The Skeptics Guide #1105 - Sep 12 2026

With Special Guest Christian Hubicki; Updating the Matrix; News Items: Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, Training Baby Robots, Testing Gravity in Space; Science or Fiction

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Today is Saturday, September 5th, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:30Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Jay Novella.

• 0:33Jay Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  And our special guest, Christian Hubicki.

• 0:39Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Christian, welcome back to the SGU. It's been a while.

• 0:45Speaker 04

  It's been a bit, but it's always great to be back. You know, I'm getting my skeptical hat back on. I mean, it's glued to my head, to be clear.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We'd love to have you on the show. For those of you who don't know, Christian is a roboticist, and that's his primary, I think, honorific.

• 1:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, nothing else. I'm not known for any other thing. Survivor legend.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  So, Christian, where do you poop when you're out there?

• 1:11Speaker 04

  Oh, there are two techniques, Jay. There is one, you dig the hole, and you fill the hole. Then you fill the hole at the top with dirt, if you're polite. The other is called the aqua dump, is the other approach to where one poops.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I got it. Okay. Which one do you prefer?

• 1:24Speaker 04

  Well, honestly, you get performance anxiety with the aqua dump because you feel a little exposed, and you want to get it done. Whereas, you get a lot more secluded space typically during the cordon-off area where we agree that one fills the hole.

• 1:37Jay Novella?

  And no toilet paper?

• 1:39Speaker 04

  Uh, do leaves count?

• 1:40Jay Novella?

  Well, I guess they have to, right?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  You guys know what we're talking about, right? I hope. I don't just ask random people.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  So, for those who know, though, I spent two seasons on the television program Survivor, where we got to camp out in the woods. And that was, it was quite a trip, I would say.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, this is our second time, actually, at Dragon Con with Christian. We've been here many, many times. Love Dragon Con. How are you guys enjoying Dragon Con so far?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  We'd like to do some Dragon Con-esque themed discussions. So, the obvious intersection between science and science fiction is science. But we're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about an interesting topic. Hopefully, this won't take up the whole show, but the question I'm putting to my panel is the following. So, let's say the programmers who are in charge of the simulation that you think of as your universe, right, the universe, they come to you and say, "Hey, we're about to do a system update, and we'd like to know if there's any law of physics that you would like us to tweak for the next edition of the universe."

• 2:53Speaker 01

  So, basically, what this means is you get to choose one science fiction phenomenon that you want to be real. Because, you know, science fiction is largely built on stuff that's never, ever gonna happen, right? We get these images in our head of, like, warping around the galaxy, raising your shields, firing phasers. None of this shit's gonna happen, right? It's just, there's no artificial gravity, there's no anti-gravity, none of this stuff is real. Either it breaks the laws of physics, or the engineering problems are what we call non-trivial. Meaning, it's maybe, it might be theoretically possible, but it's never gonna happen.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  But what one science fiction technology would you like to tweak the laws of physics so that they were possible? And I'm gonna start on my left with Christian. What do you think?

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Okay, all right. I worry I'm gonna take one of Bob's. I'm not sure I, we've...

• 3:51Speaker 01

  We're good. We've got plenty.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  They're all Bobs.

• 3:53Bob Novella?

  They're all Bobs. I got backups.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Just because we're talking about a law of the universe that's gonna allow us to, you know, presumably enjoy this universe, I want a technology that's gonna allow me to upload my consciousness in a very similar body. It could be, like, you know, and be able to exist without having to decay. So, and I'm talking, I'm not talking hundreds of years. I'm talking end of the universe. In fact, that whole second law of thermodynamics that we're all gonna go to a heat death in the universe nicks that, too.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  You only get one. You only get one.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Okay, all right. Well, that's what we put, well, I'm assuming, so let's just say immortality.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  So, you want digital immortality?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  Immortality, that's probably the form, but immortality of some sort, yes.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  All right, but I am gonna ask you to commit, because you have to make some change.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Digital immortality.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  All right, now, here's the problem with that.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  So, what is it?

• 4:46Bob Novella?

  You don't need to break the laws of physics, bottom line.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Well, that's true.

• 4:48Jay Novella?

  Continuity, man.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  There's a continuity issue. So, the question is, how do you distinguish between uploading yourself versus just copying yourself? And you're still dead, but you're just, a copy of yourself gets to enjoy the end of the universe.

• 5:03Bob Novella?

  It's like a self-deluded imposter thinks it's you.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  So, you know, so first off, I get to ask the question of this creator of the universe, not Steve, to be clear in this case. So, I want them to fix this continuity problem to make sure that it is me, in every way.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  All right, that's fair enough.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  So, what's just, but like, you know, so we can talk, we can talk about the continuity problem of that. I totally agree, that's a problem. That's why we're fantasizing, Steve. Let me fantasize. The, uh, but I'm more interested, the question's like, what does immortality effectively look like? What is that actually like to experience with someone who has a human brain, or was with a human brain? What does an eternity of experiences actually be like? And I'm curious to be, what that would be.

• 5:43Bob Novella?

  Psychosis is one word that comes to mind.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  So, yeah, I'm interested to know what it's like to experience eternity with a human-like brain. I would like the opportunity to shut it off at some point, if possible.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Always a good option.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Oh, that's what I would like. But I, but I think that, but that's what I would like, is to say, what, because then you could explore the deepest reaches of the cosmos. Say, "Hey, that planet's pretty cool. I'll go check out, oh, I forgot something, let back in study Alpha 5," you know, and go back and get it. I want that experience.

• 6:12Jay Novella?

  This reminds me of that meme where the guy wishes to live forever, and then you see him, the next cell is him floating in outer space during the heat death of the universe, and he goes, "I didn't really think that through."

