lex Fridman (2:46:46.180)

and they're not even looking at what their neighbor's doing.

Brian Keating (2:46:48.580)

There's a thing that I really enjoyed seeing

Lex Fridman (2:46:52.020)

and that don't see often enough with these theories,

Brian Keating (2:46:54.620)

which is others who are also experts

Lex Fridman (2:46:58.260)

kind of studying them sufficiently well

Brian Keating (2:47:01.740)

to steel man the theory,

Lex Fridman (2:47:04.100)

to show the beautiful aspects of the theory.

Brian Keating (2:47:07.740)

I see that with Stephen Wolfram.

Lex Fridman (2:47:09.900)

He has a very different sort of formulation of physics

Brian Keating (2:47:15.220)

with his physics project.

Lex Fridman (2:47:17.180)

Now I'm, it's, physics is a foreign land to me,

Lex Fridman (2:47:21.420)

but his formulation, especially in the context

Lex Fridman (2:47:24.820)

of cellular automata or hypergraphs,

Brian Keating (2:47:27.060)

just as objects, as mathematical objects themselves

Lex Fridman (2:47:29.820)

are familiar.

Lex Fridman (2:47:30.780)

And so I'm able to see the real beauty there

Lex Fridman (2:47:33.540)

and it saddens me that others in the physics community

Brian Keating (2:47:39.060)

can't also see the beauty.

Lex Fridman (2:47:41.220)

Like give it a chance, give a chance to see the beauty.

Lex Fridman (2:47:44.340)

And that.

Lex Fridman (2:47:45.180)

Give it your respect.

Lex Fridman (2:47:46.020)

So there is one person who does take time

Lex Fridman (2:47:48.700)

and is what I consider to be a great scientist

Brian Keating (2:47:51.780)

in terms of what he thinks.

Lex Fridman (2:47:53.220)

He obviously has invested interest in his own theory

Lex Fridman (2:47:55.820)

and it's Eric.

Lex Fridman (2:47:57.100)

Eric's got a truly encyclopedic knowledge

Brian Keating (2:48:00.540)

of the history of physics.

Lex Fridman (2:48:02.260)

And he has a great warmth and graciousness

Brian Keating (2:48:06.260)

when it comes to giving other,

Lex Fridman (2:48:08.140)

and I've witnessed this and I've had,

Brian Keating (2:48:09.900)

look, first of all, I think debate is pointless.

Lex Fridman (2:48:11.900)

Like, I don't know about you, but if you've ever voted like,

Brian Keating (2:48:14.460)

oh, I saw this debate and you know,

Lex Fridman (2:48:15.940)

because Trump did so badly, now I'm gonna vote for Biden.

Brian Keating (2:48:18.420)

No, never have.

Lex Fridman (2:48:19.380)

You almost never change anybody's mind

Brian Keating (2:48:21.380)

unless you debate with love.

Lex Fridman (2:48:23.100)

Unless you have almost like we're gonna win together,

Brian Keating (2:48:26.780)

like the red team approach in the military,

Lex Fridman (2:48:28.900)

they're trying to win a war.

Lex Fridman (2:48:30.380)

So they may disagree on the tactics day to day,

Lex Fridman (2:48:33.380)

but the strategy, we have to win this war.

Brian Keating (2:48:35.180)

I love you and I wanna protect you.

Lex Fridman (2:48:37.660)

I don't see that in very many of these physicists from Kaku.

Brian Keating (2:48:40.540)

I almost see it, it's embarrassing in some ways

Lex Fridman (2:48:42.820)

because they'll almost mock with the exception of Eric.

Brian Keating (2:48:45.900)

You know, Garrett's interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:48:47.180)

You know, his theory is, you know,

Brian Keating (2:48:48.460)

people have a lot of issues, very technical,

Lex Fridman (2:48:51.660)

but Eric has taken the time to try to understand it.

Brian Keating (2:48:54.700)

Eric has taken the time to understand Peter White's theory.

Lex Fridman (2:48:57.420)

And I don't see the same graciousness extended from them.

Brian Keating (2:49:01.140)

I'm sorry to say.

Lex Fridman (2:49:01.980)

Yeah, essentially, you're right, you're right.

Brian Keating (2:49:03.260)

I mean, with Eric, he hasn't, he wants to,

Lex Fridman (2:49:05.980)

but he hasn't extended the same for Stephen Wolfram

Brian Keating (2:49:08.100)

because I think Wolf.

Lex Fridman (2:49:09.980)

No, he did.

Brian Keating (2:49:10.820)

No, actually, no, he did.

Lex Fridman (2:49:11.660)

I had a debate with them live on my show.

Brian Keating (2:49:13.580)

No, I did, I listened to it,

Lex Fridman (2:49:14.740)

but I just think it's outside of the toolkit

Brian Keating (2:49:17.620)

that Eric is comfortable with.

Lex Fridman (2:49:19.220)

So it's not that he's not,

Lex Fridman (2:49:21.140)

but the main thing that's often absent

Lex Fridman (2:49:24.380)

and Eric does have is the willingness

Lex Fridman (2:49:28.460)

and not just dismissing or mocking that he's reaching out.

Lex Fridman (2:49:32.380)

But okay.

Brian Keating (2:49:33.220)

I mean, what if it's not,

Lex Fridman (2:49:34.860)

you know, I made a joke when they were on,

Lex Fridman (2:49:36.140)

I was like, how many theories of everything can there be?

Lex Fridman (2:49:38.380)

You know, Highlander, there can be only one.

Brian Keating (2:49:41.100)

I don't know, maybe.

Lex Fridman (2:49:42.220)

But he, of course, also, like the other folks

Brian Keating (2:49:44.580)

who propose a theory, has an ego.

Lex Fridman (2:49:48.700)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (2:49:49.780)

He rides a dragon with the dragon representing the ego.

Lex Fridman (2:49:55.460)

Well, let me ask you about your friend, Eric Weinstein.

Lex Fridman (2:50:00.140)

So he proposed initial sketches of geometric unity,

Lex Fridman (2:50:03.540)

which is his theory of everything.

Brian Keating (2:50:05.180)

Maybe you can elucidate some aspect of it

Lex Fridman (2:50:07.820)

that you find interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:50:08.980)

But what do you think about the response

Lex Fridman (2:50:13.980)

he got from the scientific community?

Brian Keating (2:50:17.700)

Well, you know, some of the response came

Lex Fridman (2:50:19.380)

from people, academicians, professors.

Brian Keating (2:50:22.700)

Some came from a lay audience

Lex Fridman (2:50:24.580)

and some came from trained scientists

Brian Keating (2:50:26.780)

who are no longer, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:50:27.700)

maybe practicing in the universities.

Brian Keating (2:50:30.500)

I thought it was, there was a lot of vitriol,

Lex Fridman (2:50:33.340)

which surprised me because I look at what he's trying to do

Lex Fridman (2:50:38.180)

and it was always, the vitriol would always come

Lex Fridman (2:50:41.500)

with some element of ad hominem.

Lex Fridman (2:50:44.140)

And maybe that's his personality,

Lex Fridman (2:50:45.860)

maybe that engenders this or whatever.

Brian Keating (2:50:48.220)

Maybe there is kind of just a natural tendency.

Lex Fridman (2:50:50.860)

You know, I always get these emails,

Brian Keating (2:50:52.140)

Professor Keating, I have a new theory,

Lex Fridman (2:50:54.700)

Einstein was wrong, I'm gonna prove it.

Brian Keating (2:50:56.700)

I'm not good at math, but if you help me,

Lex Fridman (2:50:59.140)

I will share my Nobel Prize with you.

Lex Fridman (2:51:01.260)

And I'm like, oh, thanks, have you read my books?

Lex Fridman (2:51:04.580)

In other words, it's always taking down the dragon.

Lex Fridman (2:51:07.500)

It's always taking down the Kung Fu master, right?

Lex Fridman (2:51:09.900)

That you get the hit points from D&D.

Brian Keating (2:51:11.580)

You get their hit points, you take their cards,

Lex Fridman (2:51:13.020)

you get their risk tokens from Kamchaka.

Lex Fridman (2:51:15.460)

And thinking about with Eric, it's like,

Lex Fridman (2:51:18.300)

because what he's doing is so aspirational,

Brian Keating (2:51:21.180)

it is grandiose in a good sense.

Lex Fridman (2:51:22.940)

What he's trying to do is construct

Brian Keating (2:51:25.060)

a geometric theory of everything

Lex Fridman (2:51:26.900)

that has aspects of supersymmetry

Lex Fridman (2:51:28.740)

and stuff embedded in it.

Lex Fridman (2:51:30.220)

He's trying to meld that, it has very unusual features

Lex Fridman (2:51:34.380)

and that it features not only multiple spatial dimensions,

Lex Fridman (2:51:37.220)

multiple time dimensions,

Brian Keating (2:51:38.780)

it uses new mathematical objects that he's invented.

Lex Fridman (2:51:42.900)

And look, I had him on my show, I've talked with him.

Brian Keating (2:51:46.660)

We've had consultations with other physicists

Lex Fridman (2:51:49.340)

where he'll come down and I have a visitor's office

Lex Fridman (2:51:51.860)

and he comes down to San Diego sometimes

Lex Fridman (2:51:53.500)

and spends time there.

Lex Fridman (2:51:54.860)

And we talk with eminent mathematicians and physicists.

Lex Fridman (2:51:58.420)

Eric's been out of the academic world for a long time.

Lex Fridman (2:52:02.620)

And there is, as I said before,

Lex Fridman (2:52:04.420)

an aspect of persuasion that must take place

Brian Keating (2:52:07.460)

in order to get anything through.

Lex Fridman (2:52:08.900)

And I think there was a slight amount of good nature,

Brian Keating (2:52:12.820)

not ignorance, naivete, but just the sense that

Lex Fridman (2:52:15.740)

if this is right, everyone will recognize it.

Brian Keating (2:52:18.260)

If you build a better mousetrap,

Lex Fridman (2:52:19.740)

the world will beat a path to your door

Brian Keating (2:52:21.660)

as the expression goes.

Lex Fridman (2:52:22.740)

That's completely untrue.

Brian Keating (2:52:24.380)

That doesn't even happen with mousetraps.

Lex Fridman (2:52:25.780)

I mean, you know how many fricking mousetrap types there are?

Brian Keating (2:52:27.740)

It's like, no, they don't beat a path to your door.

Lex Fridman (2:52:30.020)

You have to sell that fricking thing.

Brian Keating (2:52:31.820)

You have to sell it like Steve Jobs or Elon.

Lex Fridman (2:52:34.900)

I have never, I've had one paper out of 200 papers

Brian Keating (2:52:37.620)

I've published in peer reviewed journals.

Lex Fridman (2:52:39.420)

I've only had one, half a percent,

Brian Keating (2:52:41.540)

published with no referees comments.

Lex Fridman (2:52:43.860)

In other words, published like dream.

Brian Keating (2:52:45.420)

Submitted it, it happened to be in a prestigious journal.

Lex Fridman (2:52:47.700)

Thought I was pretty psyched about that.

Lex Fridman (2:52:49.460)

But you almost have to crave the response,

Lex Fridman (2:52:51.260)

getting it back from a journal.

Lex Fridman (2:52:52.540)

And I think he doesn't, first of all,

Lex Fridman (2:52:54.220)

he doesn't subscribe to the peer review process.

Brian Keating (2:52:56.380)

He thinks that is anathema to the way science is,

Lex Fridman (2:52:59.060)

invest interest in public, in journals, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian Keating (2:53:02.500)

I think you can have elements of peer review

Lex Fridman (2:53:05.580)

that are substantive and valuable.

Brian Keating (2:53:08.060)

I think you have to learn from your critics.

Lex Fridman (2:53:10.100)

One of my conversations with John Mather,

Brian Keating (2:53:12.060)

he talks about loving your critics in this book,

Lex Fridman (2:53:14.980)

but not being so open to their criticism

Brian Keating (2:53:17.140)

that their criticism goes to your heart

Lex Fridman (2:53:19.260)

and not being so open to their compliments

Brian Keating (2:53:21.860)

that their compliments go to your head.

Lex Fridman (2:53:24.020)

It's a very tough Scylla and Charybdis to walk.

Brian Keating (2:53:26.900)

Well, there's something, I mean,

Lex Fridman (2:53:29.060)

I wanna be careful here because I'd like to talk to,

Brian Keating (2:53:31.940)

talk to Eric about this directly,

Lex Fridman (2:53:35.620)

but I'll just, from a perspective of a friend,

Brian Keating (2:53:41.220)

wanna ask about the drug of fame.

Lex Fridman (2:53:48.540)

So there's also the public perception

Brian Keating (2:53:54.740)

of the battles of physics.

Lex Fridman (2:53:56.580)

And so there's a very narrow community,

Lex Fridman (2:53:58.760)

but then there's the way that's perceived.

Lex Fridman (2:54:03.000)

The exploration of ideas is perceived by the public.

Lex Fridman (2:54:06.240)

And so there is a certain drug to the excitement

Lex Fridman (2:54:10.800)

that the public can show when they sense

Brian Keating (2:54:14.000)

that you have something big.

Lex Fridman (2:54:17.000)

And that in itself might become the thing

Brian Keating (2:54:21.200)

that gives you pleasure.

Lex Fridman (2:54:23.680)

And I think that with theories of everything

Brian Keating (2:54:27.880)

or with any kind of super, super ambitious projects,

Lex Fridman (2:54:30.640)

and this is taking us back to when you were ambitious

Brian Keating (2:54:34.640)

about trying to understand the origins of the universe,

Lex Fridman (2:54:37.760)

if you convince yourself that you have an intuition

Brian Keating (2:54:41.400)

about the origins of the universe

Lex Fridman (2:54:43.800)

and you have a platform like you do now

Brian Keating (2:54:47.440)

where you start to communicate your intuition,

Lex Fridman (2:54:50.840)

it's hazy, like all the science, you're still unsure,

Lex Fridman (2:54:54.440)

but you have a sense, I mean, perhaps you don't have that

Lex Fridman (2:54:56.920)

as much as an experimentalist

Brian Keating (2:54:58.520)

because you always kind of start going,

Lex Fridman (2:55:00.360)

okay, how can I build a device to see through the fog?

Lex Fridman (2:55:06.000)

But if you're more like a theoretician

Lex Fridman (2:55:08.320)

who kind of works in the realm of ideas,

Brian Keating (2:55:11.120)

in the realm of intuitions,

Lex Fridman (2:55:15.160)

it is also a source of pleasure.

Brian Keating (2:55:16.800)

You mentioned dopamine, a source of dopamine

Lex Fridman (2:55:20.220)

that you can communicate to others

Brian Keating (2:55:23.500)

that you're really excited by the possibility

Lex Fridman (2:55:25.960)

of solving the deepest mysteries of the universe.

Lex Fridman (2:55:29.680)

So there's some aspect to which you want to be

Lex Fridman (2:55:32.320)

a Grigori Grisha Perlman and go into the hole

Lex Fridman (2:55:36.880)

and get the work done and shut the hell up about the,

Lex Fridman (2:55:40.960)

speaking about myself, about talking about the dream

Lex Fridman (2:55:45.320)

and planning and exploring how great it will be

Lex Fridman (2:55:48.720)

if my intuition turns out to be correct.

Brian Keating (2:55:51.680)

If the sketches I have turn out to actually build

Lex Fridman (2:55:55.660)

the bridge that takes us to a whole new place,

Brian Keating (2:55:58.640)

as a friend of Eric's or a friend of,

Lex Fridman (2:56:03.840)

or my friend, what kind of advice do you give?

Lex Fridman (2:56:08.640)

What is your role?

Lex Fridman (2:56:10.040)

Is it to be a supporter given that he has many critics

Lex Fridman (2:56:14.280)

or is it to be in private a critic?

Lex Fridman (2:56:18.940)

Like a lot of my friends will say,

Brian Keating (2:56:20.300)

hey, shut the hell up, just get it done.

Lex Fridman (2:56:22.920)

Well, first of all, I wanna ask you a question I've asked him

Lex Fridman (2:56:25.760)

and then it comes from Animal Farm by George.

Lex Fridman (2:56:29.720)

Probably my favorite book, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:56:31.480)

So you remember Benjamin the donkey?

Lex Fridman (2:56:32.960)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:56:33.800)

And he's talking to the pig.

Lex Fridman (2:56:35.160)

I forget the pig's name, you probably know.

Brian Keating (2:56:37.240)

Anyway, the pig says to him,

Lex Fridman (2:56:38.060)

you've got this long, lustrous, beautiful tail.

Brian Keating (2:56:41.280)

You're so lucky.

Lex Fridman (2:56:42.120)

I got the short, curly, little squiggly thing

Brian Keating (2:56:44.560)

that does jack squat.

Lex Fridman (2:56:46.400)

Tell me, how does it feel to have such a lustrous tail?

Lex Fridman (2:56:49.480)

And Benjamin says, well, the good Lord,

Lex Fridman (2:56:52.080)

he gave me a tail to swat away the flies.

Lex Fridman (2:56:56.260)

But you know what?

Lex Fridman (2:56:57.440)

I'd rather not have the tail if I didn't have the flies.

Lex Fridman (2:57:01.480)

So I wanna ask you, as I've asked Eric, is it worth it?

Lex Fridman (2:57:05.800)

You know, you've got these beautiful tail,

Lex Fridman (2:57:08.760)

but there are flies.

Lex Fridman (2:57:09.940)

I'm not saying in a negative way.

Brian Keating (2:57:11.240)

I'm just saying you get unwanted distractions,

Lex Fridman (2:57:14.480)

dopamine, you know, it's kind of the highlight,

Brian Keating (2:57:17.000)

the spotlight effect.

Lex Fridman (2:57:18.880)

It's obviously allowing you to do things

Brian Keating (2:57:21.000)

that you could never do alone.

Lex Fridman (2:57:22.460)

And I think, you know, first of all,

Brian Keating (2:57:24.880)

I'd love to know how you answer that.

Lex Fridman (2:57:26.120)

Cause that's something I don't feel I can relate to myself.

Brian Keating (2:57:30.240)

Well, this has to do with more like.

Lex Fridman (2:57:33.560)

Platform.

Brian Keating (2:57:34.400)

Platform stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:57:35.440)

Yeah, scale.

Brian Keating (2:57:36.840)

Oh, I, that has no, very little effect on me.

Lex Fridman (2:57:42.440)

I enjoy it.

Brian Keating (2:57:45.120)

I enjoy meeting new people,

Lex Fridman (2:57:46.600)

but that has nothing to do with platform.

Brian Keating (2:57:48.400)

Yeah, no, that has no effect on me.

Lex Fridman (2:57:52.000)

I'm one somebody that enjoys the act itself.

Lex Fridman (2:57:57.080)

So this conversation,

Lex Fridman (2:57:58.360)

the reason I'm doing this podcast with you today

Brian Keating (2:58:01.160)

is because that allows me to trick you

Lex Fridman (2:58:03.800)

into talking to me for a prolonged period of time.

Brian Keating (2:58:05.680)

I don't care about platform.

Lex Fridman (2:58:07.040)

I assume nobody listens.

Brian Keating (2:58:08.400)

It really doesn't matter.

Lex Fridman (2:58:09.920)

Yeah, I forgot it, right?

Brian Keating (2:58:11.120)

My whole test of it was a good podcast.

Lex Fridman (2:58:13.480)

How do you know?

Lex Fridman (2:58:14.320)

Like podcast has been around what, 12 years?

Lex Fridman (2:58:16.000)

How do we know as podcasters we're doing a good job?

Brian Keating (2:58:18.320)

Like sometimes someone will say,

Lex Fridman (2:58:19.160)

that was the best interview I ever had,

Lex Fridman (2:58:20.400)

but that doesn't happen that often, at least for me.

Lex Fridman (2:58:22.600)

But if you realize that you forgot to put the SD card

Brian Keating (2:58:26.600)

in that little guy and the Zoom didn't work,

Lex Fridman (2:58:29.360)

would you do it again?

Lex Fridman (2:58:30.440)

And I think if you say yes to that,

Lex Fridman (2:58:32.200)

that was a good podcast.

Brian Keating (2:58:33.080)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:58:33.920)

That's exactly it.

Lex Fridman (2:58:35.040)

So in that space, yeah, all of it is worth it.

Lex Fridman (2:58:40.880)

But the dream, I'm more referring

Brian Keating (2:58:46.360)

to the psychological effects.

Lex Fridman (2:58:47.880)

Forget the platform, forget all of that.

Brian Keating (2:58:50.280)

You know, maybe you shouldn't even brought up the platform

Lex Fridman (2:58:52.640)

because it really has to do even in your own private mind,

Brian Keating (2:58:55.920)

which is what I'm struggling with.

Lex Fridman (2:58:59.080)

I enjoy the planning, the dreaming, the early stages

Lex Fridman (2:59:07.200)

so much that I often don't take projects to completion.

Lex Fridman (2:59:11.720)

This is a psychological effect

Brian Keating (2:59:14.080)

that I'm sure basically everybody, every engineer,

Lex Fridman (2:59:16.560)

everybody that does anything goes through.

Brian Keating (2:59:18.800)

I just, in this case particular, I think it also applies.

Lex Fridman (2:59:22.800)

And I wonder as a friend, what is the role?

Lex Fridman (2:59:25.480)

So yeah, I mean, that effect has been documented,

Lex Fridman (2:59:27.520)

everything from planning telescopes to dieting.

Lex Fridman (2:59:30.240)

So there's a tiny bit of dopamine that you get

Lex Fridman (2:59:34.000)

visualizing how you're gonna feel.

Brian Keating (2:59:36.000)

You don't need to know this, but you don't deal,

Lex Fridman (2:59:38.000)

but losing five pounds.

Brian Keating (2:59:39.320)

I say, oh, I'm gonna lose five pounds

Lex Fridman (2:59:40.920)

and I'm gonna be able to run a minute faster.

Lex Fridman (2:59:43.320)

So there's a part of me when I'm planning the diet

Lex Fridman (2:59:45.400)

and the meals and the exercise

Brian Keating (2:59:47.040)

that I get a little bit of that thrill

Lex Fridman (2:59:49.160)

and that actually saps a little bit of my willpower

Brian Keating (2:59:51.240)

to actually complete the task that will take me to that goal.

Lex Fridman (2:59:53.440)

So that's a documented effect.

Lex Fridman (2:59:54.600)

And that happens in project planning and project management.

Lex Fridman (2:59:57.840)

It's a very, very important thing to guard against

Lex Fridman (30:00.100)

And he personally went to witness the application

Lex Fridman (30:02.300)

of ammonia, chlorine gas applied during trench warfare

Brian Keating (30:05.260)

in 1916 in battles in Brussels and whatever.

Lex Fridman (30:08.540)

And he was, they had a whole conjure of Nobel laureates

Brian Keating (30:10.900)

in chemistry and physics, you know,

Lex Fridman (30:12.780)

that would go and witness these atrocities.

Lex Fridman (30:14.460)

But that was also, they were almost putting science

Lex Fridman (30:17.620)

above, I don't wanna say human dignity,

Lex Fridman (30:19.780)

but of like the fact that he would later be suppressed.

