Interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson

This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. And I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything It's the ragebait. It feels like it's trying to divide people If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there NBC News, repeporting for America Aima is unpredictable. But you can flare less with FGLS, a once monthly treatment for moderate severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking EGLS achieved itch relief and glare are almost cleare skin at sixteen weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year, with monthly dosing. EGlS liibap LBKZ a two hundred fifty migram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate to severe eczema Also called a topopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGlS can be used with or without topical corticoosteroids. Don't use if you're allerg to EBGlIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBGlS. Before starting EBGlS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection Askro doctors are about Evglas, and visitvglas. Lily dot com or call one eight hundred Lily RX or one eight hundred five four five five nine seven nine. Brought to you by the Spam brand. I'm about to drop some sizzl' hot knowledge everybody. Did you know there's a blue can loved around the world with festivals dedicated to it? That's right, it's Spam cllassic. The cultural icon went from fueling the world in the nineteen thirties to earning its own museum And today there are twelve mouthwatering varieties like teriyaki and Korean barbecue flavored, plus, the original Spam classic, ready to fry up in your favorite dish. Fans everywhere, keepep sizzling it up, brereakfast, lunch, and dinner. Spam brand, sizzle pork, and mm. Learn more at sppam dot com Yes, indeed, you read that right. If you made it all the way to the end of the very lengthy title of this science playlist episode We got Neil de Grass Tyson to sit in for an interview with us, and it was pretty boss And a couple of years later he was nice enough to have me come on Star Talks. to talk about my end of the world series. He had this rapid fire question segment that he does every time, and he wondered aloud at some point why it was going so slow. And the secret answer was that my tangents were derailing the rapid fire part At any rate, even without NDT, this episode is pretty great As everyone knows, any talk about the origin of time and space is cosmologerific So I hope you feel that way about this episode too Welcome to Stuff You should Know from Hastufffworks. com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chipper Josh Clarkke. There's Chipper Charles Pryant. Oh, that's your new nickname, Chipper Charles. Yep. Ish. Yeah. And then there's Jerry She is actually Chpp today. I'm not chip Rom grumpy because this. Man, oh man, my head is already melted. You guys should see the vein in Chuck's forehead. It is protruding. best O. Dude, we're not astrophysicists, but we do have an astrophysicist coming on as a guest at the end of the episode, don't we? Yes, my friend, you interviewed Doctor Neil DeGras Tyson Or as I like to call him NDT. Sure. That's what I call him too. NDT his Dyino M. Yeah, but I was unable to be on the interview for various tooth related reasons. So you took it upon yourself. and I think An interview like that is probably just better for one person anyway. It gets a little clumsy of two people that don't know anything about astrophysics or trying to glean information. here's my question. Yeah Would you eat for breakfast doctor. But yeah, it was very kind of him to come on and we want to thank our friends at the Fox Theater, where he's going to be on april twentieth here in Atlanta. That's right for hooking that up. So thanks to everybody who made that happen because it's a great interview as you guys will hear at the end of this episode. Yeah, I loved listening to it I'm going to go ahead and say my two favorite parts are probably one that won't make it in when you said that you're happy to plug the Fox Theatater show. and he was like, Don't bother. it's going to be sold out. Yeah. I like that too. And then at the end when you thanked him for advancing our understanding of this light years and he was like Not nearly enough. Yeah. He's like a lot your' not very far, thanks. Yeah. So I changed the parses. He's like, you're getting closeer. I know it was very funny actually. I hope youd leave that part in there. I hope so. And later on, I immediately regreted not saying well you advanced our show billions and billions of light yearsars. He would have appreciated that. Yeah, he would have, and I didn't do it. Yeah. I wasn't sharp enough. It was good interview though, so thanks. Feel free to skip right ahead of that Well we'll l here and go to sleep U So we're talking about the Big Bang theory. And not the TV show. so settle down nerds. I think he was on that show, though wouldn't he? I'm sure. Yeah Yeah, he made an appearance. I think all you have to do is say like You will further science if you appear on this. he's like, I'll do it. Yeah. I've never seen one episode of that show Uh I guess I've maybe seen some here or there. It's it's think literally the most popular show in the world U or it was like last season or the season before like it's just taken off like a rocket and hats off to them too, because they like mix actual science and science jokes and all that stuff. It's like smartening up the world. Well, I'll tell you one quote I got from mister Tyson, doctor Tyson from the internet And it was actually heard him say it So I know it was a real quote. He said that, you know people asked, do you believe in the Big Bang theory? in only the way that he can. He was like, well, it's not a matter of believing. He said, I only believe in things that are evidence based. And he said, the question should be that you pos it to people of all the data and evidence out there, what theory is best supported And he said it's the big bank theory. Sure. Right. And our colleague Jonathan Stricklland, who wrote the article that this is based on and kudos to that cat because he took some really, really difficult concepts and explained it really well. you explained it in a way that I came close to understanding. time. But he makes that same point too that that Not only is the Big Bang theory a theory, which obviously cannot be proven can only be disproven. But that there are other competing theories out there too, which we'll talk about later. Sure. But that for the most part, it has the most Observational evidence backing it up, including the recent confirmation of gravitational waves, which made a huge stir Um And that as a result, it's the most widely subscribe to theory among scientists as describing the early universe. and that's a big thing. There's a big distinction about that. A lot of people think that the Big Bang describes the formation of the universe.s not true. No, The Big Bang describes the Time starting very soon after the universe formed. But it does not go back into where the origin of the universe came from, what came before it. And it actually doesn't even go all the way back to that point where everything started. It just can't because science falls apart as we'll see the further you try to go back in time because, you know, time ceases to exist at that point. Yeah, if the universe were a human being, It's the Big Bang theory sort of describes the point where the sperm and the egg meet up U It describes the time a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after they met up What about that Yeah, which is It's close It's a pretty great time. It is. So another misconception, Chuck is that the Big Bang was an