• 6:24Speaker 01

  But, okay, I'll admit, that's a good one. You wanna, whatever tweak needs to be made to the laws of nature so that the continuity problem is just a non-issue, and you can, yourself, have digital immortality to live as long as you want, in any form that you want, to experience as much of the universe as you want.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  That's all I want, Steve.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  That's it. That's it. It's a small ask. All right, I like that. I like that. Go ahead, Jay.

• 6:48Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, I like the anti-gravity thing. It's really interesting, because there's so many different ways that it could be extraordinarily useful, and also, it's fun to talk about what changes it would have on humanity. So, right out of the gate, if we had anti-gravity, getting from here to there would be a lot easier, probably can do it a lot faster as well. Like, you know, if, like, you're in an airplane, and there were no gravity, what would the vehicles be that we would use to get from point A to point B? We probably don't need air anymore to lift us up. Like, we'd probably come up with much better systems for that, and I would imagine we'd be able to move a lot faster.

• 7:22Bob Novella?

  What about acceleration? I wonder if acceleration might be impacted as well? So, that, you know, acceleration could be, like, you know, 1,000 Gs, and you're just like, just like, having no problem with it.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  You want anti-grav, you want artificial gravity in there as well, and inertial dampeners?

• 7:38Jay Novella?

  I mean, I'll take as much as I can get, of course, but I'm, I think the anti-gravity thing is really provocative, though, because, you know, wouldn't it change, like, the way we build buildings? Wouldn't it, wouldn't it allow us to do things that we could never even dream about doing before?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Well, you can, you want Cloud City, basically. And, yeah, I mean, every movie, every science fiction movie where you see, like, the Millennium Falcon just sort of take off from the ground and fly into orbit in whatever, one minute, that's never gonna happen. That single-stage-to-orbit thing just doesn't work when you have to get out of a 1G gravity well, right? Like, you have the rocket equation. There's just no good way to get into space. There's no, you know, so every science fiction movie lies about that. But, or, they're basically assuming they have anti-gravity, which, which probably is impossible, right, with the laws of physics. We don't know 100%.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, until we flesh out quantum gravity, but it looks damn impossible at this point.

• 8:28Jay Novella?

  Well, and you think, too, like, if we were gonna do it, you'd, like, a machine would do it, right? Like, in Star Trek, you know, you don't see it, they have gravity plating, but it's gotta be powered. And I would imagine the amount of power you would need to nullify gravity would be extraordinary.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I'll allow, as part of the question, that it's not only possible, but practical and feasible within the laws of physics to have your science fiction thing. So, if you want anti-gravity, you have anti-gravity. It's practical, it's pragmatic, and it doesn't break the laws of physics.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  Well, Jay gets a good twofer on this one, because what you got, the ability to just turn off gravity in a feasible way, you got, like, free energy, too.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Because imagine a water, basically, you have a water wheel, or whatever, you know, the water, you turn on gravity when the water goes down, like, oh, turn off gravity, floats back up, and you have a perpetual motion machine for free.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Well, let's just say, let's just stipulate that that would use up as much energy with the artificial gravity as you get out of it, so it's not a free-energy machine, so that that's a separate thing you have to wish for.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Is Steve always the buzzkill on these things?

• 9:24Jay Novella?

  No, he's wrong. No, no, but it's, he's wrong.

• 9:26Bob Novella?

  Yes, he is.

• 9:26Jay Novella?

  He's wrong. Like, I don't think you're right, Steve.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 9:29Jay Novella?

  The energy, if you have the gravity on, and you have the water, you know, going down with gravity, turning the wheel, then you turn gravity off, the energy you would need to push the water back up into that container...

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I'm talking about the energy you need to turn the gravity off. That's what I'm talking about.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Well, then, don't you have the exact, but then you've killed the Millennium Falcon, Steve. And, like, how much energy you have to put, uh, to run the anti-gravity machine to get the Millennium Falcon in orbit? I feel like, now, we have to run power plants just to get the Millennium Falcon in orbit.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  No, I'll say, it's feasible so that you could have, like, a portable hydrogen reactor on the Millennium Falcon that could turn off gravity and have artificial gravity, and would do whatever you need to do, but you just can't use it to make perpetual energy, just so that you don't get a two-for-one. That's, that's all I'm saying.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  All right, fair enough.

• 10:11Jay Novella?

  All right, okay.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  All right, Bob, what do you got?

• 10:14Bob Novella?

  One that I really like, I love the idea of some sort of hyperspace, subspace, that you can enter, using some sort of technology that we discover, enter that subspace or hyperspace, travel conventionally with whatever engine you want, and when you emerge from that into real space, you have traveled, you know, a million, billion, trillion times farther than you traveled in subspace.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Which is it, a million, a billion, or a trillion?

• 10:39Bob Novella?

  I'll take any of them, but if I had to pick one, I'd take septillion would be a nice one. So, I mean, basically, this would be FTL, because FTL is not going to happen, the best we can potentially...

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Faster than light for the new set there.

• 10:53Bob Novella?

  Faster than light is not going to happen, the science is not behind that at all. The best we could hope for is a fraction of the speed of light, sixty, seventy, eighty percent potentially, which would be nice, but also, if you get close to the speed of light, you could travel great distances, because, you know, time dilation slows down, but then, the time on the Earth, though, when you get back, could be millions of years later, so that's not good. So, being able to do that would be, you know, practical FTL, would be wonderful, and I don't see any downsides, because hyperspace and subspace doesn't need to have any impact on real space, and my wish, it doesn't.

• 11:27Jay Novella?

  Changing the laws of physics mean that we're doing it in the universe, right? Not just around where we want it to be?

• 11:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Jay Novella?

  Well, that would mean that aliens would have access to all the things that we're talking about.

• 11:38Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 11:39Jay Novella?

  And that's the thing, I'm worried that if we make it really easy to get from point A to point B, that it could, you know...