Lex Fridman (30:23.660)

And actually some of his relatives would die in Auschwitz

Brian Keating (30:27.500)

because of the chemical that he invented also

Lex Fridman (30:30.020)

called Zyklon B.

Lex Fridman (30:31.540)

And so it's just unbelievable.

Lex Fridman (30:33.020)

So I feel like that does have resonance today

Brian Keating (30:36.100)

in this worship of science, you know,

Lex Fridman (30:38.700)

and listen to science and follow the science,

Brian Keating (30:41.340)

which is more like scientism.

Lex Fridman (30:43.740)

And there is still a danger.

Brian Keating (30:45.180)

You know, I always say, just cause you're an atheist

Lex Fridman (30:47.980)

doesn't mean you don't have a religion.

Brian Keating (30:49.700)

You know, just because you, you know,

Lex Fridman (30:51.620)

in my case, in my books, I talk a lot about the Nobel prize.

Brian Keating (30:54.700)

It's kind of like a kosher idol.

Lex Fridman (30:56.660)

It's something that you can worship, you know,

Brian Keating (30:58.460)

it doesn't do any harm.

Lex Fridman (30:59.460)

And we want those people that are so significant

Brian Keating (31:02.420)

in their intellectual accomplishments.

Lex Fridman (31:03.740)

Cause there is a core of America

Lex Fridman (31:06.100)

and the Western world in general

Lex Fridman (31:07.380)

that does worship and really look at science predominantly

Brian Keating (31:10.580)

cause it gives us technology,

Lex Fridman (31:13.220)

but there's something really cool about that.

Lex Fridman (31:14.860)

And so for me, it's hard to find that balance point

Lex Fridman (31:17.380)

between looking to science for wisdom,

Brian Keating (31:20.780)

which I don't think it has, they're two different words,

Lex Fridman (31:23.580)

but also recognizing how much good and transformative power

Brian Keating (31:27.060)

maybe our only hope comes from science.

Lex Fridman (31:30.380)

You opened so many doors

Brian Keating (31:32.660)

cause you also bring up our Ernest Becker in that book.

Lex Fridman (31:38.820)

So there's a lot of elements of religiosity to science

Lex Fridman (31:43.260)

and to the Nobel prize.

Lex Fridman (31:44.500)

It's fascinating to explore and we will.

Lex Fridman (31:48.260)

And we still haven't finished the discussion

Lex Fridman (31:50.140)

of the beginning of the universe, which we'll return to.

Lex Fridman (31:54.100)

But now since you opened the book, wow,

Lex Fridman (31:57.860)

pun unintended of losing the Nobel prize,

Lex Fridman (32:01.420)

can you tell me the story of BICEP,

Lex Fridman (32:04.420)

the background imaging

Brian Keating (32:05.660)

of cosmic extragalactic polarization experiment,

Lex Fridman (32:09.180)

BICEP one and BICEP two,

Lex Fridman (32:11.420)

and then maybe you can talk about BICEP three,

Lex Fridman (32:13.180)

but the thing that you cover in your book,

Lex Fridman (32:16.340)

the human story of it, what happened?

Lex Fridman (32:18.740)

Yeah, that book is in contradistinction of the second book.

Brian Keating (32:21.700)

That's like a memoir.

Lex Fridman (32:22.740)

It's really a description of what it's like to feel,

Lex Fridman (32:26.580)

what it feels like to be a scientist

Lex Fridman (32:28.820)

and to come up with the ignorance, uncertainty,

Brian Keating (32:32.180)

imposter syndrome, which I cover in the later book

Lex Fridman (32:35.220)

in more detail, but to really feel like

Brian Keating (32:38.260)

you're doing something and it's all you think about.

Lex Fridman (32:41.500)

It is all consuming.

Lex Fridman (32:43.540)

And it's something I couldn't have done now

Lex Fridman (32:45.500)

cause I have too many other,

Brian Keating (32:47.300)

wonderful, delightful demands of my time.

Lex Fridman (32:50.060)

But to go back to that moment

Brian Keating (32:51.660)

when I was first captivated by the night sky

Lex Fridman (32:53.940)

who has a 12 year old, 13 year old,

Lex Fridman (32:56.100)

and really mixed together throughout my scientific story

Lex Fridman (32:59.740)

has always been wanting to approach

Brian Keating (33:01.740)

the greatest mystery of all,

Lex Fridman (33:02.980)

which I think is the existence or non existence of God.

Lex Fridman (33:05.940)

So I call myself a practicing agnostic.

Lex Fridman (33:08.900)

In other words, I do things that religious people do

Lex Fridman (33:12.580)

and I don't do things that atheist people do.

Lex Fridman (33:16.060)

And I once had this conversation,

Brian Keating (33:18.020)

with my first podcast guest actually,

Lex Fridman (33:19.300)

I shouldn't say, oh, I was just having a conversation

Brian Keating (33:21.500)

with Freeman Dyson, but he was actually my first guest.

Lex Fridman (33:24.180)

And I miss him.

Brian Keating (33:25.020)

Name drop.

Lex Fridman (33:25.840)

Name drop, yes.

Brian Keating (33:27.300)

I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of comments about that.

Lex Fridman (33:30.020)

In case people don't know, Brian Keating is the host

Brian Keating (33:33.260)

of Into the Impossible podcast,

Lex Fridman (33:34.860)

where he's talked to some of the greatest scientists

Brian Keating (33:38.700)

in history of science, physicists,

Lex Fridman (33:41.180)

especially in the history of science.

Lex Fridman (33:43.300)

So when I talked to Freeman, I said,

Lex Fridman (33:45.180)

Freeman, you call yourself an agnostic too.

Lex Fridman (33:47.660)

Can you tell me something like what do you do on Saturday,

Lex Fridman (33:50.060)

on Sundays, do you go to church?

Brian Keating (33:51.900)

He's like, no, I don't go to church.

Lex Fridman (33:53.620)

And I'm like, well, imagine there was

Brian Keating (33:55.380)

like an intelligent alien and he was looking down

Lex Fridman (33:58.100)

or she, I don't know, thing was looking down

Lex Fridman (34:01.500)

and it saw Freeman and on Sundays,

Lex Fridman (34:03.420)

like a group of people go to church,

Lex Fridman (34:05.260)

but Freeman doesn't go to church.

Lex Fridman (34:06.600)

And then there's another group of people

Brian Keating (34:07.660)

that don't go to church and those are called atheists,

Lex Fridman (34:10.220)

but Freeman calls himself an agnostic,

Lex Fridman (34:12.180)

but he does the things that the Richard Dawkins,

Lex Fridman (34:14.100)

he doesn't go to the same church

Lex Fridman (34:15.940)

that Richard Dawkins doesn't go to, right?

Lex Fridman (34:18.260)

So I said, how would you distinguish yourself

Lex Fridman (34:19.900)

if not practice?

Lex Fridman (34:20.820)

So I'm a behaviorist.

Brian Keating (34:22.180)

I believe you can change your mentality.

Lex Fridman (34:23.780)

You can influence your mind,

Brian Keating (34:26.060)

view your bodily physical actions.

Lex Fridman (34:28.460)

So when I was a 12 year old, I got my first telescope.

Brian Keating (34:30.500)

I was actually an altar boy in a Catholic church,

Lex Fridman (34:32.580)

which is kind of strange for a Jewish kid

Brian Keating (34:34.460)

who grew up in New York.

Lex Fridman (34:35.280)

Maybe we'll get into that, maybe not.

Lex Fridman (34:36.860)

But I was just fascinated by these, these.

Lex Fridman (34:41.180)

Can we get into it for a second?

Brian Keating (34:42.900)

Okay, yeah, all right, let's go.

Lex Fridman (34:45.140)

All right, let's go there.

Brian Keating (34:46.580)

All right.

Lex Fridman (34:47.420)

Let's go to a baby Brian or young.

Brian Keating (34:49.660)

Young Brian.

Lex Fridman (34:51.100)

The new sitcom on CBS.

Brian Keating (34:53.100)

Young Brian, born to two Jewish parents.

Lex Fridman (34:55.780)

My father was a professor at SUNY Stony Brook.

Brian Keating (34:58.100)

He was a mathematician, eminent mathematician.

Lex Fridman (35:00.460)

And my mother was an eminent mom

Lex Fridman (35:02.140)

and a brilliant English major, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (35:06.600)

And they raised it, but they were secular.

Brian Keating (35:08.100)

They, you know, we'd go to, I always joke,

Lex Fridman (35:09.600)

we'd go to synagogue, you know, two times a year,

Brian Keating (35:12.780)

on Christmas and Easter.

Lex Fridman (35:14.100)

No, no, we would go, yeah, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah,

Brian Keating (35:16.700)

right, that's the typical two day a year Jews.

Lex Fridman (35:19.460)

And you know, we'd have, we'd have matzahs

Brian Keating (35:21.580)

once a year on Palm Passover.

Lex Fridman (35:23.320)

And that was about it.

Lex Fridman (35:24.380)

And for years, I was like that

Lex Fridman (35:26.380)

until my parents got divorced.

Brian Keating (35:28.120)

My mother remarried and she married an Irish Catholic man

Lex Fridman (35:31.100)

by the name of Ray Keating.

Brian Keating (35:32.360)

My father's name is James X.

Lex Fridman (35:34.380)

So when she remarried Ray Keating,

Brian Keating (35:37.780)

I was immediately adopted.

Lex Fridman (35:39.920)

I'm actually adopted into the Keating family.

Lex Fridman (35:42.380)

And he had nine brothers and sisters

Lex Fridman (35:44.740)

and just warm and gregarious.

Brian Keating (35:46.380)

They, you know, did Christmas and Easter.

Lex Fridman (35:49.460)

It was one of the most wonderful experiences I had.

Lex Fridman (35:51.460)

And I do things with great gusto.

Lex Fridman (35:53.980)

Whatever I do, I want to take it all the way.

Lex Fridman (35:55.900)

So to me, that meant really learning about Christianity,

Lex Fridman (35:59.320)

in this case, Catholicism.

Lex Fridman (36:00.300)

So I was baptized, confirmed,

Lex Fridman (36:02.300)

and I said, I want to go all the way.

Brian Keating (36:04.900)

I became an altar boy in the Catholic church.

Lex Fridman (36:07.460)

And you're going to be the best altar boy there ever was.

Brian Keating (36:10.460)

I had like serious skills.

Lex Fridman (36:11.940)

You passed that collection basket.

Brian Keating (36:13.380)

I could push people and get them to 2x their contributions.

Lex Fridman (36:17.660)

But in this case, I was 13.

Brian Keating (36:20.540)

I don't know if you remember when you were 13.

Lex Fridman (36:23.360)

But if you extrapolate the next level up,

Brian Keating (36:25.740)

it's like you go graduate student, postdoc, professor.

Lex Fridman (36:28.220)

The next level up from confirmation, altar boy,

Brian Keating (36:31.300)

is priest.

Lex Fridman (36:32.240)

And I don't know if you're aware of this,

Lex Fridman (36:33.860)

but priests are not entitled to have relations with women.

Lex Fridman (36:37.540)

And as a 13 year old boy, kind of like future casting

Lex Fridman (36:40.780)

what life's going to be like for myself

Lex Fridman (36:42.660)

if I continue on my path, I found that maybe I...

Brian Keating (36:46.580)

The math is not up.

Lex Fridman (36:48.220)

That's right.

Brian Keating (36:49.140)

There was a serious gap in that future.

Lex Fridman (36:54.360)

And instead, when I should have been preparing

Brian Keating (36:56.380)

for my Bar Mitzvah, as most Jewish boys would be,

Lex Fridman (36:58.660)

a 12, 13 year old boy, I actually got a telescope

Lex Fridman (37:01.540)

and became infatuated with all the things

Lex Fridman (37:04.160)

you could see with it.

Brian Keating (37:05.000)

It wasn't bigger than that one over there

Lex Fridman (37:06.300)

that your hedgehog's looking through.

Lex Fridman (37:08.300)

Is that a hedgehog?

Lex Fridman (37:10.040)

It's a hedgehog in the fog.

Brian Keating (37:13.100)

I should mention, and we'll go one by one, these things,

Lex Fridman (37:16.380)

you've given me some incredible gifts.

Brian Keating (37:18.220)

Maybe this is a good place to ask about the telescope

Lex Fridman (37:21.660)

that puts some clamps on and let the hedgehogs look.

Lex Fridman (37:24.700)

And using...

Lex Fridman (37:25.640)

Now you're officially an experimental astrophysicist.

Lex Fridman (37:27.820)

Why experimentalist versus an engineer?

Lex Fridman (37:30.100)

Because you assembled this telescope,

Brian Keating (37:31.540)

you gave it a mount, and you connected it to a very powerful...

Lex Fridman (37:35.220)

Yeah, but there's no experiment going on.

Brian Keating (37:36.540)

It's just engineering for show.

Lex Fridman (37:38.340)

It's very shallow.

Brian Keating (37:39.420)

Experiment is taking it to the next level

Lex Fridman (37:41.580)

and actually achieving something.

Brian Keating (37:42.960)

Here, I just built a thing for show.

Lex Fridman (37:44.980)

Well, that's always a joke.

Brian Keating (37:45.820)

People say, oh, you're an experimental cosmologist.

Lex Fridman (37:47.580)

I'm like, yeah, I build a lot of universes.

Brian Keating (37:49.860)

Actually, most of my time is putting clamps on things,

Lex Fridman (37:52.140)

soldering things.

Brian Keating (37:53.140)

It's not actually doing the stroking

Lex Fridman (37:55.420)

of my non existent beard, contemplating the cyclic

Brian Keating (37:57.980)

versus the bouncing cosmological monitor.

Lex Fridman (38:00.220)

Just like most of robotics is just using Velcro for things.

Brian Keating (38:04.060)

Right, yeah, it's not like having dancing dogs

Lex Fridman (38:06.380)

and whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (38:07.580)

So telescope.

Lex Fridman (38:08.420)

Yes, this telescope.

Lex Fridman (38:09.860)

What's the story of this little telescope?

Lex Fridman (38:11.340)

This telescope's a very precious thing in some ways,

Brian Keating (38:14.580)

a symbol of what got me into...

Lex Fridman (38:18.500)

What brought me all the blessings I have in my life

Brian Keating (38:21.140)

came from a telescope.

Lex Fridman (38:22.340)

And I always advise parents or even people for themselves.

Brian Keating (38:26.480)

You right here, wherever we are,

Lex Fridman (38:28.740)

a biggest city on earth, Manhattan,

Brian Keating (38:30.220)

where I was growing up as a 12 year old

Lex Fridman (38:31.700)

outside of Manhattan.

Brian Keating (38:33.380)

You can see the exact same craters on the moon,

Lex Fridman (38:35.600)

the same rings of Saturn, the same moons of Jupiter,

Brian Keating (38:38.780)

the same phases of the...

Lex Fridman (38:40.260)

You can see the Andromeda galaxy,

Brian Keating (38:42.500)

Lex, two and a half million light years away from earth.

Lex Fridman (38:45.700)

You can do that with that little thing over there.

Brian Keating (38:47.700)

One that's a little more expensive.

Lex Fridman (38:48.740)

Get one that has a mount and you could attach now

Brian Keating (38:51.220)

your smartphone.

Lex Fridman (38:52.260)

What the hell is that?

Brian Keating (38:53.080)

I wouldn't have known what that was in 1994.

Lex Fridman (38:55.540)

And with that, you can do something that no other science

Brian Keating (38:58.900)

to my knowledge can really replicate,

Lex Fridman (39:00.820)

maybe biology in some sense,

Lex Fridman (39:02.360)

but you can experience the physical sensation

Lex Fridman (39:06.700)

that Galileo experienced when he turned a telescope

Brian Keating (39:10.180)

like that to Jupiter and saw these four dots around it.

Lex Fridman (39:12.980)

Or that Saturn had ears as he called it.

Brian Keating (39:15.540)

Or that the moon was not crystalline polished smooth

Lex Fridman (39:18.100)

and made of this heavenly substance,

Lex Fridman (39:20.520)

the quintessence substance, right?

Lex Fridman (39:22.700)

So where else can you be viscerally connected

Lex Fridman (39:26.040)

with the first person to ever make that discovery?

Lex Fridman (39:27.680)

Try doing that with the Higgs boson.

Brian Keating (39:29.540)

Get yourself an LHC and smash together high luminosity,

Lex Fridman (39:33.580)

call up Harry Cliffe and say, I want to replicate.

Lex Fridman (39:36.140)

How did you feel?

Lex Fridman (39:36.980)

He didn't feel anything.

Brian Keating (39:38.180)

None of them felt anything.

Lex Fridman (39:39.240)

It took years to go, you can't do it.

Lex Fridman (39:42.060)

But with this, you can feel the exact same emotions.

Lex Fridman (39:44.420)

That's fascinating.

Brian Keating (39:45.420)

It's almost like maybe there's another one like that

Lex Fridman (39:49.180)

is fire.

Lex Fridman (39:50.180)

Like when you build a bonfire, can you actually get it?

Lex Fridman (39:53.620)

See, if you use a lighter, I think if you actually

Brian Keating (39:56.860)

by rubbing sticks together or however you do it

Lex Fridman (39:58.900)

without any of the modern tools,

Brian Keating (3:00:00.520)

as a manager of a big project.

Lex Fridman (3:00:02.600)

With Eric, it's interesting because with him,

Brian Keating (3:00:05.680)

first of all, we relate extremely well

Lex Fridman (3:00:08.760)

on a friendship level and very close.

Brian Keating (3:00:11.800)

He does remind me a lot of my father

Lex Fridman (3:00:14.200)

and I've told him that just as a mathematician,

Brian Keating (3:00:17.280)

as a big thinker, in his case, as a father,

Lex Fridman (3:00:21.560)

the father kind of figure that I didn't have in a sense,

Lex Fridman (3:00:24.440)

but that he is a true lover of life.

Lex Fridman (3:00:27.160)

He knows he's got a huge platform.

Brian Keating (3:00:28.800)

He knows he gets a lot of attention for what he does.

Lex Fridman (3:00:32.360)

And I jokingly say, well, it's one thing,

Lex Fridman (3:00:34.640)

like how do you know, Lex, that someone's an expert?

Lex Fridman (3:00:37.520)

Experts say.

Brian Keating (3:00:39.000)

There's a good rule Ray Dalio writes about in principles.

Lex Fridman (3:00:41.360)

He says, an expert is someone who's done something

Brian Keating (3:00:43.280)

three times successfully.

Lex Fridman (3:00:44.880)

Like you can do something correctly once,

Brian Keating (3:00:47.160)

you could do something correctly.

Lex Fridman (3:00:48.440)

It's very hard to pull off like three projects,

Lex Fridman (3:00:51.160)

three telescopes, three whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (3:00:53.880)

So look for, it's arbitrary, it could be four,

Lex Fridman (3:00:57.200)

it could be two, right?

Lex Fridman (3:00:58.440)

But the point is, look at Eric.

Lex Fridman (3:00:59.720)

So how many things has he contributed to

Lex Fridman (3:01:01.440)

and made pretty substantive kind of paradigm shifts

Lex Fridman (3:01:05.800)

for different people?

Lex Fridman (3:01:06.760)

I would say he's been right many times.

Lex Fridman (3:01:09.120)

Does that mean he's infallible, that he's ineffable?

Lex Fridman (3:01:11.360)

No, of course not.

Brian Keating (3:01:12.680)

For me, so what I'm saying is I get a little bit of the joy

Lex Fridman (3:01:16.280)

of kind of learning something purely as a scientist,

Brian Keating (3:01:20.400)

something completely outside of what I do, mathematics,

Lex Fridman (3:01:23.520)

gauge theory, the kind of very advanced geometry topology

Brian Keating (3:01:30.200)

that he's interested in.

Lex Fridman (3:01:31.760)

But every now and then, I will sneak in that I want,

Brian Keating (3:01:35.400)

you know, I've told him, I'm gonna turn your son

Lex Fridman (3:01:36.840)

into an experimentalist despite you.

Brian Keating (3:01:38.400)

You know, like he is not gonna be a theorist,

Lex Fridman (3:01:40.200)

Zev is not gonna be a theorist.

Brian Keating (3:01:41.240)

He is working with me, he is learning from me.

Lex Fridman (3:01:43.400)

We're trying to get him into, he wants to bypass

Brian Keating (3:01:46.240)

all of the kind of nonsense of undergraduate

Lex Fridman (3:01:48.640)

and go straight to graduate school.

Lex Fridman (3:01:50.080)

And I've tried to encourage him

Lex Fridman (3:01:51.560)

that maybe he could do it, maybe he can't,

Lex Fridman (3:01:53.440)

but there's no other way than to try.

Lex Fridman (3:01:55.160)

And so I prepared a whole curriculum for Zev

Brian Keating (3:01:57.640)

to basically bypass all of undergraduate.

Lex Fridman (3:01:59.600)

And to his credit, he's not earns all the credit.

Brian Keating (3:02:02.000)

He's learned it to a level

Lex Fridman (3:02:03.360)

that matches many of my graduate students.

Brian Keating (3:02:05.080)

Okay, hold on a second.

Lex Fridman (3:02:06.000)

I have to push back and this is me saying it

Lex Fridman (3:02:08.480)

and I'm sure I'll talk to Eric about this.

Lex Fridman (3:02:11.600)

But to say, you said Eric's done,

Brian Keating (3:02:15.600)

was right on multiple things.

Lex Fridman (3:02:19.240)

I think Eric has a great deep insight

Brian Keating (3:02:24.640)

about human nature and how societies work.

Lex Fridman (3:02:27.640)

And he says a lot of wise words on that world.

Lex Fridman (3:02:31.480)

But I think if we're talking about experts,

Lex Fridman (3:02:34.760)

you kind of have to prove, you know,

Brian Keating (3:02:36.200)

it's like Michael Jordan playing baseball.

Lex Fridman (3:02:38.520)

Like he's proved it many times that he can play basketball,

Lex Fridman (3:02:42.120)

but he's also got to prove that he can play baseball.

Lex Fridman (3:02:44.480)

And I would say the whole point of, I mean,

Brian Keating (3:02:47.480)

of radical ideas is you're not, I mean,

Lex Fridman (3:02:51.960)

it's very hard to be sitting on a track record of,

Brian Keating (3:02:55.120)

I mean, when you're swinging for the fences,

Lex Fridman (3:02:57.320)

always there's not a track record to sit on.

Lex Fridman (3:03:02.040)

And like Max Tegmark is an example of somebody

Lex Fridman (3:03:05.240)

who has a huge track record of more like acceptable stuff,

Lex Fridman (3:03:09.320)

but he also keeps swinging for the fences

Lex Fridman (3:03:11.520)

in every other world.

Lex Fridman (3:03:12.960)

So he has that track record.

Lex Fridman (3:03:14.800)

With Eric, if you look at just the number of publications,

Brian Keating (3:03:17.680)

all this stuff, he chose not to travel the academic route.

Lex Fridman (3:03:21.480)

So there's no proof of expertise

Brian Keating (3:03:24.600)

except sort of an obvious linguistic demonstration

Lex Fridman (3:03:30.040)

of brilliance, but that's not how physics works, right?

