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1:36

situations. Chuck,

1:39

have you recovered from this conversation with Brian

1:41

Greene? I'm surprised that I can even speak

1:43

to you right now, to be honest. You look like you blew

1:45

a couple of gaskets in there. It's

1:47

more than a gasket. This was mind blowing beyond

1:50

mind blowing. I mean, it was like blood coming

1:52

out of your eyesock. Your brain said I got

1:54

it. I can't handle it. Well,

1:57

when you and Brian get going, man, I've got to

1:59

tell you. It's tough to keep

2:01

up. I don't know. All right. Welcome

2:06

to StarTalk, your

2:09

place in the universe where science

2:11

and pop culture collide. StarTalk

2:15

begins right now. This

2:20

is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse

2:22

Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. I got Chuck

2:24

Nice with me. Chuck, baby. What's

2:26

up, Neil? All right. All right. You know what you're

2:28

going to talk about today? The

2:31

only way to talk about physics is

2:33

to talk about physics with Brian Greene in the

2:35

house. That is true, that is true. You got

2:37

to, you know, you can't, it's empty unless

2:40

you have Brian Greene in the conversation. Absolutely.

2:42

And he's just up the street, up in

2:45

Columbia. You're a dual professor,

2:47

professor of physics and professor of

2:49

mathematics. That's right. Wow. You

2:51

get paid twice for that. But I go

2:53

to no faculty meeting. I'm always saying to

2:55

the other department. That's

2:58

pretty cool. I'm

3:00

sorry, I can't, I'm math today. So

3:03

you're author of several books, Until the

3:05

End of Time, was that your more recent one? That's my

3:07

most recent, yes. And that came out how long ago? 2020,

3:10

right at the pandemic. What a moment to have

3:12

a book called Until the End of Time. Oh,

3:14

yeah. And the one I think most people know

3:17

if they know you at all, the elegant universe.

3:19

There's nothing in the fabric of the cosmos.

3:21

Yeah, absolutely. That's the next one. Hidden

3:23

reality. Yeah, it was about multiple universes.

3:26

Man, so he's all up in it. I believe

3:28

the fabric of the universe is a tweed. A

3:30

tweed? A satin with that.

3:33

A satin with that. A tweed. So

3:36

welcome back to the show. This is like your

3:38

more than a three-peat, I think at this point.

3:40

Oh, God. And you're involved

3:43

in a lot of things. You're writing the book, other

3:45

than being professor, you're writing the books. And

3:47

are we in the 15th year

3:49

of your World Science Festival? How many years

3:51

have you been doing this? That's right, we started 2008. So

3:55

if you just subtract, it's even a little bit

3:57

more, but the pandemic changed things. Pandemic, yeah. But

4:00

yeah, we're coming up to probably the 15th

4:02

live event. Congratulations on that. Although it's a

4:04

little audacious to hold it in New York

4:06

and call it the World Science Festival. But

4:08

we don't only have it in New York,

4:10

we also have it in Australia. And

4:13

we've had events in Amsterdam, in Moscow.

4:15

No, no, I got nothing, I can't.

4:17

In Italy, in Spain. I know. I

4:20

try to, and by the way, New York

4:22

is the world. Yeah. Let's be honest. I

4:24

mean, for anybody out there listening, I'm sorry.

4:26

You go to Paris, you find Parisians, you

4:28

know, you go to England, you

4:31

find the Brits, but you come to New

4:33

York, you find everybody. Audacious would have been

4:35

like the cosmic science festival. Oh, yeah. Yeah,

4:38

you know, then you would have had a

4:40

point. Yeah. Well,

4:42

congratulations on bringing it to the world. Thank

4:45

you. Or taking it to the world. And

4:48

what I enjoyed most about the several that

4:51

I've attended is the effort

4:53

to bring the arts

4:55

into it in a meaningful way. In

4:57

a meaningful way. Oh. There's,

4:59

you know, there are many artists who

5:01

I would later learn are not

5:04

rare, who are inspired by

5:06

science and the universe and discoveries.

5:09

And they will compose dance and

5:11

music and you have a

5:14

mixture of these sessions. We do, we do.

5:16

I mean, the goal is to have science

5:18

feel connected to everything that matters to us.

5:21

And of course, culture is a big part

5:23

of that. Culture and arts matter to everybody.

5:25

In fact, now with AI, we're doing a

5:27

program on the arts in the age of

5:29

artificial intelligence. So how is AI changing how

5:31

artists approach their work and how scientists think

5:33

about art? It'll be more unemployed artists. Yeah,

5:35

well. Yeah, but it's a funny thing. No,

5:38

people say that. People say that. People say

5:40

that. They'll pay the blood. They just won't

5:42

be paid. like the camera,

5:44

people are like, okay, now you don't need

5:46

artists anymore because anyone can just, you know,

5:48

click. But there are artists who use the

5:50

camera to create things at mere mortals camps.

5:53

And there are painters who actually take a

5:55

picture and then they actually paint a picture

5:57

as opposed to having someone sit for a

5:59

portrait. But that wasn't the biggest. the biggest

6:01

thing, the biggest force operating was,

6:04

you no longer needed the artist to

6:06

portray reality. Yeah. Because of

6:08

course the camera captured that. So that's- Freedom

6:10

up. Free the artist to

6:12

portray impressionistic reality. Beyond reality.

6:14

Exactly. It's not what the scene looks

6:16

like, it's what the scene feels like.

6:18

It's the interpretation. That matters. It's

6:21

huge. Huge. I mean, that's what

6:23

is the magic in so much expression. Right? It's

6:26

what we do with it as opposed to just

6:28

literally depicting what's out there. There

6:31

are many people who project that AI

6:33

is gonna create a new kind of

6:35

art. Yeah. Just the

6:37

way the camera is. Just the way the camera is. It

6:39

has to shake out. Yeah. I

6:41

think AI just accelerates creativity. It

6:44

doesn't replace it because what happens is

6:46

you have associations

6:48

that are being made at a level that you

6:50

as a human being would maybe

6:52

eventually over a course of years, you

6:54

might make those associations, but the computer

6:57

can do it almost instantaneously.

6:59

And then you take that and you say, hmm,

7:01

what does that mean to me? Okay, so it

7:03

pushes you along. Pushes you along. Yeah, but the

7:05

flip side of that is if you have a

7:07

computer creating so much, there's a lot of chaff,

7:10

you know, that you have to separate

7:12

out. That's so true. So, yeah. This

7:14

chaff even went people. That's true. Yeah.

7:16

Yeah. You're born and raised in

7:18

New York City. Yeah, right across the street from

7:21

where we are sitting right now. You went to

7:23

Stuyvesant High School, which is a selective high school

7:25

that specialized in science in the way the Bronx

7:27

High School of Science, especially, in fact,

7:29

they're rivals. They're like intellectual rivals. Why do you

7:32

think that we've wrestled each other? I

7:34

always lose them. You would not like

7:36

a book if it didn't have

7:38

equations in it. It's true. This is weird. Yeah,

7:40

that has changed, I should say. But that's true.

7:42

So you wrote a novel. That's right now and

7:45

then. That meant you

7:47

thought more deeply about math than you

7:49

thought about words. Yeah, but the one

7:51

change I would make to that statement

7:53

was it was when it came to

7:55

books for a science class. If

7:57

the book was chock full of words. I

8:00

feel like, oh no, there's a lot of

8:02

interpretation that's gonna go into this particular

8:04

science class. But it was chock full

8:06

of equations. I was like, nah, this

8:08

is rigorous. This is gonna be specific.