explosion That's not that's not correct. No, in fact, a man named Sir Fred Hoyle is the one who gave it a name almost Well not almost, he gave it to it in justest as sort of an insult because he was a believer I don't know if he always was, but he was a believer at the time in the steady state theory.. And was like, yeah, this explosion this big bang. Yeah. But it's not an explosion at all So Chuck, it's it's a rapid expansion. It was and the best way to think of it is like this. So like an explosion Let's say you have a planet. planet is actually the universe and it's just floating there in spaceure. And Darth Vader shoots it with the Death star and it goes right. And it goes everywhere Yeah. starts scattering everywhere. But it's scattering within the boundaries, the confines of space as we understand it. That would be the popular conception of what the Big Bang represents. Not at all What the Big Bang actually says is that space itself inflated. Yeah. It expanded. and that all the stuff that was in it was in this very tightly Wound Dents Incredibly hot Cor That was a singularity basically expanded into the universe that's as big as we understand it now. Yeah, something that was so tiny and hot had infinite amount of density because everything we know was crammed in. You know what it's like? it's like If Neil Degrras Tyson listens to this, he's going to love this. Okay. You know the little pellets that you would get with your fireworks, a little black pellet and then you light it. a smok snake and then it snakes out to like, you know, several feet. Right. that's like it except if that pellet were Thousands and thousands and thousands of fraction the size of a head of a pin. Right I think that's a great analogy. And I'm just gonna leave the room. R right and I'll come back in forty minutes. But even still Chuck, take that analogy, right? When you imagine that You imagine that snake growing that on a sidewalk and maybe there's kind of grass in your view and it's at night and there's a car parked there because you're outside, right? Well, sure. That's where our brain wants to take us. Yeah. We want to confine what we know within the boundaries of our universe. What we're talking about The universe itself Ging. Yeah expanding in nothingness. Yeah, And he points out in the interview. I don't want to spoil it, but he kind of blows my mind when he starts talking about like this goes beyond what our human senses can understand Right and sight and sound like forget about it. Yeah. And that's how nobody's going to be able to pin anything on us because we'll be like, well We just can't comprehend that. So how could you blame us for getting it wrong? Yeah So u Chuck Now I'm gonna to leave the room. Okay, and you need what? a half an hour It may take a little longer than that. No, I get parts of it, so I'll just chime in when I feel confident. There's a line, right that Strickland had in here. It was he says at the earliest moments of the Big Bang, all of the matter, energy, and space we could observe was compressed to an area of zero volume and infinite density. Doesn't that sound like the line from a religious text or something like that? Yeah. Isn't it just like right there on that border between like science and religion, basically? Yeah, and now take this drug and everyone take their clothes off and follow me right into the grand room And we'll understand what I'm talking about Uh, yeah, and you know what? when Stickland and scientists and cosmologists talk about that That is what is known as a singularity right that thing with zero volume and infinite density. Right So u I think it bears repeating at least one more time. What we're talking about is all of the matter All of the energy All of the heat, all of the radiation, everything in the universe is here or ever was here over the last thirteen point roughly seven to nine billion years Yeah. was in a point that was twenty three orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of an atom. You almost you just caught yourself going to say it's like a little ball, but there's not even circularism. Right? Yeahah Is that a word? Yes. There was nothing circular. And so at this time, at this point, we know that it was very, very hot.ure makes sense. L mind bogglingly hot. like you can't even think of all the zeros associated with the degrees of Kelvin or Fahrenheit or Celsius, right? Right. And it was incredibly dense And then something happened. we don't know what that was. science simply isn't equipped to explain it or understand it or detect it. R. somethingomething happened to make this incredibly dense ball or whatever it was. Yeah, there was no ball. Yes, and it was not like the the Smokes snake. It wasn't a child with a lighter. You don't know that. Neil de Grass Tyson doesn't know that. Nobody knows that. So this expanding happened really, really, really fast and we'll talk later about just those first few seconds afterward Like that's how fast we're talking few trillionths of a second is how they break it down. L there this so much happened in that first literally the first second of the origin of the universe. Yeah that that there are different ages and epochs that happened in like tririllths of a second Yeah, it's really mind blowing. So as things expanded though in those first few seconds And today, things are still expanding. right. Things are expanding and things are cooling down even as we speak, that literally every second that we're on the earth We're expanding and well not us. the universe is expanding and cooling. Right, exactly. And as a matter of fact, from what I understand ur region of the universe, which is something like ninety billion light years across is is no longer expanding But other parts of the universe are expanding. R. And there's this really great article about cosmology and where it stands right now. It's in Aeon. Not cosmetology. No Cosmology, yes. It was written by a guy named Ross Anderson and I think it's called in the Beginning. and it's incredibly well written, but he makes a really great analogy. He says that that ninety billion light year across portion of the universe that we inhabit that we consider our own a small section of one tiny bubble Floats along on a frothy sea whose proportions defy comprehension Isn't that neat? Yeah And that's just our section of the universe, right? That's our little neighborhood. So the universe is unknowably large. We sound like HP Lovecraft here describing this stuff. Yeah. And still some parts of it are expanding Apparently in the early universe, when it was a singularity The four Forces, the four fundamental forces. The dark side wait. Yeah. I thought you were going I thought you went at the Star Wars university. I was. No, okay. Yeah So the Force, the Dark side, Midilorans. And Mark Hamel's hair. Yeah prequels The four basic forces as everyone knows Electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and gravity. Right. And that singularity before the universe expanded began to expand Um, All of them were coupled together into a single unified force. Yeah, which we don't understand how. No, we don't. And as a matter of fact, trying to get them back together is one of the great pursuits of physics. because if we can figure out how they were all unified, we can start to understand The science we need, the paradigm we need to understand the origins of the universe, but we just can't figure out how to do it, right Yeah, one thing that kind of blows my mind with this is when you know, we get to the stuff later on about Does it defy other laws of physics and stuff? Like basically every answer is like the further you travel back toward that singularity The less all these rules that we think we understand apply. Right? It falls apart. Yeah, so