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the potential downside. Yeah, you can't say there's no downside, because then a hostile alien species could use that to colonize Earth.

• 11:53Bob Novella?

  Right, it's probably trivial, though, because although we're confident there's other life in the universe, it could be two galaxies away, one galaxy...

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you just said that the distance, you know, how fast can you go? If you're going septillion miles per mile, whatever, in subspace, if you make it feasible for us to get around the universe, you're making it feasible for other civilizations to come to us.

• 12:14Bob Novella?

  True, but we're so far from them, they would have no reason to think that there's life on our planet from two million light years away, so I think they would go elsewhere, they're so far away, they would just travel elsewhere and be unlikely to find us.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Bob, you gotta roll those dice.

• 12:26Bob Novella?

  We're still a needle in a haystack.

• 12:27Jay Novella?

  Bob, what if they make a quadrillion nano-satellites that use hyperspace to basically go everywhere in the universe, and then they'd know where we are?

• 12:35Bob Novella?

  Well, then, I'd like to meet them, anyway.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  So, that is a risk, though, that's true, you change the laws of physics, rush, you change it for everybody. Also, you chose a specific form of FTL, why subspace? Why not warp drive? Why not folding space? Why not jump gates?

• 12:52Bob Novella?

  Because I'm worried about the ramifications to real space with those, potentially. With subspace and hyperspace, it's a different space, it's separate from our real space, so I'm trying to minimize the impact.

• 13:05Jay Novella?

  Wouldn't you need a guild navigator to fold space, anyway? They don't exist.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Well, again, the premise of the question is that there's some way, we can develop the technology, so we could find some way to fold space. Remember, they had guild navigators, so they didn't have computers, we have computers.

• 13:21Bob Novella?

  This is, right, this is Dune, by the way, right?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be Dune. And in Star Trek, it is canon that warping around the galaxy was tearing space apart, they had to limit...

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Yes, it was, that was like environmentalist episode, basically, what it was. I have a question for you, Bob, so like, let's assume that we go through with this, and you have this problem, that maybe some other alien species is out there, could use it, what's our strategy? What's our game plan? We've committed, this universe is this now, does that mean we try to send out nano-satellites? We try to map the universe? Or is that putting us at too much of a risk of alerting people to our presence? Or is that going to be like, hey, they're going to come and find us, anyway? Basically, first strike?

• 14:00Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a strategy that people discuss in terms of, you know, exposing yourself to the universe with, say, radio signals that we've been emitting, but I think that we could, in our corner of the universe, I think we could stay very well hidden. I mean, yeah, unless they send out a billion of these probes...

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't think you can count on it. So, you're counting on just hiding in the vastness of the universe?

• 14:25Bob Novella?

  Absolutely, and the likely possibility of life being close to, you know, extraterrestrials close to us, that's almost certainly not going to be intelligent life.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they wouldn't have to be close if you can travel faster than light.

• 14:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but my point is that they wouldn't be able to, they wouldn't look at us, our radio signals are diluted into basically nothingness, you know, in just light years, it's impossible in principle to tease out the idea that there's life on Earth.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  My compromise would be jump gates, because you have to build the jump gate at both ends.

• 14:55Bob Novella?

  Bad compromise.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  It's a great compromise.

• 14:57Bob Novella?

  All right, lay it out, lay it out.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  So, you, once you develop the technology, you could build robotic systems that you could send at great distances to build the jump gate where you want to go, so then you get the ability to have locations where you can instantaneously go from, say, one system to the other, we could settle Alpha Centauri and have a jump gate there and a jump gate in the Sol system, but that doesn't give the ability for every alien out there in the universe to come find us, but we could slowly expand our civilization with jump gates, so it's a good compromise.

• 15:25Jay Novella?

  Well, you'd have to have Christians' physics change in order to have that be valuable, because it would take, you know, it wouldn't be in anybody's lifetime, anywhere near, you know, like, think about how long it would take to physically move a jump gate from Earth.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Oh, you're saying because it wouldn't benefit you personally, that it would not be worth it?

• 15:41Speaker 04

  No, we're being selfish here, Steve, keep in mind, this is our decisions, we want to see the outcome of this.

• 15:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but so here's Steve's wish, here's my wish, and then he tells the world, this is a great wish, and it's because of me that we have this thing coming true, but we won't see it for thousands of years, so you're great, great, great, great, great, grand... Sending mass to another solar, to another star, how are you going to do that?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  First, we could go to just the outer parts of our own solar system, we just slowly work our way there.

• 16:08Bob Novella?

  Sure, that's fine, but the whole point, I think, would be to get to other stars far away.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Once we get to other solar, it takes a while to get to those other solar systems, I mean, think about what Bob's, is it's an instant acceleration. Once you can get these instantaneous colonization of other planets, you can even do small manned excursions through the gate or whatever, like, oh, you know, help set up mining robots to get resources, you can start accelerating human progress, like, right now, and like, the race is on.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I agree, it's better for us personally to have subspace travel, but the compromise is we're giving that technology to infinite, practically, alien...

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Roll the dice, Steve, roll the dice.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Roll the dice, all right, I'll tell you mine.

• 16:47Bob Novella?

  Didn't you just do it?

• 16:49Speaker 01

  No, I'm just riffing on yours.

• 16:51Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Mine is paradox-free time travel, but the paradox-free is critical, so that means...

• 17:00Bob Novella?

  Slightly.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Because if you could change the past, no way, there's no way I would want to live in a universe where you could travel to the past and actually change your present. Think about it, that would...

• 17:13Jay Novella?

  It's a terrible idea, Steve.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  But consequence-free, I mean, paradox-free means you could visit the past, but you can't change anything. So, Matt, wouldn't you want to go back and look at the dinosaurs? Or, I mean, of course, we would rewrite history, we could actually go back and observe history and prove that everything we...

• 17:32Jay Novella?