8:10

And it's gonna be something that I

8:12

can nail because I don't have to

8:14

interpret. I can just really engage with

8:16

the equation. Wow, so in a history

8:18

class or a literature class, you

8:22

would have been in tears for the task

8:25

required of you. It was mostly just for

8:27

science. But you're absolutely right.

8:29

There is a different mindset that you bring to

8:31

a history class or an English class, which I

8:34

did not have a full appreciation for when I

8:36

was younger. That's absolutely true. And as I got

8:38

older, and especially there's a moment when I graduated

8:40

college and I said to myself, I

8:43

think I just got a technical education

8:45

as opposed to learning about the world

8:47

and life and humanity. And I went

8:50

into kind of a tailspin for a

8:52

little while because I was like, what did I do? And

8:54

that really then changed it all for me. And words

8:57

have become vital to the way I engage

8:59

with the world. You think? I mean,

9:02

for best-selling books, words matter. If

9:05

you wanna talk to other people who

9:07

are not physicists. And if you wanna

9:09

really get the essence of what someone's

9:11

about as opposed to quantifying some quality

9:13

of abstract or objective reality. Okay, all

9:15

right. I think that's an

9:18

enlightened posture. Yeah, we've gotten

9:20

there. Took me a while. So

9:25

I wanna do is follow up. There was a

9:27

question to our cosmic

9:30

queries that I didn't

9:32

have an answer to. Oh no, here we go. Okay.

9:34

Yeah. And I said, I don't know. We're

9:36

gonna have to get Brian Greene in here. Gotta get the big guns

9:38

in here. All right. If I remember the question,

9:41

it was what happens if

9:46

a cork falls

9:48

into a black hole? You have

9:50

a cork pair. Yes. You never found

9:52

them in cork pairs. Yeah. Okay. And

9:54

in a normal lab, if you take them and pull

9:56

them apart, the strength.

10:00

The force that wants to bring them together

10:02

grows, which sounds weird when

10:04

you're used to gravity and other things

10:06

where distance makes something weaker. But they're

10:08

like really creepy identical twins. No.

10:11

Like you ever meet identical twins that are like

10:13

super creepy. Where they sort of talk together. When

10:15

they kind of talk together, they got their own

10:18

language. Yeah, and they don't. Okay.

10:20

So, but it's kind of like a rubber band. As

10:23

you stretch a rubber band, the force is greater.

10:25

Yeah, the gluonic force between them. The gluonic force,

10:27

because it's held together by gluons. Okay, so now

10:30

as I pull it apart, there will be a

10:32

point where it snaps. As

10:34

I understand my nuclear physics, it

10:37

snaps with the exact amount of

10:39

energy you put in. So

10:41

that out of that energy creates two other

10:43

quarks. So now I have four quarks. Quark

10:46

anti-quark pairs. Thank you. Okay,

10:48

pairs. Okay, so now. So

10:50

you want to see what happens. Now you send a

10:52

pair of quarks down the black hole. It

10:55

gets split. We make two other quarks.

10:57

Yeah. Thank you.

10:59

That was very good. And

11:02

you keep doing this. So

11:04

wouldn't the quarks eat

11:07

the entire gravitational field of

11:09

the black hole? And that you wouldn't have a black

11:11

hole left, you just have a ball of quarks. You

11:14

have to realize, number one, that we still don't know

11:16

the physics of the

11:18

singularity of black hole well enough. Why else

11:20

did I invite you into this office now?

11:22

So, well, I wish one day, one day

11:24

I pray that I'll sit here and tell

11:26

you what happens when the person who knows

11:28

next time. But here's the thing, there is

11:30

nobody on planet earth who knows the answer,

11:32

unfortunately, yet. When we follow the

11:35

mathematics to the actual singularity of a black

11:37

hole. Using Einstein general relativity. Using

11:39

Einstein general relativity and even some of

11:41

the modifications that have come

11:43

from more recent thinking, we're still not there

11:45

yet to truly understand what happens. And I

11:47

should say there are ideas. There are ideas

11:50

of things, I don't know if you've heard

11:52

of them called fuzzballs, where there isn't actually

11:54

a singularity and the black hole is actually

11:56

a more fuzzy collection of

11:58

matter that. There are ideas

12:00

that people prefer. That makes your math come out okay. Makes

12:02

the math come out okay, but we're not sure. When they

12:05

say black holes are work, the singularity at

12:07

the center of a black hole is where God is

12:09

dividing by zero. That's a Stephen Hawking quip or something.

12:11

I think it is. Do you remember

12:13

why if you divide by zero, this is not gonna

12:15

work out. And it's

12:18

actually, in a sense, it's literal because if

12:20

you calculate what's known as the scalar curvature,

12:22

which is a number

12:24

that characterizes how warped a region

12:26

of space is, it

12:28

does go to infinity as you go to

12:31

the center of a black hole, just like

12:33

when you divide by zero, it goes to

12:35

infinity. In fact, it goes to infinity as

12:37

the sixth power of your distance. So we

12:39

know very well how badly behaved the center

12:42

of a black hole is. So it goes

12:44

to infinity fast. It goes to infinity fast.

12:46

That's crazy. Yeah, and so if

12:48

you ask what really happens if something is

12:50

just being crushed at the center, we

12:53

can't really answer yet. So is it possible

12:55

that as a quark-antiquark pair goes that

12:58

the tidal forces will create additional quark-antiquark

13:00

as sure. And then you'd have the

13:02

proliferation of quarks, making me some sounds.

13:04

Yeah. So

13:07

there may be a cloud and there may

13:09

be some sort of cloud that forms just

13:11

before it hits. Ultimately, we believe it hits

13:13

the singularity, whatever that means, because we

13:15

don't really know what the singularity is. So if

13:17

it's a fuzzball, you can have a fuzzball or

13:19

quarks, possibly. Or the

13:21

fuzzball may have a slightly different

13:23

impact on the quark-antiquark pair. Maybe

13:26

before- Influence. Influence on it,

13:28

yeah, yeah. Impact you. Yeah, that's right, exactly. So

13:30

it's a really good question, but it will have

13:32

to fully await a full understanding of what truly

13:34

happened at the center. Okay, so me not being

13:36

able to answer it wasn't just

13:39

my personal ignorance. It's a total ignorance

13:41

of all humans on earth. Yeah, and

13:43

there- So I don't feel so bad

13:45

now. And I should say there are

13:47

many, many questions like that, that we're

13:49

still struggling with. Like we believe that

13:51

when any information falls into a black

13:53

hole, we believe that information does not

13:55

get destroyed. But for a while, Stephen

13:58

Hawking thought, no, any information ultimately hits

14:00

the- singularity and leaves our universe.

14:02

He changed his mind later in life,

14:04

which just- Was that his famous bet

14:06

with- Yes, that's right. So

14:08

they bet, I think, an encyclopedia, the

14:12

source of information that we humans have

14:14

created. T. Thorin was

14:16

one of the executive producers on

14:19

Interstaltar. And he sort

14:21

of spearheaded the effort, among others, but he

14:23

was the exponent to

14:25

build the laser interferometry

14:27

gravitational wave observatory, LIGO, the detected

14:29

colliding black holes, and he won

14:31

the Nobel Prize for that. So

14:33

he's significant in our field, and

14:35

I have at least a few

14:37

books by him on my shelves.

14:39

And he was clearly on a

14:42

level of geekdom where he bets

14:44

encyclopedias. Yeah, yeah. But in terms

14:46

of his book, he wrote an

14:48

encyclopedic book on gravity in black

14:50

holes, which is about 1,200 pages

14:52

just filled with equations. Therefore,

14:56

I loved it when I was a kid. But with the

14:59

Mizzner-Thorne Wheeler. Yes. I have two copies

15:01

of that in my office. Two copies? You

15:03

want to cross-reference or something? No, no, no,

15:05

no. One of those mine and the other

15:07

one belonged to my wife. Oh,

15:09

that's so cool. We

15:12

met in relativity class. Really? Taught

15:14

by John Wheeler. Really? Yes.