Brian Keating (3:03:32.880)

There's a polite way to damn somebody as a scientist

Lex Fridman (3:03:35.320)

and say he or she, they really know

Brian Keating (3:03:37.800)

the history of physics very well.

Lex Fridman (3:03:40.080)

Like physicists always love it.

Brian Keating (3:03:41.240)

Like Sean Carroll always jokes about like,

Lex Fridman (3:03:43.280)

physicists should never talk about history of physics,

Lex Fridman (3:03:46.480)

but it's more than that.

Lex Fridman (3:03:47.560)

So Eric has certainly contributed in finance specifically

Lex Fridman (3:03:53.440)

and gauge theory and economics and inflation dynamics

Lex Fridman (3:03:57.400)

and the non cosmological.

Brian Keating (3:03:59.040)

Hold on a second, that's yet to be proven.

Lex Fridman (3:04:00.960)

He has a lot of powerful interests.

Brian Keating (3:04:03.440)

Calculate is calculus proven.

Lex Fridman (3:04:04.920)

I mean, he has a gauge model for currency exchanges

Brian Keating (3:04:10.920)

between different nations that is explanatory.

Lex Fridman (3:04:13.480)

Not, it's not, you know, is this something,

Brian Keating (3:04:16.840)

in other words, it's a model

Lex Fridman (3:04:18.320)

and it's used for pedagogical purposes.

Lex Fridman (3:04:20.080)

And it might be, okay.

Lex Fridman (3:04:21.760)

It's unique to him.

Brian Keating (3:04:22.600)

I mean, to him and Pia.

Lex Fridman (3:04:23.800)

Yes, it might be a powerful model.

Brian Keating (3:04:27.480)

It might be one that's actually deserves

Lex Fridman (3:04:29.560)

a huge amount of applause and celebration,

Lex Fridman (3:04:32.360)

but does not yet receive that.

Lex Fridman (3:04:34.120)

And that's one of the things that Eric talks about.

Brian Keating (3:04:35.920)

It has not received the attention it deserves,

Lex Fridman (3:04:38.000)

but it has not yet received the attention it deserves.

Lex Fridman (3:04:40.920)

And so like the proven expertise thing,

Lex Fridman (3:04:43.680)

I mean, there's a lot of people that go to their grave

Brian Keating (3:04:47.120)

without the recognition they deserve and it's a tragedy.

Lex Fridman (3:04:50.400)

But the fact is like, you know,

Brian Keating (3:04:53.760)

you have to fight for that recognition.

Lex Fridman (3:04:55.680)

The tragedy happens for a reason.

Brian Keating (3:04:57.280)

You can't just say this person is obviously brilliant

Lex Fridman (3:05:00.680)

and therefore they deserve the credit

Brian Keating (3:05:05.240)

in every single domain.

Lex Fridman (3:05:06.880)

It doesn't like transfer immediately.

Brian Keating (3:05:09.400)

There's nobody that's, well, at least I wouldn't argue

Lex Fridman (3:05:12.000)

Eric is one of the special minds in our generation,

Lex Fridman (3:05:15.520)

but you still have to fight the fight of physics

Lex Fridman (3:05:18.720)

and prove it within the community.

Lex Fridman (3:05:20.440)

And I think the same applies in economics.

Lex Fridman (3:05:22.720)

You can't, I mean, as somebody that, you know,

Brian Keating (3:05:27.240)

I've gone through the academic journey,

Lex Fridman (3:05:30.760)

just like you said, the peer review,

Brian Keating (3:05:33.320)

all of those things, flawed as they are,

Lex Fridman (3:05:35.840)

that's the part of the process.

Brian Keating (3:05:37.600)

You have to convince your peers,

Lex Fridman (3:05:39.360)

the people that are as obsessed for whatever the hell reason

Brian Keating (3:05:44.120)

about that particular thing that you're working on.

Lex Fridman (3:05:46.720)

Yes, there's egos.

Brian Keating (3:05:48.040)

Yes, there's politics.

Lex Fridman (3:05:49.240)

It's a giant mess.

Lex Fridman (3:05:50.880)

But I think it's a beautiful mess

Lex Fridman (3:05:52.840)

through which you have to go through

Brian Keating (3:05:56.160)

in order to reveal the power of your idea

Lex Fridman (3:06:00.520)

to yourself and to the world.

Brian Keating (3:06:02.480)

Well, let me use an example.

Lex Fridman (3:06:03.360)

So, you know of James Clerk Maxwell

Lex Fridman (3:06:06.000)

and he invented the laws of electromagnetism,

Lex Fridman (3:06:08.520)

which is the first example of a unification principle

Brian Keating (3:06:10.800)

ever displayed by the human mind in history.

Lex Fridman (3:06:13.480)

Purely mathematics, unifying completely disparate phenomena.

Brian Keating (3:06:17.920)

In one case, electricity, charges,

Lex Fridman (3:06:20.320)

static electricity, lightning,

Lex Fridman (3:06:21.880)

and the other magnets, bar magnets, currents, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:06:24.680)

Unify them.

Lex Fridman (3:06:25.520)

And you know what he did?

Lex Fridman (3:06:27.400)

I like to do a thought experiment.

Brian Keating (3:06:28.760)

Imagine Twitter exists, 1864.

Lex Fridman (3:06:31.040)

Maxwell's working away.

Lex Fridman (3:06:32.440)

And he goes, I have this wonderful idea

Lex Fridman (3:06:34.000)

with fluxions and inductive virtue and blah, blah, blah.

Lex Fridman (3:06:37.760)

And it revolves on this thing called an ether.

Lex Fridman (3:06:39.960)

And by the way, there are these little vortices and gears

Lex Fridman (3:06:42.800)

and the gears have these planetary things

Lex Fridman (3:06:44.520)

and they suck up vortices and the vortices determine

Brian Keating (3:06:46.480)

the density of the electromagnetic potential.

Lex Fridman (3:06:49.040)

You feel like this guy's a fricking moron.

Lex Fridman (3:06:51.160)

And what would you do?

Lex Fridman (3:06:52.520)

Come on, honestly, you would say

Brian Keating (3:06:53.840)

everything this guy does is wrong.

Lex Fridman (3:06:55.560)

I mean, he's got this idiotic idea

Lex Fridman (3:06:57.280)

and it would be falsified a couple of decades later

Lex Fridman (3:07:00.080)

by Michelson and Morley.

Lex Fridman (3:07:02.040)

And in so doing, you would have thrown out

Lex Fridman (3:07:04.520)

a very beautiful baby with bathwater.

Brian Keating (3:07:07.400)

Imagine Twitter, imagine the twit storm,

Lex Fridman (3:07:09.720)

clerk Maxwell, at clerk Maxwell one would get.

Lex Fridman (3:07:13.640)

It would be brutal, right?

Lex Fridman (3:07:14.960)

And to the detriment.

Lex Fridman (3:07:16.040)

And that might even set back history.

Lex Fridman (3:07:17.560)

Imagine Yang Mills doing the same thing.

Brian Keating (3:07:19.360)

Chairman Simons.

Lex Fridman (3:07:20.560)

All these things are very fantastic.

Lex Fridman (3:07:22.200)

But why Lex?

Lex Fridman (3:07:23.240)

Why does Ed Witten, why does Juan Maldacena?

Brian Keating (3:07:26.680)

Let me give a good example.

Lex Fridman (3:07:28.000)

Juan, brilliant guy, I love him.

Brian Keating (3:07:30.720)

He is the reason that Stephen Hawking conceded

Lex Fridman (3:07:33.520)

his black hole information paradox loss issue.

Lex Fridman (3:07:36.400)

What did he concede based upon Maldacena's calculation

Lex Fridman (3:07:40.280)

in ADS, CFT and five dimensional wormholes?

Lex Fridman (3:07:44.920)

Is any of that?

Lex Fridman (3:07:45.760)

First of all, we don't live in ADS universe.

Brian Keating (3:07:47.440)

Second of all, we don't know if wormholes are traversable,

Lex Fridman (3:07:49.960)

if they exist even.

Brian Keating (3:07:51.840)

These are devices, Kip Thorne is popularized for movies.

Lex Fridman (3:07:55.440)

To say that this is something on which I will concede a bet.

Brian Keating (3:07:58.320)

Now, obviously Hawking was doing that for publicity.

Lex Fridman (3:08:00.840)

Why does Maldacena?

Lex Fridman (3:08:02.440)

And he's got a pretty high H index,

Lex Fridman (3:08:04.480)

pretty well respected guy at IAS.

Brian Keating (3:08:06.560)

Love talking to him, brilliant guy.

Lex Fridman (3:08:08.240)

By the way, also had made use of Eric and Pia's work

Brian Keating (3:08:12.200)

on gauge theory and economics originally.

Lex Fridman (3:08:14.840)

And one, I believe the breakthrough,

Brian Keating (3:08:16.560)

I can't remember exactly what,

Lex Fridman (3:08:17.640)

but partially credit some of the work that he did,

Brian Keating (3:08:20.600)

which appears there's a footnote to Pia Milani's thesis

Lex Fridman (3:08:24.000)

and some conversations with Eric, I think in it.

Brian Keating (3:08:26.360)

Anyway, getting back to that,

Lex Fridman (3:08:28.320)

why is there not the same skepticism?

Brian Keating (3:08:30.320)

Is it because Maldacena,

Lex Fridman (3:08:32.040)

who's an eminent physicist obviously,

Brian Keating (3:08:34.160)

has published realistic work and done,

Lex Fridman (3:08:37.360)

what about Witten?

Brian Keating (3:08:39.040)

Witten gets a pass.

Lex Fridman (3:08:40.000)

I mean, if you, Witten just gets here.

Lex Fridman (3:08:40.840)

Well, Witten gets a pass on which aspect?

Lex Fridman (3:08:42.840)

The string theory?

Brian Keating (3:08:43.800)

Yeah, that M theory is correct.

Lex Fridman (3:08:45.200)

I mean, here's, well, let me just say Hawking.

Brian Keating (3:08:46.600)

Hawking gets the ultimate pass.

Lex Fridman (3:08:48.400)

Hawking would say things like M theory,

Brian Keating (3:08:50.880)

there's zero evidence for it.

Lex Fridman (3:08:52.200)

I mean, there's the famous meme

Brian Keating (3:08:53.560)

that went around this weekend, like,

Lex Fridman (3:08:54.880)

what is string theory predicted?

Lex Fridman (3:08:56.200)

And it's nothing.

Lex Fridman (3:08:57.040)

And by the way, that's actually wrong.

Brian Keating (3:08:57.920)

I talked to Kamran, I know you talked to Kamran.

Lex Fridman (3:08:59.840)

Kamran says that string theory does make predictions.

Brian Keating (3:09:02.280)

It predicts the mass of the electron lies

Lex Fridman (3:09:03.840)

between 10 to the minus one Planck mass

Lex Fridman (3:09:06.040)

and 10 to the minus 30 Planck mass.

Lex Fridman (3:09:07.680)

Okay, whatever, or electron.

Brian Keating (3:09:09.680)

It's a big range.

Lex Fridman (3:09:10.520)

It's a huge range.

Brian Keating (3:09:11.720)

Is that, imagine Kamran comes up and again,

Lex Fridman (3:09:13.920)

he's just some nobody, but he actually,

Brian Keating (3:09:16.560)

he doesn't have a profile, he's not Harvard,

Lex Fridman (3:09:18.480)

has zero H and X or whatever Eric says.

Lex Fridman (3:09:21.320)

Why do we not like, in other words,

Lex Fridman (3:09:23.000)

why are we more harsh on people that are trying?

Brian Keating (3:09:25.840)

You know the answer to that.

Lex Fridman (3:09:27.600)

So I get a million emails, just like you said,

Brian Keating (3:09:30.640)

you yourself, where they provenized in my world

Lex Fridman (3:09:34.240)

as artificial intelligence, the equivalence of that,

Brian Keating (3:09:37.840)

is I figured out how to build consciousness,

Lex Fridman (3:09:40.400)

how to engineer intelligence, how to, and sometimes.

Brian Keating (3:09:44.440)

You should send your emails to me

Lex Fridman (3:09:45.840)

and I'll send my emails to you.

Lex Fridman (3:09:46.680)

And we'll reply to each other.

Lex Fridman (3:09:48.000)

I mean, and I don't want to sort of mock this

Brian Keating (3:09:50.400)

because I think it's very possible

Lex Fridman (3:09:52.360)

that there is either kernels of interesting ideas

Brian Keating (3:09:55.560)

or in whole, like there is geniuses out there

Lex Fridman (3:09:58.860)

that are unheard, but because there's so much noise,

Brian Keating (3:10:03.000)

you do have to weigh out like a higher

Lex Fridman (3:10:08.680)

the Ed Wittons of the world when they make statements.

Lex Fridman (3:10:12.120)

And that's why you build up a track record.

Lex Fridman (3:10:14.800)

Like you just said with Ray Dalio,

Brian Keating (3:10:16.860)

you have to show that you can, like if you're a Pollock

Lex Fridman (3:10:23.080)

and you show us a painting of a bunch of chaos,

Brian Keating (3:10:26.000)

you have to, and this is a bad example, probably,

Lex Fridman (3:10:28.480)

because he probably never showed this proof.

Brian Keating (3:10:30.000)

I don't think he could do it.

Lex Fridman (3:10:30.840)

Yeah, it's much more comforting to see

Brian Keating (3:10:36.600)

that they can paint a good, accurate picture.

Lex Fridman (3:10:39.800)

Still life.

Brian Keating (3:10:40.640)

Of still life, of an apple on the table.

Lex Fridman (3:10:43.440)

So there's, because then, I mean,

Brian Keating (3:10:47.960)

because then there's something

Lex Fridman (3:10:50.000)

about the scientific community

Brian Keating (3:10:51.360)

that they have perhaps an oversensitive bullshit sensor

Lex Fridman (3:10:54.820)

to where they're not going to give the full effort

Brian Keating (3:10:57.200)

of their attention if you don't have the track record.

Lex Fridman (3:11:00.200)

Now you could say that's a kind of club

Brian Keating (3:11:02.600)

that only you have to like, you have to have 10,

Lex Fridman (3:11:04.960)

you have to have this, yes, that exists,

Lex Fridman (3:11:07.000)

but there's some aspect in which you have to play the game

Lex Fridman (3:11:10.440)

a little bit to get the machine of science going.

Brian Keating (3:11:13.840)

Otherwise, if you're always saying,

Lex Fridman (3:11:16.560)

well, I have my ball and I don't want to play your game,

Brian Keating (3:11:20.200)

your game sucks, then nobody's gonna want to play with you.

Lex Fridman (3:11:23.480)

That's true.

Brian Keating (3:11:24.720)

Look, inherent in all of this is an underlying grandiosity.

Lex Fridman (3:11:28.080)

Look, how could you talk about doing what Kaku said

Lex Fridman (3:11:31.520)

on here and elsewhere?

Lex Fridman (3:11:33.520)

We're looking for the umbilical cord

Brian Keating (3:11:34.980)

that connects our universe to another universe

Lex Fridman (3:11:36.840)

that will then reveal in a one inch equation

Brian Keating (3:11:38.840)

that will surely win a Nobel Prize, the mind of God.

Lex Fridman (3:11:41.440)

That's like a prerequisite, I guess,

Brian Keating (3:11:42.960)

to tackle these questions.

Lex Fridman (3:11:44.160)

I think it's detrimental.

Brian Keating (3:11:46.960)

I think doing that, first of all,

Lex Fridman (3:11:48.840)

I think there's an element of almost snarkiness

Brian Keating (3:11:50.760)

because none of these scientists are believing,

Lex Fridman (3:11:52.560)

you know, Gnostics, they're not theists, right?

Lex Fridman (3:11:55.720)

So they're using it as kind of a stand in

Lex Fridman (3:11:57.640)

and always talk about Einstein didn't mean

Brian Keating (3:11:59.200)

he was like a Spinoza and he wasn't a, you know, a theist.

Lex Fridman (3:12:02.080)

God doesn't play dice.

Brian Keating (3:12:03.040)

God doesn't play dice.

Lex Fridman (3:12:03.880)

Yeah, Einstein's mentions of God, yeah.

Brian Keating (3:12:05.200)

Yeah, and then Stephen Hawking says if,

Lex Fridman (3:12:07.520)

when we come, we get an M theory understood,

Brian Keating (3:12:09.660)

we'll know the mind of God.

Lex Fridman (3:12:11.560)

That's the title of Kaku's book,

Brian Keating (3:12:13.800)

The God Particle, The God Equation.

Lex Fridman (3:12:16.420)

It, you know, do any of them really believe in God?

Lex Fridman (3:12:19.240)

No, is that a prerequisite?

Lex Fridman (3:12:20.340)

No, I'm not saying that.

Lex Fridman (3:12:21.440)

But the point being,

Lex Fridman (3:12:23.400)

you're talking about something that has to do with God,

Lex Fridman (3:12:24.900)

right, I mean, where else do you go from there?

Lex Fridman (3:12:26.560)

I mean, I think God for now enjoys a little bit more,

Lex Fridman (3:12:29.520)

you know, kind of a PR than Elon or Joe or whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (3:12:33.160)

So like it's, you know, God's got a pretty good,

Brian Keating (3:12:36.040)

you know, H index himself.

Lex Fridman (3:12:37.280)

He has a, by the way, a Twitter account,

Brian Keating (3:12:39.160)

just so you know, it's pretty good.

Lex Fridman (3:12:40.440)

The tweets of God, yeah.

Brian Keating (3:12:41.360)

Yeah, that's right.

Lex Fridman (3:12:42.200)

The tweet of God.

Lex Fridman (3:12:43.320)

So if you look at that, you have to go in there,

Lex Fridman (3:12:46.040)

again, you have to go in with some swagger.

Brian Keating (3:12:47.720)

You have to have a little bit of arrogance,

Lex Fridman (3:12:50.360)

but you should, I agree,

Brian Keating (3:12:51.520)

mix with a little bit of humility.

Lex Fridman (3:12:52.800)

So he's doing something, he comes from outside of academia.

Brian Keating (3:12:55.960)

Now, if he rails against, I'm talking about Eric now,

Lex Fridman (3:12:58.240)

if he's just railing, oh, the system,

Lex Fridman (3:12:59.700)

and I'm not gonna publish because F that,

Lex Fridman (3:13:01.200)

and that's only created by greedy journalists,

Brian Keating (3:13:03.460)

I don't think he's doing himself any favors.

Lex Fridman (3:13:05.640)

On the other hand, if he's shopping it, if he's talking it,

Brian Keating (3:13:08.120)

if he's willing to expose it to criticism,

Lex Fridman (3:13:13.240)

and to even embrace people

Brian Keating (3:13:15.000)

who may not have the purest intentions perhaps,

Lex Fridman (3:13:18.120)

but in the sense of like they're not arguing solely

Brian Keating (3:13:21.480)

to get to the truth with a capital T,

Lex Fridman (3:13:23.920)

what they're trying to do is take down Eric.

Brian Keating (3:13:25.680)

Hopefully those people aren't out there.

Lex Fridman (3:13:27.700)

But on the other hand,

Brian Keating (3:13:29.400)

looking at what Eric does for other people,

Lex Fridman (3:13:32.280)

looking at the fact that he has courtesy,

Brian Keating (3:13:34.600)

he will look at Wolfram, he will look at Lisey,

Lex Fridman (3:13:36.640)

who's one of his closest friends.

Brian Keating (3:13:38.000)

I mean, he calls him as his aunt, not his aunt.

Lex Fridman (3:13:40.240)

Nemesis. Nemesis, right, right.

Brian Keating (3:13:42.000)

I think that's interesting that they're loving friends.

Lex Fridman (3:13:44.280)

I really enjoyed that portal conversation

Brian Keating (3:13:46.160)

between Gary and Lisey.

Lex Fridman (3:13:47.920)

Eric is torn about that conversation because, I guess,

Brian Keating (3:13:51.800)

because of the nemesis of the beautiful dance of minds

Lex Fridman (3:13:55.260)

playing with these ideas and theories of everything.

Brian Keating (3:13:56.920)

Some of these things, you know, look, so fundamentally,

Lex Fridman (3:13:59.120)

now I may disagree with him, Eric, on a different aspect,

Brian Keating (3:14:02.080)

which is the only one I'm capable of,

Lex Fridman (3:14:03.440)

but let me say one thing,

Brian Keating (3:14:04.500)

which is experimental, but let me say one thing.

Lex Fridman (3:14:06.720)

I understand probably a third

Brian Keating (3:14:08.820)

of what Eric's talking about with GU.

Lex Fridman (3:14:10.640)

I understand, you know, GR, I understand mathematics,

Brian Keating (3:14:13.900)

I understand some group theory, fiber bone,

Lex Fridman (3:14:16.440)

I can get a little of it, the age theory,

Lex Fridman (3:14:19.120)

but I also understand what I don't understand,

Lex Fridman (3:14:21.980)

and I understand that there are people like Witten,

Brian Keating (3:14:23.740)

Maldacena, Nima, other people that can understand it,

Lex Fridman (3:14:28.200)

and they're not trying to understand it.

Brian Keating (3:14:29.840)

Sabina, she can understand it.

Lex Fridman (3:14:31.080)

She makes all these, you know,

Brian Keating (3:14:32.500)

oh, I don't understand it, I don't want to understand it.

Lex Fridman (3:14:34.160)

I don't have time, and then she makes a video,

Brian Keating (3:14:36.480)

a music video, you know, kind of mocking Eric

Lex Fridman (3:14:39.080)

and Steven and Garrett, and I'm like,

Brian Keating (3:14:40.600)

oh, you have a time to do, and I love Sabina,

Lex Fridman (3:14:42.400)

and I've actually promoted my show on her,

Lex Fridman (3:14:44.480)

and I love her, and she's doing a wonderful job,

Lex Fridman (3:14:47.140)

but you have a video that you said yourself

Brian Keating (3:14:49.880)

takes eight weeks to produce from start to finish,

Lex Fridman (3:14:51.520)

and you couldn't have spent, you know, 30 minutes, two hours.

Brian Keating (3:14:54.600)

I, Brian Keating, have done it

Lex Fridman (3:14:55.920)

as an experimental cosmologist,

Lex Fridman (3:14:57.840)

and I have enough to say, like, this is interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:15:00.280)

It's part of the ASEIR project, and it actually,

Brian Keating (3:15:02.880)

I shouldn't say that there are no people.

Lex Fridman (3:15:04.040)

They're very serious.

Brian Keating (3:15:04.880)

Louis Alvarez Gommet at SUNY Stony Brook

Lex Fridman (3:15:08.160)

at the Simon Center for Geometrical Physics.

Brian Keating (3:15:10.000)

Yeah, so he and I are running this seminar,

Lex Fridman (3:15:12.280)

hopefully this summer.

Brian Keating (3:15:13.120)

We're gonna reenact the famous

Lex Fridman (3:15:14.480)

Shelter Island conferences in the 1900s,

Brian Keating (3:15:17.560)

where, you know, Feynman got together,

Lex Fridman (3:15:19.240)

and they calculated the Lamb shift and all that,

Lex Fridman (3:15:21.060)

but what did that feature?