just, you know, we we'll probably never understand this stuff. Yeah you know, at that very singular moment. Yeah, I don't know. I disagree. I think I disagree. Yeah. I think that we are Maybe a century or two away from understanding it? Well, you just clearly pulled that out of your hat. Well, I totally did. Okay. But we've made another one hundred twenty six years. Well, no, we've made some incredibly huge strides in the last like one hundred fifty, two hundred years in our understanding thus far, right? So I think that's not a bad guess, right be a strreingth theorist, right to marry all these I don't know. Probably I don't know. and that's what NDT said, that's what we call them now. Yeah. That's what he said. He was like, who knows? It could be string theory. Maybe someone will be able to come up with a unified theory what's called the theory of everything that unifies the four fundamental forces back into their There're single version of a force. Or maybe we just don't understand quantum physics enough quite yet. And when we figure that out a little more, that will unlock some keys for us Unbelievable. So Chuck before we get into how we started to come to understand the Big Bang and the origin of the universe. Let's take a break real quick, all right I'm gonna go wipe my brow. You're doing great Hey guys, it's Dasha here. The World Cup brings cities to life. Streets buzzing, crowds gathering, every goal sparking celebration. Moments like this are impossible to miss, but some moments are so quiet They slip right past us. Human trafficking affects real people across the US, and it often looks different from what we think. Some survivors cannot simply walk away or ask for help. so learn the signs. Break the silence. Visit bluecampaign d. gov slash World Cup Llugging for something new? Try fencing, the Olympic and paralympic sport that mixes speed, strategy, and fun. It's like chess meets cardio, quick feet, quick decisions, and a satisfying beep when you score a point Kids, teens, and adults can start any time, no experience needed, and many clubs have loner gear Coaches teach fundamentals and safety from day one. Find a beginner class for your kids near you at tryfencing. orgot That's tryfencing dot org I turned off news altogether I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything It's the rage bait It feels like it's trying to divide people If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there NBC News, reporting for America Bing stuff with your Off your should. All right, I can sort of get this part so. The history part. I'm gonna talk a little bit about it Uh and this makes a lot of sense to me. go back in time. let's get in the way backack machine. Oh yes. let's. It feels so safe and comfortable in here. I know It thinks so kerosene. It does, weirdly. It's the eighteen hundreds and astronomers started using something called a spectroscope retty nifty. We've talked about light waves in here before a spectroscope is something that divides that light spectrum up into the wavelengths Blue on the left red on the right And as you go further toward the red, the wavelengths grow longer So that's part one. Right That was spectroscopes. Yes, that's light waves. Right. And around the same time. U a guy named Christian Doppler was tinkering with the frequency of sound waves, right? He was studying those because he's a smart guy. He is. And he said, you know what? It's weird that when I sit by a train It sounds different as it goes by mean approaches then goes by me and goes further away from me. Right, It sounds different than that doesn't really make any sense. Yeah, And whereas most people would just eat their figy pudding and go about their day. He wanted to try and explain it He was like anybody else would been like, this new Charles Dickens book is top notch. U So he said, you know what? as this noise approaches you The sound waves it generates compress it's going to change that frequency or at least how you perceive it in a different pitch. So as it moves away from you, Those waves are going to stretch, that pitch goes down, and I'm going to name this effect after myself. Right. Well, I'll let my wife do it So I don't look like a jerk Right. So basically you marry these two things, light wavelengths and the dopppler effect. R And it's sort of led us down this path to where we could understand the Big Bang theory. Right. It would indicate that something It's something that was emitting light out there in the universe who' light move toward the red end of the spectrum would be emitting longer wavelengths, which would suggest based on Christian Doppller's findings That it was moving away, right? Yeah. and they they found that. They said, look at these stars Some of the light is falling into this this right hand side. And does that mean it's moving away and it's getting faster Right? And that it wants to get away from us. That's where Edwin Hubble came in he basically said, yeah, this is really weird guys because some of these stars ear to have a velocity that's proportional to its distance from the Eth. Like there seems to be some sort of rhyme or reason here to it. Yeah. And it's suggested to Hubble and later on to everybody else, including Einstein, as we'll see the universe itself was expanding And this is where we came to the Guine origin. of the Big Bang theory. the idea that The universe was expanding. and It a constant rate too, right? Yes. Is that the idea Is that the Hubble constant? No, no, no the the Hubble constant is the the proportion between or the relationship between how fast something is moving away from us right to its distance from us. Well yeah, I guess it is so a constant rate. I mean And actually no, the universe appears to be expanding more quickly than it was before. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's increasing, which is that's what I meant. but's a lot of people really their relationship Yeah that sense. Yeah. The Hubble constant has to do not necessarily with the inflation of universe itself or the expion of unise itself, but the how far or how fast say a star is moving away from us and the further away from us it is, it appears to be moving faster than others that are closer. Yeah. and we should point out, you said inflation and or expansion. and apparently if you're an insider, if you're a scientist, you probably say inflation. Sure. So expansion is the basis of the Big Bang theory. Yeah It's the idea that the universe has expanded over time. So that by logic, since time is one of the four dimensions that we live in, right? You've got the three dimensions plus time, so therefore space time describes the fabric of the universe and the reality we live in, right? That's right. So by logic of that, if you went backward in time The universe would be smaller and smaller and smaller. and the more they started looking into it, the more their mind started popping as they realized like, wow, this thing was really, really small once. and that's the basis of it. Inflation theory comes in and suggests how that happened, how that expansion happened. it fills in a lot of blanks that we'll also talk about U yeah, so you mentioned Einstein earlier He's a noted smart guy. Yeah and he actually had some issues because it conflicted somewhat with his general relativity theories because he subscribed to his own theory that the universe is static. it's not expanded Right. don't I think like he was like a member of the there' a way of viewing the universe that like it was always this way, it was always spread out this way. Right. It wasn't getting bigger, that's nuts. And so he figured that his general theory of relativity would prove this And actually he was extremely surprised to find that his own general