  Would you be invisible?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 17:34Jay Novella?

  Would you be invisible?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I don't know, that's a detail. Whatever is necessary for it to be paradox-free.

• 17:40Bob Novella?

  By definition, you'd basically be a ghost, that nobody could... No, there's no maybes about it, because if you have any influence, that influence could cause a paradox, so it's by definition, I think, that would be gone, off the table.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  There are different ways to achieve paradox-free, in some formulations, just whatever you do ends up creating the future you already know.

• 18:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, there's, yeah, there's that idea.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  The universe conspires against you.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  Or, let's just, one way to resolve it, I think, is that, like, oh, this technology spawns a copy universe as we understood it in our history, we get to go visit it, yeah, you can go mess around with it if you want to, it's okay, you jump back to, but you have to jump back to your timeline, and that thing just ceases to exist once you leave.

• 18:22Bob Novella?

  And nobody likes that alternative. You want to go back to your past, not some other parallel timeline.

• 18:27Jay Novella?

  I don't even want to go back into my past, this is what would happen, Bob, I'd get into a fight with my wife, I would tell her she's wrong, we'd go back in the past, we'd find out she's right, and then I'm going to be, like, forever wrong, talking to my wife.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  You already are, Jay, it's not going to change anything.

• 18:43Jay Novella?

  At least I can write it myself.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  You have plausible deniability. You don't want to lose your plausible deniability. I got you. All right. So we are still here at Dragon Con. However, our live show has concluded, even though I'm probably clipping this in the middle of the show. And we're about to record our, our private SGU show, but we are, we're going to record some more of our discussion. We felt we were a little bit rushed because they only gave us 60 minutes on stage. So we need to extend our discussion. And we have somebody joining us for this extended discussion. And that is, and this I guess will be your first time, actually, this episode appearing on the SGU, my elder daughter, Julia Novella. Julia, welcome to the SGU.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  You've kind of grown up with this podcast, but you've never been on it before.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Does, uh, who's that noisy count?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Immediately. So you, yeah, you famously, or perhaps infamously coined the phrase, who's that noisy?

• 19:37Speaker 05

  I haven't been present on the show. My, my influence has been present.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yes, your influence has been felt on the show. We were having a discussion during the stage show about if you could change one law of physics specifically designed, or however many laws you have to change, so that one science fiction technology or phenomenon that is currently either impossible or almost certainly impossible by the laws of physics would be possible. And we figured that, that discussion could go a lot longer than it did. And I'm going to give you an opportunity now to chime in if you have any thoughts on that. Is what would, what would you say? What would your choice be? And it could be one of the ones you've already picked. But what, what science fiction tech would you want to have work?

• 20:24Speaker 05

  It's so hard not to say FTL.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  Like, if you could just take the obvious correct answer and put that aside, then I think it's hard to come up with something that's like, okay, what can we not ever possibly have without cheating?

• 20:43Bob Novella?

  You're not a fan of immortality, is what you're telling me? That FTL beats immortality?

• 20:47Speaker 05

  I'm 100% okay with being finite. I'm terrified. And that's like, the, one of the more classic sci-fi horror tropes is immortality when you don't want it.

• 20:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Not fun. Not fun.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  With the option to turn yourself off, you added that.

• 21:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I added. I had a few caveats.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  You need the escape clause.

• 21:08Bob Novella?

  I also noticed that she's the youngest on the panel and the, and the most okay with the eventual death. I'll notice that.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was going to point that out, too. That may change as you get older. As you get closer, as you, we all, all, as somebody said, hurtling toward oblivion. And as you get closer and closer to that wall of oblivion, your attitude might change a little bit. Just putting that out there.

• 21:27Speaker 05

  Well, okay, there's a lot of longevity then. That's very different from immortality. But back to the right answer, which is FTL.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  All right. So which form, let's put it this way, which form of FTL would you want?

• 21:37Speaker 05

  Um, and I already kind of told you this about the problem with the jump gates is then you're locked, you have a maximum radius that you can get to. So, you know, whatever is 65 million light years away, you're never, pretty much never going to see that.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, you can't say never. It just, it would take a long time to get there.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  It's too long.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  But Julia, you'd have to live forever in order to get to it. You can only get one of these things. So you can't get the immortality to take advantage of the jump gates. I think jump gates would be best for humanity. I admit they wouldn't do me any good.

• 22:07Bob Novella?

  Well, you're great, great, great, great, great crankits.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Well, I think you're exaggerating.

• 22:11Bob Novella?

  Oh, no. Come on, man.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  I think that, um, and my coworkers were asking me about the Drake equation the other day. And they're like, well, how do they know what to put in the equation to figure out if there's life that's not us? Uh, but given how things are going so far, I think if we ever have a chance of interacting with anything else, I think jump gates prevents that. Um, I like the folding space idea. You know, I, I read, um, A Wrinkle in Time when I was a kid. So I'm probably-

• 22:41Speaker 01

  When you were a kid.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  I never read it two years ago. Let's put it that way. But, um, I, so obviously I'm very biased. And I, but I love that idea of, um, and you know, you've already mentioned that like, oh, the knock on effects, the consequences, but let's just, we're, we're cheating. So we can just say this consequence free folding space to get other places very quickly.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's also the dune thing, you know, traveling without moving. You just, you just appear in another part of the universe.

• 23:09Speaker 05

  And Futurama that says, oh, we're not moving the ship. We're moving the rest of the universe around the ship.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Right. Right, right, right. Um, okay. So you're an FTL girl, then?

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  All right. There's a couple of other options that we came up in the after discussion that we'd like to mention. Well, one actually, my second choice, and maybe we can get, get everybody's second choice. My second choice is free energy, which is partly why I didn't want to give you free energy in addition to the-

• 23:36Bob Novella?