Lex Fridman (3:15:23.300)

The harmony, the resonant minds

Brian Keating (3:15:25.680)

behind the best experimentalists in cosmology,

Lex Fridman (3:15:28.520)

particle physics, condensed matter physics

Brian Keating (3:15:30.580)

is now teaching us tremendous things about, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:15:32.920)

lower dimensional systems that can be applied.

Brian Keating (3:15:35.840)

Theorists and experimentalists, observers,

Lex Fridman (3:15:37.800)

cosmologists, we all will get together,

Lex Fridman (3:15:40.640)

and we're just gonna do it out of a spirit of love,

Lex Fridman (3:15:43.360)

but if it's just like, oh, this guy's like a loudmouth,

Brian Keating (3:15:46.080)

I don't have time for that.

Lex Fridman (3:15:46.920)

I really don't.

Brian Keating (3:15:47.760)

I don't think it's interesting way to spend my time.

Lex Fridman (3:15:50.360)

There's a aspect that I hope to see,

Lex Fridman (3:15:52.980)

and it goes back to our sort of discussion

Lex Fridman (3:15:56.440)

about Joe Rogan.

Brian Keating (3:15:58.040)

I do hope to see sort of love and humility

Lex Fridman (3:16:00.500)

in the presentation.

Brian Keating (3:16:01.340)

Like, let go of this kind of fear of your ideas being stolen

Lex Fridman (3:16:06.040)

and the ego that's inherent to the scientific pursuit,

Lex Fridman (3:16:09.500)

and now that everybody is established and known entities,

Lex Fridman (3:16:16.120)

let go of that a little bit

Lex Fridman (3:16:17.360)

so we can explore and celebrate ideas.

Lex Fridman (3:16:20.180)

I would love to see more of that,

Brian Keating (3:16:21.360)

just like, as you were saying,

Lex Fridman (3:16:22.580)

especially with these big ideas of theories of everything.

Lex Fridman (3:16:26.120)

And I've talked, I mean,

Lex Fridman (3:16:26.960)

this isn't talking tails out of school,

Lex Fridman (3:16:28.560)

but I mean, he has made claims

Lex Fridman (3:16:30.080)

that I fundamentally disagree with,

Brian Keating (3:16:32.040)

in terms of like, he's had this Twitter baiting,

Lex Fridman (3:16:35.840)

loving trolling of Elon,

Lex Fridman (3:16:37.400)

why are you spending all this money to get to Mars?

Lex Fridman (3:16:39.260)

We should be spending money on interdimensional travel,

Lex Fridman (3:16:41.140)

and we can unlock it if we...

Lex Fridman (3:16:42.720)

And I said to him, and he makes the point

Brian Keating (3:16:44.840)

that the atomic theory, that unleashed the nuclear age,

Lex Fridman (3:16:49.540)

and that could lead to planetary destruction.

Lex Fridman (3:16:53.560)

But I make the point pushing back with love on him,

Lex Fridman (3:16:56.140)

and I say, look, nobody looked into the equations,

Brian Keating (3:16:58.760)

like Fermi didn't look into all these equations

Lex Fridman (3:17:01.280)

of the unification, which still doesn't exist, by the way.

Brian Keating (3:17:04.000)

We spent all this time, Lex,

Lex Fridman (3:17:05.320)

and I don't know why it is,

Brian Keating (3:17:06.380)

it's a phenomenon purely in theoretical physics.

Lex Fridman (3:17:08.520)

People are looking for the toe,

Lex Fridman (3:17:10.920)

and they're overlooking the gut.

Lex Fridman (3:17:12.920)

In other words, they're spending all this time

Brian Keating (3:17:13.760)

on the theory of everything, the God equation,

Lex Fridman (3:17:16.060)

and there's this gut that unifies the three stronger forces.

Brian Keating (3:17:18.720)

We don't have a single theory for that.

Lex Fridman (3:17:20.280)

And people like lash out, they've tried and failed at it.

Brian Keating (3:17:22.960)

Yeah, for people who don't know,

Lex Fridman (3:17:23.920)

there's four forces, gut grant unification theories

Brian Keating (3:17:27.340)

that unifies the three forces stuff,

Lex Fridman (3:17:29.460)

and I'm trying to get a shortcut

Brian Keating (3:17:30.880)

to the theory of everything, which unifies the four.

Lex Fridman (3:17:34.420)

And then there's this whole thing

Brian Keating (3:17:35.820)

that maybe quantum gravity is not even a thing.

Lex Fridman (3:17:38.180)

So we're trying to solve the puzzle of everything

Brian Keating (3:17:47.300)

at the physics level.

Lex Fridman (3:17:49.000)

And then already before solving it,

Brian Keating (3:17:51.540)

already saying, once we solve it,

Lex Fridman (3:17:53.240)

here's going to be all the beautiful time machines.

Brian Keating (3:17:55.080)

We're just level jumping it, going to level 256.

Lex Fridman (3:17:59.160)

Time x and everything.

Brian Keating (3:18:00.900)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:18:02.920)

I suppose you need that kind of ego, that confidence,

Brian Keating (3:18:06.780)

that ambition in order to even have a chance

Lex Fridman (3:18:09.400)

at some of these things.

Brian Keating (3:18:10.240)

The only two people in this book of nine Nobel laureates

Lex Fridman (3:18:13.160)

who told me they don't have the imposter syndrome

Brian Keating (3:18:16.160)

were two theorists, Frank Wilczek and Sheldon Glashow.

Lex Fridman (3:18:19.520)

And Frank is a pretty interesting,

Lex Fridman (3:18:21.100)

and I know eventually we're gonna talk

Lex Fridman (3:18:22.240)

about the meaning of life, but you talk about Frank.

Brian Keating (3:18:25.320)

Frank invented this theory along with his advisor

Lex Fridman (3:18:27.740)

and another third person in the early 1970s,

Brian Keating (3:18:32.040)

which from 1974, three, when he was at Princeton,

Lex Fridman (3:18:34.680)

all the way up until 2004, when he won the Nobel,

Brian Keating (3:18:37.040)

every day of his life.

Lex Fridman (3:18:38.680)

Imagine this, Lex.

Brian Keating (3:18:39.680)

You're gonna have this startup.

Lex Fridman (3:18:41.120)

Actually, someone tells you you're gonna win a lottery.

Brian Keating (3:18:43.240)

You're gonna win a lottery in 40 years.

Lex Fridman (3:18:45.180)

What becomes your singular focus in your life

Lex Fridman (3:18:48.080)

from now until the next 40 years?

Lex Fridman (3:18:52.440)

Well, I'm not sure.

Brian Keating (3:18:54.120)

I mean, would it be winning the lottery

Lex Fridman (3:18:56.440)

or if I'm so confident?

Brian Keating (3:18:57.280)

No, I'm saying you're guaranteed to win a lottery.

Lex Fridman (3:18:58.720)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (3:18:59.560)

Here's this wallet, Bitcoin wallet.

Lex Fridman (3:19:01.000)

It's gonna guarantee I have this much money.

Brian Keating (3:19:02.320)

It's stable coin, whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:19:04.160)

You're gonna win it, but you have to wait 40 years.

Brian Keating (3:19:06.420)

To me, it would be surviving for the next 40 years.

Lex Fridman (3:19:09.180)

You wouldn't leave your house.

Brian Keating (3:19:10.560)

You would go out in a bubble wrap hat.

Lex Fridman (3:19:12.540)

You wouldn't go out with that 20 masks on, right?

Brian Keating (3:19:14.720)

Your whole life would be consumed with.

Lex Fridman (3:19:17.160)

Now, imagine everyone's telling you

Brian Keating (3:19:18.400)

you're gonna win the Nobel Prize,

Lex Fridman (3:19:19.440)

which is bigger than the lottery.

Brian Keating (3:19:20.800)

I mean, many P prizes are worth more than the Nobel Prize

Lex Fridman (3:19:23.240)

and every person who wins a prize

Brian Keating (3:19:25.120)

that's worth three times the money, like Maldacena,

Lex Fridman (3:19:27.280)

he would trade that breakthrough prize

Brian Keating (3:19:29.280)

for a Nobel Prize and a heartbeat.

Lex Fridman (3:19:30.720)

So these guys had to wait 40 years.

Brian Keating (3:19:33.840)

Imagine the excruciating pain.

Lex Fridman (3:19:35.540)

What got him through it?

Brian Keating (3:19:36.560)

He didn't feel like he didn't deserve it.

Lex Fridman (3:19:38.480)

He felt like, hell yeah, I earned it.

Brian Keating (3:19:40.520)

He has that swagger.

Lex Fridman (3:19:42.440)

And what I'm looking for in this asset is to try to find

Brian Keating (3:19:46.080)

ways that we can test stuff now,

Lex Fridman (3:19:47.560)

cause I don't know if I'm gonna be here in 40 years,

Lex Fridman (3:19:49.360)

I hope I am, but can we bypass, can we get shortcuts?

Lex Fridman (3:19:51.880)

What's called the low energy regime.

Lex Fridman (3:19:53.600)

And to me, that's what's interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:19:55.680)

Like, what can we do now?

Brian Keating (3:19:56.720)

I don't care.

Lex Fridman (3:19:57.560)

Like Isaac Newton came up with color theory

Lex Fridman (3:19:59.640)

and he did something really interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:20:00.680)

Next time I come, I'll bring you some prisms.

Lex Fridman (3:20:02.280)

What did he do?

Lex Fridman (3:20:03.120)

He took a white light.

Brian Keating (3:20:04.040)

He took a prism from the sun, actually.

Lex Fridman (3:20:06.040)

He put it through a slit, put it through a prism

Lex Fridman (3:20:07.640)

and it made a beautiful rainbow, like you've seen.

Lex Fridman (3:20:10.520)

And then he took another prism

Lex Fridman (3:20:12.320)

and he put it upside down,

Lex Fridman (3:20:13.760)

like, you know, dark side of the moon, whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:20:15.520)

And the light went through the first prism,

Lex Fridman (3:20:17.240)

turned into a rainbow.

Lex Fridman (3:20:18.080)

And then the rainbow went into a prism

Lex Fridman (3:20:20.000)

and came out a white light.

Brian Keating (3:20:21.520)

That's pretty cool.

Lex Fridman (3:20:22.760)

Then he took a popsicle stick or whatever,

Brian Keating (3:20:24.760)

it's probably, you know, pipe tobacco.

Lex Fridman (3:20:26.400)

And he put it in the beam, like blocked out the orange

Lex Fridman (3:20:29.720)

and it didn't make white light come out.

Lex Fridman (3:20:31.760)

So he showed like colors of synthesis.

Brian Keating (3:20:34.120)

It's a common, he didn't use like

Lex Fridman (3:20:36.120)

the Large Hadron Collider to do that.

Brian Keating (3:20:38.120)

You know, he used a very low energy experiment

Lex Fridman (3:20:40.200)

to prove a unification in this color physics

Lex Fridman (3:20:42.480)

and different kind of color physics

Lex Fridman (3:20:43.720)

than in quantum chromodynamics.

Lex Fridman (3:20:45.400)

But nevertheless, can we find things like that?

Lex Fridman (3:20:47.840)

Are we spending way too much time and energy

Brian Keating (3:20:49.800)

thinking about the future circular collider,

Lex Fridman (3:20:52.200)

which even if it gets built will cost $30 billion

Brian Keating (3:20:54.680)

just to build.

Lex Fridman (3:20:55.520)

By the way, anytime from now on,

Brian Keating (3:20:56.720)

if I leave you with anything,

Lex Fridman (3:20:57.960)

anytime an experimental physicist tells you a number,

Brian Keating (3:21:00.160)

always double it, maybe triple it.

Lex Fridman (3:21:01.960)

How much is it gonna cost?

Brian Keating (3:21:03.200)

To operate it.

Lex Fridman (3:21:04.080)

So like, do we build an aircraft carrier

Lex Fridman (3:21:06.240)

to build an aircraft carrier?

Lex Fridman (3:21:07.680)

Do we build a nuclear reactor, a semiconductor facility?

Lex Fridman (3:21:10.440)

And the rule of thumb that works pretty well

Lex Fridman (3:21:12.040)

in project management is it costs about 10% per year

Brian Keating (3:21:14.840)

to operate a given object of sufficient complexity.

Lex Fridman (3:21:18.160)

And in this case, so in 10 years,

Brian Keating (3:21:19.720)

it'll cost double the cost.

Lex Fridman (3:21:20.800)

So never believe a number,

Brian Keating (3:21:22.400)

whether it's from our mutual friend, Harry or whoever,

Lex Fridman (3:21:24.800)

don't believe the number, double it.

Lex Fridman (3:21:26.160)

And then say, is it worth it?

Lex Fridman (3:21:27.480)

And so building a solar system size accelerator,

Lex Fridman (3:21:30.440)

even if it were possible, do we have to do that?

Lex Fridman (3:21:32.760)

Or can we use these two 30 solar mass objects

Brian Keating (3:21:35.800)

colliding together to test the number

Lex Fridman (3:21:38.600)

of large extra spatial dimensions?

Lex Fridman (3:21:40.320)

Can we do that?

Lex Fridman (3:21:41.160)

People are working on it.

Brian Keating (3:21:42.000)

I think it's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (3:21:43.080)

So focus on building detectors.

Brian Keating (3:21:46.120)

Experiments.

Lex Fridman (3:21:48.200)

That like, where the cosmos is part of the experiment,

Brian Keating (3:21:55.480)

I suppose, is doing the hard work.

Lex Fridman (3:21:57.280)

Cause when you're saying low energy regime,

Brian Keating (3:22:00.200)

cause for some of these, especially big questions,

Lex Fridman (3:22:02.560)

like theories of everything,

Brian Keating (3:22:03.760)

you need some high energy events.

Lex Fridman (3:22:07.320)

And so somehow figure out how the high energy events

Brian Keating (3:22:10.240)

that are already happening out there,

Lex Fridman (3:22:12.640)

how to leverage them to understand here on earth.

Lex Fridman (3:22:16.040)

So one of the alternative theories of cosmology

Lex Fridman (3:22:19.040)

that is not a singular quantum gravitational requiring

Brian Keating (3:22:22.000)

as the big bang and inflation are,

Lex Fridman (3:22:23.840)

is are these bouncing models.

Brian Keating (3:22:26.000)

Some of them feature a similar kind of entity

Lex Fridman (3:22:29.000)

called the quantum field.

Lex Fridman (3:22:30.560)

And that quantum field in the initial stages

Lex Fridman (3:22:33.280)

of the universe of our current, after the bounce,

Brian Keating (3:22:35.360)

which is not a singularity,

Lex Fridman (3:22:36.600)

it compresses to a classical kind of rebound

Lex Fridman (3:22:39.280)

and the universe starts expanding.

Lex Fridman (3:22:41.480)

During that process, the expansion is governed

Brian Keating (3:22:44.680)

by what's called a scalar field,

Lex Fridman (3:22:46.360)

of which we only know one that exists,

Brian Keating (3:22:48.200)

that's called the Higgs boson.

Lex Fridman (3:22:49.160)

Higgs is a scalar fundamental particle, fundamental field.

Brian Keating (3:22:53.440)

That field then later does double duty

Lex Fridman (3:22:56.280)

and it becomes dark energy.

Lex Fridman (3:22:59.480)

So it solves two problems.

Lex Fridman (3:23:00.920)

And I'm not saying it's correct, we don't know yet.

Lex Fridman (3:23:02.640)

But are there observations of,

Lex Fridman (3:23:04.560)

and so dark energy is manifest today.

Brian Keating (3:23:06.240)

It's manifest in properties we see in supernova explosions,

Lex Fridman (3:23:10.160)

et cetera, et cetera.

Brian Keating (3:23:11.120)

We see the effects of accelerating universe

Lex Fridman (3:23:13.160)

caused by presumably dark energy.

Lex Fridman (3:23:15.000)

Is dark energy a constant or does it vary?

Lex Fridman (3:23:18.160)

That has to vary in order for this theory to be true,

Brian Keating (3:23:20.680)

because that eventually has to decay

Lex Fridman (3:23:22.280)

so that the universe can not support itself

Lex Fridman (3:23:24.280)

and collapse again, again classically.

Lex Fridman (3:23:26.600)

So we could use low energy phenomenon.

Brian Keating (3:23:28.520)

It's hard to think of supernova

Lex Fridman (3:23:29.720)

as being a low energy phenomenon,

Lex Fridman (3:23:31.360)

but we use that as a tracer of the cosmic expansion field

Lex Fridman (3:23:34.080)

and see, does it change or is it a constant?

Brian Keating (3:23:36.480)

That's an example of a low energy limit

Lex Fridman (3:23:38.040)

to prove a high energy phenomenon,

Brian Keating (3:23:40.080)

unlike this collapsing universe in the cyclic model.

Lex Fridman (3:23:43.000)

Speaking of things that cost a lot, but are super exciting.

Brian Keating (3:23:49.120)

Page two, crap.

Lex Fridman (3:23:51.320)

No, we'll wrap it up.

Brian Keating (3:23:52.840)

No.

Lex Fridman (3:23:53.680)

Calm down, this is, there's more than page two.

Lex Fridman (3:23:56.520)

What do you think this is?

Lex Fridman (3:23:58.520)

This is a...

Brian Keating (3:23:59.360)

Thesis.

Lex Fridman (3:24:00.200)

Well, Louis de Broglie's thesis was three pages long

Lex Fridman (3:24:03.080)

and he won the Nobel Prize for the wave particle duality.

Lex Fridman (3:24:06.040)

So, size matters in different dimensions in life.

Brian Keating (3:24:10.760)

I think the lessons I've learned about life

Lex Fridman (3:24:13.520)

is the short of the paper or the short of the thesis.

Brian Keating (3:24:17.920)

Actually the short of the paper,

Lex Fridman (3:24:18.960)

some of the greatest papers ever written are short.

Brian Keating (3:24:21.720)

I feel like some of the best ideas in this world,

Lex Fridman (3:24:26.040)

not to sound like a contradiction of Feynman,

Brian Keating (3:24:28.720)

a contradiction on top of a contradiction,

Lex Fridman (3:24:30.440)

but it could be written on a napkin, honestly.

Brian Keating (3:24:32.720)

It just kind of tells you something about ideas.

Lex Fridman (3:24:39.480)

What are your thoughts about the James Webb Space Telescope?

Brian Keating (3:24:45.480)

Is this, as somebody who likes telescopes,

Lex Fridman (3:24:49.880)

and this is one of the, I think it says,

Brian Keating (3:24:53.840)

took 20 years to build, $9.7 billion.

Lex Fridman (3:24:57.640)

Is that way too much, too little?

Lex Fridman (3:24:59.240)

Are you excited about this thing?

Lex Fridman (3:25:01.240)

It's sufficiently different from what I do in my field

Brian Keating (3:25:04.120)

that it's incredibly interesting to me

Lex Fridman (3:25:05.920)

because I have no horse in that race.

Lex Fridman (3:25:09.560)

And so I'm not competing with them for time or money

Lex Fridman (3:25:12.320)

or resources or people or whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:25:14.320)

So I can purely be an advocate

Lex Fridman (3:25:16.680)

and an aficionado of science.

Brian Keating (3:25:18.920)

It is in some sense the successor to Hubble.

Lex Fridman (3:25:21.800)

It will do things that Hubble can't do.

Brian Keating (3:25:24.600)

It will also may or may not have the impact

Lex Fridman (3:25:27.600)

on a visceral kind of artistic level that Hubble had.

Lex Fridman (3:25:31.440)

What are some of the most iconic things that Hubble did?

Lex Fridman (3:25:34.200)

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the pillars of creation,

Brian Keating (3:25:37.720)

storms and imaging of these twisted deep sky galaxies.

Lex Fridman (3:25:42.920)

Those resonated with the public.

Brian Keating (3:25:44.920)

Just visually, they were beautiful.

Lex Fridman (3:25:46.920)

Yeah, when you look at these images,

Brian Keating (3:25:48.920)

the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,

Lex Fridman (3:25:50.240)

you'll maybe put that in,

Brian Keating (3:25:51.480)

you'll show every speck of light except for one,

Lex Fridman (3:25:53.960)

4,000 blobs of light.

Brian Keating (3:25:55.920)

There's one star in our galaxy, the rest are galaxies.

Lex Fridman (3:25:58.960)

Now that image is less than 1 10th of your fingernail

Brian Keating (3:26:02.200)

held out at arm's length.

Lex Fridman (3:26:03.840)

It contains 4,000 galaxies.

Lex Fridman (3:26:05.760)

So now you can figure out

Lex Fridman (3:26:07.080)

how many galaxies there are in the whole sky

Brian Keating (3:26:09.760)

just by seeing how long does it take you

Lex Fridman (3:26:11.320)

to move your fingernail over the whole sky.

Lex Fridman (3:26:13.120)

So we have another couple of hours.

Lex Fridman (3:26:15.200)

No, so it comes out to be,

Brian Keating (3:26:16.280)

that's how we get 500 billion or more galaxies.

Lex Fridman (3:26:18.880)

Now it's not exact to the galaxy,

Lex Fridman (3:26:20.320)

but it's a good order of magnitude estimate,

Lex Fridman (3:26:22.840)

maybe even better.

Brian Keating (3:26:24.480)

Hubble produced that and it was basically serendipitous.

Lex Fridman (3:26:26.920)

They pointed to some dark blank piece of sky

Lex Fridman (3:26:29.160)

what they thought was blank and they saw it.

Lex Fridman (3:26:30.800)

Same thing that happened with the CMB.

Brian Keating (3:26:32.560)

They were looking for something they didn't find.

Lex Fridman (3:26:34.440)

Same thing they found when they were looking

Brian Keating (3:26:35.880)

for the deceleration of the universe

Lex Fridman (3:26:38.280)

and found it was accelerating.

Lex Fridman (3:26:40.280)

So what I sometimes hear is that

Lex Fridman (3:26:42.600)

we don't know what we're gonna discover.

Brian Keating (3:26:44.400)

I never think that's a good idea

Lex Fridman (3:26:46.000)

to spend billions of dollars on something.

Brian Keating (3:26:47.760)

Like you should have some guaranteed low hanging fruit

Lex Fridman (3:26:51.120)

and then there should be swinging for the fences.

Lex Fridman (3:26:53.360)

And I think in this case, it was really everything

Lex Fridman (3:26:55.640)

is swinging for the fences

Brian Keating (3:26:56.560)

because it's kind of a single point failure.

Lex Fridman (3:26:58.560)

If that telescope, which is this origami construction

Brian Keating (3:27:01.840)

of 22 hexagonal panels that have to unfold properly

Lex Fridman (3:27:05.400)

and then orient themselves a million miles from Earth

Brian Keating (3:27:08.200)

beyond the Earth moon distance by a factor of four

Lex Fridman (3:27:11.000)

and still transmit telecommunication back to the Earth,

Brian Keating (3:27:15.280)

get solar energy, keep it away from the sun.

Lex Fridman (3:27:17.680)

You don't wanna look through the telescope of the sun

Brian Keating (3:27:19.680)

with your remaining good eye.

Lex Fridman (3:27:20.920)

And you do that and you cover,

Brian Keating (3:27:22.760)

it's gonna be phenomenal for science, for sure, if it works.

Lex Fridman (3:27:27.960)

There are a lot of people think it's so risky.