theory of relativity actually said, No, the universe is either expanding or contracting. It's certainly not steady. And then Edwin Hubble came along and he had his findings and Einstein said, you know what? I was wrong I's big enough a man to admit it. Yeah, that's the kind of guy I am. And one day people are going to keep my brain in a jar in a barn and slice it up. It's going to go in a car trip That was a good episode we did too. Yeah, did we do one on that? Oh, yeah. O onn its own. Einsteins brain Oh, yeah, that's right. boy, those were the good old days Einstein's brain episodes? Sure. ye All right, so let's talk about some of the predictions that rose from the theory that the universe is expanding uh, one is And Strickland says the universe is homogeneous and isotropic, which is a fancy way of saying It's made up of the same materials and completely uniform. Here is One of the first times we run into something where you're like, what are you talking about It's funny if you read Strickland's article and I sent him an email saying as much that I was like, this is really well written Yeah. But if you just read the words you're saying, it sounds like it was written by someone who is totally insane. Yeah, you know? I know. And he makes the point too. he's like, well, yeah, all you have to do is look out into the Milky Way or anything like that. anythingthing we can see easily and see that it looks different there's not a star that looks just like our sun with the same number of planets looking around. Right. The point is that you look If you go out at several orders of magnification and look at the universe outside of any given galaxy. Yeah, you're going to see that actually yeah, everything's distributed pretty evenly throughout the universe And so that makes it homogenous. And then secondly, it's isotropic, meaning that there is no center to the universe. There's no central point Yeah, which some people posit that the Earth is the center of the universe Well, we'll talk a little bit about that later. Okay, but that's wrong, right I mean, it hasn't been disproven, but it's just extremely unlikely, I think. Yeah. I think it's very human centric thing to say. But the reason why some people say that is that they are if you look around Yeah, that expansion that we're seeing is everything's going away from us. Right, whichich is like, why is that happening? Like we should be going along at least with with something else. The idea is that we're not because we're the center of the universe, but the implications of that are so mind boggling that it's just not possible almost. that we're actually at the center of the universe when we're just a small segment of a tiny bubble in a frothy sea that defies proportions. There's no way that's the center of the universe Uh so another prediction was u in We talked a little bit about the intense heat at the very first moments of the Big Bang And if that were true, then you would feel and see this radiation. I guess not see it But you would have this radiation expanded over the entire galaxy in roughly equal proportions. Yeah, because again, remember, the universe is homogenous and isotropic. So if there was radiation It should be evenly distributed. Yeah, there'd be they call it an echo, I've seen described in some circles. Right. Okay. So apparently back in the forties, they detected this stuff and didn't know what they were looking at In the sixties, they figured out Holy cow, this is the cosmic microwave background which is basically I think of it as more like a fingerprint fingprints of the universe, right? Yeah. And it's evenly distributed. It's this trace radiation that's still around from bang. Yeah. which is pretty amazing. So when you put that in the discovery that the universe does seem to be homogeneous and isotropic, along with the fact that we discovered this cosmic radiation background that's evenly distributed throughout the universe It really gives a lot of credence to the Big Bang theory. And so too does this gravitational wave The gravitational wave discovery they apparently found curls in the cosmic microwave background That are remnants of gravitational wave from the Big Bang too. So it's just getting supported all over the place and everybody is super happy about it. Yeah, there's like real observational data there.. All right, we teased those those first Nano seconds Nano moments after the Big Bang Um, so let's let's talk about them right now The earliest thing that scientists can even talk about with a straight face. Like later on when they're having drinks at the bar that they talk about before this. But if they're like on a podium in front of an audience. Yeah, they can go back as far as U I'll just say the equation, even though it will make no sense to anyone T equals one times ten to the negative forty three seconds Yes. Okay. So t Yeah equals the time after the creation of the universe. Y. And as far back as they've gone is Po Zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero. zero zero zero zero zero, zero zero zero zero zero, zero zero zero zero zero, zero zero one second after the creation of the universe. That's how far back they've been able to trace the Big Bang forty three Nice work. Isn't that amazing? That fraction of one second is how far back they've been able to figure it out And so much happened in that first second, Chuck justust Fractions of that fraction are like I said before, like different epochs in the era or the age of the universe. likeike entire epochs happen in trillionths of a trillionth of a second. I know. It's just so mind boggling. I know. I love it though. Like I really given myself over to this. I was fighting at first like, well, that doesn't make sense. I don't want to. How does that make sense? And I did look plenty of stuff up. But I also just kind of was like, I'm just taking to submit on faith Despite what NDT says like you do kind of have to take this on faith, especially if you're not an astrophysicist And I just kind of gave myself over to it and I love it. You know what happens when my mind gets bent like that too far I just have some pie Oh that's good stuff. Yeah. What kind of stare at the wall and have some pie. What do recommend? Dead matter? again. Okay, so something super sweet, not fruity Uh what's a fruity pie? like a cherry pie or apple pie Mm, I like a good apple crumble pie. Oh yeah, I do too, but but not like the one with the crisscrossed pastry on top I don't I don't really discriminate against pie. sureure I tend more toward the fruitity section of the pie spectrum. And I tend to think of pecan like right in the middle. Yeah. But then on the other end you have like your creamy and chocolate mousse pies and stuff like that. I tend to be on the other side a little. O a good lemon pie, lemon ice cream. Yeah It's good stuff. What I don't get is the cheddar on the apple pie. I've never gotten that eith. I've never tried it Maybe I should. Those people are obviously crazy. I like sweet and savory together, so maybe I should give it a whirl. Oh, yeah Do to start talking about this again? Dip a French fry and a frosty and call it a day. All right, so at that point that you described that you know, don't say all the zeroos again. But at that point, the universe was Tiny, tiny, tiny and small and dense and hot And the area of the universe spanned a region of about three point nine by ten to thirty four inches Ething And that that area, right? ten to the negative thirty three centimeters. Again, the average diameter of an atom or roughly something like that is ten to the negative ten. Yeah. This is that much smaller than an atom and everything that's in the universe now was encapsulated in that Tiny little thing, whatever it was That's right And