  Ah, makes sense now.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  The anti-gravity.

• 23:38Bob Novella?

  Oh, what kind of free energy?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Well, you know, something like, let's say zero point energy actually exists and you could tap into a virtually unlimited source of, of carbon free, you know, energy-

• 23:49Bob Novella?

  Too problematic.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  With, for what? How would that be problematic? Basically, we, all other forms of energy become obsolete. We have as much energy as we want to run our civilization.

• 24:00Bob Novella?

  The problem is, zero point energy is so dilute now, the way it is now, you would need basically cubic light years of space to, to tap into to light a light bulb. So, so that's one of the biggest problems with observationally with, with zero point energy.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  But that's among the things that would change in the laws of physics to make it practical.

• 24:20Bob Novella?

  Yes. And that's what's problematic about it. Because if you put that much energy into, into space like, like that, the end result would be universe expansion so nasty that it could cause the big rip, which we know is scary. And it just basically destroy all of life. It's just too much energy to put into, into zero point energy.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  I'm not disagreeing with you, but the premise of the question was the, the programmers of the matrix will make it all work. Don't worry about it.

• 24:47Bob Novella?

  Yeah. A lot of these ideas will have some horrible consequence if actually enacted without some magical caveat, right?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  That's why they're not the laws of physics.

• 24:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  So you don't have to say zero point. You just say unlimited energy.

• 24:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Or something, something like zero point energy. Whatever the actual physics are, I don't care. It's, we can tap into, you know, limit, maybe there's another universe we could tap into that just has a ton, a bunch of extra energy.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  We just have a back rooms that we've filled with like a million nuclear generators.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  And the waste just gets like snapped, Thanos snapped away.

• 25:17Bob Novella?

  But that's one of the fun things about this thought experiment is that it's trying to find the, the weakness to the, to the wish that would undermine it because the ramifications that are unaccounted for are disastrous. So that's one of the fun parts of this. It's sometimes really hard to figure out. But I mean, okay, so if we're going to, if we're talking full on wish-

• 25:34Speaker 05

  That was, that was one of the things about Jay's thing with gravity. Um, because my major is in astrophysics. And I was like, oh my God, that would be such a pain. Because like, you know, 90% of the stuff we're looking at, we're like, oh, because gravity works exactly like this, then we can tell exactly this about whatever stellar phenomenon. I'm like, if they had a dial and like, you know, whoever's on that planet could just be turning it up and down like an 11 year old with a thermostat, that'd be so annoying.

• 25:58Bob Novella?

  Shocker. That's what dark matter actually is. It's, it was just, it was just the gravity dial all along.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Think about this, Julia, though. That would be a great techno signature. We would know there was an advanced civilization out there because-

• 26:12Bob Novella?

  They're messing with their own gravity. Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  I, I was thinking of it more localized, like convenience factors, like get, you know, like easy travel. You know what I mean? Like getting from point A to point B around the planet would be a joke. And also like moving material around. Like, you know why I thought of this? I'm just going to, I'll be honest with you. My wife and I bought a piece of furniture off a marketplace. And, you know, you can find amazing deals on there, by the way. Right? So we got, we found a really awesome, like-

• 26:36Bob Novella?

  A lot of horrible people.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, like you open the door and it's a desk and the thing is huge and it's awesome. And we got it really cheap, like a few hundred bucks. This thing weighed 400 pounds. And when we went into like, we tested it to see if we could lift it. Because you know, my, my wife is phenomenally strong, but not strong enough to move boulders, right? So we couldn't, we couldn't do it. And I'm like, damn, man, where's, where is the anti-gravity field for me to just push this with my, my finger and put it in the corner where I want it? And then when you, when you came up with this idea about, I'm like, yeah, I want to move furniture around my house. Okay. I want it, but I want it to be like a little localized thing. I don't want to like, do it like Julia's saying, like have, you know, a lever that changes gravity around the earth and the whole planet.

• 27:17Bob Novella?

  What about inertial mass? Is that also dialed down? Is there, is it hard to accelerate these heavy objects that are down, don't weigh anything? Or is that just-

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Would they be? Or I don't know. You tell me.

• 27:26Bob Novella?

  Well, that depends on the wish, I guess. But, so you're messing with gravitational mass, not inertial mass.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Can I ask a, or can I, can I bring up what, um, I was also talking about after the show is like, is there a single law of physics that could change to stop climate change? Or is it too complicated?

• 27:43Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's interesting. It is complicated.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  What, like, one thing would have the most...

• 27:51Speaker 04

  If there's a dial on literally the greenhouse effect that you could dial down and up, like, at will, like, if you, if there's a way, I forget, is it, was it, is it competence scattering or brag scattering, I forget which one it is that causes it, I have no idea, but like, whatever it is, it just keeps the, like, oh, we'll dial it down a little bit, just don't make it, you know, go too far, that'd be bad.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So, there's the climate sensitivity, which is how much warming you get with a certain amount of CO2 increase. You could always say, I would like to just decrease the climate sensitivity, but the thing is, if you mess with that, you're also messing with the greenhouse effect that is causing the climate we want, right?

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Now, you're talking about the snowpiercer problem, where we turn the Earth into Snowball Earth, we don't want that to happen.

• 28:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I didn't like that Earth.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, any other, I have a, Bob, you mentioned a runner-up, and I have another idea for a runner-up, and I'll see what these guys think, but go ahead and tell us your runner-up.

• 28:43Bob Novella?

