Scientific Discovery and Future Frontiers

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night series, real time with Bill Ma. He is an astrophysicist and author of Take Mear Leader, Neil deGrasse Python. He served as the 50s and Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy All right, first one is for you, very topical again. This happened last night. A rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos Blue Origin exploded on the launch pad. How much failure should we expect when it comes to rocket development? I would guess a lot, and hopefully not when the people are in it. Yeah. Yes. And so I don't know what next gen that rocket was. If it was an old gen, it should not have blown up and some heads will roll. But if he's experimenting with something new, right. Some new design, you expect some failure. And if you never fail, that is evidence you are not on the frontier. Right. Absolutely. Uh same in the ar same in the arts. Oh yes. Absolutely. Yes. But but the first thing I thought was, is this the same rocket that Katie Perry was in. No, I'm not being facetious about it, but like you know it's not. Yeah. But I mean SpaceX have the same thing. The the question we had NASA had the same thing. The answer is that you don't give up. I'm sure they learned quite a few things from that and they correct it on the next one. And the beauty of it is that it's a private company, so they have the money to spend unlike the unlike NASA. You can't flow that amount of cash. If NASA did it, they go study it for a year. Why? Private sector gets back in it and does it again. That's why private space is doing better. But what an engineer says a rocket launch that blows up, they say it is an experiment rich in data. That's SpaceX. SpaceX just had their launch and they literally blew it up after they calculated all the data they wanted. But you guys used to always be up Obama on the the fact that he was like uh picking winners and losers because they were you know, Cylindra, remember Sylindra was the one of your big scandals for it was dumb to do that or Sylindra was dumb? Cylinder was a dumb investigation. But you but you you when you're in these new fields, some of them aren't going to work out. That's true and Tesla did work out. Exactly. But so why were you so critical about Cylinder? Wasn't that that expected that some of them would work and some of them wouldn't, but it was worth the effort to try to bring us into the green energy era. I I agree. Um from that perspective, but next question. She's out of office. That's right. I'm not dying. I'm not dying. I'm not dying. No, but but you would have known Cylinder didn't work, but I tell you this, when I was in office, I I authored the Space Act. And they didn't want to fund Elon. And they were fund ing and buying them from Russia. It was really McCain and I who forced us to do that, knowing it would cost more at the beginning, but long term we could build it in America then. So you do want to take risks, but there's a better way to do it than government directly funding , you give them the incentive and the companies will rise up, some will fall off, but the most efficient ones will will rise better. Alright. So uh Kevin, what are the chances of California electing a Republican governor? Very slim. Exactly. But Massachusetts did it many times. Oh, yeah. You can't get bluer than Massachusetts. Okay, you know why? And Maryland. Yeah. So it's not an impossible thing. But it is a big happen here as well. Structure dictates behavior. A long time ago, yeah. Yeah, but that was a the top two system has failed us. Right now, I don't believe any of those candidates running for governor are qualified to be governor, okay? I think we're losing on both spectrums. Massachusetts did it, and Baker was the most popular one. Yes, and Maryland. Yes. Blue states with Republican governors are the most popular because they're in a blue state, so they can't be Ken Paxton. You know what happened. But they're not crazy woke. You'd get a socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republican, and the c the state would like a check and balance, and you could no longer do that. Why can't the whole country do this? Because we have a system that stops us from doing it in the top two. If we had a system that each party put out their very best, they would have better candidates and we'd have a better choice. How can we get there ? We have to change it. How? Well, we can do it with a referendum. So you want to go back to a closed primary is what you're saying? I'm not saying closed primary. I'm saying letting the party select . You could have an open primary, but the re the di the independents can join Republicans or Democrats, their choice, but Republicans get to pick the nominee. Okay. Uh Neil, if first contact happened tomorrow. Who who would you trust most to serve as humanities ambassador? Probably you. Well Well you say that you say it's gotta be somebody . Uh you say the universal language is math. Yes. By the way, this is what Mr. Politti told me in high school. He said he said that's the universal language was. Was he a teacher of yours or some other person in your life? Yeah, I do speak math. And so math is a language of the universe. You want to commune with the cosmos, you become fluent in math. An alien comes, they would not have come here without some understanding of math. That is a certainty. So whoever's in the room, when it happens, you gotta at least have someone who's fluent in math. I don't mind there's some politicians that want to jump in on this, good the the ones that are more diplomatic, because maybe there's a tense negotiating point that's neat you gotta bring in a diplomat to solve. That's the scientist. Steve Woodcock. Scientists have no experience. So it would definitely be the scientist up front. What I would do, it's not an individual. I would be delighted to have a first encounter, but but I I take them immediately to the National Academy of Sciences. And then we have the biologists, the chemists, the engineers, and then we will do right by that encounter . Um that's the Academy of Sciences written into law by a Republican president. That's right. It was Abraham Lincoln. Okay. What do you the panel thinking I'm giving a shout out across the aisle here? At HSBC UK, when you invest in your business, we're invested too. Whether it's borrowing to buy new equipment, to invest in energy saving or in new technology, we cut through the noise with our sector specialists, regional expertise, and tailored finance solutions. So if you're looking to grow your business, we lend more than money. To get insights on how UK businesses are borrowing for growth, search HSBC Business Finance. 