again, like surely astrophysicists and cosmologists when they were coming up with these calculations were like, be right, ye. And I guess over time, they were like, it seems to be right. Yeah. Either we're all just totally off our rockers and really somebody forgot to carry you one and everybody forgot to carry you one, or this is really how things started. And it's just mind boggling to think. All right, so in that very first, first, first, first moment U Theorists think that those four primary forces that we mentioned are still hanging together. S. They're still united And that matter and energy were were inseparable at this point. Which is another. don't feel bad if like you're sitting there going, like, how is that possible? No one knows. Yeah. They just see like the calculations bear that out is another way to put it, you know? That's right. But that's how it was. Matter and energy were one and the same And as things expanded and we'll go into these in detail, we go through something called bariogenesis particle cosmology than standard cosmology right. And as this time passes, things become a little more easy to understand. And when I say easy to understand, I mean extremely difficult. but at least your mind can wrap around it. Yeah. Start to at least, right? Yeah. So remember we started at T, which is the time after the creation of the universe. T equals one times ten to the negative forty three seconds. Yeah. U the next the next big part where things start and actually u, in between the two gravity separated from the from the four fundamental forces. Yeah, justust a little thing like that. Right The next big one that came along was at ten to the negative thirty six seconds And this is where bariogenesis happened. And around this time also, this is where the electro weak, which is electromagnetic and weak force combineed together separated from the strong magnetic force And apparently here At that ten to the negative thirty six power seconds Um That was where inflation happened. That's where the expansion began. Right. And that's where we actually could begin to observe some kind of matter Yeah, and they think that what happened was a tremendous amount of matter and antimatter were created Yeah. But that and we did it I don't remember a lot about the details, but remember we did a podcast on anntimatter spacecraft. Oh yeah, how amazing those were. Sure. but antimatter and matter like to destroy each other and effectively cancel one another out. But apparently at the beginning of the universe, at the origin of the universe, it's suggested by this, that there was a slight imbalance in whatever makes matter and whatever makes antimatter, so that there was slightly more matter that created than antimatter. was a good thing. So that right so that that stuff survived. Yeah. Had the balance been the other direction, there'd be slightly more antimatter than matter now. and who knows what kind of loopy bizarro universe that would have created. Seriously. you, or if there would have been anything at all. So all that matter that survived is the matter that we see in the universe now Yeah. And that's a lot of matter. So imagine since this is just a tiny fraction of the matter that was created and destroyed by the antimatter that was also created, how much matter in antimatter was created at ten to the negative thirty six seconds. Yeah through bariogenesis? Again, it's just mind boggling. And that was the result Ch of Eergy and matter uncoupling as well, right? That's right. Okay. All right and this is the point where We can actually start to, you know, we did one on the large Haddron collollider. It's a particle accelerator, the biggest and best that we have on the Earth And this is where you can actually use a particle accelerator to recreate and look at this stuff. Right So we can actually observe this at this point. Yeah, we can smash things together and be like, K boom Look at that. Early universe That's what they do, Sir Oh yeah.. All right Well people should listen to that one too, by the way. Oh yeah. That would be a good like primer. That was the one where we wondered whether it was going to end the universe or not. It did not. Not yet. So at this point, there is still no light. Things are too dense and it is still just a dark dense area Right, exactly. And about I think during the particle cosmology epoch the electromagnetic force and the weak force break off into separate forces. That's right. And we still can't at this point these subatomic particles still can't bond. They're there They can form. Right, but they can't hook up and party. Right Exactly. That actually didn't start to take place until we reached the standard cosmology age, which is the age that I believe we're in now, right? Yeah, which started zo zero one seconds after the initial bang. Right, one hundredth of a second. So we've gone through that many ages and we haven't even mentioned them all in those that within that first second. Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy. So that standard cosmology, this is about where the astrophysicists and cosmologists say we understand it from about here on out, Everything else is a little shaky, but we've got some observational data that backs it up Here is where neutrons and protons were formed. And, um, A little after that, they started to be able to form nuclei through nucleosynthesis, right And they would ultimately be the building blocks of atoms. Right. And so at this point things are still expanding and cooling at a rapid rate and we can actually Uh There are no atoms yet, but like you said, it's It's too hot at this point for electrons to complete that process. Right. Still too hot in the hot tub. Yeah I mean, after one hundred seconds, the universe had cooled to a temperature cooled after one hundred seconds to one point eight billion degrees Fahrenheit or a billion degrees c Celsius That was how hot it was still after one hundred seconds Should we take another break here? Let. All right, let's do that and we'll come back and and explain the rest of it in great, easy to understand detail Hey guys, it's Dasha here. The World Cup brings cities to life. streets buzzing, crowds gathering, every goal sparking celebration. Moments like this are impossible to miss, but some moments are so quiet They slip right past us. Human trafficking affects real people across the US, and it often looks different from what we think. Some survivors cannot simply walk away or ask for help. so learn the signs. Break the silence. Visit bluecampaign d. gov slash World Cup Llugging for something new? Try fencing, the Olympic and paralympic sport that mixes speed, strategy, and fun. It's like chess meets cardio, quick feet, quick decisions, and a satisfying beep when you score a point. Kids, teens, and adults can start any time, no experience needed, and many clubs have loner gear. Coaches teach fundamentals and safety from day one. Find a beginner class for your kids near you at trifencing. org. That's tryfencing dot org And I turned off news altogether I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait It feels like it's trying to divide people If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News repeporting for America Burning stuff with your O you sh All right, buddy, when we left off, things were expanding and cooling And they still are actually, the end. Good night everyone And everyone here's Neil deegrras Tyson to take us home. So fifty six thousand years after the creation of the universe or after the Big Bang We were at a temperature of fifteen thousand seven hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit. Nice and cool. or eighty seven hundred twenty six degrees Celsius, right. After another three hundred twenty four