  Quantum tunneling at will. According, you could create a technology that takes advantage of quantum tunneling, so that you can quantum tunnel as much mass as you want, basically, any distance that you want. So, if you, so if you look at the wave, if you look at the wave function, at the very tail of the wave function, which extends, basically, really, really far, if that, if that tail is outside of an energy barrier, like, say, at the other side of a wall or whatever, so that means there's a very small probability that a subatomic particle can tunnel to that spot, essentially going through a barrier, like, an energy barrier or a wall. That happens, not only all the time, fusion in stars relies

• 29:27Bob Novella?

  on that. Fusion would not happen without quantum tunneling, so it's, it's a known effect, it's critically important, but if you could control it through some technology, then you could, basically, teleport yourself across town, across the room, you could teleport objects, you could do lots of things that would be amazing, and you're not, and this teleportation, it's not like, it's not, it's ill-defined when you're en route, what's actually happening, so you wouldn't actually be interacting, like, with that wall as you're going through with, through it, you know what I mean?

• 29:56Speaker 01

  So, what are you passing through? That's, this is the thing, I don't know if there's an answer, but like, what, your, your, your molecules are no longer where they were, and now, is it instant? Is it subspace? What is it? What is it passing through?

• 30:08Bob Novella?

  We don't know, we don't know, like, Jay, electrons in orbit, in their orbitals, when they change, when they change orbits, they don't trend, they don't go to the orbit, they appear there, so they're, they don't exist technically en route.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  It's a probability thing, right? So, if you look at an electron shell, which is basically the probability that the electron will appear in any of these places, and that may pass through the nucleus without the electron ever being at the nucleus, right? It, you could go from one side to the other of the nucleus without ever passing through it, because the whole field is just a probability field.

• 30:43Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  So, that's what Bob's talking about, is that you could, if we can control the probability field and treat macroscopic objects as if this applies, right?

• 30:52Bob Novella?

  Right, they would all be doing it at once.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could, yeah, make everything, like, you have a spaceship, you quantum tunnel the entire spaceship to the other side of the galaxy. So, that's where you, that's, again, not that you can't do this, you want to change the laws of physics, that we could do this.

• 31:05Bob Novella?

  I'm not saying, no, I'm not saying you can't do it, I'm saying it is possible, but ridiculously unlikely.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:12Bob Novella?

  It's about as close to zero as you can get, the farther away you go, it's exponential.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you're, you're, you want to change the laws, that it becomes a practical technology.

• 31:19Bob Novella?

  Right, I mean, the interesting bit here, one of the interesting bits here is that, this is possible, I could, I can quant, quantum tunnel through that wall, but I might have to live, you know, a septillion, to the septillionth power, yeah, to actually wait and see it happen. But, the, so, the problems, though, that arise are, when you get quantum tunnel to another point, what about the air that's there? You'd have to displace that air away as you go into it, because otherwise, I don't know, your body would merge with the atmosphere, that would, could be problematic, you'd have, you'd have to make sure you don't quantum tunnel into, like, a wall or a rock, so we'd have to have some sort of, like, you can't quantum tunnel if you're going to quantum tunnel into a material object. Tunneling

• 32:04Bob Novella?

  into a vacuum would be great, because there's basically nothing there, but you have a problem, though, if you want to go at altitude, if you want to go up a mountain, well, where'd that potential energy come from? So, you might need to have some device that has a lot of energy with it that could make that happen, so it depends how you do the wish, and how you're changing the law.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  They're not, they're not testing this thing on me, I'll tell you that much.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  If you had this, what's the first thing you would do with it?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  He'd go to the other side of the wall, Julia, and it would be awesome, so useful.

• 32:31Bob Novella?

  I would quantum teleport an, an object, and then, an animal, and then, a friend, and then, once, once I'm confident it does what I want it to, then I would, you know, I'd mess around, quantum tunneling to various distances, but I'd be afraid to go, like, if you go somewhere where your momentum is different, like, you're from a moving train to the ground, what would happen? I don't know, that could be catastrophic, you know, there's a lot of scary aspects to it.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  I'd rather just use my anti-gravity thing, it sounds less... But you could theoretically have, like, teleportation chambers, where everything is held constant, and there's no issues, and you can just go from one to the other, so you could bounce around the world instantaneously.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  You could do small-scale folding space to, for teleporting instead of FTL.

• 33:14Bob Novella?

  I mean, wouldn't you love to tunnel your, your luggage back home before we get on the plane, or even ourselves, I guess, but if you're scared, afraid of it, tunnel your, your luggage, and like, okay, I don't have to worry about luggage for the trip.

• 33:24Speaker 05

  I could buy a big sword without the US government getting involved.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  So, so, I mean, now, now it's my job to be the party pooper, right?

• 33:31Bob Novella?

  Please do.

• 33:32Speaker 04

  So, so, so, I mean, let's say, we, all the convenient things we can teleport, of course, now, you could teleport a bomb into a building at any time, and nothing, what can you do to stop it, you know, like, what's that world like? Is, or is that worth the trade?

• 33:44Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, it's, it's too scary and powerful, if it works as it possibly can, but, I mean, if I was in control of it, then I wouldn't be teleporting bombs, but, yeah, I mean, who knows, they could, somebody could steal that technology, so, yeah, this is very problematic, but it's just an interesting idea, I've never, I've never considered, if you've got that wish, through the, you know, the people running the simulation, then it's an interesting idea to consider, and the ramifications are fascinating.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  You'd have to have an anti-tunneling field that would prevent it from happening.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  Or make it traceable, where you knew where it came from, even if you could tell, like, someone did it, and that at least would be something you could investigate, who did what, where, when, and why.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it'd be privacy, we'd become, we have a privacy problem now, we don't even have quantum tunneling, so, yeah, it'd be, it's crazy, Bob.

• 34:28Bob Novella?

  It's a fun idea, it's a fun idea, though.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Either of you guys have another runner-up?