15:17

You took it, relativity from Wheeler? Yes, I did.

15:20

That is amazing. GR, from GR. Wow, nice. So

15:22

John Wheeler is one of the authors of this

15:24

Mizzner-Thorne and Wheeler. And

15:26

Mizzner taught physics at

15:28

University of Maryland. Charles Mizzner. Charles

15:30

Mizzner, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so

15:33

I would have think

15:35

of it as a quark catastrophe that

15:37

would happen in the center of the black hole. They're trouble

15:39

with quarks. They're like tribbles. By the way, there's

15:41

a previous, if we're physics

15:43

geeking out here, there's a previous time, was it, 100

15:45

years, 110 years ago? Well,

15:48

there's something called the ultraviolet catastrophe. Do you

15:50

remember that? I remember it, well, I wasn't

15:53

there. But I've learned about

15:55

it. This is the start of quantum

15:57

physics. Yeah, it had to predate 1900. a

16:00

predated Planck, max Planck.

16:03

Because there was an equation that would

16:05

show how much energy would come from

16:07

glowing objects. And how much

16:09

energy of a certain wavelength of

16:12

light and then another wavelength. And so there'd

16:14

be the spectrum of what it gives you.

16:17

And if you follow that equation to

16:20

higher and higher energies, it

16:23

blows up. And

16:25

it was called the ultraviolet catastrophe. Now

16:27

we knew that's not happening in the

16:29

actual universe, but we had no theoretical

16:32

understanding of why the actual

16:34

universe was not doing what our

16:36

equation said. So we knew something was missing. Okay.

16:39

And max Planck comes along, finish the

16:41

story. Yes, and max Planck comes along

16:44

and he suggests an idea that he

16:46

never fully believed. This is interesting. He

16:48

suggests that maybe the energy only comes

16:50

in packets of certain

16:53

quantized sizes. And

16:55

therefore your calculation of the amount

16:57

of energy was biased by assuming

16:59

that energy could come in arbitrarily

17:02

large or small amounts. If

17:04

you assume it only comes in packets

17:06

of a minimum size, then the total

17:08

energy inside that cavity is finite. It

17:10

actually converges and drops off. And it

17:12

agrees with experiments. Right. But

17:14

the weird thing is- And he got an equation.

17:16

The equation is like, holy shit, this

17:18

would come out of someone's head to make

17:21

this happen. It's got an exponential, and an

17:23

exponential has interesting properties where it goes up

17:25

and then it comes down again if it's

17:27

a negative exponent. I mean, there's a fun

17:30

math in there. Exactly. And was

17:32

it just a fitting function or did

17:34

he actually have deep physics insight? He

17:36

had a model in mind. He really

17:38

quantized the energy, he broke it up

17:41

into little bits and redid the calculation.

17:43

And that's what came out. But then

17:45

later on, he never fully believed that

17:47

energy in light, in photons, as we

17:50

now call it, did come in little

17:52

packets. He said, sure,

17:54

the math seems to describe it, but

17:57

I'm not willing to go to that next up. I'm

17:59

not gonna win. of ascribing a

18:01

full reality to it. And so it's

18:03

really Einstein who came along and came

18:05

up with the idea of photons more

18:08

particularly with the photoelectric effect. And

18:10

that's how he wins the Nobel Prize. Many people

18:12

think he won the prize for special relativity or

18:15

general relativity, no. My boy, because she could have

18:17

had eight Nobel Prizes. His Nobel Prizes are for

18:19

what he's least famous for. Right. Yeah.

18:22

That just means you're gangster. That's straight

18:24

up. But the problem is that the

18:27

school ball could have been. People winning

18:29

Nobel Prizes for discovering

18:31

things that he predicted. So

18:33

if you add everything he predicted to the Nobel

18:35

Prize count, plus what everything, if they gave out

18:37

Nobel Prizes for everything you did, I give him

18:39

eight Nobel Prizes. What would you give him? Well,

18:42

certainly gravitational waves. Although again, he didn't fully

18:44

believe it, but it comes right out of

18:47

his 1916 and 1918 paper. I'm

18:49

saying if you give him a Nobel Prize for everything people

18:52

discovered based on his stuff.

18:54

Well then, it's kind of

18:56

everything. Your person's

18:59

on the Nobel Prize for seeing me. I said, nope,

19:01

take it. It's like that

19:03

Bugs Bunny, first base, Bugs Bunny, second base,

19:05

Bugs Bunny, third base, but yeah, every Nobel

19:08

Prize is Albert Einstein. That's the answer right

19:10

there. And so

19:12

of course, since if energy is quantized,

19:15

thus is born

19:17

the branch of physics called

19:19

quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics.

19:21

Wow. And that probably has

19:23

had the greatest impact on

19:26

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19:28

1905 is when Einstein writes his paper on

19:30

the idea of photons, but Max Planck, you're

19:33

right, was 1900. Max Planck was a clean,

19:35

clean 1900. Started in a new century. Yeah.

19:38

Before they even had calculators. Oh,

19:41

is that really, was it that far back? Yeah.

19:43

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22:13

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus,

22:15

Ohio. I'm here with my son

22:17

Ernie because we listen to StarTalk

22:19

every night and support

22:21

StarTalk on Patreon. This

22:23

is StarTalk with Neil

22:25

deGrasse Tyson. We

22:35

are old enough to remember when

22:37

the United States lost the most

22:40

powerful collider in the world, the superconducting

22:43

supercollider, which there was

22:45

money allocated, they started digging a hole, it was

22:47

a 200-mile circumference, there was something huge, and

22:52

superconducting, it was going to use

22:54

superconducting magnets, which had very powerful

22:56

magnetic fields, because

22:59

that was coming of age at the time. It

23:01

was going to push the frontier. My

23:03

analysis, as you read the report, well,

23:06

there were cost overruns, and

23:08

we have too many other priorities here, so

23:10

we're going to zero the budget

23:13

for the superconducting supercollider. And

23:15

you read the report and say, well, we have other priorities, plus this

23:17

is going to be built in Texas, and if

23:19

we're going to build the space station, which

23:22

is based in Houston, Texas is already getting a

23:24

chunk of change. You know when all this happened?

23:27

Between 1989 and 1992, when the debates, and

23:31

then they zeroed the budget. What

23:33

else was happening over those years? Let me think. Oh,

23:37

my gosh, peace broke out

23:39

in Europe. No longer do

23:41

we need the physicists to protect us

23:44

from the evil, godless communists.

23:48

That's what I think was the subtext of

23:50

that story. Damn you, Harmony. Because

23:52

no other particle accelerator was ever canceled for

23:55

any reason, that was designed, conceived, and built

23:57

in the 20th century. So

24:00

if you grant me one conspiracy theory, that's the

24:02

grant me that. But then you think they kept

24:05

the space station because that was the place where

24:07

the new battles might be waged. I mean, was

24:09

that part of the sense? So

24:11

what we're looking at right now, when you think about it.