thousand years, so at three hundred eighty thousand years after It had cooled down to four thousand just under five thousand degrees Fahrenheit and just under three thousand degrees Celsius. And finally here Adom started to form Protons and electrons could combine U and The other thing that happened too was the density head expanded out enough, the volume had increases is a better way to put it. and the temperature had cooled so that suddenly the universe was now transparent. We could see through it. Up to this point three hundred and seventy nine thousand years, you still couldn't see through. It was too dense and too hot. And at about three hundred eighty thousand years it hits that point and you can see it like we do now. Yeah, we finally have light. at that point, those cosmic microwave background Radiation was that we talked about earlier. it's locked in I don't think we mentioned earlier where we're at now temperature wise, just to kind of put it in perspective. we currently are at roughly negative four hundred and fifty four point eight degrees Fahrenheit. neegative two hundred seventy point four degrees Celsius. Yeah, that's the temperature of space right now, right Yeah. Yeah So it's definitely cool. apparently it's still cooling, like it's still not at absolute zero yet, which is the the lowest temperature U or the lowest activity that atoms will move at ever. right So it it's still cooling and still expanding All right, so here's when things really heat up or I guess really cool down sorry, bad bun. Strickland points out for the next hundred million years or so This is when the universe is really cooling, It's expanding Uh, and then You have matter clusters together Yeah, eventually forms. gas and this is the quick view. We'll dive into it Those gases form stars, those stars cluster into galaxies those galaxies cluster together into solar systems. R That's the overview. And so what they think happened was because this really doesn't make any sense. As a matter of fact, one of the criticisms of bigig Bang theory is that it violates the law of entropy, that organizations become more disordered and chaotic over time. Right. And the idea that planets and galaxies and things formed it seemed like it became more the opposite, right Eactly Um And so they've really kind of looked into how anything would have formed at all And what they think happened was that back in say the ten to the negative forty three second era. Yeah. there were quant quantum fluctuations, little vacuum energy fluctuations within this universe, this tiny little universe. And that As the universe expanded very quickly thoseose fluctuations grew tremendously in size. and the vacuum energy Cosmic microwave background, those little fluctuations that are on there. Yeah. were just different enough from the other spots in the universe that they had slightly more density and thus exerted slightly more gravitational pull than other areas And so more matter started to attract around them and they started to form stars. and the stars started to form galaxies and planets started to form around them. And all of a sudden, what had just started out as little vacuum energy became ultimately universal hotspots where you could find matter clustered together. whichich explains why so much of it is deep of deep space is just void. Yeah. and why some of it has stuff Apparently it all began with these little tiny quantum fluctuations way back trillions of the trillionions of a second after the universe is created So like a really cool dude at a party the size of all humankind And he's so cool that people start hanging out with him. and that his party grows a little bigger. Sure. Is that a good way to describe it? I think that's better than anybody could ever hope to. So so it's an attraction basically that drew things together ever so slightly enough. to form larger bodies and then larger bodies. Yeah, and the reason why they think this happened is because these tiny little fluctuations, little little details in these little this little universe and grow bigger over time, right? Especially if you look at this inflation growing as a process of time rather than just like, volume expansion. It's also time is a dimension to it, right? Yeah. So it makes total sense U in that just these little things would get bigger as the universe itself got bigger too. Well, does that mean that the universe and I'm being coy here, does that mean the universe will ever expand for all of time infinitely. So I mean, you're talking about like debate, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole debate over whether or not it's ever going to stop. and all of it comes down to how much matters in the universe which we don't quite know yet. That's right. When they calculate the matter we do know about they realize that there's actually some that you can't account for and that's dark matter because we know that there's something that's making stars behave differently or there's clearly some matter that we can't detect that's out there. Yeah. So we can't account for all the matter in the universe. So we don't know how much matter iss in the universe. Right. But the idea is if there's enough Th that gravity will reverse and things will start to contract again, right? Right becausecause gravity is this force that attracts matter to other matter. Yeah. And yeah, eventually if there's enough matter, it'll counteract that expansive force that came out of it. And then yeah, probably will either stop is one school of thought or the universe will contract and form what's called the Big Cunch. And some people say that's what our universe is. It's just the cycle of expansion and contraction that takes place over many billions of years, but we're just one part of a cycle um, is is ongoing pererhaps forever It makes it sound when we talk about like that, it makes it sound like the universe is just breathing. It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah in a creepy way. And Chuck that has to do also The reason why they don't know Um if it's going to keep expanding or contracting, they don't know if it's what's called a closed universe with positive curvature or one with negative curvature, right And it also has to do with the the shape of space to a certain degree. And Strickland also wrote a really top notch article called Does Space haveave a Sape? Yeah, this is a good one. It really is. somethingomething from studying this that they figured out is that really It doesn't seem like it has a positive or a negative curvature. It seems flat. seems like it has a zero curvature. And this is what's called the flat problem of the Big Bang theory. Why should it be flat? That doesn't make any sense. because If you look at the spectrum between positive curvature and negative curvature, there's a lot of places on that spectrum where the universe could fall one way or the other But it's so close to the middle that astrophysicists and cosmologists have no idea if it's positive or negative in its curvature And they've started to wonder like why should we be almost exactly in the middle? That doesn't make any sense. It would suggest that the early universe was so finely tuned that we're only slightly off of center.. So it would have had to have started almost completely at center because remember, small fluctuations grow bigger and bigger over time and on a larger scale. So since we're still so close to center right now with the universe as big as it is, it would have had to have been basically on top of exactly in the middle between a closed or a negative and a positive curvature Yeah at the very beginning of it, which is puzzling in of itself. that that's like, well, that indicates some sort of weird fine tuning. Yeah. So does that