• 34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do, I, this is a weird one, I'm not sure where it's going to go with it, I've just, I've been toying this with my head. All of the, making all of these really small constants that we have, like, the Planck length, the Planck time, the limits on Heisenberg uncertainty, shrink them by, like, many orders of magnitude, make them super tiny, and what can we get out of that? You know, like, is, we can measure super-precise things, can we measure things like gravitational waves better, can we measure things that are off in the distance of space, like, the positions of particles off galaxies away, something crazy, where you can, and more than just observation could be, of space could be changed, and where the things that you could make at a small scale, like, I don't know, make

• 35:15Speaker 04

  atoms smaller, I don't know, but like, but, but something where you can make even smaller microchips, but like, the weirder things are like, like, what if you could observe the interesting dynamics of, like, a nebula, like, galaxies away, and when you have, like, these really complex nonlinear systems, they can do weird things. I, I have a, there's chaos, and, but like, I work on a research project now, there's this concept called physical reservoir computing, where, basically, if you have a nonlinear system, say, like, a bucket of water that's swirling around, okay, you have, you can measure certain parts of it, and there's always, like, nonlinear interactions that you can have. Well, these nonlinear interactions, you can analogize them to an artificial neural network. So,

• 35:59Speaker 04

  in a weird way, you can get a bucket of water to think, compute, and people have done things like this, I saw a talk where a guy said, here's a weird nonlinear process, like, like, something happening with mayonnaise over time, it's like, we got mayonnaise to think very slowly, but the, but if you had this massive thing the size of a nebula, and you had, like, you, the idea is you put some input into it, and then things start happening on the output, and if you measure the right spots, you could have it do the thinking for you. So, and so, I don't know, this is a wild idea, it's like, what if you could do that with something the size of a nebula, but so far away, you could never measure it, but now you could. And so, it's, again, it's a weird one.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  But there are all kinds of strange implications that might come out of just shrinking those constants super-small.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  So, let me ask you a question, if you had a large enough bucket of mayonnaise, could it become conscious?

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:49Bob Novella?

  Is that the Love, Death and Robots episode about the sentient tapioca?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Sentient tapioca.

• 36:54Bob Novella?

  That was a great episode.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  I mean, like, I mean, in all seriousness, I mean, like, there's, in, in neural networks, there's something called the universal approximation theorem, I don't recall the exact lemmas of it, but like, it's, but, but basically, saying, if you have enough neurons in, in a deep enough network with enough stuff in them, it can approximate, basically, anything. Not, anything could include consciousness, if it's big enough, and might be impossible to train with current technology, but those things could happen, and it could theoretically be mayonnaise.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  I mean, a big consciousness, could that be, can do a hive mind?

• 37:24Speaker 04

  I mean, what's, like, it could be hive mind, I mean, what do people talk about, Boltzmann machines, is that what they're called, right? You know, that's like, where the idea of, like, a big nebula could theoretically, like, be a brain, or the universe is like a brain or something, right? And, and like, and it could be lots of little ones interacting, that could be how it works, you know, but like, these big systems, I mean, I'm not trying to get too kooky on it, but like, I, once I started messing with these systems, like, this is, there is weird stuff going on, like, even with nonlinear systems that are like, you know, we would connect weird springs to each other, and we're like, oh, can we get one signal in, one signal out?

• 37:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  You kind of can, so...

• 37:58Bob Novella?

  Boltzmann brains, that, that rings a bell, I mean, is, aren't they usually discussed in, in the context of, like, the, the heat death of the universe, and how the universe, during this point in time, where you've got so much time passing, that you can't even, I mean, a Google to the Google to the Google years, where crazy things can happen, because this, out of probability, crazy things could happen with the, you know, with, with the, with the, I don't know, how that, trying to remember how that worked, but they theorize that you could potentially have a Boltzmann brain kind of emerge out of, out of nothing in this vast extensive time, that could, that could be self-aware for a period of time, I don't know, that's, that's where I think Boltzmann brains come from.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, my...

• 38:42Bob Novella?

  Theoretically, but it's just, it's an interesting concept.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I, I'm not super well in, read into it, I imagine, at some point, the heat death of the universe would prevent anything like that happen, eventually, just everything sort of becomes inert, but like, so you might be in a race against heat death of the universe, but some point before that, a Boltzmann brain type thing could emerge.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  I mean, think about how depressed you'd be if you become conscious and you realize you're a glob of mayonnaise floating in outer space.

• 39:05Bob Novella?

  At the end of time.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  At the end of time. I got another one, Steve. All right. What do you think about if we, again, people that just came in were talking about like altering the laws of physics to make cool things happen, or you know, like anti-gravity or whatever. What about quadrupling the periodic table? Yeah. Making it so like-

• 39:25Bob Novella?

  I was thinking about that, Jay. I was thinking about the exact thing.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Because all we do is, you know, the material sciences, like we're trying to like figure out ways to use these different things for different properties and all that stuff. And if we had more things-

• 39:37Speaker 04

  And they were stable, Jay.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  No, I'm talking about like 10 different versions of a metal, like that's cool, like does things like gold, but has different properties.

• 39:46Bob Novella?

  So more isotopes? I mean, you gotta, you gotta change atomic physics, man. That's scary.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Well, what about getting bigger? What about like, I thought you meant, Jay, when you said that, like, like making like, oh, we have atomic number 450.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:59Speaker 04

  That's what I thought. And because we got all like, we got all those cool properties of these things, like uranium, when we discovered that, like, oh, look at all we can do. What would you do if you had atomic number 400 and it didn't disappear instantly?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, right. Actually, that's very close to what I was gonna say is the sort of the final run over before we stop, which was not that specifically, but what about just, I would like the- Island of Stability? Well, something that makes it possible to have either like Krell metal, unobtanium, whatever, the magical metal, like metal that is 100 times stronger than steel and lighter than steel with a greater specific, the thing that we would then build everything out of if we, if we actually had it.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Unobtanium.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, unobtanium, basically. Or what's the Wakanda metal? Vibranium? Vibranium, yeah. Something like that. Basically, the, all of, it's mithril, unobtanium, vibranium, you know, type, you know, all that stuff.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Naquadah and Stargate and Noradria.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Unobtanium, though, like floats. So it could be like an, it's an anti-grav-

• 40:55Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  -metal. But there's a reason why so many different sci-fi genres have that metal, because we kinda need it, right? We need something that we could build ships out of that will block the radiation, that's light enough and strong, whatever. Dwarves need armor, and it has to be mithril, right? Like, it's like they need it, right? Right. So I'll take just that one element, you know, maybe there's an island of stability that creates unobtanium. But I wasn't thinking, we could just have 400 new elements and then with all kinds of crazy properties.