24:14

Yeah, with the space force and everything else. So that's where

24:16

I am on that. But I say

24:18

this only to note that once that

24:20

got canceled, the

24:23

center of mass of particle physics went

24:26

across the pond to Europe. And

24:29

then CERN, the European

24:33

Center for Nuclear Physics. Somewhere

24:37

in there, yeah. It's

24:39

a French acronym. When the

24:41

words are in the French order or

24:43

something. It goes there. And

24:46

I think our lawmakers don't

24:50

really understand that

24:52

if we don't do the physics, someone else can and

24:54

will. We don't own all

24:57

access to future discoveries of science. And so

24:59

now Europe does it. And so they went

25:01

ahead, build a large hadron

25:03

collider, and

25:05

they successfully found

25:08

the Higgs boson, the big holy grail.

25:10

July 4th, 2012. Look

25:12

at that. It was July 4th, that's sticking it to us.

25:14

Wow, that really good. It really was. And you know they really

25:16

found it on like June 28th. That's a

25:19

good choice. You know they found it on June 28th.

25:21

And they were like, guys, we're gonna sit on this

25:23

for a few days. Yeah. But

25:27

there are a lot of Americans involved in

25:29

the large hadron colliders. Yes, of course, that's

25:31

true. But just to say, but yes, exactly

25:33

right. Yeah, even Peter Higgs, is he American?

25:35

Peter Higgs was Scottish, I would think. I

25:38

think it's a Medinborough. Although I think he was

25:40

Edinburgh, but I don't think he was Scottish. Maybe

25:42

he was English. You know, I don't know, 100%

25:44

know. But yeah, you

25:46

know, he predicted

25:48

its existence. And then it was discovered.

25:51

And at the announcement, he

25:53

saw tears welling in this man's eyes who'd

25:55

been waiting decades for this idea that at

25:57

first nobody believed. Right. was

26:00

accepted theoretically, but it was proven

26:02

experimentally finally. And what is the

26:04

Higgs boson? Exactly. Of the

26:07

particle categories, one of them is

26:09

bosons. Right. Okay. And

26:12

bosons are force mitigating

26:15

particles. Okay. Okay.

26:17

So, and when we think of a force action

26:20

at a distance, there's a way to think about

26:22

that in terms of the particle that

26:24

in the category of particles is a boson. One

26:27

of the bosons is this Higgs boson,

26:29

which has what properties? Well, it has to-

26:31

Was I right? Yes, very good. Thank

26:33

you. Thank you. He said I

26:35

was very good. No, no. It's okay. Can

26:38

I answer? Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian.

26:40

Please. It's what

26:42

endows other particles, even itself

26:45

actually, with mass. Interesting.

26:47

Now, where does that come from? Well, just to take,

26:49

you know, the idea, it starts with the idea of

26:51

a field. That's how you get rid of this idea

26:53

of action at a distance. You imagine that space is

26:56

filled with stuff. You don't invent the fields? I

26:59

really don't. Michael Faraday. Oh, really? Well,

27:02

that makes sense. He was the first. Yeah, what

27:04

a leap that is. Huge.

27:07

It's an insane leap. Right, it's like

27:09

nothing there. There's nothing there. You're looking

27:11

at nothing, you're seeing nothing. You're positing

27:13

that there is something there. And that's

27:15

an amazing thing. But he

27:17

was talking electric and magnetic fields. What

27:20

Higgs is talking about is a new

27:22

field called the Higgs field, which

27:24

he didn't call it that, but that's what

27:26

we call it. So it's this field that

27:28

fills space and as particles that otherwise would

27:30

be massless. As they try to

27:32

go through space, they have to borrow through the Higgs

27:34

field. And that creates a kind of drag

27:37

force on them, which is

27:39

what imparts the mass that they

27:41

have. And that's the field.

27:43

Now, what's the particle? Well, if you have

27:45

this field in principle, if you hit it

27:47

hard enough, like hitting the surface of water,

27:49

you can cause little particles of the field

27:52

to spray out. And that's

27:54

what the Large Hadron Collider did. It

27:56

slammed proton against proton. And

27:58

that way jostled the Higgs field. and

28:00

cause a little droplet of it to break free. And

28:02

that's the Higgs particle. And then we got the, oh

28:05

my God. So you're seeing the actual piece of the

28:07

field. Yes. Oh my God. So

28:09

the Higgs field generated via

28:11

equals MC squared. Yes. Its

28:14

own particle of its own. That's amazing. That's right.

28:16

It's the old point. Or you can say it's

28:18

a quanta to go back to the other language.

28:20

It's a quanta of the Higgs field. Like the

28:22

photon is the quanta of the electromagnetic field. All

28:25

right, that's amazing. That's some stuff. So,

28:27

okay. Okay, now I get it. So

28:30

it's not the particle that you're

28:32

actually seeing. It's not the particle

28:34

that is imbued with mass itself.

28:37

It is the thing on which the

28:39

particle is traveling, the field, the

28:42

medium itself. Boom, it kind of

28:44

splashes apart for a quick second.

28:46

And then that itself becomes

28:49

a particle and has mass. Holy.

28:52

Wait, wait. That's amazing. That

28:57

is amazing. Chuck

28:59

just blew a gas can. Oh my God,

29:01

that's crazy. Dude, that is

29:03

insane. Call the doctors. This is the

29:06

first time I've actually really understood. Call

29:08

the doctors. Because, oh my

29:10

God, that's so freaking crazy. Oh

29:13

my God. A week later,

29:15

he's there in bed still. Eye

29:18

is this big. That is fantastic.

29:21

So my favorite analog to this is

29:24

when I explain the Higgs field to people, I say

29:26

it's like a Hollywood

29:30

party. So

29:32

there are people in the party. And

29:36

the bar is at the back of the wall. And

29:40

if no one knows

29:42

you and you walk into this party, you

29:46

have near zero

29:49

resistance to movement through that party.

29:53

So you have a very low,

29:55

if not zero party mass.

29:57

Exactly. Okay. Because you

29:59

have no. into the bar right away. You

30:01

get into the bar right away. So your

30:03

inertia, it knows

30:06

no resistance there. Whereas Beyonce

30:08

walks in, everybody will

30:11

crowd around here. She can only make

30:13

very small steps towards the bar. She

30:16

has a very high party mass.

30:19

Is that fair? That's awesome. That's the party

30:21

field. And then if you slap all those

30:23

party goes, you can slap off one of

30:26

them. That's the party. Somebody from the B

30:28

high. Somebody from the B high. Yes. Yeah.

30:31

Party is very. Oh, my God, what's up, Beyonce? Oh,

30:33

there it is. All right, so

30:36

I have learned, not from you, and I'm

30:38

disappointed because I thought you would have told

30:40

me the whole story. Yes. I

30:42

come to you for these frontier conversations

30:45

that the Higgs

30:47

mass that a particle would have

30:51

is only for free particles. If

30:54

a particle is in an atom, it's

30:56

not getting its mass from the big field.

30:59

I've known you this in the past though.

31:01

I absolutely have. But you're absolutely right. Absolutely

31:03

right. So I'm a fat proton in a

31:05

nucleus. I'm

31:09

not getting my mass from the Higgs

31:12

field. No, and that's why it's a

31:14

really misleading notion that many people have.

31:16

They think that all mass comes from

31:18

the Higgs field. It is just the

31:20

fundamental particles. And here's the thing, if

31:22

you were to go up into your particle data book,

31:24

which I know you have a few copies lying

31:26

around in here. It's very good. If you look

31:28

up the masses of the quarks, the up quark

31:30

and the down quark that make up a proton

31:32

up, up and the down, add up their masses.

31:35

He said that quickly. Up, up and the down.