Brian Keating (3:27:30.640)

NASA sunk so much of their budget, it ate up.

Lex Fridman (3:27:33.600)

And what if it does fail?

Brian Keating (3:27:34.680)

I mean, there's no guarantee.

Lex Fridman (3:27:35.960)

Yes, it's insured, but so what?

Brian Keating (3:27:37.720)

You're not gonna get back those 20 years of people.

Lex Fridman (3:27:40.000)

Well, let's start building it again.

Brian Keating (3:27:41.200)

Like they didn't build two copies of it.

Lex Fridman (3:27:43.440)

And then if it fails, it kinda has a dampening effect

Brian Keating (3:27:49.240)

on the prospects and the inspiration of the public

Lex Fridman (3:27:52.040)

for what science can do,

Lex Fridman (3:27:53.240)

what science engineering can do is out in space.

Lex Fridman (3:27:56.000)

It will make a huge impact scientific.

Brian Keating (3:27:57.640)

Let's hope for the best, let's assume it does succeed.

Lex Fridman (3:28:00.120)

It's launched in a couple of weeks.

Lex Fridman (3:28:01.680)

And when it does, it will transform our understanding

Lex Fridman (3:28:05.640)

of we just discovered not only like extrasolar planets

Brian Keating (3:28:10.080)

that have moons on them and asteroid belt,

Lex Fridman (3:28:12.120)

we discovered an extrasolar planet in another galaxy.

Brian Keating (3:28:15.120)

This will be able to see crazy stuff like that,

Lex Fridman (3:28:16.960)

spectroscopy, imaging, but it will be able

Brian Keating (3:28:21.320)

to go back farther in time,

Lex Fridman (3:28:22.960)

such that we will be doing cosmology.

Brian Keating (3:28:25.080)

Hubble did some cosmology and measured the Hubble constant.

Lex Fridman (3:28:27.480)

That was its key project when it was designed and launched.

Lex Fridman (3:28:30.920)

But because it is optical telescope,

Lex Fridman (3:28:33.500)

it's sensitive to more close in redshift,

Lex Fridman (3:28:35.680)

so shorter distances.

Lex Fridman (3:28:37.160)

Now James Webb is much, much higher redshift.

Brian Keating (3:28:39.360)

It can probe the darker, deeper, distant universe.

Lex Fridman (3:28:42.320)

Okay, let's talk about not the distant universe,

Lex Fridman (3:28:44.480)

but our neighboring planets.

Lex Fridman (3:28:47.160)

First, I gotta ask you about the moon.

Lex Fridman (3:28:52.360)

So there's a piece of the moon on this table

Lex Fridman (3:28:55.120)

that you've given me that we didn't have to pick up

Brian Keating (3:28:58.640)

that arrived here.

Lex Fridman (3:29:00.200)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (3:29:01.040)

So how did a piece of the moon arrive here on Earth?

Lex Fridman (3:29:03.360)

So this chunk of the moon, if it were delivered

Brian Keating (3:29:06.660)

by the Apollo and NASA missions,

Lex Fridman (3:29:10.280)

you and I would be guilty of a felony right now

Brian Keating (3:29:12.800)

because it's illegal to own pieces of the moon

Lex Fridman (3:29:14.580)

collected by the Apollo astronauts.

Lex Fridman (3:29:16.520)

So don't even joke about that when you go over to Houston.

Lex Fridman (3:29:19.640)

This piece of moon rock was delivered

Brian Keating (3:29:21.360)

via the old fashioned way by gravity.

Lex Fridman (3:29:23.520)

So this was a chunk of the moon, which is blasted off

Brian Keating (3:29:27.620)

because the moon gets bombarded by asteroids and meteoroids.

Lex Fridman (3:29:31.840)

Some of them eject material from the surface of the moon

Brian Keating (3:29:34.760)

into space, and it will then orbit

Lex Fridman (3:29:37.580)

the common moon Earth system.

Lex Fridman (3:29:41.120)

And it will then eventually enter our atmosphere.

Lex Fridman (3:29:44.020)

And if the piece is large enough

Lex Fridman (3:29:45.560)

and the trajectory is proper, it can land intact.

Lex Fridman (3:29:47.800)

And this one landed with a few hundred grams worth,

Lex Fridman (3:29:51.040)

and they sliced it up.

Lex Fridman (3:29:52.480)

And then it was delivered via US Postal Service to my house.

Lex Fridman (3:29:56.380)

So you can buy these pieces.

Lex Fridman (3:29:57.560)

And actually, you can buy a piece of Mars.

Brian Keating (3:29:59.680)

You can buy a piece of Mars delivered by the same route.

Lex Fridman (3:30:02.680)

Now, what's so interesting about that?

Brian Keating (3:30:04.360)

Well, if a piece of Mars can get here,

Lex Fridman (3:30:06.560)

a piece of Earth can get there.

Brian Keating (3:30:08.640)

Some piece of Earth has some life forms on it.

Lex Fridman (3:30:11.440)

It could get there.

Lex Fridman (3:30:12.680)

And if that can happen in our solar system,

Lex Fridman (3:30:14.480)

it could happen throughout the galaxy.

Lex Fridman (3:30:16.440)

So I'm actually not of the opinion

Lex Fridman (3:30:18.400)

that there is life elsewhere in the universe,

Brian Keating (3:30:21.360)

at least technological life that we can,

Lex Fridman (3:30:23.560)

I see this look of horror on your face.

Brian Keating (3:30:26.000)

I view it, I am personally extremely pessimistic,

Lex Fridman (3:30:30.120)

would be extremely surprised.

Brian Keating (3:30:31.360)

I'm just, I'm curious by the transition

Lex Fridman (3:30:34.480)

because you just said that life could have arrived from Mars

Brian Keating (3:30:39.240)

or like from planet to planet

Lex Fridman (3:30:40.880)

because of the meteorites striking it and so on.

Lex Fridman (3:30:43.440)

And then you went to,

Lex Fridman (3:30:45.120)

you don't think there might be life out there

Brian Keating (3:30:47.680)

in the universe.

Lex Fridman (3:30:48.760)

Technological life.

Brian Keating (3:30:49.800)

Technological life.

Lex Fridman (3:30:50.880)

Yeah, advanced intelligence civilizations.

Brian Keating (3:30:53.640)

Okay, so go on.

Lex Fridman (3:30:57.120)

So that's the generalization

Brian Keating (3:30:58.560)

of what the famous astronomer Fred Hoyle called,

Lex Fridman (3:31:01.120)

I know this is a PG 13, it's called panspermia.

Brian Keating (3:31:04.720)

Panspermia.

Lex Fridman (3:31:06.480)

Beep that out, please.

Brian Keating (3:31:07.320)

Yeah, yeah, please.

Lex Fridman (3:31:08.160)

And that's the exchange of genetic life form material

Brian Keating (3:31:12.520)

from other reaches on earth,

Lex Fridman (3:31:14.360)

which explains the origin of life on earth,

Lex Fridman (3:31:16.880)

but not the origin of life itself,

Lex Fridman (3:31:18.400)

which I think is a much grander mystery

Lex Fridman (3:31:20.240)

and much more interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:31:22.120)

How did life get here?

Lex Fridman (3:31:23.160)

And you've talked with many eminent people about that.

Lex Fridman (3:31:25.720)

I'm not gonna add that much,

Lex Fridman (3:31:26.840)

but just thinking about the reverse process.

Lex Fridman (3:31:29.560)

Let's say life started on the earth somehow

Lex Fridman (3:31:32.720)

and then made its way out into the universe.

Lex Fridman (3:31:34.720)

Is there enough time for the,

Brian Keating (3:31:36.120)

whatever material went from earth

Lex Fridman (3:31:37.960)

via panspermic direction,

Brian Keating (3:31:40.560)

spraying the love gun out into the universe,

Lex Fridman (3:31:42.880)

did that then have enough time to incubate

Lex Fridman (3:31:45.200)

and go onto a planet that could support it?

Lex Fridman (3:31:47.440)

Certainly not within our solar system,

Brian Keating (3:31:49.680)

which traveling at the meteorite speeds

Lex Fridman (3:31:51.400)

would require hundreds of millions of years.

Brian Keating (3:31:53.880)

Then looking at the evolutionary history

Lex Fridman (3:31:55.720)

from bacteria to Bach,

Brian Keating (3:31:57.760)

from rocks to Rachmaninoff,

Lex Fridman (3:32:00.680)

I don't know, I can do this all day.

Brian Keating (3:32:01.880)

Oh wow, that's pretty good.

Lex Fridman (3:32:02.920)

How do you get from those very simple

Lex Fridman (3:32:05.080)

inanimate objects to life?

Lex Fridman (3:32:06.320)

I just simply think there's not enough time

Brian Keating (3:32:07.800)

for earth to seed life,

Lex Fridman (3:32:09.040)

technological life throughout the galaxy.

Brian Keating (3:32:10.720)

I don't think there's any evidence for that.

Lex Fridman (3:32:12.560)

But so you really think that the origin

Lex Fridman (3:32:15.680)

of life on earth is a really special event?

Lex Fridman (3:32:19.960)

Yeah, if it did originate on earth,

Brian Keating (3:32:22.760)

my question for those that search for life

Lex Fridman (3:32:24.800)

outside the earth is what if you had a letter from God

Lex Fridman (3:32:28.440)

and the letter said life didn't originate on earth,

Lex Fridman (3:32:32.320)

like would you choose a different profession?

Brian Keating (3:32:34.920)

Like it would seem hopeless.

Lex Fridman (3:32:36.440)

Like in other words, we only have a sample of one.

Brian Keating (3:32:38.280)

In fact, we only know of one conscious life form,

Lex Fridman (3:32:40.320)

let alone one planet that has life on it, right?

Lex Fridman (3:32:42.800)

What if you knew for sure it didn't start here?

Lex Fridman (3:32:45.080)

That means that like there's almost nothing about earth

Brian Keating (3:32:48.080)

that is originated, it didn't originate the life process.

Lex Fridman (3:32:52.240)

So to study purely the origin of life,

Brian Keating (3:32:54.000)

not life itself, I think that's still fascinating.

Lex Fridman (3:32:55.960)

But how could we learn about the origin of,

Brian Keating (3:32:59.240)

remember you have to go from inanimate object

Lex Fridman (3:33:01.120)

to a living object, whatever that definition of life is.

Lex Fridman (3:33:04.280)

And I'm not an expert in many definitions,

Lex Fridman (3:33:06.360)

Max, Sarah, you know, many different definition.

Lex Fridman (3:33:09.520)

But how do you actually go from inanimate to animate?

Lex Fridman (3:33:13.800)

It's a huge question.

Brian Keating (3:33:14.840)

Yeah, but then you don't have to be the place

Lex Fridman (3:33:17.360)

where life originated to replicate the origin

Brian Keating (3:33:20.400)

or to under, like, yeah, that's one way

Lex Fridman (3:33:22.640)

to understand something is to build it.

Lex Fridman (3:33:26.080)

But another way is to just observe it.

Lex Fridman (3:33:27.760)

You don't have to truly re engineer from scratch.

Brian Keating (3:33:32.040)

So, you know, but then yes, if it didn't originate on earth,

Lex Fridman (3:33:37.240)

then your intuitions about the basic prerequisites

Brian Keating (3:33:41.800)

of life are off.

Lex Fridman (3:33:43.640)

What's the governing principle, right?

Brian Keating (3:33:45.160)

Like, what is, and then you can have just

Lex Fridman (3:33:48.280)

almost an arbitrary number of possible,

Brian Keating (3:33:51.640)

like, if life didn't start on earth.

Lex Fridman (3:33:56.480)

So to me, that's exciting because it's like,

Brian Keating (3:33:59.080)

we know even less than we thought.

Lex Fridman (3:34:02.160)

The thing is it can prosper on earth though.

Brian Keating (3:34:05.200)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:34:06.040)

So maybe the origin of life is fundamentally different

Brian Keating (3:34:08.920)

from the maintenance of life.

Lex Fridman (3:34:11.240)

Right, and maybe the existence

Brian Keating (3:34:13.200)

of the earth life symbiosis is critical.

Lex Fridman (3:34:16.680)

I think Sarah, and you talked about Sarah Walker,

Brian Keating (3:34:19.800)

that it's a planetary phenomenon, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:34:22.120)

So doesn't that make it less like, in other words,

Brian Keating (3:34:24.240)

like not only do you need special life conditions

Lex Fridman (3:34:27.120)

to create life, but then sustenance of life, as you say,

Brian Keating (3:34:31.560)

that also has to be maintained

Lex Fridman (3:34:33.840)

under very specific circumstances

Brian Keating (3:34:35.640)

by very specific planets

Lex Fridman (3:34:37.000)

and with very specific tectonic activity and moon.

Lex Fridman (3:34:39.520)

And by the way, you need a Jupiter nearby.

Lex Fridman (3:34:41.480)

You need an earth and a moon system

Lex Fridman (3:34:43.760)

so that you don't get bombarded too early.

Lex Fridman (3:34:45.960)

And I always think like this, like technological life,

Brian Keating (3:34:48.720)

I haven't said this before, really, so I'm just speaking.

Lex Fridman (3:34:50.600)

I usually like to write down before I say these different,

Lex Fridman (3:34:52.760)

but one of the things I thought about is.

Lex Fridman (3:34:53.840)

Somebody hosts a podcast.

Brian Keating (3:34:56.000)

You should probably accept the fact

Lex Fridman (3:34:57.720)

that you're going to say stupid things

Brian Keating (3:34:59.320)

every once in a while.

Lex Fridman (3:35:00.200)

Not every once in a while, every while.

Brian Keating (3:35:02.880)

I claim that to get to sending people to the moon,

Lex Fridman (3:35:08.440)

our planet needed whales and dinosaurs, right?

Brian Keating (3:35:12.000)

Like you don't make a solar panel

Lex Fridman (3:35:13.360)

from another solar panel.

Brian Keating (3:35:14.880)

Like you made a solar panel from a factory

Lex Fridman (3:35:17.120)

that melted down glass, silica, aluminum,

Brian Keating (3:35:20.200)

extruded that using fossil fuels.

Lex Fridman (3:35:21.760)

Where do those fossil fuels come from?

Brian Keating (3:35:23.400)

Like, so any civilization that's going to be a Dyson,

Lex Fridman (3:35:26.200)

you know, a Kardashev, do they have dinosaurs?

Lex Fridman (3:35:29.320)

Like, do they have like prebiotic life?

Lex Fridman (3:35:31.280)

Do they have a great oxygenation event?

Lex Fridman (3:35:32.920)

Did they have a dimorphism between prokaryotic, eukaryotic?

Lex Fridman (3:35:37.400)

All those hurdles, let's say you give each one,

Brian Keating (3:35:39.160)

let's say there's eight hurdles.

Lex Fridman (3:35:40.920)

And each one of those has a probability

Brian Keating (3:35:42.520)

of one in a thousand to go from, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:35:44.600)

eukaryotic, prokaryotic, whatever.

Brian Keating (3:35:46.760)

Let's say that's a one in a thousand chance.

Lex Fridman (3:35:48.120)

I think it's like one in 10 to the 40th or whatever,

Brian Keating (3:35:50.480)

if you really do it.

Lex Fridman (3:35:51.320)

But let's say it's first generous nature.

Brian Keating (3:35:53.200)

One in 10 to the three.

Lex Fridman (3:35:55.040)

Let's say there's eight of those hurdles.

Brian Keating (3:35:57.080)

That means you have 10 to the 24th power,

Lex Fridman (3:36:01.120)

different possibility.

Lex Fridman (3:36:03.280)

And that's just with eight.

Lex Fridman (3:36:04.520)

Like the moon has to be there.

Brian Keating (3:36:05.760)

Jupiter has to be there.

Lex Fridman (3:36:06.640)

Dinosaurs had to be there.

Brian Keating (3:36:07.880)

All the different things that we have

Lex Fridman (3:36:08.900)

to get to technological life.

Brian Keating (3:36:11.040)

There's only 10 to the, only,

Lex Fridman (3:36:12.800)

there's 10 to the 22nd, we think,

Brian Keating (3:36:15.240)

Earth, not Earth, planets in the observable universe,

Lex Fridman (3:36:18.900)

not the galaxy.

Lex Fridman (3:36:20.420)

So that's 100 times fewer than the probability

Lex Fridman (3:36:23.800)

to get, you know, 100% clearing these eight

Brian Keating (3:36:26.360)

very low hurdles of one in a thousand.

Lex Fridman (3:36:28.820)

That's fascinating, because now I really need

Brian Keating (3:36:30.760)

to listen to your conversation with Lee Cronin,

Lex Fridman (3:36:32.960)

who I believe you had, because he believes the opposite.

Brian Keating (3:36:36.480)

Yes, I know.

Lex Fridman (3:36:37.600)

Yeah, I want to have a debate with him.

Brian Keating (3:36:39.760)

He believes that the way biology evolved on Earth

Lex Fridman (3:36:45.480)

could have evolved almost an infinite number of other ways.

Lex Fridman (3:36:48.920)

So like, if you ran Earth over and over and over,

Lex Fridman (3:36:51.160)

you would keep getting life and it would be very different.

Lex Fridman (3:36:54.280)

So it's, the fact that our particular life seems unique

Lex Fridman (3:37:00.040)

is just like, well, because every freaking life

Brian Keating (3:37:02.280)

is going to seem unique, but it'll be very different.

Lex Fridman (3:37:05.040)

It's not like, we shouldn't be asking the question

Lex Fridman (3:37:07.660)

of what's the likelihood of getting a human like thing?

Lex Fridman (3:37:12.920)

Because that seems to be super special.

Brian Keating (3:37:15.300)

It's more like, how easy is it to make

Lex Fridman (3:37:20.200)

Slime mold.

Lex Fridman (3:37:21.520)

Anything that has the skills of a human?

Lex Fridman (3:37:23.960)

And I don't mean like something with thumbs,

Lex Fridman (3:37:26.040)

but achieving basically a technological civilization.

Lex Fridman (3:37:29.580)

And according to Lee at least, it's like, it's trivial.

Brian Keating (3:37:33.840)

I know, we fought, I fought a little bit.

Lex Fridman (3:37:35.560)

I'd love to debate him and I think it'd be a lot of fun.

Brian Keating (3:37:37.000)

Because we debate with love when I talk with Lee.

Lex Fridman (3:37:38.680)

I love him and he loves me, I think, I hope.

Lex Fridman (3:37:40.880)

But let me ask you a question.

Lex Fridman (3:37:42.440)

I asked this of him and Sarah on our Clubhouse ones.

Lex Fridman (3:37:45.920)

So what do you think would happen the next day?

Lex Fridman (3:37:47.840)

Let's say we discover life, it's Proxima Centauri B.

Brian Keating (3:37:52.260)

It looks just like Slime mold,

Lex Fridman (3:37:54.920)

like you got on your Brie cheese or whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:37:57.800)

We discover it, what would happen the next day?

Lex Fridman (3:38:01.400)

And they were like, oh, this would be transformative.

Lex Fridman (3:38:03.960)

And I'm not trying to be like Total Cassandra about this,

Lex Fridman (3:38:06.920)

but I said, I don't think anything would happen.

Lex Fridman (3:38:09.800)

And what are you talking about?

Lex Fridman (3:38:10.640)

It would be transformational.

Brian Keating (3:38:12.160)

I'm like, I stipulate that life exists.

Lex Fridman (3:38:14.240)

Go down to like the river, I'm in San Diego,

Brian Keating (3:38:16.760)

go down to the Pacific Ocean, scoop up a glass.

Lex Fridman (3:38:21.280)

You're gonna find life in there.

Lex Fridman (3:38:22.700)

And what are we doing?

Lex Fridman (3:38:23.620)

What are we doing to our earth?

Brian Keating (3:38:25.400)

We're destroying it callously.

Lex Fridman (3:38:27.320)

We're like pumping crap into there.

Brian Keating (3:38:29.080)

Like we have this toxic waste spill

Lex Fridman (3:38:30.480)

a couple of months ago in San Diego,

Brian Keating (3:38:31.680)

I couldn't go to the beach.

Lex Fridman (3:38:33.640)

Let me take it a step further.

Brian Keating (3:38:35.240)

You know how many people, I'm sorry that you do know,

Lex Fridman (3:38:38.080)

but how many people died in the 20th century killed?

Brian Keating (3:38:41.520)

These are advanced civil, this isn't a slime mold.

Lex Fridman (3:38:44.120)

We kill, we maim, we harm, we hurt, we hate.

Brian Keating (3:38:48.240)

I don't think anything would happen the next day.

Lex Fridman (3:38:50.160)

Then we go back to what we had.

Lex Fridman (3:38:51.000)

And I said, if that weren't proof enough,

Lex Fridman (3:38:52.920)

life has been discovered at least two or three times

Brian Keating (3:38:55.280)

just in my professional career.

Lex Fridman (3:38:56.560)

Once in 1996, these Allenland Hills meteorites in Antarctica,

Brian Keating (3:39:01.200)

they saw like microbial respiration processes.

Lex Fridman (3:39:04.400)

Still we don't know, it was a press conference

Brian Keating (3:39:06.200)

held by Bill Clinton on the White House lawn

Lex Fridman (3:39:08.160)

that's featured in the movie Contact.

Brian Keating (3:39:10.640)

My purpose for that movie.

Lex Fridman (3:39:12.880)

And then there's this phosphorus life,

Brian Keating (3:39:17.200)

this toxic life in the pools of Mono Lake.

Lex Fridman (3:39:20.920)

Many, you know, extremophile, we don't give a crap.

Brian Keating (3:39:24.280)

We continue to treat.

Lex Fridman (3:39:25.440)

So why are we thinking that like our salvation,

Lex Fridman (3:39:27.720)

from whence will our salvation come as the Bible says?

Lex Fridman (3:39:30.640)

Like it's not gonna change how we are.

Brian Keating (3:39:32.600)

It's not gonna magnify how I treat you or you treat me.

Lex Fridman (3:39:36.200)

And we're pretty knowledgeable people,

Brian Keating (3:39:38.000)

you and I compared to, you know, lay people.

Lex Fridman (3:39:39.800)

Okay, that's interesting.

Brian Keating (3:39:40.760)

That's a really interesting argument.

Lex Fridman (3:39:41.920)

I wonder if you're right.

Lex Fridman (3:39:43.040)

But my intuition is I can maybe present

Lex Fridman (3:39:49.400)

a different argument that you can think about

Brian Keating (3:39:51.800)

in the realm of things you care about even deeper,

Lex Fridman (3:39:54.800)

which is like what happens once we figure out

Lex Fridman (3:39:57.200)

the origins of the universe?

Lex Fridman (3:39:58.840)

Like how would that change your life?

Brian Keating (3:40:00.480)

I would say there are certain discoveries

Lex Fridman (3:40:03.440)

that even in their very idea

Brian Keating (3:40:05.000)

will change the fabric of society.

Lex Fridman (3:40:07.280)

I tend to see if there's definitive proof

Brian Keating (3:40:10.160)

that there's life and the more complex,

Lex Fridman (3:40:12.160)

the more powerful that idea is elsewhere.