mean that the astrophysicists are off a little bit in their their own fine tuning of the Big Bang theory and inflation? or what Who knows? Or is there a little kid with a lighter who set the snake off? That's right. And the snake was very well manufactured. U Well, that's just one thing that we can't quite explain. We talked earlier about the fact that at the very beginning that the Big Bang theory wasn't meant to address a lot of questions One of which is that we touched on was what happened before the Big Bang and we just don't know. It doesn't even try. it doesn't It can't, right? Yeah, like trying to explain time before timing existed is futile. Right, because you get into stuff that I just suggested, which is basically amounts to intelligent design or whatever. and there's that's beyond science. like science isn't equipped to say Oh, well, what about this or what about that? And I tried really hard to get Neil Le Gras Tyson to say something and he was not going to bite Well, no, and smartly, you know, I think a scientist looks at the observational data and extrapolates from there and not and I'm sure like I said, I'm sure, and I think he even said in the interview that sure people like to talk about these things, right But um, It's not like, you know, hard science right And also to answer that flat problem that I brought up. Apparently inflation theory does answer it. It does satisfy it by saying The universe appears to us becausecause we're looking at it strictly on a very local level, even though we're looking at ninety ninety billion light years or something like that. Right Um, the It's really just a very small segment of something. So if you take a balloon, And you blow it up. Yeah It's still curved But the If you're just looking at just a pinpoint segment of it, it's going to appear flat to everybody looking at it from just that tiny perspective. So it's basically our perspective that we're looking at the universe right now makes it seem like it's flat, but it's really actually curved one way or the other. R. That's the answer to that. Well, should we talk about some of the problems with the Big Bang theory? Sure. There are criticisms and there will continue to be one was that is that it violates the firstirst laaw of thermodynamics that you can't create or destroy matter or energy. And proponents will say that That's unwred for a couple of reasons. One is Like we already said, it doesn't address the creation of the universe. It was never meant to but just how it evolved or inflated over the years. over the years overver the sixty or seventy years.. And another reason is kind of like we said earlier is that the further back you go The rules don't apply, so maybe the law of thermodynamics is just completely moot. Right When you go back that far. Yeah. Like it didn't come into being until later. Yeah, if matter and energy are like one in the same I can imagine that some of our current laws don't necessarily apply. Yeah, well, probably a lot of them. Right And then one of the other things too is that inflation that supposedly happened when the strong nuclear force decoupled from the electroeak force Yeah and the universe suddenly expanded. you know, within that one second, it just kept growing and growing and growing way faster than the speed of light. Yeah. And a lot of people are like I'm wrong. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light. Well, there was no light Well nothing you could see. Yeah. they' definitely photons, but they they had the proponents of Big Bang have the same answer. They say, well Again, dude, you're talking General relativity, that wouldn't have applied at all. Yeah, the answer is kind of consistently, don't even come at me with that. Right. Y laws. Yeah. Uh Should we talk about should we finish with a few other u Alternative explanations? Yeah Like we said, there are alternative models, right? One of them is that same one that Einstein was a proponent of the steady state model that it is not actually expanding and the Apparently this is hard for me to wrap my mind around peoplee who say that it's not expanding. explain away expansion by saying that matters created as Um in proportion to the original density of the universe. Right So maybe the universe is expanding some and more matter has to be created to keep the same density. So I think what they're saying is I think that's what it me. The universe has been at the same density all the time. Right. And sure it's expanding, but it's also creating more matter. R. So which holds it static. Yeah. guess so U the ck Pyotic Epirotic pyrotic. I know this two should not be. E pyrotic? E pyrotic model? Yeah, I think that's it. Man, that's just we're the worst U that suggests the universe is the result of a collision of well, that's the one you brought up earlier of two three dimensional worlds and that there is some hidden fourth dimension out there Well, that's part of um The fourth dimension is part of like standard astrophysics and cosmology But this was like This thing says our universe came out of two universes colliding right in the fourth dimension, which that defies me a little bit. But the idea that there are four dimensions and one of them is time is definitely a part of like Stard stuff. All right. 's still hard to think of, sure. And then plasma cosmology, I like that one a lot because it's just totally different from the way we think of the universe. It seeks to describe it based on its basasically in its it's electrical charge state You know, Okaykay rather than like the temperature of it or the density or anything like that, it's more involved in like plasma aspects of it because you know, plasma' is ionized gas. Yeah. and it's like a fourth state of matter and plasma cosmology looks at it through that lens, which is It's basically totally alien to everything we've just talked about from what I can gather. Did you just say there's totally aliens out there? There's aliens out there, and the universe was started by a little kid with a lighter. Wow That's my stand Well,, if you like this then stick around because right now, Chuck, we have an interview with Neil DeGras Tyson, and we weren't joking. Yeah, great job on that one too, buddy. Thanks, man. We missed you He wass like, Where's Chuck Yes he did Well how you guys doing? Good, How are you doing? Are you assuming I know how stuff works? I have an inkling that you may have a clue.. So I guess my first question is then how do you specifically, how do you think of the universe when you think of the universe as a whole? do you think of it as something like a speck of dust underneath a giant fingernail or is it part of a branching multiverse Is it a bubble that kind of pushes up against other bubbles? Like what is the universe when you think of it I don't I think of the universe in a fundamentally different way from that of my colleagues What you want to do is separate the things we have data and observations to support. and the things that live and thrive on the frontier. of theorizing about what the universe was is or will one day be or what larger system it could be a part of. So if you live in the realm of data then we are in an expanding universe, and it's been expanding for nearly fourteen billion years. and it was smaller in the past and hot in the past, and it's getting larger and cooler by the minute And we exist on this planet we call Earth born four point six billion years ago with the rest of the solar system and some undised undistinguished part of an undistinguished galaxy we call the Milky Way. And this this this scenario, this picture, was very hard earned. and it's no more than about eighty or ninety years old in total. Edwin Hubble the man in this particular usage of the word Edwin Hubble