31:38

The nucleons have three quarks in

31:40

them all bound together, making

31:42

up the proton and the neutron, but they're

31:45

different combinations of three quarks. This

31:47

is good. Tell them. So quarks

31:49

have charges, fractional charges. So

31:52

watch, watch, watch, watch. So proton has

31:55

a charge of plus one. How do

31:57

you get that from three quarks? Yeah, how do you do that? So

31:59

give me, give me. You gotta have a two thirds and

32:01

a two thirds and a minus one third. Two

32:03

thirds minus one third. So two thirds is one

32:05

and a third and then a minus charge to

32:07

bring it down to one. Now,

32:10

neutrons have charged quarks inside of them, but

32:12

they don't have any charge. So

32:14

how do you get them? How do you get them? Let's

32:16

hear it. Oh,

32:19

must be up two thirds down,

32:22

one third down, one third. Yeah, so if you

32:24

have an up and then a down and down

32:26

down, then you got a two thirds minus one

32:28

third minus one third. Canceling out

32:30

and so as a neutral thing, even though what's inside

32:32

of it has charges. Right, but here's the thing. The

32:34

point I wanna make though, is if you add up

32:36

the masses of those quarks, they're much less

32:38

than the mass of the proton. So what's going

32:40

on here? They make up the proton and yet

32:42

the proton is much heavier than its ingredients. Answer

32:45

is there's another contribution to the mass, which

32:47

has nothing to do with the Higgs field,

32:50

which is the thing we were talking

32:52

about before, the energy in the glue

32:55

holding the quarks together. There's

32:58

energy holding them together equals MC

33:00

squared. There's mass associated with that

33:02

energy and most of the mass of the

33:04

proton is coming from the glue that's

33:07

holding the quarks together. That's insane. So

33:09

let's take a neutron, which has a

33:11

half life in minutes, like 15 minutes

33:13

for memory serves. And after

33:15

that amount of time, half the

33:17

neutrons will have decayed into

33:19

a proton. And if let's

33:21

say if it's a regular proton and then an

33:23

electron and an anti-neutrino. If

33:27

you add up the masses of those, don't you

33:29

recover the mass of the proton? As long as

33:32

you're taking kinetic energy into account and all this

33:34

too. Could they fly away? But yes, but yes.

33:37

So the energy budget is all there? It's all there. Okay.

33:40

Look at that. So everything is conserved

33:43

all the time. And in fact, the

33:45

way the neutrino was predicted was from

33:47

looking at these particle decays and finding

33:49

that the energy budget was not adding

33:52

up. And so the idea

33:54

was maybe there's an invisible particle that's carrying away

33:56

some additional energy. Was this amigo fermi? Yes. So

33:58

what I like about it, He's like,

34:00

look folks, I can't explain this. Let's

34:02

make some shit up. Yes. But

34:05

geniuses make up shit that's

34:07

right. That was a quote. That's

34:11

a bumper sticker right there. That's

34:13

it. I'm getting a T-shirt. I'm

34:15

getting a T-shirt. That's awesome. That's

34:22

great. That's what Carl

34:24

Sagan was famous for saying. They laughed

34:26

at Einstein. They laughed at, you know, all

34:28

these people with these great ideas. And

34:30

he said, they also laughed at Bozo

34:33

the clown. Just

34:35

because he's in the lab doesn't mean they're

34:37

going to be wrong. He makes it up and

34:40

then everyone starts looking for it. And it's

34:42

this highly elusive particle that has no charge

34:46

because we knew all the charges had already balanced in

34:48

the lab. It's got no

34:50

charge, but it's carrying away energy and no one has

34:53

detected it. And he was

34:55

Italian, right? So neutrino

34:57

is like little neutral. Little neutral. Little neutral one,

34:59

I think is technically. Oh, that may be right.

35:02

Little neutral one. Little neutral one. And

35:04

so that's the only thing that

35:06

allows me to, okay, I'm

35:10

not going to get in your way. When people

35:12

saying dark matter, it's some

35:15

elusive particle that we can't detect that's

35:17

accounting for the extra gravity. And

35:19

it's the part we haven't found the particle yet.

35:22

And I'm thinking that's intellectually lazy, but

35:24

it's no different than neutrino. So

35:27

that's why I cut it some slack, more slack than

35:30

I otherwise would. Now, we

35:32

still need to find it. We still haven't found, if it's

35:34

a particle we haven't found. Yeah, right. So are you

35:36

a betting man? Is it a particle or is it something else? Look,

35:39

I'm relatively conservative when it comes to these things.

35:42

So I think that it's likely to be a

35:44

particle, but look. Just because we've been down that

35:46

road before. We've been down that road before. It

35:48

fits in so well to our theoretical framework. It

35:51

doesn't require- Do you have a slot for a

35:53

dark matter particle? Well, the amazing thing is, and

35:55

here's where you're gonna come back at me and

35:57

say, this should undercut my confidence. When you look-

36:00

Look at a theory called supersymmetry that

36:02

I've spent a long time working on.

36:04

Within this theory, which goes beyond what

36:06

we know about particle physics for reasons

36:09

that are well motivated. Because that's ordinary

36:11

symmetry. That's right. It takes the

36:13

symmetries that we have and it takes them

36:15

one step further and it's the only step

36:17

further that you could possibly go. So of

36:20

course nature must make use of this final

36:22

symmetry principle. Why else would it

36:24

exist? That's the thinking that we've had. Just

36:26

let me back up for a minute. So

36:28

as I was learning particle physics, I was

36:31

intrigued to recognize that

36:34

you have your electron, you have your photon, you have

36:36

your neutrino and these other sort

36:39

of basic particles. And they exist

36:41

in our world that we live,

36:43

we experience. Okay. If you

36:46

up the energy knob,

36:48

other particles manifest. There's

36:51

a version of the electron that

36:53

manifests only in these higher energy levels

36:55

and it's called the muon. Okay.

36:58

And so there's a whole layer

37:01

of particles sitting above the ones that

37:03

are in our world. So there's three

37:05

of these layers and tell me

37:07

the three electrons. You get the electron,

37:09

the muon and the tau. The tau.

37:12

Yeah. Okay. And there's an electron

37:14

neutrino, there's a muon neutrino, there's a tau neutrino.

37:16

So now I have three layers here and you

37:18

have access to them in your particle accelerators because

37:20

it takes a lot of energy and you can

37:22

get there. Now what is

37:25

supersymmetry? Supersymmetry says that. This package

37:27

is beautiful and confirmed.

37:29

And tell me the three

37:31

force carriers. We have a photon. You got

37:33

the photon, then you got the gluons, you got

37:36

the W and Z bosons or the weak nuclear

37:38

force. Okay. And those are the three

37:40

forces. Discovered by bozo. Right. Bozo. Actually

37:43

bozo is an Indian

37:45

physicist. Yes, absolutely. And then for the quarks, you

37:47

got the up and the down that we spoke about.

37:49

You got the charm, the strange, you got the top

37:51

and the bottom. Right. So again, they

37:53

come in three pairs of two. So that's three pairs

37:55

of quarks. Okay. Supersymmetry says take all of those particles

37:58

and double them. another

38:01

shadow version of all of those

38:03

particles. So shadow governance. For the electron.

38:06

We are the puppets. This

38:08

is a deep state. They

38:10

are the puppet masters. The quantum deep

38:12

state. Wait, wait.

38:15

So I didn't know this. The entire

38:18

set of particles would have

38:20

a counterpart in this

38:22

supersymmetric place. So for

38:24

the electron, you have the supersymmetric

38:26

electron. For the quarks,

38:29

you have squarks. For

38:31

neutrinos, you have neutrinos. People just making sure.

38:33

You don't run out of music. You just

38:35

look at the latest cartoons. But here's the

38:38

thing. This is all mathematically

38:40

motivated by a completely compelling rationale.