Brian Keating (3:40:16.720)

That I'm not exactly sure how it will change society

Lex Fridman (3:40:21.760)

because it's such a slap in the face.

Brian Keating (3:40:24.560)

It's such a humbling force or maybe not.

Lex Fridman (3:40:28.040)

Or maybe it's a motivator to say,

Brian Keating (3:40:31.200)

yeah, I don't know which force would take over.

Lex Fridman (3:40:33.040)

Maybe it would be governments with military

Lex Fridman (3:40:36.120)

that start to think like, well, how do we kill it?

Lex Fridman (3:40:40.240)

If there's a lot of life out there,

Lex Fridman (3:40:41.560)

how do we create the defenses?

Lex Fridman (3:40:43.080)

How do we extract it?

Lex Fridman (3:40:44.600)

Or mine it for benefits?

Lex Fridman (3:40:47.960)

I mean, I just see like there's 100 million

Brian Keating (3:40:50.080)

literal counter examples of that.

Lex Fridman (3:40:51.760)

I mean, right now there's like 700 million kids in poverty.

Lex Fridman (3:40:57.600)

How do we go about our life and just not deal with that?

Lex Fridman (3:41:00.120)

I mean, look, I put it aside.

Brian Keating (3:41:01.720)

I eat hamburgers and in 100 years I'll be canceled

Lex Fridman (3:41:04.840)

for being a carnivore or whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:41:08.200)

So obviously to get through life,

Lex Fridman (3:41:09.640)

you have to make certain compromise.

Brian Keating (3:41:10.760)

You're not gonna think about certain things.

Lex Fridman (3:41:12.720)

But I just think there is a sort of wish fulfillment.

Brian Keating (3:41:15.800)

Like every time there's, why are we going to Mars

Lex Fridman (3:41:17.880)

and digging and flying this cool ass helicopter?

Brian Keating (3:41:20.400)

We're looking for water.

Lex Fridman (3:41:21.240)

Like stipulate that water was there.

Brian Keating (3:41:23.680)

Like, I believe there was water.

Lex Fridman (3:41:25.000)

I think we should investigate

Lex Fridman (3:41:26.120)

and see what the geology was like.

Lex Fridman (3:41:28.160)

But don't you think, so you're saying?

Brian Keating (3:41:29.840)

I don't think you're gonna get meaning from it.

Lex Fridman (3:41:31.160)

That's all I'm saying.

Brian Keating (3:41:32.000)

I'm not saying it's not worth doing.

Lex Fridman (3:41:33.720)

I'm just saying there's a wish fulfillment aspect

Brian Keating (3:41:36.640)

that people will find meaning for life from science.

Lex Fridman (3:41:39.840)

Okay, but there's a complicated line here.

Lex Fridman (3:41:44.200)

What if it's this intelligent civilization living,

Lex Fridman (3:41:49.360)

obviously probably not on Mars,

Lex Fridman (3:41:51.560)

but somewhere like in a neighboring galaxy that we,

Lex Fridman (3:41:55.280)

sorry, in a neighboring star system that we discover,

Brian Keating (3:42:00.280)

that we discover,

Lex Fridman (3:42:02.240)

don't you think that profound change in meaning?

Brian Keating (3:42:05.320)

I mean, I guess, again,

Lex Fridman (3:42:06.200)

I assume that because of this panceramic process

Brian Keating (3:42:09.080)

or whatever, that the probability is much,

Lex Fridman (3:42:11.800)

much greater than zero.

Brian Keating (3:42:12.920)

I mean, it's not one, a hundred percent,

Lex Fridman (3:42:14.880)

but it's much likelier than that,

Brian Keating (3:42:16.520)

that at least some living material from Earth

Lex Fridman (3:42:18.960)

has ejaculated itself into the solar system,

Lex Fridman (3:42:22.040)

into the universe, right?

Lex Fridman (3:42:23.000)

Into our galaxy. Beat that, please, as well.

Brian Keating (3:42:26.200)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (3:42:27.040)

So like the fact that that could happen

Lex Fridman (3:42:29.520)

and that you're holding a piece from a planetary body,

Lex Fridman (3:42:32.240)

one that couldn't support life as far as we know,

Lex Fridman (3:42:34.520)

but next time, if you play nice

Lex Fridman (3:42:37.560)

and you come on my podcast someday,

Brian Keating (3:42:39.000)

I will give you a tiny chunk of Mars.

Lex Fridman (3:42:40.920)

So Mars theoretically could support stuff, right?

Lex Fridman (3:42:43.560)

So yeah, so I believe that there could be remnants of Earth

Lex Fridman (3:42:47.080)

so that means there could be evolution.

Brian Keating (3:42:48.960)

I don't think there's any chance

Lex Fridman (3:42:50.200)

that there's people using iPhones

Lex Fridman (3:42:52.520)

and having podcasts and stuff in Proxima Centauri.

Lex Fridman (3:42:54.960)

There's some chance though, right?

Lex Fridman (3:42:57.240)

So again, I think the simple statement to say,

Lex Fridman (3:43:02.320)

it's much, much, much higher probability

Lex Fridman (3:43:04.120)

that life exists than technological life exists, right?

Lex Fridman (3:43:06.920)

I don't think we can argue that.

Brian Keating (3:43:08.800)

It doesn't mean it's forbidden.

Lex Fridman (3:43:09.840)

Again, I'm not saying any of this is forbidden,

Brian Keating (3:43:11.480)

not worth studying, not interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:43:13.040)

It's a likelihood thing.

Brian Keating (3:43:14.080)

Yeah, and to answer your,

Lex Fridman (3:43:15.440)

I think you're wise to push back

Lex Fridman (3:43:17.120)

and like, what does it matter what I'm doing?

Lex Fridman (3:43:19.600)

And I like to think about that,

Lex Fridman (3:43:21.360)

because it's like, what is the value of what you're doing?

Lex Fridman (3:43:23.600)

Like you have to answer that question

Brian Keating (3:43:25.320)

or else at the end of your life,

Lex Fridman (3:43:26.560)

you'll have these existential kind of crises, right?

Lex Fridman (3:43:29.680)

So when I think about like who I am,

Lex Fridman (3:43:31.640)

part of my identity is answering

Lex Fridman (3:43:33.520)

and asking scientific questions.

Lex Fridman (3:43:35.440)

For me though, there is a religious kind of undercurrent

Brian Keating (3:43:37.880)

that does undergird in some sense, this quest.

Lex Fridman (3:43:41.000)

Again, I'm not like a practicing,

Brian Keating (3:43:42.520)

I'm not like wearing yarmulke,

Lex Fridman (3:43:44.040)

like I'm not like full on into my birth religion, Judaism.

Lex Fridman (3:43:49.200)

But at the same token, I think as,

Lex Fridman (3:43:52.040)

one of the things Einstein did say is that,

Brian Keating (3:43:53.560)

religion without science is blind

Lex Fridman (3:43:55.640)

or is lame and science without religion is lame,

Brian Keating (3:44:00.720)

is blind and lame.

Lex Fridman (3:44:01.640)

Anyway, the point is that like,

Brian Keating (3:44:03.400)

you can't get meaning from just knowing facts.

Lex Fridman (3:44:07.080)

Like Wikipedia knows more than all of us will ever know,

Lex Fridman (3:44:09.760)

right?

Lex Fridman (3:44:10.600)

It has no wisdom.

Brian Keating (3:44:11.600)

Wisdom, it means sapient.

Lex Fridman (3:44:13.480)

The word wisdom in Latin is sapient.

Brian Keating (3:44:15.160)

We are wise.

Lex Fridman (3:44:16.240)

And by the way, do you know what we're,

Brian Keating (3:44:18.480)

our real name is Homo sapiens sapient.

Lex Fridman (3:44:20.840)

So it's man who knows that he knows.

Lex Fridman (3:44:22.760)

Do you know what he knows?

Lex Fridman (3:44:24.200)

Do you know what the knowing is?

Brian Keating (3:44:25.320)

It's that he's gonna die.

Lex Fridman (3:44:27.480)

We're the only creatures that know that we are gonna die.

Brian Keating (3:44:29.600)

We don't know when we're gonna die.

Lex Fridman (3:44:31.400)

But like, you know, I have a cat,

Brian Keating (3:44:33.920)

a fierce attack cat, it's beautiful.

Lex Fridman (3:44:36.560)

She doesn't know when she's gonna die.

Brian Keating (3:44:38.280)

It doesn't mean I'm more valuable than I think I am.

Lex Fridman (3:44:40.800)

The survival instinct is fundamentally different

Brian Keating (3:44:43.720)

from like the knowledge of death.

Lex Fridman (3:44:46.480)

And that's where the Ernest Becker comes in

Brian Keating (3:44:48.120)

with the terror of death and that that's a creative force

Lex Fridman (3:44:52.080)

that seems to be more feature than bug

Brian Keating (3:44:55.600)

about the human condition is that,

Lex Fridman (3:45:00.440)

I mean, it's a gift of knowing our own mortality.

Brian Keating (3:45:06.640)

Yeah, to me, I mean, that's why,

Lex Fridman (3:45:09.960)

I agree with you in some sense

Brian Keating (3:45:11.920)

in terms of the aliens not being a thing

Lex Fridman (3:45:14.600)

that solves all mysteries.

Brian Keating (3:45:17.080)

That's why my love has always been the human mind.

Lex Fridman (3:45:20.280)

So understanding who we are, what the hell are we?

Lex Fridman (3:45:25.320)

And I think your love has been an echo of that,

Lex Fridman (3:45:29.080)

which is where do we come from?

Brian Keating (3:45:32.120)

Or basically, as cheesy as it sounds,

Lex Fridman (3:45:36.760)

Michio Kaku is away with words.

Brian Keating (3:45:39.160)

If you can just like enjoy the, you know.

Lex Fridman (3:45:42.880)

Oh, he speaks in complete,

Brian Keating (3:45:43.800)

he's like Sam Harris of cosmology.

Lex Fridman (3:45:45.720)

I mean, he speaks in complete paragraphs.

Lex Fridman (3:45:47.480)

But like also unapologetically, he says,

Lex Fridman (3:45:51.560)

we will know God or we will know the mind of God

Brian Keating (3:45:54.440)

or whatever the quotes, those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (3:45:58.480)

That's exciting that physics might be able

Brian Keating (3:46:02.160)

to find equations that unlock our origins

Lex Fridman (3:46:06.520)

at the very core and like the fabric of it all too,

Lex Fridman (3:46:09.160)

and not just our origins.

Lex Fridman (3:46:13.440)

At the beginning, something tells me we're too dumb

Brian Keating (3:46:16.880)

to truly understand what's at the beginning, but.

Lex Fridman (3:46:19.240)

I think we should be humble in that way.

Brian Keating (3:46:21.200)

I mean, again, another thing is, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:46:24.160)

you ever hear the saying like we share 99% of our DNA

Lex Fridman (3:46:28.320)

with chimps or bonobos or whatever?

Lex Fridman (3:46:31.320)

I share like probably more than that.

Brian Keating (3:46:33.240)

Sometimes I wish we shared like 100%.

Lex Fridman (3:46:35.440)

Like that'd be so much more interesting,

Brian Keating (3:46:37.280)

like, oh, there's 50% of a fruit fly or banana.

Lex Fridman (3:46:41.160)

No, no, no, there's something,

Lex Fridman (3:46:42.600)

but that should make us feel more precious.

Lex Fridman (3:46:44.680)

And I almost feel like discovering life

Brian Keating (3:46:46.640)

on another planet, whatever solar system

Lex Fridman (3:46:49.920)

would cause a diminution of humanity.

Brian Keating (3:46:52.240)

Like the one thing I do hold fast to from religion,

Lex Fridman (3:46:54.600)

I don't know where I am with God.

Lex Fridman (3:46:56.000)

Like, do I believe in God?

Lex Fridman (3:46:57.160)

I think that's an unanswerable question,

Lex Fridman (3:47:00.640)

but I have some thoughts about it.

Lex Fridman (3:47:02.560)

But by the same token, I think the one thing I do get

Brian Keating (3:47:06.320)

from religion is that every human has infinite worth

Lex Fridman (3:47:08.560)

because we are in a religious capacity

Brian Keating (3:47:10.680)

considered to be equal to God.

Lex Fridman (3:47:12.640)

In other words, we are gods not to be like, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:47:15.360)

but we can contemplate what God did.

Lex Fridman (3:47:17.040)

We have aspects of God.

Brian Keating (3:47:18.280)

We have free will.

Lex Fridman (3:47:19.120)

God had free will if he exists.

Brian Keating (3:47:21.400)

Again, I can't prove that God exists,

Lex Fridman (3:47:23.040)

otherwise you wouldn't have any credit

Brian Keating (3:47:24.720)

for believing in God.

Lex Fridman (3:47:25.560)

This is interesting.

Brian Keating (3:47:26.380)

I mean, it's like I'm talking to Einstein here,

Lex Fridman (3:47:29.860)

but let me ask anyway.

Lex Fridman (3:47:31.200)

Can you clip that for my clips, John?

Lex Fridman (3:47:33.040)

For somebody who's looking at the young universe,

Brian Keating (3:47:39.080)

at the early universe, and are talking about God

Lex Fridman (3:47:44.080)

and are agnostic, who do you think is God?

Lex Fridman (3:47:50.820)

So I thought you had just like one of the best podcasts

Lex Fridman (3:47:54.800)

with Sam Harris this past summer.

Lex Fridman (3:47:57.880)

And one of the things I liked about that conversation

Lex Fridman (3:48:01.000)

is he talked a lot about happiness and meditation.

Lex Fridman (3:48:04.880)

And he said something that's really resonated with me,

Lex Fridman (3:48:06.660)

and I've been working it around

Lex Fridman (3:48:07.720)

and trying to work on it my own way.

Lex Fridman (3:48:09.240)

But he said like, you can never be happy

Brian Keating (3:48:12.880)

if you can only become happy.

Lex Fridman (3:48:16.240)

And I try to take it a little bit further than that,

Brian Keating (3:48:18.440)

because I think it's interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:48:19.680)

Meditation is like, you're not like, oh, I'm happy,

Lex Fridman (3:48:22.240)

and now like, oh, my kid came in and now I'm not happy.

Lex Fridman (3:48:25.320)

No, you can be satisfied.

Lex Fridman (3:48:26.800)

Kurt Vonnegut said, you ever catch this?

Lex Fridman (3:48:28.560)

Sometimes, Alexa, you're walking around and you're like,

Brian Keating (3:48:30.400)

life is fricking amazing, I'm happy.

Lex Fridman (3:48:32.800)

And Kurt Vonnegut said, you should say to yourself

Brian Keating (3:48:35.440)

every time that happens a little mantra,

Lex Fridman (3:48:37.600)

if this isn't goodness, if this isn't happiness, nothing is.

Brian Keating (3:48:41.200)

Just remind yourself how awesome it is,

Lex Fridman (3:48:43.160)

every breath, everything that you do when you make an impact.

Brian Keating (3:48:46.080)

Even some of the bad stuff that happens, good, it's good.

Lex Fridman (3:48:49.520)

So Sam said that, and it made me think,

Brian Keating (3:48:51.800)

because I was like, well, what does it really mean

Lex Fridman (3:48:55.040)

to be happy?

Brian Keating (3:48:56.880)

Because like, I can think of about two or three ways

Lex Fridman (3:49:02.200)

that right now I could double my happiness.

Brian Keating (3:49:04.840)

You know, like win the lottery or whatever,

Lex Fridman (3:49:06.480)

like I could double my happiness.

Lex Fridman (3:49:07.560)

There's only a few ways though, right?

Lex Fridman (3:49:08.940)

Like, you know, I had this kind of thought like,

Lex Fridman (3:49:12.760)

how many boats can you water ski behind?

Lex Fridman (3:49:15.320)

Like you had twice as many followers,

Brian Keating (3:49:17.060)

now you've got 2 million followers, 5 million, whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:49:19.480)

It doesn't do anything, it's called the hedonic treadmill.

Brian Keating (3:49:22.000)

Like once you get to a certain level,

Lex Fridman (3:49:23.200)

it takes a lot more, you know, change in followers,

Brian Keating (3:49:26.340)

money, impact, women, whatever you want

Lex Fridman (3:49:28.860)

to make you have one more quanta of happiness, right?

Brian Keating (3:49:32.280)

On the other hand, this is a concept from entropy.

Lex Fridman (3:49:36.220)

I can make your life miserable in an infinite number of ways.

Brian Keating (3:49:39.640)

In other words, there's more space

Lex Fridman (3:49:41.520)

to make your life unhappy than happy.

Lex Fridman (3:49:44.520)

And so I thought about that in the context

Lex Fridman (3:49:46.200)

of what Sam said about happiness.

Lex Fridman (3:49:48.740)

So it's sort of like, yeah, it's an expression of entropy.

Lex Fridman (3:49:52.360)

And that what you should be doing in life

Brian Keating (3:49:54.960)

is doing that which will cause you devastation

Lex Fridman (3:49:59.040)

if it goes away.

Brian Keating (3:50:00.720)

Because those are the things that like,

Lex Fridman (3:50:02.680)

are where you're reducing entropy,

Brian Keating (3:50:05.360)

like a kid, like anyone who's a parent

Lex Fridman (3:50:08.140)

knows instantly what I'm talking about.

Brian Keating (3:50:10.320)

Like how to make your life a billion times worse.

Lex Fridman (3:50:13.840)

But there's no way to make your life a billion times better.

Lex Fridman (3:50:16.400)

And so thinking about that,

Lex Fridman (3:50:17.840)

now turning it to the question of God's existence,

Brian Keating (3:50:21.120)

I feel like there's no way that you can believe in God

Lex Fridman (3:50:24.440)

to quote, misquote Sam,

Lex Fridman (3:50:26.280)

but there's ways that you can become a believer in God.

Lex Fridman (3:50:29.400)

In other words, you could increase

Brian Keating (3:50:31.460)

the Bayesian confidence level that there is some,

Lex Fridman (3:50:34.640)

and let's not call it God because that's a freighted term.

Brian Keating (3:50:36.720)

Let's just call it some infinite source of goodness

Lex Fridman (3:50:38.920)

or our beautiful power in the universe, right?

Brian Keating (3:50:42.740)

Simple things can do that.

Lex Fridman (3:50:44.040)

You can increase your credulity in the goodness of life.

Lex Fridman (3:50:47.800)

And we have this bias as humans towards negativity,

Lex Fridman (3:50:50.480)

negativity bias, well known fact.

Lex Fridman (3:50:53.040)

So what I wanna do is, let's call it God good, right?

Lex Fridman (3:50:56.280)

That's where it comes from, God good,

Brian Keating (3:50:57.960)

same words in German.

Lex Fridman (3:50:59.680)

And when we think about what is good,

Brian Keating (3:51:02.600)

let's do those things that would devastate us.

Lex Fridman (3:51:06.920)

And a lot of that could be relationships.

Lex Fridman (3:51:09.920)

And there's a powerful concept from network theory,

Lex Fridman (3:51:14.600)

which is that the number of connections in a network,

Brian Keating (3:51:18.160)

you know, I'm just saying it for your own,

Lex Fridman (3:51:19.640)

it grows as the square of the elements in the matrix

Lex Fridman (3:51:21.680)

in the number, right?

Lex Fridman (3:51:22.640)

So you think of a matrix with N people,

Brian Keating (3:51:24.600)

you know person one, two, three, four,

Lex Fridman (3:51:26.560)

and then there's four other people.

Brian Keating (3:51:28.000)

There's 16 different pairs, but half of them overlap.

Lex Fridman (3:51:31.660)

The diagonal is where you know each other,

Brian Keating (3:51:33.280)

you know yourself.

Lex Fridman (3:51:34.640)

But that still grows as N squared.

Lex Fridman (3:51:37.060)

So those connections increase and decrease, right?

Lex Fridman (3:51:41.800)

You ever have two friends that are fighting

Lex Fridman (3:51:43.520)

and like you're kind of upset,

Lex Fridman (3:51:44.900)

even though you're not fighting with either one of them?

Lex Fridman (3:51:46.640)

So like a network grows like that.

Lex Fridman (3:51:48.420)

So you wanna increase your network as much as possible,

Lex Fridman (3:51:50.600)

but only the kind of high quality interstices between them.

Lex Fridman (3:51:54.720)

And I think in doing so,

Brian Keating (3:51:56.000)

you make yourself fragile, not anti fragile.

Lex Fridman (3:51:59.840)

And I think that is where purpose

Lex Fridman (3:52:02.400)

and maybe approaching some notion of God can come from.

Lex Fridman (3:52:05.680)

So that is a source of meaning,

Brian Keating (3:52:08.140)

maximizing the goodness in life.

Lex Fridman (3:52:11.040)

And the way you know it's good,

Brian Keating (3:52:13.200)

is if it's taken away, it would devastate you.

Lex Fridman (3:52:16.640)

That's one way.

Brian Keating (3:52:19.160)

Think about it, your brand, your business,

Lex Fridman (3:52:21.320)

your spouse, your kids.

Brian Keating (3:52:23.480)

I mean, parents can't count,

Lex Fridman (3:52:24.920)

I've known parents that have,

Brian Keating (3:52:26.760)

Jim Simons, here's a perfect example.

Lex Fridman (3:52:28.720)

He's one of my oldest friends and mentors.

Brian Keating (3:52:31.920)

He is one of the richest people on earth.

Lex Fridman (3:52:35.300)

Gulf Stream, Mega Yacht,

Brian Keating (3:52:37.000)

this is all documented books about him.

Lex Fridman (3:52:39.840)

He lost two sons as adults.

Lex Fridman (3:52:42.880)

And I hear people say,

Lex Fridman (3:52:43.960)

oh, I'm so jealous of Jim Simons.

Lex Fridman (3:52:46.400)

Would you take everything?

Lex Fridman (3:52:48.720)

I don't know where he has that strength

Lex Fridman (3:52:51.120)

and his wife, Marilyn, and his first wife, Barbara.

Lex Fridman (3:52:54.980)

I'm not like that.

Brian Keating (3:52:57.120)

Some people are, there are angels that walk among us.

Lex Fridman (3:53:01.120)

And there's this famous prayer.

Brian Keating (3:53:03.840)

It's like, God, there's an old saying,

Lex Fridman (3:53:07.600)

one of the hardest tests there are in life

Brian Keating (3:53:09.340)

is to be given a lot of money.

Lex Fridman (3:53:10.720)

And you see it happens with people that win the lottery

Brian Keating (3:53:13.480)

or whatever, or NFL football players

Lex Fridman (3:53:15.600)

after their career's over, they're broke, right?

Lex Fridman (3:53:18.780)

And I was like, God, please test me with money.

Lex Fridman (3:53:20.840)

That'd be great.

Lex Fridman (3:53:21.680)

But in reality, you should never say,

Lex Fridman (3:53:24.840)

I want what X person has.

Brian Keating (3:53:26.600)

Unless you're willing to take everything.

Lex Fridman (3:53:28.200)

And you'll find you won't want to take everything.

Brian Keating (3:53:32.760)

Yeah, I think a lot about the altering effects

Lex Fridman (3:53:36.720)

of fame, of money, of power on people.

Brian Keating (3:53:44.080)

It blinds people.