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Visit medexpress.co.uk slash podcast to learn more. What does the panel think of the idea that was put out today that maybe the Iran war will end because there's a talk of a three hundred billion dollar rebuilding fund? In other words, we're gonna rebuild Iran, we're gonna we're gonna make it into like, you know, member Gaza was gonna be okay. What do you think? Now it sounds a little like when Obama gave Iran money and that was like the worst thing that could ever happen. But No, this is totally gonna be different. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's that old story, the mouse that roared. Yeah, but but wouldn't there ha yes, wouldn't there have to be regime change first? You would think so. So so why are we even talkinging about giv the money until we know that the people Because the Street of Hormuz is closed and we need it open, that's the only way to get it done? I see. I I don't see Congress authorizing the money and I I don't see this administration giving them that money. So um at the end of the day, how this ends is very important for the world. The uranium cannot be there and they cannot control the open waters. That's that's how it has to end. Can Donald Trump get there? I believe so. How? I mean we've already played all the cards. You know, it's easier to get in war to get out. It's it's a greater threat to to threat and use military force than when you're already in it. I look, I think at the end of the day, Iran has some severe pressure on their point too, but this is a regime that likes to kill their own people. They'll sit and wait it out and they'll probably wait till try to wait till after the election. I like the idea of the other countries joining the Abraham Accords and that this becomes a bigger solution than just the straight. I know, I know. But you know, I just feel like we went into Iraq and Iran won that war. And every time we go there it seems like Iran wins the war. Do you think that he has another option other than boots on the ground if he wants to meet those goals. Yeah. I don't see what the and the other option is. And we don't want to do that. And plainly he doesn't want to do that. I don't think he ever will do that. Yeah. That's a much different battle. Do we have evidence that we've actually destroyed the capacity to purify uranium? Because that was the whole point. No, we don't have to the whole exercise . And everybody's now focusing on the straights and oil prices and and the like. But if you purify uranium above certain levels, it's weapons grade. I saw a picture in the paper yesterday, a diagram of what it's gonna look like when we have a base on the moon. Yeah, so yes what is it worth uh if it's exploration you're doing something that's never been done before, you are not in a position to judge the value of that to our future. Do you realize we're in the centennial decade of the discovery of quantum physics? And at the time you would have said, why are you studying that? I I'm a carpenter. I got wood atoms. That's all I care about. And we'd learned about how atoms work and molecules and, it is the foundation of this creation, storage, and retrieval of digital information. It is it is 40% of the world economy exploited by knowing what the quantum is and how and why it works. So that's if you were around back then, would you say, well, don't study this. This is a waste of money. Go build another railroad or go build something else. Somebody's got to be on the frontier, because that's what pulls civilization into the future. So what what did did you say quantum okay? Okay, but like connect that to somebody like a layman like me who like how did that affect my life? What did that bring to you? I have a better example. My physics professor in college. He studied molecules in space and he discovered a new phenomenon where the nucleus responded to elect uh uh uh uh uh electromagnetic fields, and he got a Nobel Prize for it. Shared a Nobel Prize. This became the founding principle of the magnetic resonance imager. Oh . It's based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. It was a frontier. MRIs. It's an MRI. In fact, it's a technically it's an NMRI, nuclear magnetic resonance imagery. But that's one of the two N-words you're not supposed to use. So they took away the nuclear, because you're not gonna go into a uh a cavity that this is the nuclear , they're not gonna do that. So they took away the word MRI. This is an example of a frontier disc , and you don't you can't pre-select that. So you have to allow this is what made America great, is that we funded curiosity driven research and that had a pathway through through creative engineers right uh uh directly into our economy. And so so we have the economy is the envy of the world. You know, I've I've heard um a guy say this that if England, the UK, were a state of the United States. Yeah be 51st. 50 51st in GDP per capita. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Don't take it for granted that we live in this country and the investments in science that has occurred over the over the centuries. But also, private space is doing so much. And look where you live now too. If you if you want to have the internet and you're sitting in Ukraine, thanks to Elon Musk for that. I mean a lot of it the return on investment is going so great., yeah. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. So yes. So private enterprise gets you so far, but there's the research that does not feed the quarterly report or the annual report. The government invests in that. That creates the industries that the government then draws tax base funding from. But think about how many young kids got so excited when they saw that Artemis go around. Oh, yeah. The new young astronauts. And what did they go back in class and study? I mean, I think the return on the investment is more than we'll ever spend on. And and while if we were only gonna do science, I would say, yes, just send robots. But when you come back and describe what the far side of the moon looked like , you realize I don't think anyone ever gave a ticker-tape parade to a robot. I don't think anyone ever named a high school or middle school after a robot. There's something about the human element of discovery that we that has been with our civilization from the beginning, that we cherish the the accounts of what people have for seeing something that no one has seen before. There was also an amazing coming together of people in this country to watch the launch to to they were invested in the journey and it was not partisan to launch the landing as well. They were rooting for him. When Congress was listening to the to the the whistleblowers and the accounts of aliens in the back closet, it was Republicans and Democrats just sitting there together, you know? And I said, wow, how I haven't seen this. I haven't seen this. So if aliens and bring us together and the moon brings us together, space is our frontier. For more information, log on to hbo.com.