38:42

So this is not pulled out

38:44

of thin air. We

38:47

have our universe three ways,

38:49

a three-layer cake. And as a

38:51

whole other cake, where does that live? With

38:54

us, but we believe they're more massive,

38:56

which is why we wanted to build

38:58

the superconducting super glider to try to

39:00

find them. Now we've looked for these

39:02

at the large hazard. Why can't they,

39:05

right here in front of our faces?

39:07

They typically have short lifetimes. So they'll

39:09

decay into lighter particles. But

39:11

the lightest of the supersymmetric particles would

39:13

not decay. And therefore it should be

39:15

all around us. Tell them why the

39:17

lightest one would not decay. If it's

39:19

the lightest one, when it decays, the

39:21

decay products have to be lighter than

39:24

it. Okay. If it's

39:26

the lightest one, subject to a certain- It's

39:29

no place for it to go. It's no place for

39:31

it to go. In essence, yes. It's

39:33

the same reason why you can have an

39:35

energy field of any kind and you

39:38

will not make particles out of that,

39:40

right? Unless the

39:43

energy available is higher than

39:46

the E equals MC squared of two

39:48

electrons. Right. Because

39:50

it has to make them in pairs. Okay. Like

39:53

if the charge conserves. Yeah, because it's plus and

39:55

a minus. And so an electron is the lightest

39:57

physical particle. Right. So nothing's happening.

40:00

Light is charged particle. That's why it's not happening around

40:02

us right now. Yeah, it's a light is charged particle.

40:04

So it has to talk to the electromagnetic field. That's

40:06

why light coming from lights is

40:09

not just making particles. It doesn't have enough

40:11

energy. Right. But if X-rays

40:13

start to come out of there, X-rays, high

40:15

energy X-rays, you can pop electrons

40:18

into existence. Cause they're stepping

40:20

down so they leave something. The energy

40:22

of the field is big enough to

40:24

create the electron and anti-electron and so

40:27

it will pair produce them. In fact,

40:29

electron microscopes

40:32

are enabled by X-rays

40:36

creating them. And the wavelength

40:38

of X-rays is so tiny

40:40

that you can see tiny detail. It's

40:44

tinier than the detail. You can't have

40:47

resolution higher than the wavelength of light that

40:49

you can use to see it. Right. Now

40:52

back to dark matter just to finish

40:54

his point. This is a whole massive

40:56

other layer cake. You're telling me that

40:58

is the mass of the dark matter.

41:00

Well, the lightest supersymmetric particle would be

41:02

stable, should be around us. That's when

41:04

everybody's looking for it. So maybe it's filling space. Right. And

41:07

here's the beautiful thing. Here's the beautiful, this

41:09

will blow your mind. This will blow your

41:11

mind. This actually makes sense. My mind's already

41:13

blown. When you do the calculation of how

41:15

much of this lightest supersymmetric particle should be

41:17

leftover since the big bang, it

41:20

exactly matches what you need to be

41:22

the dark matter. It comes in the right

41:25

abundance. And yet

41:27

we've not found it. And it may be the

41:29

wrong answer. So sometimes things that just seem so

41:31

deeply compelling are wrong, but we don't

41:33

know yet. Wow. So

41:35

do you know enough in the theory of these particles

41:38

to predict how you should detect it?

41:40

Yes. Now they can vary

41:42

which is the lightest supersymmetric particle on

41:44

the flavor of the supersymmetric theory you're

41:47

looking at. But in any

41:49

given version, yes, you know exactly how

41:51

the particle interacts. Okay. So

41:53

now you have everybody's favorite flavor, the theorists come

41:56

out with their competing models, but still they got to have

41:58

one of these particles. Okay. Now I'm

42:01

an experimentalist and it's how many tests for this one, I

42:03

don't find it. Let me test for that one, I don't

42:05

find it. So it's not looking good. Yeah, I

42:07

agree. Okay. I agree. Okay.

42:09

I agree. But yeah, when I was a

42:11

student, it was almost a foregone

42:13

conclusion that you just had to look for

42:16

it, you'd find it. This is a dark

42:18

matter because supersymmetry also solves other problems. The

42:20

so-called hierarchy problem, it's of the dark matter

42:22

problem. It's a beautiful idea that seems perhaps

42:24

not to be right now. It's not fully

42:27

ruled out yet, but that may be where

42:29

we're going. Who's the one that said, the

42:32

great tragedy in science, a beautiful

42:35

theory, a slain

42:37

by some facts. Yeah. Yeah.

42:40

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42:42

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44:32

I have not been the same since we had lunch

44:35

months ago. And you

44:38

explained to me, and I've said it here,

44:41

that there are ideas

44:43

percolating that

44:46

the fabric of

44:49

space time might be

44:51

woven by

44:53

wormholes that

44:55

connect the virtual

44:58

particle pairs that come in and out

45:00

of existence. And that

45:02

if they're connected by wormholes rather

45:05

than just some field, then

45:07

the wormhole is an actual

45:09

structural texture of

45:13

the universe. Yeah, in fact, the

45:15

other way. I'm sorry. First of

45:17

all, I need some

45:19

weed to even deal with this.

45:22

Because if I'm trying to figure out what you

45:24

just said, because it's so fricking, I mean, it

45:26

really is just crazy. Wait, wait, let's back up.

45:29

The vacuum of space is

45:31

not a vacuum because quantum physics

45:33

requires what? There's all sorts of

45:35

uncertainty, and that uncertainty means that

45:37

there's fluctuations, and therefore there are

45:39

particle-antiparticle pairs, there's energy fluctuations, there's

45:41

field fluctuations. It's a roiling mess

45:44

out there in empty space. So

45:46

there's no such thing as nothing.

45:48

That violates uncertainty, if it was truly nothing. If

45:51

it was truly nothing, we couldn't have uncertainty.

45:53

So the uncertainty gives

45:56

us the fact that we do have virtual

45:58

particles. Yes. they popped in

46:00

and out of existence. Oh, what you're

46:02

trying to tell me. I think it's

46:05

not that we know they're there. No

46:07

one denies it because it is completely

46:09

consistent. Well, I say, well, the Casimir

46:11

force, where you actually put two metal

46:13

plates in otherwise empty space, they should

46:15

simply sit there. They're drawn together. And

46:17

our best explanation is it's the virtual

46:19

pairs of particles that's the fluctuating field.

46:22

I feel like I have fallen into

46:24

a star trap nightmare. So

46:28

you take two exactly parallel plates and

46:31

evacuate what's in between them. In

46:34

between them, that makes sense. Best vacuum you can

46:36

muster. Then you slowly move

46:38

them together. There is

46:40

a point within which a

46:42

whole other force kicks in. That's right. And

46:45

it's not the gravitational force. It's

46:47

not a virtual magnetic force. Rather, it's

46:49

a force that comes from the Casimir

46:51

field, which is basically- That got a

46:53

Nobel Prize? The Casimir? 1948

46:56

is when it was discovered. It got one

46:58

in my book. I'm glad it did. But

47:00

it should have. I just gave it one.

47:02

Yeah, it definitely deserved one. That's insane. But

47:04

it's an imbalance between the fluctuations of uncertainty

47:06

within the place and the fluctuations of uncertainty

47:09

outside the place. And it's

47:11

that imbalance. Grace of force, put

47:13

some together. Okay, so

47:16

that's how we get the particles in the

47:18

vacuum of space. Okay, so now, why a,

47:23

what compels you to say wormhole rather

47:25

than just a field? Well, because it

47:27

really comes from the idea of quantum

47:30

entanglement. What we find is that

47:33

entanglement, which normally we think of

47:35

as particle pairs, but now we're

47:37

finding that the vacuum of space

47:39

may be stitched together by the

47:41

threads of quantum entanglement itself. So

47:44

deep down within the substrate of

47:46

reality, it may all be stitched

47:48

together by quantum entanglement. And then

47:51

other work shows us that quantum entanglement connecting

47:53

two particles is just like a wormhole going

47:56

from one to the other. Because what happens

47:58

in one happens to the other. Yes. And

48:01

that means they're touching each other in that instance.