Lex Fridman (3:53:47.360)

And I wonder about that for myself

Brian Keating (3:53:50.280)

because it seems like in themselves,

Lex Fridman (3:53:53.720)

these are definitely not the goals

Brian Keating (3:53:55.220)

that I'm pretty much afraid.

Lex Fridman (3:53:58.160)

I'm not desirous, and I'm definitely afraid

Brian Keating (3:54:01.520)

of each of those things, money, fame, and power.

Lex Fridman (3:54:07.240)

But it seems the dreams I have as consequences

Brian Keating (3:54:11.880)

can often have these things.

Lex Fridman (3:54:14.280)

And I'm really afraid of becoming something

Brian Keating (3:54:17.720)

that would disappoint me when I was younger,

Lex Fridman (3:54:20.740)

that I wouldn't recognize.

Brian Keating (3:54:23.460)

You know, because change happens gradually.

Lex Fridman (3:54:27.180)

But are you using yourself as the touchstone

Lex Fridman (3:54:30.560)

to use the assay amount?

Lex Fridman (3:54:32.380)

What is your rubric to apprise if you have lived up

Lex Fridman (3:54:36.060)

to that 12 year old, whatever year old Lex?

Lex Fridman (3:54:38.860)

How will you know or not know if you've let yourself down?

Brian Keating (3:54:41.860)

Or I always think, live to impress yourself.

Lex Fridman (3:54:45.060)

I don't care if I have followers.

Brian Keating (3:54:47.660)

It's nice, all right, whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:54:49.300)

But it's hedonic, and it's just never ending

Brian Keating (3:54:51.660)

because you'll always see the next level.

Lex Fridman (3:54:53.660)

But I think it's pretty damn cool

Brian Keating (3:54:54.840)

that I've gotten to go to these places, the South Pole,

Lex Fridman (3:54:57.300)

and I've done these things, and I've made a family,

Lex Fridman (3:54:59.580)

and I'm able to teleport my values into the future

Lex Fridman (3:55:04.000)

through my children, and I've had ideological children.

Lex Fridman (3:55:08.260)

So by what metric have you not already,

Lex Fridman (3:55:11.180)

A, impressed yourself, and B, could you let yourself down?

Brian Keating (3:55:13.300)

I don't want to turn to the therapist.

Lex Fridman (3:55:14.380)

I think some of it is psychology.

Brian Keating (3:55:15.940)

For me, I'm very much just never highly self critical.

Lex Fridman (3:55:20.940)

I'm never happy, never happy with what I've done.

Lex Fridman (3:55:24.300)

But I'm always happy in the way that you describe,

Lex Fridman (3:55:27.020)

which is that the Vonnegut thing,

Brian Keating (3:55:29.860)

where you just, often during the day, I will feel,

Lex Fridman (3:55:34.020)

I don't know, I just remember just eating beef jerky

Lex Fridman (3:55:39.180)

and being truly happy.

Lex Fridman (3:55:40.820)

That was just last night, and I have that all the time.

Lex Fridman (3:55:44.620)

And that, to me, is why, I mean,

Lex Fridman (3:55:48.900)

that feels to me like a healthy way to live life,

Lex Fridman (3:55:51.260)

and at least for me, it's the one I really enjoy.

Lex Fridman (3:55:55.020)

A lot of people tell me that maybe being so self critical,

Lex Fridman (3:55:57.620)

so hard on yourself, is not a good way to go.

Lex Fridman (3:56:00.480)

But more and more as I get older,

Brian Keating (3:56:02.140)

I realize it's just who I am.

Lex Fridman (3:56:04.580)

You have to a certain point accept,

Brian Keating (3:56:08.000)

this is how I'm always going to be this self critical.

Lex Fridman (3:56:10.700)

It's like the Oracle of Delphi, right?

Brian Keating (3:56:12.140)

You know thyself.

Lex Fridman (3:56:13.780)

But I want to leave you with one last thing,

Brian Keating (3:56:15.060)

which is to say, just on this topic,

Lex Fridman (3:56:16.980)

you know, it could be different, right?

Brian Keating (3:56:19.940)

We could go down to the ocean and get some krill

Lex Fridman (3:56:22.780)

instead of the 711.

Brian Keating (3:56:24.460)

You know, it could be that we have no other taste buds.

Lex Fridman (3:56:28.340)

And you know, Eric's talked about the four dimensions

Lex Fridman (3:56:31.220)

of the vibration of your tongue, right?

Lex Fridman (3:56:33.420)

It could be like there's one,

Lex Fridman (3:56:35.900)

and it's just like, not Memphis barbecue,

Lex Fridman (3:56:39.420)

whatever you like in your Slim Jim.

Brian Keating (3:56:42.700)

It could be something, it could be very boring.

Lex Fridman (3:56:44.420)

Similarly, what if like that's a clue?

Lex Fridman (3:56:47.260)

Like what if that's giving us evidence?

Lex Fridman (3:56:49.060)

Here's another clue.

Brian Keating (3:56:50.660)

There are many animals,

Lex Fridman (3:56:51.520)

most animals have single monocolor vision.

Brian Keating (3:56:54.380)

They only see in black and white intensity.

Lex Fridman (3:56:56.940)

They only have rods and no cones.

Brian Keating (3:57:00.560)

We could be like that, but we're not.

Lex Fridman (3:57:03.060)

Why is that not a clue?

Brian Keating (3:57:04.900)

Like if, like God's not going to like hit you over the head

Lex Fridman (3:57:08.980)

and say like, here I am.

Brian Keating (3:57:10.080)

Cause then everybody would believe in him.

Lex Fridman (3:57:11.360)

And there's very simplistic.

Brian Keating (3:57:12.340)

I've had debates even with like famous atheists,

Lex Fridman (3:57:14.180)

like Lawrence Krauss.

Brian Keating (3:57:15.500)

He's like self declared militant atheist.

Lex Fridman (3:57:18.560)

And I was like, well, I don't believe in the same God

Brian Keating (3:57:20.940)

you don't believe in.

Lex Fridman (3:57:21.860)

Like some guy in a white beard and a chair,

Brian Keating (3:57:24.140)

like that's infantile.

Lex Fridman (3:57:25.460)

Like I gave that away a long time ago.

Lex Fridman (3:57:27.960)

But what if there are clues?

Lex Fridman (3:57:29.380)

What if Yang Mills theory and you know,

Lex Fridman (3:57:31.840)

Maxwell's equation, like what?

Lex Fridman (3:57:33.220)

Those are beautiful.

Brian Keating (3:57:35.060)

If you've ever seen like, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:57:37.100)

expressed in tensor notation, Einstein's equations

Brian Keating (3:57:39.840)

or Maxwell's equations or,

Lex Fridman (3:57:41.620)

and then Maxwell's equations riding on Einstein's,

Brian Keating (3:57:44.940)

it's unbelievably beautiful.

Lex Fridman (3:57:47.740)

Doesn't have to be that way.

Brian Keating (3:57:49.420)

That we can comprehend it.

Lex Fridman (3:57:51.260)

That's a crack.

Brian Keating (3:57:52.540)

Maybe that's where the light gets in.

Lex Fridman (3:57:54.020)

And the light is what reveals what's beautiful.

Lex Fridman (3:57:56.940)

So I don't believe in God.

Lex Fridman (3:57:59.060)

I think that's a stupid notion.

Lex Fridman (3:58:00.380)

Like, do I believe in God?

Lex Fridman (3:58:01.740)

Like sometimes I wonder if God believes in me,

Brian Keating (3:58:04.860)

like more than if I believe in,

Lex Fridman (3:58:06.060)

like he needs Brian Keating.

Brian Keating (3:58:07.420)

Like, you know, it's like one of my friends is a rapper.

Lex Fridman (3:58:11.180)

He's like, what would I be doing if I were God?

Brian Keating (3:58:14.820)

Exactly what God's doing right now.

Lex Fridman (3:58:16.140)

Like, you think I know more than God?

Brian Keating (3:58:17.780)

Give me a break.

Lex Fridman (3:58:18.620)

Leaving clues of beauty for these hairless apes.

Brian Keating (3:58:23.340)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:58:24.180)

And to see what they do with this.

Lex Fridman (3:58:26.180)

And then marvel at both the tragedy

Lex Fridman (3:58:31.620)

of what those apes do to each other

Lex Fridman (3:58:34.580)

and the rare moments of when they understand deeply

Lex Fridman (3:58:41.580)

about how the world works.

Brian Keating (3:58:43.460)

Brian, you're an incredible human being.

Lex Fridman (3:58:45.300)

I'm a big fan and I'm really honored that he was,

Brian Keating (3:58:48.540)

first of all, showered me with rocks from the moon.

Lex Fridman (3:58:51.820)

From space.

Brian Keating (3:58:52.780)

From space.

Lex Fridman (3:58:53.780)

Space dust.

Brian Keating (3:58:54.620)

Space dust.

Lex Fridman (3:58:55.460)

The villains.

Brian Keating (3:58:56.300)

Crystals, magical crystals, healing crystals.

Lex Fridman (3:58:59.180)

Yeah.

Brian Keating (3:59:00.020)

That you can use for good.

Lex Fridman (3:59:01.820)

And tell me your story and spend your really valuable time

Brian Keating (3:59:05.100)

with me today.

Lex Fridman (3:59:05.940)

This was amazing.

Brian Keating (3:59:06.780)

That was a great pleasure for me, Lex.

Lex Fridman (3:59:08.020)

Thank you so much.

Brian Keating (3:59:10.020)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

Lex Fridman (3:59:11.700)

with Brian Keating.

Brian Keating (3:59:12.860)

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors

Lex Fridman (3:59:15.940)

in the description.

Lex Fridman (3:59:17.340)

And now, let me leave you with some words

Lex Fridman (3:59:19.420)

from Galileo Galilei.

Brian Keating (3:59:21.980)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand

Lex Fridman (3:59:25.340)

is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Brian Keating (3:59:29.660)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (40:00.860)

that's probably what that's like.

Lex Fridman (40:02.340)

And then you get to experience the magic of it,

Lex Fridman (40:04.860)

of what like early humans homo sapiens felt.

Brian Keating (40:07.620)

You feel what Aug felt when he did it that first time.

Lex Fridman (40:10.480)

By the way, is this a gift?

Brian Keating (40:11.940)

This is a gift, of course.

Lex Fridman (40:13.060)

You need a little bit of a swag upgrade,

Lex Fridman (40:15.100)

so I got you some gifts.

Lex Fridman (40:16.180)

Yeah, this is a, I'm pulling a Putin,

Brian Keating (40:18.860)

like ask if this is a gift,

Lex Fridman (40:21.180)

making it very uncomfortable for you to say.

Brian Keating (40:24.280)

Not really.

Lex Fridman (40:25.120)

This is actually my childhood telescope here, you know.

Lex Fridman (40:28.020)

But now I'm keeping it.

Lex Fridman (40:29.380)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (40:30.420)

So looking through this telescope.

Lex Fridman (40:32.100)

Was when your love for science was first born.

Brian Keating (40:34.660)

Changed my life.

Lex Fridman (40:35.500)

Because not only was I doing that,

Brian Keating (40:37.300)

I was replicating what Galileo did,

Lex Fridman (40:39.380)

but I was, and I'm 100% not comparing myself

Brian Keating (40:42.520)

to Galileo, Galileo, okay,

Lex Fridman (40:43.660)

if there's any confusion out there.

Lex Fridman (40:45.140)

But I did replicate exactly what he did,

Lex Fridman (40:47.260)

and I was like, holy crap, this is weird.

Brian Keating (40:48.740)

Let me write it down.

Lex Fridman (40:50.180)

So it had another effect, which all good scientists,

Brian Keating (40:52.500)

budding scientists should do, and all parents should do,

Lex Fridman (40:55.100)

get your kid a book, a little notebook,

Brian Keating (40:57.040)

tape a pencil to it.

Lex Fridman (40:58.480)

Write down what you see, what you hypothesize,

Lex Fridman (41:00.980)

what you think it's gonna be.

Lex Fridman (41:01.980)

Not like in the high school, you know,

Brian Keating (41:03.760)

like hypothesis, thesis, but just like,

Lex Fridman (41:06.420)

wow, how did I feel?

Brian Keating (41:07.900)

Better yet, astronomy is a visual science.

Lex Fridman (41:10.180)

Sketch what you see.

Brian Keating (41:11.660)

The Lagoon Nebula, the Pleiades Seven Sisters.

Lex Fridman (41:14.820)

You can see them anywhere on Earth.

Lex Fridman (41:16.900)

And when you do that, again,

Lex Fridman (41:18.380)

you're connecting two different hemispheres of your brain,

Brian Keating (41:20.940)

as I understand it,

Lex Fridman (41:22.140)

and you're connecting them through your fingertips.

Brian Keating (41:24.660)

You literally have the knowledge in your fingertips.

Lex Fridman (41:27.020)

In your connection between what you see,

Lex Fridman (41:30.140)

what you observe, and what you write down.

Lex Fridman (41:31.860)

Then you do research, right?

Brian Keating (41:34.680)

The goal of science is not to just replicate

Lex Fridman (41:36.380)

what other people did, is do something new.

Lex Fridman (41:38.620)

And that's why we call it research,

Lex Fridman (41:40.380)

and not just like studying, you know, Wikipedia.

Lex Fridman (41:42.980)

And in so doing, you start to train a kid

Lex Fridman (41:45.980)

at age 12 or 13 for 50 bucks.

Brian Keating (41:48.780)

It's unbelievable.

Lex Fridman (41:49.620)

And now we can do even better,

Brian Keating (41:50.700)

because you can share it on Instagram or whatever,

Lex Fridman (41:53.020)

and you can, by doing so, have an entree

Brian Keating (41:56.060)

into the world of what does it really mean

Lex Fridman (41:57.700)

to be a scientist, and do so viscerally.

Brian Keating (41:59.980)

You know, I often say, I was taught this

Lex Fridman (42:02.620)

by my English teacher, Mrs. Tompkins, in ninth grade,

Brian Keating (42:05.860)

that the word educate, it doesn't mean to pour into.

Lex Fridman (42:09.600)

Let me pour in some facts and intellects,

Lex Fridman (42:11.300)

and you know, it's not like machine learning

Lex Fridman (42:12.740)

that you're just showing like billions of cats,

Brian Keating (42:14.660)

or you know, you're not like forcing it in,

Lex Fridman (42:16.540)

you're bringing it out.

Brian Keating (42:17.580)

It means to pour out of, in Latin, educare.

Lex Fridman (42:20.220)

And what more could a teacher want

Brian Keating (42:22.840)

than to have something, the kid is just like gushing.

Lex Fridman (42:25.060)

No, you're not gonna see like.

Brian Keating (42:26.140)

To inspire the kid.

Lex Fridman (42:26.980)

Yes.

Brian Keating (42:27.820)

Inspire.

Lex Fridman (42:28.640)

Shout out to Mrs. Tompkins.

Brian Keating (42:29.480)

Yeah, Mrs. Tompkins, she's watching, yeah.

Lex Fridman (42:31.380)

She's a big fan.

Brian Keating (42:33.860)

Me, she doesn't care for it, but you.

Lex Fridman (42:35.140)

Yeah, excellent.

Brian Keating (42:36.980)

We take those we love for granted.

Lex Fridman (42:39.620)

This is in Manhattan.

Brian Keating (42:40.780)

This is in Westchester County, New York.

Lex Fridman (42:42.340)

Okay, got it.

Lex Fridman (42:43.380)

So okay, but then that's where the dream is born.

Lex Fridman (42:47.140)

But then there is the pragmatic journey of a scientist.

Lex Fridman (42:51.620)

So going to university, graduate school,

Lex Fridman (42:55.180)

postdoc, all the way to where you are today.

Lex Fridman (42:58.280)

What's that, what are some notable moments in that journey?

Lex Fridman (43:03.220)

So I call that the academic hunger games.

Brian Keating (43:05.780)

Because it's like you're competing against

Lex Fridman (43:07.740)

like these people who are just getting smarter all the time

Brian Keating (43:11.500)

as you're getting smarter all the time.

Lex Fridman (43:13.340)

They wanna get into a fewer and fewer number of slots.

Brian Keating (43:16.380)

Like there's fewer slots to get into college

Lex Fridman (43:18.340)

than in high school.

Brian Keating (43:19.420)

There's fewer slots in graduate school.

Lex Fridman (43:20.900)

There's fewer, very fewer slots to be a postdoc.

Lex Fridman (43:23.380)

And many, many, maybe infinitesimal number.

Lex Fridman (43:26.540)

We just did a faculty search at UC San Diego,

Brian Keating (43:29.220)

400 applicants for one position.

Lex Fridman (43:31.300)

It's almost getting impossible.

Brian Keating (43:32.680)

Like I almost can't conceive of doing

Lex Fridman (43:34.880)

what these new brilliant young people applying

Brian Keating (43:37.100)

to become an assistant professor at a state university

Lex Fridman (43:39.660)

that they're doing.

Brian Keating (43:40.740)

It takes so much courage to do that.

Lex Fridman (43:42.940)

So I went from this kid in New York,

Brian Keating (43:45.700)

thinking I would never be a professional astronomer.

Lex Fridman (43:48.560)

A, because I didn't know any, I'd never seen any.

Brian Keating (43:50.960)

I didn't even know that they existed.

Lex Fridman (43:52.580)

And I thought, who the hell's gonna pay me

Lex Fridman (43:53.980)

to look at the stars?

Lex Fridman (43:54.980)

Like, won't they pay me to be like an ice cream taster?

Brian Keating (43:57.300)

Like, it's just not something I could conceive

Lex Fridman (43:59.300)

of getting paid to do.

Brian Keating (44:00.140)

Even if I had the brilliance to do it,

Lex Fridman (44:01.620)

which I didn't feel I did.

Lex Fridman (44:03.820)

And then I went to graduate school.

Lex Fridman (44:05.820)

And during graduate school, I had this kind of

Brian Keating (44:10.380)

on again, off again relationship with my father.

Lex Fridman (44:12.980)

And I knew that he was a mathematician.

Brian Keating (44:14.500)

He had left and gotten remarried himself

Lex Fridman (44:16.460)

and moved across the country.

Brian Keating (44:17.300)

I didn't see him for 15 years.

Lex Fridman (44:19.580)

And in that time, I learned a lot about him.

Lex Fridman (44:22.100)

And I learned that he had gotten very interested

Lex Fridman (44:23.980)

not in pure mathematics,

Brian Keating (44:25.200)

which he had been a number theorist

Lex Fridman (44:26.620)

and contributed seminal work on the offending equations,

Brian Keating (44:30.340)

which play a role in Turing's work that you may have seen.

Lex Fridman (44:33.140)

But anyway, he had become interested,

Brian Keating (44:35.620)

turned completely away from that into the foundations

Lex Fridman (44:37.940)

of quantum mechanics and relativity, which is physics.

Lex Fridman (44:40.100)

And by that time I was at Brown University

Lex Fridman (44:42.260)

and I was thinking, oh, maybe I'll be condensed matter

Brian Keating (44:44.940)

physicist or experimentalist.

Lex Fridman (44:46.620)

I never thought I'd be a theorist and I'm not a theorist.

Lex Fridman (44:48.820)

So it was pretty prescient.

Lex Fridman (44:51.900)

But it always appealed to me,

Lex Fridman (44:53.340)

why not do what made me happy as a 12 year old?

Lex Fridman (44:56.140)

We often forget about those primitive things about us

Brian Keating (45:00.100)

are probably the most sustainable, durable

Lex Fridman (45:01.940)

and resilient attributes of our character.

Lex Fridman (45:04.220)

So with my own kids,

Lex Fridman (45:05.540)

what are they interested in now when they're young?

Lex Fridman (45:07.300)

And it doesn't mean that's what they're gonna do.

Lex Fridman (45:09.020)

Some of them wanna play Fortnite,

Brian Keating (45:10.620)

like professional Fortnite play, which there are,

Lex Fridman (45:13.060)

but the odds of that is less

Brian Keating (45:14.980)

than the odds of being a professor.

Lex Fridman (45:16.060)

Can I ask you, is your father still with us?

Brian Keating (45:19.340)

No.

Lex Fridman (45:21.580)

Just in a small tangent.

Brian Keating (45:23.580)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:24.500)

Do you miss him?

Lex Fridman (45:25.820)

Do you think about him?

Lex Fridman (45:27.260)

Does his mathematical journey reverberate

Lex Fridman (45:30.940)

through who you are?

Lex Fridman (45:32.100)

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Brian Keating (45:33.220)

I mean, it did in very many ways

Lex Fridman (45:36.020)

and he's been gone for a long time now.

Brian Keating (45:37.900)

Thinking back to that time with him,

Lex Fridman (45:40.660)

he must've instilled some capacity for me

Brian Keating (45:43.860)

to only wanna spend my time,

Lex Fridman (45:45.820)

which is a limited quantity.

Brian Keating (45:46.940)

I don't think it's the most limited quantity.

Lex Fridman (45:48.380)

Maybe we'll talk about that later,

Lex Fridman (45:49.580)

but to go into only the most challenging,

Lex Fridman (45:53.620)

interesting things with the limited time that we have

Brian Keating (45:56.460)

while we're alive.

Lex Fridman (45:57.300)

And for him, it was the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Brian Keating (45:59.740)

For me, it was the foundations of the universe

Lex Fridman (46:02.700)

and how did it come to be?

Lex Fridman (46:03.740)

And I felt like, well, people have been trying

Lex Fridman (46:05.500)

since Einstein to outdo Einstein,

Brian Keating (46:07.260)

really have made great progress

Lex Fridman (46:08.980)

in the foundations of quantum mechanics,

Lex Fridman (46:10.860)

but this is an exciting time.

Lex Fridman (46:12.620)

The COBE satellite had just released its data

Brian Keating (46:15.060)

that the universe had this anisotropy pattern.

Lex Fridman (46:17.500)

Stephen Hawking called it like looking at the face of God

Lex Fridman (46:20.100)

and so forth.

Lex Fridman (46:21.660)

And so it seemed like this is a good golden age

Brian Keating (46:23.700)

for what I'm gonna do and what I'm most interested in.

Lex Fridman (46:26.380)

But always throughout that, I wanted to understand,

Brian Keating (46:29.220)

I didn't wanna be a wrench monkey,

Lex Fridman (46:30.460)

no offense to people that just do experiment.

Lex Fridman (46:33.100)

And no offense to monkeys.

Lex Fridman (46:34.260)

No offense to monkeys, that's right.

Brian Keating (46:35.740)

This little guy, sorry, man.

Lex Fridman (46:37.780)

But thinking back to what animates me,

Brian Keating (46:40.620)

it's not doing the engineering

Lex Fridman (46:41.980)

as much as it is getting the data,

Lex Fridman (46:44.380)

but there's a lot of steps.

Lex Fridman (46:45.380)

I wanna be the guy understanding

Lex Fridman (46:48.420)

what made the universe produce the signal that we saw.

Lex Fridman (46:51.980)

So I always joke with my theorist friends,

Brian Keating (46:54.260)

call me a closeted theorist.

Lex Fridman (46:56.340)

Like I wanna be, you know what they call

Brian Keating (46:58.300)

a guy who hangs out with musicians, a drummer.