in the nineteen twenties about ninety years ago, nineteen twenty six, discovered that there are other Island universes, if you will, not the way we might think of that term today, but back then There were these spiral fuzzy things in the night sky, imagined to be just spiral fuzzy things in the milky way He would show that those spiral fuzzy things are not in the Milky Way. They are entire other Milky Ways, other galaxies And that was a profounding expansion of our worldview if you would. And then just three years after that, he would show that these spiral fuzzy things are rapidly moving away from us coupled with Einstein's general theory of relativity we would learn that it's not just galaxies spreading apart. within a pree existing space. It is the fabric of the space and time itself that's expanding All of this is supported by data. So if you have discomfort thinking that the universe had a beginning that we will expand forever then too bad That's just what the universe says. And the universe, I've said this before, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you especially when what we learn of the universe comes to us from methods and tools that completely transcend our native inborn biological senses which in fact, is the great acent of science.. What are all the ways we can decode the operations of nature without having to rely on the limits that are sent our biological senses force us to occupy So when science is furthered um, you know, decades down the road. Um and the the The vision we have or the view we have of the universe we live in is magnified by orders of magnitude from what we're looking at through right now what what do you suspect it's what shape do you suspect it's going to take? Do you have suspicions? And if I mean, if you don't, how do you keep yourself from from making that leap? Like, yes, of course this is what it's going to be. This is what we're really living in Well, we all have biases and Let me not call them biases. Let's say we all have longings for how we think or want the universe to be And if you begin to believe your longings too strongly then you could you might miss some realities that don't fit your expectations and someone else will catch them and make the discovery. So it's okay to lean in one direction or another, but don't do so while being blind to what else could be true in spite of how you think it might be. So So now the scenario I gave you is sort of is very well established in terms of observations and data data and basically a century of thinking about and observing the universe and posing questions and answering them. So beyond that, we can ask Is there a multiverse? It This seems to come naturally out of certain thinking. about the behavior of the universe when you try to bring together quantum physics and Einstein's general relativity. are there are good arguments to suggest that we could be in a multiverse. And it's not obvious, at least to me, how one would test that just yet And so but the theories of the universe that point to a multiverse are themselves well tested. So this is what gives you the confidence that maybe maybe our multiverse folks are onto something And there are other frontiers, for example they quantum physics, which is the theory of the small. and general relativity, the theory of the large they work perfectly well in their own regimes general relativity describing the large scale universe, quantum physics describing very high precision atoms, molecules, nuclei, particles, this sort of thing. But in the early universe, when the entire universe was the size of an atom then we might suppose that quantum forces override whatever was going on with general relativity because now the entire universe is of the size that quantum laws significantly manifest. And so and right now we do not have a good way to merge those two theories And we got top people working on it. So these are collectively the string theorists and others in that realm who are thinking long and hard about is there a third theory that needs to be introduced that will enclose quantum physics and general relativity into a deeper broader understanding of what's going on, or will quantum physics absorb general relativity? I don't know that people know just yet. and it involves very high levels of math and higher dimensions and this sort of thing. And some people have criticized string theory for not really being a legitimate theory because you can't test it in any traditional way But it's the only game in town. and they're not very expensive, you know, You give them a pencil and a pad throw in a laptop and a streing theorist is in business. So I let them go as far as they can take it So it does seem like there is either, like you said, quantum physics may be the answer to all this. We just don't fully understand that field yet enough to get back to the moment of the Big Bang or what happened before the Big Bang. But it could also be from what I've seen the unified field theory that gets us back to that point Either way, to get to a point where we go further beyond our current understanding, further back in time in the Big Bang including before the Big Bang of what was before. It seems like it's going to take a vast leap forward.. Do you think that leap is going to come from a genius that hasn't been born yet or has been born, but hasn't been educated and enter the field yet? Is that how it's going to happen? or it going to happen from you know this person combining this work with this work and that work and this work and then suddenly the pieces are going to fall together in that sense That's a great question that also has a philosophical dimension to it, such that in modern times, great leaps in science Do they happen by the lone genius burning the candle at midnight coming up with a Eureka moment or do they come about because you have huge expensive, highly collaborative scientific projects, such as LIGO discovering gravitational waves, such as The next generation space Telescope is called the James Webb Space Telescope, not yet launched, but that will enable us to see galaxies being born in the early universe as well as a host of other other frontier observations that were not possible with previous telescopes. Well, that telescope had to be designed by whole teams of people with questions that they had in mind that they want't answered by the new data. I'm not convinced that we're just waiting for a new smart person to come along and have it all make sense. I think we're waiting for someone to obtain new data that we've never seen before that then force us into new ideas and understandings of the universe. Maybe there's some new theory that maybe I'm not discounting it. but I can tell you is we're in an era. lookook at the Higgs Boson, for example, that required the large Haddron collollider and thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of engineers who built the thing in the first place. So we're kind of in a collaborative era right now. and So if I were a betting man, I would say that the great discoveries to come will come about from huge collaborations, possibly even international collaborations. that doesn't remove the question as to whether there is an Einstein walking among us. who happen to have been born into poverty in a developing country, and then we will never know. Well, that would be one of the great tragedies of modern civilization. So I as an educator feel very strongly about what kind of access people of the world should have to knowledge to learning to health to you know, a person should be able to live a day and not have the entire day be preoccupied about whether whether you have food or whether or not you're going to die from a disease that your neighbor just died of. This is a so