48:03

They're connected in some weird way. And entanglement

48:06

is one language, but we believe

48:08

wormholes may be the general relativistic

48:10

version of that quantum language. So

48:12

it's like a little quantum net

48:14

holding the whole universe together. Yes,

48:17

exactly right. Because we find

48:19

mathematically, if

48:22

we cut the threads of quantum

48:24

entanglement, which we can do mathematically, space

48:27

falls apart. It

48:29

discretizes into little tiny pieces and

48:31

it just disappears. I

48:34

gotta go. I gotta go. No, check.

48:36

I need you to the end of this. Check,

48:38

dude. Don't leave me. Don't leave me,

48:40

check. Oh my God. Oh my God. Dude,

48:44

that's insane. It's not just

48:46

that there's a field there. It's

48:48

the fact that they were quantum

48:50

entangled that makes the wormhole model

48:52

compelling. Yeah,

48:55

but I would say you don't even need the particle

48:57

pairs. It's as if the entanglement

48:59

is entangling regions of space.

49:02

So space itself has a

49:04

fundamental substrate woven by these

49:07

threads of quantum connection. Now

49:11

look, it's mathematical, but it comes out of our cutting

49:13

edge ideas. It all makes sense. It just makes sense.

49:15

He said he's not pulling out of his ass. Right,

49:17

yeah. Okay, he's saying the math gave it to him.

49:19

The math works. And he started out saying, my boy

49:22

loves the math. So now, last thing. Explain

49:25

why you need more

49:28

than four dimensions for

49:30

your string theory universe. Well,

49:33

it's a very concrete explanation.

49:35

When we look at the equations

49:37

of string theory, there's a consistency

49:39

equation where something must

49:41

equal zero or the math doesn't work. That

49:44

something is a product of two things. One

49:47

term is really complicated. It's never zero. The

49:49

other term is the number of dimensions minus

49:51

10. The

49:53

only way to get it to be equal to zero is for D to

49:55

be equal to 10. That's

49:58

it, I am not joking. This is

50:00

where... the constraint of extra dimensions comes

50:02

from in string theory. The math is forcing our

50:04

hands. Forces your hand. And then you say, well,

50:06

let me take this math here. One thing you

50:08

could say as well, if it's not D equals

50:10

four, three space in one time, throw the theory

50:13

away. Others of us will say,

50:15

hey, let's consider the possibility. No,

50:17

some of them are short. Yeah, exactly. So

50:19

why should these three dimensions of space be

50:21

the only ones? We only are aware

50:23

of them because they're big enough that we

50:25

can be directly aware of them with these

50:27

really faulty sensors that we have. Right. If

50:30

it's only your sensors that limit that awareness, why

50:33

not in principle, can we build something

50:35

that can gain access to these higher

50:37

dimensions? Yeah, so there are experiments on

50:39

the table. Some have been carried out,

50:42

but more precise ones may be done

50:44

where you study Newton's law of gravity.

50:46

Why is Newton's law go like one

50:48

over R squared? Why do we teach

50:50

our kids GMM over R squared? It's

50:52

a geometric- Geometric sphere in three dimensions

50:54

of space. Look at that sphere

50:56

in four or five or six dimensions, and

50:59

the two in Newton's law won't be a

51:01

two. It'll be a bigger number.

51:03

The falloff will be differently. And

51:05

so look at the gravitational force on

51:07

very small distances. Look for a

51:09

deviation from the one over R squared that Isaac Newton

51:12

told us about in the late 1690s. Because

51:14

that's only in our dimensional measurement

51:16

of it. Yes. Because I'd

51:19

asked you, again, over that same lunch, why

51:21

do we have lunch? I forgot, we were just catching up. We

51:23

were hungry. No, no, no. We were

51:25

just catching up. It's my annual

51:28

fix, my annual Brian Greene infusion.

51:31

It was could dark matter be

51:35

ordinary matter with ordinary gravity

51:37

in a parallel universe?

51:41

Because for reasons I don't understand the math

51:43

of, the field theory equations

51:45

of, you were telling me that electromagnetic

51:48

energy cannot escape our

51:50

space time, but gravity

51:52

can. In a certain model called

51:55

the brain universe, where

51:57

our ANE, it comes out. Yeah,

52:00

it's a membrane. So our universe is

52:02

like a four dimensional membrane floating in

52:05

a higher dimensional universe that might have

52:07

other membranes. Higher dimensional membranes.

52:09

Yes, and those other membranes like parallel to

52:11

us like two slices of bread and a

52:13

big loaf of bread. I like it. So

52:16

one slice of bread is some other membraneal

52:18

universe. Ours is this one, but it's one

52:20

multi-brain. Okay,

52:23

and so gravity could leak out of one into the

52:25

other. Or it could just be the, yeah, that's right.

52:27

So the gravitational pull, yeah. That's what I'm getting. So

52:29

if the other universe has six

52:31

times, nobody see, this

52:33

is where you corrected me. Cause I was

52:35

thinking because we have six times as much force

52:37

of gravity operating in the universe as matter and

52:40

energy can account for it. Okay. Factor

52:42

of six. Right. So I

52:44

was saying, why isn't it just a parallel

52:46

universe that has six times the mass and

52:48

it's leakage into our universe. And we have

52:50

to try to feel the elephant trying to

52:53

figure out what it is, but it's just

52:55

regular matter in another universe whose gravity leaked.

52:57

But then you said, if it's in another

52:59

membrane, it's gonna be dropping off faster than

53:01

one over R squared. Like one

53:03

over R cubed, there's some higher dimension. And

53:06

if that's the case, it has to be

53:08

way more than six times. But you could

53:11

imagine rigging it so that it would have

53:13

the right amount. And people have studied this

53:15

and it's hard to make these theories work

53:17

in detail. And be all self-persistent. But in

53:19

principle, it's an idea that's absolutely worthy of

53:22

investigating because that's one way to make it

53:24

invisible. Just put it in another membrane. Somewhere

53:26

else. And then we can

53:28

still calculate with it. It's not a problem. That's

53:32

crazy. Oh man. All

53:35

right. I don't know what to

53:37

believe about anything. Nothing is

53:39

real. Nothing

53:42

is real, man. Dark

53:46

energy. I'm curious about this

53:48

because it was

53:50

a natural arithmetic element

53:54

of Einstein's equations. Integration

53:57

constant as I understood it. You're talking

53:59

about the. The cosmological constant? The cosmological

54:02

constant in his equations that

54:05

enabled Lematre to

54:08

calculate that the universe is

54:10

either expanding or, well, the universe is not static.

54:12

And so there's a term there. And

54:16

if you've had calculus, you might

54:18

remember there's a constant of integration, often

54:20

it's just zero and you can ignore it. But

54:23

when we were in graduate school, I'm a little

54:25

older than you, when we were in graduate school,

54:28

we always recognized, we paid homage to

54:30

that constant, but said, let's assume it's

54:32

zero. If this term existed, it would

54:34

mean there was a force operating in

54:36

the universe opposite that of gravity. Depending

54:39

on the sign of the cosmological constant,

54:41

but yes, because it could have

54:43

either sign. Okay, it would either work with gravity or

54:45

against it. Exactly, exactly. But if we had a static

54:47

universe, it would be something just holding up the universe

54:49

against the collapse of gravity. Which is why I'm saying.