Lex Fridman (47:01.420)

So I wanna be like that for physics,

Brian Keating (47:04.100)

for theoretical physics.

Lex Fridman (47:04.980)

I wanna be like the guy doesn't do new theory,

Lex Fridman (47:07.060)

but understands the theory that the new theorists are doing.

Lex Fridman (47:09.260)

I love that formulation of a theorist

Brian Keating (47:12.580)

is understanding the source of the signal you're getting.

Lex Fridman (47:17.380)

Like signal is primary.

Brian Keating (47:19.060)

Like the thing you measure is primary

Lex Fridman (47:22.500)

and theory is just the search of explaining

Lex Fridman (47:28.260)

how that signal originated, but it's all about the signal.

Lex Fridman (47:31.860)

I mean, I see the same search for the human mind

Lex Fridman (47:34.260)

and like neuroscience in that same kind of way.

Lex Fridman (47:37.980)

It's ultimately about the signal,

Lex Fridman (47:39.900)

but you kind of hope to understand

Lex Fridman (47:42.500)

how that signal originated.

Brian Keating (47:43.860)

That's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (47:45.140)

That's such a beautiful way to explain experimental physics

Brian Keating (47:52.940)

because it ultimately at the end of the day

Lex Fridman (47:54.860)

is all about the signal.

Brian Keating (47:57.420)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (47:58.460)

Yeah, and maybe those two things,

Brian Keating (48:00.180)

the neuroscience and the cosmos,

Lex Fridman (48:02.580)

not getting too romantic, but yeah,

Brian Keating (48:04.700)

maybe they're linked in some fundamental way,

Lex Fridman (48:07.300)

some fundamental cosmic consciousness,

Brian Keating (48:09.780)

but.

Lex Fridman (48:10.660)

We're gonna get to that.

Brian Keating (48:11.500)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (48:12.340)

No, we definitely have to get back to that.

Lex Fridman (48:14.500)

But getting back to, yeah, so my origins.

Lex Fridman (48:16.700)

So I always say like, and I wanna try this on you.

Brian Keating (48:18.620)

You said you wouldn't answer any of my questions,

Lex Fridman (48:20.220)

but I'm gonna ask you some questions.

Lex Fridman (48:21.260)

What's the most important day on the calendar?

Lex Fridman (48:23.020)

Don't tell me the date, but to you,

Lex Fridman (48:24.540)

what's the most important day to you every year?

Lex Fridman (48:27.940)

Do I have to answer or do I have to think about it?

Brian Keating (48:29.580)

No, no, answer.

Lex Fridman (48:30.500)

Like, you don't have to tell me the exact date

Brian Keating (48:31.900)

of the calendar.

Lex Fridman (48:32.740)

It could be like your mistress's birthday or whatever, but.

Brian Keating (48:35.380)

I have so many I lose track, even though I'm single.

Lex Fridman (48:39.140)

How does that even make sense?

Brian Keating (48:40.380)

I know.

Lex Fridman (48:41.220)

Okay, I'm sorry.

Lex Fridman (48:42.140)

So a day, like a month and a day, yeah.

Lex Fridman (48:46.220)

I mean, for me, it would be December 31st.

Brian Keating (48:49.540)

Yeah, so I was gonna say New Year's Eve, New Year's Day.

Lex Fridman (48:52.500)

Some people say birthday, anniversary, kid's birth.

Lex Fridman (48:54.900)

They're usually signifying beginnings and ends, right?

Lex Fridman (48:58.220)

January means the portal between,

Brian Keating (49:00.420)

the God was the portal between the beginning and the end.

Lex Fridman (49:02.700)

So you're looking back, maybe because you're Russian,

Brian Keating (49:05.100)

like the death side, the light side,

Lex Fridman (49:06.900)

looking forward into January, the beginning, right?

Lex Fridman (49:10.220)

So everybody's most important day is usually some beginning

Lex Fridman (49:15.980)

or something significant.

Brian Keating (49:17.260)

For me, it was studying the most significant thing of all.

Lex Fridman (49:19.260)

It's like, when did the universe get born,

Lex Fridman (49:20.620)

as I said before?

Lex Fridman (49:21.940)

And I didn't think there, again, I didn't,

Brian Keating (49:24.940)

I just, there was some mental obstruction

Lex Fridman (49:27.180)

that I didn't realize that I could get past

Brian Keating (49:30.540)

because I didn't think like anybody does it.

Lex Fridman (49:32.700)

Like I knew astronomers knew these answers,

Brian Keating (49:34.820)

like the universe at that time, between 10 and 20 billion

Lex Fridman (49:37.380)

years old.

Brian Keating (49:38.220)

Now we know it's 13.872 billion years old.

Lex Fridman (49:41.740)

It's incredible the five digit, you know,

Brian Keating (49:43.500)

per significant five.

Lex Fridman (49:44.620)

What is it again? 13.872 billion years.

Brian Keating (49:48.940)

872 million.

Lex Fridman (49:50.860)

So is there a lot of plus or minus on that?

Lex Fridman (49:52.900)

Is it, what are the error bars on that?

Lex Fridman (49:53.740)

So for me, I'm 50.

Lex Fridman (49:55.260)

So it would be the equivalent of you looking at me

Lex Fridman (49:57.340)

and telling me within 12 hours how old I am.

Brian Keating (49:59.500)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (50:00.340)

It's a half a percent, percent level accuracy.

Lex Fridman (50:02.460)

There's a confidence behind that?

Lex Fridman (50:04.020)

Oh yeah. I mean, there's a significance.

Brian Keating (50:05.380)

Yeah. No, it's extremely well measured.

Lex Fridman (50:07.100)

I mean, it's one of the most precise things that we have.

Brian Keating (50:09.100)

In contrast to, again, 25 years ago,

Lex Fridman (50:12.300)

we didn't know if the universe was 10 billion

Brian Keating (50:14.580)

or 20 billion years old,

Lex Fridman (50:16.020)

but there were stars in our galaxy that were believed to be

Brian Keating (50:18.860)

as they are about 12 billion years old

Lex Fridman (50:21.100)

or in the universe that were 12 billion.

Lex Fridman (50:22.660)

So that would be like you being older than your father.

Lex Fridman (50:26.700)

It was embarrassing.

Brian Keating (50:27.660)

Can we actually take a tangent on a tangent,

Lex Fridman (50:30.340)

on a tangent, on a tangent?

Lex Fridman (50:31.820)

How old is the universe?

Lex Fridman (50:33.420)

Can you dig in onto this number?

Lex Fridman (50:35.980)

How do we know currently with those,

Lex Fridman (50:38.540)

I guess you said four or five significant digits?

Lex Fridman (50:42.740)

So we can come about it from two different ways.

Lex Fridman (50:44.900)

One, basically they rely on the most important number

Brian Keating (50:47.920)

in cosmology, which is called the Hubble constant.

Lex Fridman (50:50.280)

The Hubble constant is this weird number

Brian Keating (50:52.660)

that has the following units.

Lex Fridman (50:54.180)

It has the units of kilometers per second per megaparsec.

Lex Fridman (50:58.300)

So it's a speed per distance,

Lex Fridman (51:00.340)

which means you multiply it by distance and you get a speed.

Lex Fridman (51:02.860)

And what is the speed you're measuring?

Lex Fridman (51:04.300)

Well, you're measuring the speed of a distant galaxy

Brian Keating (51:06.140)

at many megaparsecs away.

Lex Fridman (51:07.900)

So a galaxy at one megaparsec away,

Brian Keating (51:09.580)

this isn't actually strictly true

Lex Fridman (51:10.860)

because of local gravitational effects.

Lex Fridman (51:12.940)

But if you go out, say one megaparsec away,

Lex Fridman (51:15.460)

I would say that that galaxy is moving 72 kilometers

Brian Keating (51:17.820)

per second away from you.

Lex Fridman (51:19.140)

And every galaxy, except for the local,

Brian Keating (51:21.620)

very most local group surrounding us,

Lex Fridman (51:23.480)

maybe a half a dozen galaxies,

Brian Keating (51:25.220)

out of 500 billion galaxies to perhaps a trillion galaxies.

Lex Fridman (51:30.220)

So 12 out of that number are moving towards us,

Brian Keating (51:33.460)

the rest are moving away from us.

Lex Fridman (51:35.100)

So that number, if you invert it,

Brian Keating (51:38.140)

if you say, well, when did those things last touch each other,

Lex Fridman (51:40.940)

all those galaxies, now they're really far apart,

Brian Keating (51:43.460)

we know how fast they're moving away.

Lex Fridman (51:44.740)

It's a very simple algebra problem to solve.

Lex Fridman (51:46.700)

When were they touching?

Lex Fridman (51:47.820)

That's where you get that number from.

Lex Fridman (51:49.660)

So there's the local 12 and then the rest.

Lex Fridman (51:51.900)

Ignore the 12, yeah.

Lex Fridman (51:52.740)

And then ignore the 12 and then look at the others

Lex Fridman (51:54.860)

and yeah, then solve the algebra problem.

Lex Fridman (51:57.140)

How does the stuff in the beginning,

Lex Fridman (52:03.980)

the mystery of that beginning epoch

Lex Fridman (52:05.620)

change this calculation of?

Lex Fridman (52:07.420)

Very little, because actually we understand

Lex Fridman (52:10.820)

how there's some other ingredients that go into it,

Lex Fridman (52:12.820)

namely how much dark energy there is in the universe,

Lex Fridman (52:14.860)

how much dark matter there is in the universe,

Lex Fridman (52:16.420)

how much radiation, light, neutrinos, et cetera there are,

Lex Fridman (52:19.940)

and how much ordinary matter,

Lex Fridman (52:21.280)

like we're made up of neutrons, protons, croutons.

Brian Keating (52:24.660)

Okay, so let me, morons.

Lex Fridman (52:31.300)

It appears that the universe is bigger than it is older.

Lex Fridman (52:37.500)

How does that make sense?

Lex Fridman (52:38.660)

Oh, oh, yeah, so you're talking about the fact

Brian Keating (52:40.460)

that we can actually see stuff in our observable universe

Lex Fridman (52:43.900)

that's located at a distance that is farther

Brian Keating (52:46.780)

than the speed of light times the age of the universe.

Lex Fridman (52:49.740)

Naively you would say that,

Lex Fridman (52:51.600)

so you're right, if the universe were static,

Lex Fridman (52:54.640)

if the universe came into existence,

Lex Fridman (52:56.220)

and you can conceive of this,

Lex Fridman (52:57.500)

the universe came into a big bang in a fixed universe,

Lex Fridman (53:00.460)

so the universe just started off,

Lex Fridman (53:02.700)

those galaxies were, they could be moving

Brian Keating (53:05.360)

towards us, away from us, who knows,

Lex Fridman (53:07.720)

that you could say I can see a galaxy

Brian Keating (53:09.960)

that's at a distance of only 13.8 billion years

Lex Fridman (53:13.740)

times the speed of light, that would be true.

Lex Fridman (53:15.900)

But the fact that the light is expanding

Lex Fridman (53:18.340)

along with the expansion of the universe,

Lex Fridman (53:20.440)

so imagine there was some very distant past,

Lex Fridman (53:23.140)

we were near a galaxy, it's gonna produce some light,

Lex Fridman (53:25.940)

and that galaxy's going to be moving away from us,

Lex Fridman (53:28.300)

the light's gonna be getting more and more red shifted

Brian Keating (53:30.380)

as it's called, and it's gonna be moving

Lex Fridman (53:31.940)

farther and farther away from us as time goes on,

Brian Keating (53:34.820)

there'll be some acceleration

Lex Fridman (53:35.900)

as we get into the era of dark energy.

Brian Keating (53:38.700)

The light signals, there'll be some cone of acceptance,

Lex Fridman (53:41.640)

if you will, from which, which represents all the events

Brian Keating (53:45.180)

that we could have received information from.

Lex Fridman (53:47.700)

We can't currently communicate with that galaxy.

Brian Keating (53:50.900)

It sent us some light, and now it's moving away,

Lex Fridman (53:53.500)

and it sent us some light, and because the space

Brian Keating (53:55.480)

is also dragging the photons with it, if you like,

Lex Fridman (53:57.860)

the photons are participating

Brian Keating (53:59.820)

in the expansion of the universe,

Lex Fridman (54:01.100)

that's why they're red shifting,

Brian Keating (54:02.520)

that we can see things out to where the universe

Lex Fridman (54:05.260)

first began expanding, not just when it began existing.

Lex Fridman (54:09.220)

And because the universe has been expanding

Lex Fridman (54:10.680)

for 13.8 billion years, with no sign of slowing down yet,

Brian Keating (54:14.100)

which is a huge surprise, serendipitous surprise,

Lex Fridman (54:18.060)

that we can see things approximately three times

Brian Keating (54:20.300)

the age of the universe away from us.

Lex Fridman (54:22.140)

So we can see, it's called the age of the universe,

Brian Keating (54:24.100)

15 billion years, just to make the math simple.

Lex Fridman (54:26.240)

We see things at 45 billion light years distance

Brian Keating (54:29.640)

in that direction, and we see things at 45 billion

Lex Fridman (54:32.540)

light years in that direction,

Brian Keating (54:34.260)

just turning our telescopes 180 degrees away.

Lex Fridman (54:36.860)

So that means we see things that themselves

Brian Keating (54:39.360)

are 90 billion light years away from each other.

Lex Fridman (54:42.560)

That's sort of the diameter of the observable universe.

Lex Fridman (54:45.360)

Is there another universe beyond that?

Lex Fridman (54:47.100)

We don't know.

Lex Fridman (54:47.920)

So in conjecture, there's not only one,

Lex Fridman (54:49.660)

there's an infinite number of them.

Lex Fridman (54:51.260)

How are you emotionally okay with the fact

Lex Fridman (54:54.300)

that our universe is expanding?

Lex Fridman (54:55.980)

So like...

Lex Fridman (54:56.820)

It's gonna be like Annie Hall, like with Alvy Singer.

Brian Keating (55:00.220)

I grew up in the Soviet Union.

Lex Fridman (55:02.540)

We watched propaganda films.

Brian Keating (55:03.620)

I realized that you did, yes.

Lex Fridman (55:05.420)

So there's a famous... Annie Hall, is that some kind of...

Lex Fridman (55:07.860)

What is the...

Lex Fridman (55:08.680)

It's a comedy, it's a propaganda movie with Woody Allen.

Brian Keating (55:12.940)

Certainly canceled, but nevertheless,

Lex Fridman (55:14.940)

back when he was not canceled yet,

Brian Keating (55:17.660)

he made a movie called Annie Hall,

Lex Fridman (55:19.080)

in which as a self depiction, he's like a Larry David

Brian Keating (55:21.820)

before Larry David was Larry David,

Lex Fridman (55:23.660)

neurotic, typical neurotic young Jew.

Brian Keating (55:26.060)

He's in Brooklyn and he all of a sudden tells his mother

Lex Fridman (55:28.780)

he's not doing his homework anymore.

Brian Keating (55:29.940)

He refuses to do his homework.

Lex Fridman (55:31.340)

Mother says, why?

Brian Keating (55:32.380)

Goes, because the universe is expanding

Lex Fridman (55:34.020)

and it keeps on expanding.

Brian Keating (55:36.180)

Everything will rip apart

Lex Fridman (55:37.100)

and then we'll never have anything in contact

Lex Fridman (55:38.980)

and everything is meaningless.

Lex Fridman (55:40.460)

I assume these are some of the topics we're gonna get to.

Lex Fridman (55:43.860)

And she goes, what are you talking about?

Lex Fridman (55:45.620)

We're in Brooklyn.

Brian Keating (55:46.780)

Brooklyn is not expanding.

Lex Fridman (55:49.100)

And that's true, Brooklyn is not expanding.

Brian Keating (55:50.820)

The solar system is not expanding.

Lex Fridman (55:52.660)

Often times they get asked,

Lex Fridman (55:53.580)

what is the universe expanding into?

Lex Fridman (55:55.500)

That's one of my favorite questions.

Lex Fridman (55:57.340)

What is it expanding into?

Lex Fridman (55:59.020)

And I say, it's actually an easy question

Brian Keating (56:00.940)

if you think about it.

Lex Fridman (56:02.340)

You've seen your friend Elon, he goes out into space,

Lex Fridman (56:04.780)

he's got a rocket, right?

Lex Fridman (56:05.900)

What's outside of the rocket?

Brian Keating (56:07.840)

If you take this bottle, empty out this bottle,

Lex Fridman (56:10.120)

take the cap off it, go outside the rocket,

Brian Keating (56:13.260)

sip in some Tang, screw on the cover of it,

Lex Fridman (56:16.060)

what's in there?

Lex Fridman (56:18.260)

Is it empty?

Lex Fridman (56:20.720)

That's just semantics, I guess, yeah.

Brian Keating (56:24.780)

No, it's definitely not empty.

Lex Fridman (56:26.020)

So you step outside the rocket.

Brian Keating (56:27.780)

Yeah, you're in the vacuum of space,

Lex Fridman (56:29.480)

the quote unquote vacuum of space.

Lex Fridman (56:30.320)

And there's no more liquid in it.

Lex Fridman (56:31.780)

There's no more liquid in it.

Brian Keating (56:32.620)

No, it's just a container.

Lex Fridman (56:33.780)

One cubic centimeter, let's make it simple.

Brian Keating (56:35.860)

One cubic centimeter of a box

Lex Fridman (56:38.200)

and you take it out into space,

Lex Fridman (56:39.400)

outside of a Falcon, whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (56:42.700)

What's inside that box?

Brian Keating (56:44.020)

It's not empty.

Lex Fridman (56:45.100)

There's actually, I'm gonna say,

Brian Keating (56:47.340)

this is gonna set your friends up.

Lex Fridman (56:48.460)

There's 420 photons from the fusion of the light elements

Brian Keating (56:53.140)

that we call the cosmic microwave background

Lex Fridman (56:54.900)

inside that box at any second.

Brian Keating (56:56.580)

Okay, all right, hold on a second.

Lex Fridman (56:58.460)

What, 420, I've heard of that number before.

Brian Keating (57:03.340)

All right, let's.

Lex Fridman (57:04.160)

It used to be 69, but then they changed it.

Brian Keating (57:06.780)

Wow, physics works in mysterious ways.

Lex Fridman (57:09.260)

In a millimeter box, it's 69.

Lex Fridman (57:10.940)

What are we talking about here?

Lex Fridman (57:12.740)

What's inside, what's in the box?

Brian Keating (57:16.460)

I'm gonna get, that's right.

Lex Fridman (57:18.020)

Let's think outside the box.

Brian Keating (57:19.060)

No, we're thinking inside the box.

Lex Fridman (57:20.220)

So if you have, every cubic centimeter

Brian Keating (57:22.380)

of our observable universe is suffused with heat

Lex Fridman (57:25.340)

left over from the Big Bang, dark matter particles.

Brian Keating (57:28.520)

There's a little ordinary matter in the universe.

Lex Fridman (57:31.860)

And every cubic centimeter,

Brian Keating (57:33.020)

there's some probability to find a proton,

Lex Fridman (57:34.700)

a cosmic ray, an electron, et cetera.

Brian Keating (57:37.580)

There's actually an awful lot of neutrinos

Lex Fridman (57:39.660)

inside of that cubic centimeter.

Brian Keating (57:41.320)

Now just imagine how many cubic centimeters

Lex Fridman (57:43.020)

are in the universe, it's enormous.

Brian Keating (57:44.540)

That's why there's enormous numbers of particles

Lex Fridman (57:46.640)

in our universe, it's a very rich universe.

Lex Fridman (57:48.920)

But now let's zoom in on that box.

Lex Fridman (57:51.140)

So now inside that box, there might be one,

Brian Keating (57:54.000)

let's say there might be one ordinary matter,

Lex Fridman (57:56.260)

like a proton or an electron, a baryon, a lepton.

Brian Keating (58:00.000)

There might be a couple hundred neutrinos

Lex Fridman (58:03.160)

and there'll be a couple hundred photons, as I said, 420.

Lex Fridman (58:07.000)

What's between those guys?

Lex Fridman (58:08.520)

What's between the protons and the neutrinos

Lex Fridman (58:13.120)

and the photons?

Lex Fridman (58:14.120)

Like just zoom into a cubic micron now.

Brian Keating (58:16.720)

Like imagine 420 things inside a box this big.

Lex Fridman (58:19.400)

It's actually pretty empty.

Lex Fridman (58:20.640)

Like they're just zipping around in there, right?

Lex Fridman (58:22.400)

So between them, there's a lot of empty space.

Lex Fridman (58:24.480)

And this is outside the kind of physics based models

Lex Fridman (58:27.960)

of fields and all those kinds of things,

Brian Keating (58:29.560)

just like asking the question of like,

Lex Fridman (58:32.720)

what is this emptiness?

Brian Keating (58:33.560)

What's the particle content in the universe

Lex Fridman (58:35.880)

in every cubic centimeter of the universe?

Brian Keating (58:38.440)

Outside of the 420.

Lex Fridman (58:39.720)

So you have the 420, they have some mass.

Brian Keating (58:44.480)

Well, they have energy, they don't have mass.

Lex Fridman (58:45.600)

Photons don't have mass.

Brian Keating (58:47.320)

That's why they don't bring suitcases.

Lex Fridman (58:48.520)

You know, that's true, right?

Brian Keating (58:50.080)

Photons never bring suitcases with them

Lex Fridman (58:53.040)

because they're traveling light.

Brian Keating (58:55.200)

See, I don't even get to laugh at you.

Lex Fridman (58:56.960)

That's corny dad jokes.

Brian Keating (58:58.340)

Okay, you'll appreciate some.

Lex Fridman (58:59.560)

No, this is pretty good.

Brian Keating (59:01.520)

I'm laughing on the insides.

Lex Fridman (59:02.880)

What's in the box?

Lex Fridman (59:03.920)

What's the 420?

Lex Fridman (59:04.800)

What's between the photons?

Brian Keating (59:07.440)

That's what space is.

Lex Fridman (59:08.480)

That's what the universe is expanding into.

Brian Keating (59:10.400)

Okay, so that's the notebook

Lex Fridman (59:13.720)

on which the photons are written.

Brian Keating (59:16.320)

That's beautiful.

Lex Fridman (59:17.160)

But still, thank you.

Brian Keating (59:19.480)

Still, I understand this, but it's still uncomfortable

Lex Fridman (59:24.440)

that if the universe is expanding,

Brian Keating (59:27.720)

that this thing is expanding, the canvas is expanding.

Lex Fridman (59:31.540)

It's very strange.

Brian Keating (59:33.280)

Because like if we were just sitting there still,

Lex Fridman (59:35.280)

I guess if we're in Brooklyn, nothing's expanding.

Lex Fridman (59:37.740)

So our cognition, our intuition about the world

Lex Fridman (59:41.920)

is based on this local fact

Brian Keating (59:44.000)

that we don't get to experience this kind of expansion.

Lex Fridman (59:49.560)

Yeah, and that intuition leads us astray.

Lex Fridman (59:52.440)

But you know that gravity is the weakest

Lex Fridman (59:54.440)

of the so called four fundamental forces.

Lex Fridman (59:57.360)

And yet it has the longest range pervasiveness.