54:52

And we didn't have any reason to

54:54

think it, so it could be zero.

54:57

But we always had to go through that portal. We

55:00

say, here it is, we set it to zero and move

55:02

on. Exactly. Then it gets discovered. Okay,

55:05

dark energy gets discovered in 1998, gets

55:08

the Nobel Prize, using quantum physics,

55:10

which has done so well by us, perhaps

55:13

the most successful theory ever

55:16

about anything, fails in

55:18

its attempt to predict the

55:20

amount of dark energy in the universe. And

55:24

it fails badly by

55:27

a factor. What's up with that, Brian? Of a

55:29

Google. Wow, by a factor of

55:31

a Google. Bigger than a Google. 10 to the, 10 to

55:33

like, it's like 10 to 123 or something. 100,

55:36

Google is 10 to the 100? It

55:38

gets the wrong answer by the biggest amount

55:41

ever in a mismatch between theory and observation.

55:44

Where are we with the dark energy

55:46

theorists? Well, look, what this is showing

55:48

us is that quantum mechanics is incredibly

55:50

successful when you apply it to the

55:52

electromagnetic force, to the weak nuclear force,

55:54

to the strong nuclear force. But we've

55:56

long known that when you apply it

55:58

to gravity, some- something goes wrong,

56:00

something changes. This is the motivation for

56:03

string theory. And this is the motivation

56:05

for trying to go beyond conventional approaches.

56:08

And so you're absolutely right. This is the clearest

56:10

signal that something is wrong. Now, here's, I think

56:12

our best guess. But that's not something wrong, that's

56:15

actually a good thing. Well, it's an opportunity. Opportunity,

56:17

that's the way it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's

56:19

a huge opportunity. The press always says, oh, scientists

56:21

are angry or this. No, we're delighted. If something

56:23

breaks, oh my gosh, it's a new thing. That's

56:26

right, that's right. And so I would

56:28

say my guess where we're going is, and

56:30

many of my colleagues agree with me, that

56:34

you can't quantize gravity the

56:37

way you had to quantize Faraday and

56:39

Maxwell's electromagnetism, or the way it had

56:42

to quantize the weak or strong nuclear

56:44

forces. It may be that gravity and

56:46

quantum mechanics are already so

56:49

intimately connected that it's

56:51

a completely different mindset when you approach

56:53

them. You don't take the rules of

56:55

quantum mechanics and slap them onto gravity,

56:58

that gets you the wrong answer. That's

57:00

the wrong approach. In fact,

57:02

this idea of entanglement in wormholes suggests

57:04

that gravity and quantum mechanics, they're

57:07

already in there. They're already there. That makes

57:09

sense. They already have the shotgun wetting set,

57:11

it just was in a tent. Exactly, so

57:13

you just need to understand that melding better,

57:15

and when you do, perhaps you'll be able

57:17

to do a calculation of the cosmological constant

57:20

and get the right answer. Right.

57:22

Now, another answer might be, maybe

57:24

the cosmological constant is not a

57:26

constant, right? There's recent

57:28

data. They're working on that now.

57:30

Yeah, maybe it's changing over time.

57:32

And so you don't actually calculate

57:34

the number, you just need to

57:37

understand the dynamical process. However, doesn't

57:39

the math in general

57:41

relativity require there to be constant?

57:43

No. That's how it came out

57:46

of the integral. There can be a constant,

57:48

but it doesn't have to be the only

57:50

contribution that looks like that constant, and the

57:52

other contributions can change over time. What'd he

57:54

say there? It can be a constant, but

57:57

it doesn't have to look like, and

57:59

then. It's not the only contribution

58:01

to that term. So you can have a

58:03

field that slowly varies

58:05

over time. And that

58:07

field may dominate. So

58:10

that field is meta to that equation. Yes.

58:12

Look at that. It is meta to that equation.

58:14

Absolutely. So Einstein did not talk about that field.

58:17

No, he wasn't there. You're right. And he did

58:19

talk about the constant because you're right. It's just

58:21

an integration constant. It's an integration constant. It's right

58:23

there. It's a constant, it's a constant. So if

58:25

in fact it needs to

58:27

modify, because that's how they reconcile this tension

58:29

in the age of the universe. Because

58:32

the age of the universe, in

58:34

my day we didn't know it by a factor

58:36

of two. Now people are, there's

58:38

a 10% difference. So it's more than

58:40

6,000 years. Is

58:43

what you're saying. That's exactly what

58:45

I'm saying. When Noah's

58:47

flood took place. So to

58:49

relieve the tension as we describe it,

58:51

this was a 10%, some

58:54

single digit percent. Uncertainty

58:56

in the age of the universe, actually not

58:58

uncertainty. These two methods have very small,

59:01

tight uncertainties that do not

59:03

overlap. That's why everyone is freaking

59:05

out. And as I learned recently, you can

59:07

resolve that by allowing the

59:10

cosmological constant to vary in some way.

59:13

But that's a meta variation on

59:15

top of Einstein. This Hubble tension

59:17

that people are struggling with today is

59:19

exactly something that also may point toward

59:21

a dynamical value. So we'll see. But

59:24

yes, their true test of a

59:27

version of gravity that you fully understand with

59:29

quantum mechanics included would be a calculation of

59:31

the cosmological constant and get a number. Are

59:33

you and your people smart enough to get

59:35

this figured out? I don't think so. And

59:39

that's our show. Good

59:43

answer. Because you know I've drank you

59:45

over the cold. We have come full circle. Because

59:49

I've told her, I said, look, Einstein

59:52

came up with general relativity in

59:54

10 years by himself. You

59:56

strength theorists, dozens of you have been working

59:58

on this for decades. Either

1:00:01

you're all wrong or you're all

1:00:03

just too stupid to figure it out. And

1:00:06

it's probably a combination. Oh. Oh.

1:00:09

Love you, man. Brian, thanks for coming back.

1:00:11

My pleasure. To the StarTalk. Always good, Chuck.

1:00:14

So great. Chuck, we'll find you in the

1:00:16

hospital. Bless you well. I'm completely fried right

1:00:18

now. I'm fried. Just to take us out,

1:00:21

let me remind us all. We are in

1:00:23

my office at the Hayden Planetarium at the

1:00:25

American Museum of Natural History. The Cosmic Crib.

1:00:27

The Cosmic Crib. And after

1:00:29

this conversation we just had, I

1:00:32

delight in realizing

1:00:35

and celebrating the fact that just

1:00:37

a few pounds of organic matter

1:00:40

inside of our heads can

1:00:43

not only contemplate, but

1:00:46

figure out how the

1:00:48

universe works. And

1:00:52

yes, we still have a long way to go. And

1:00:56

we don't even know how long a way to

1:00:58

go remains in front of us. But

1:01:02

the distance we've come thus far gives

1:01:05

us everything that we call civilization. And

1:01:09

it's the power of mind over

1:01:13

the mysteries of the universe. And that is

1:01:15

a product of

1:01:17

the eternal curiosity expressed by

1:01:19

our species. Beginning

1:01:22

in childhood. Continuing

1:01:24

for some into adulthood. We

1:01:27

call them scientists. Those

1:01:29

who never lost that childhood curiosity.

1:01:32

Brian Greene, of course, among them.

1:01:35

So I'd like to just give

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a shout out to our species for

1:01:42

all that has wondered as we looked up at night, all

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that we have discovered, and all that

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we have yet to figure

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out. That is

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a cosmic perspective. I'm

1:01:54

Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

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Keep looking up. Now

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for the awkward part.

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