• 41:24Bob Novella?

  But can you, but can you imagine those, those, those nucleons, though? I mean, we're talking, what, 200 protons and, and 300 neutrons in, in, in these atoms?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  And yet I'm imagining it, Bob.

• 41:37Bob Novella?

  Can you imagine, like, oh, look, I can see the atom, because it's, it's so big that I can actually see the one atom with my naked eye type of crazy crap. Wow. I mean, I'd be scared with messing with that kind of stuff, because who knows how that, those ramifications would bleed down to the, to the, to the elements that we love and interact with.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  But you're okay with quantum tunneling, though.

• 41:56Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean, I threw my caveats in there. I threw my caveats.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  All right. Well, unfortunately, this is never gonna happen, but it's a fun thought experiment.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  So we're now gonna end this extended discussion and get back to our, our main show. Well, everyone, we're gonna take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quince. Yeah, guys, we talk about Quince a lot, and, you know, we keep them as an advertiser like this because we really do love their products and, and shop there. You know, whenever I need clothes, they're my first stop. Quince makes premium pants, they have fitted tees and polos, Mongolian cashmere sweaters, you know, these are starting at $60. Their prices are, are very, very good if you compare them to, to other brands. You know, if you buy a high-quality t-shirt, that t-shirt could be worn in lots of different circumstances. And I typically now wear t-shirts underneath a nice blazer. And Quince's t-shirts are

• 42:50Speaker 01

  perfect for that, so I recommend that you check it out. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/sgu. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/sgu. All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Let's move on to some news items. How many people here have heard about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope?

• 43:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. This was kind of, from my perspective, kind of a stealth telescope. The James Webb had all kinds of press and hype leading up to it. And I found out about this when it launched. I was just surprised that there wasn't a more, I mean, Christian, have you been following this, or?

• 43:38Speaker 04

  No, this stuck up on me, too. I mean, it wasn't on my radar, which is like, kinda shocking.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:43Bob Novella?

  I'm sure, though, if you were really plugged in-

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 43:45Bob Novella?

  You would be aware of it. But yeah, I'm surprised it didn't raise to our level

• 43:48Speaker 01

  It didn't filter down to our level.

• 43:50Jay Novella?

  One of the, I'm on the NASA site every week looking at news items. I did not see anything about this.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  Like a startup stealth launch? What was going on here?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what is it, what is this telescope? This is a wide-angle infrared telescope. It has a 3.4-meter mirror, so the same size mirror as the Hubble. But now, the first thing people ask, what's it, how is it better than the existing telescopes? That's not the point of this. The best way to think about this is that this is complementary to existing space telescopes. And this is meant to work as an integrated system. So, for example, you have the James Webb Telescope, which is really good at looking deep into space. You have the Hubble, which can look in other wavelengths, visible light and other wavelengths

• 44:38Speaker 01

  as well, UV, et cetera, but is also very good at focusing on, on specific objects. And now you have the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, which has, is good at looking at a lot of space all at once. So you'll be able to get high-definition images of a large patch of space. So why is that helpful to, and why is that, you know, complementary to the other telescopes? So, for example, the Roman Telescope can survey a patch of sky 1,000 times faster than the Hubble, 1,000 times faster, which means in its five-year mission, it has a five-year mission, just like the Enterprise, by the way, five-year mission, it can, it

• 45:21Speaker 01

  can survey as much of the sky as the Hubble would in 1,000 years, like a crazy amount of time. So that's good for two things. One, just for finding cool stuff, right? You can have, it's a big universe out there. We have a lot of sky to cover. And when it does find something interesting, then we could point the Webb and point the Hubble at that thing to gather more information. So that's how they are designed to work together. Also, if the Hubble finds something interesting, then we could point the Roman Telescope and say, well, let's look at the environs around that thing, right? Let's, yeah, let's see what's, what space is like, what's happening in the, all of the area around it. So this

• 46:01Speaker 01

  is going to be used to construct a three-dimensional map of the universe, which we're already doing, but this will accelerate that process phenomenally, right? So not just like a picture of the universe, but actually constructing a three-dimensional map. And the other main, it also has, another piece of equipment on the Roman Telescope is a coronagraph. Do you guys know what that's for?

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Bob does? Yeah. That is for looking for exoplanets. And I remember, this was in Cosmos from the 80s, remember Carl Sagan did that demonstration where you move the thing in front of the sun, the light bulb, which is pretending to be a star, and then, then you could see an exoplanet, because you're blocking the glare. That's what this is gonna do. The Roman Telescope is designed to do that, which is why it has to move really, really precisely to be able to just occlude a, a star. And then we'll be able to see exoplanets. Now, what's, this is again, complementary to other mechanisms that we use to find exoplanets. This will be able to find smaller ones, smaller exoplanets, and ones that are further from their host star. Right now, we're really good at finding hot Jupiters, right? We're

• 47:11Speaker 01

  good at finding planets, exoplanets, that are big and close to their parent star.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  The transit method, right? That blocks, it blocks the light and you could-

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Through, well, through the transit method, that favors those two.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  We also are good at looking at wobbles, which, but, which-

• 47:25Speaker 04

  Gravity, yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Then that's also favors bigger planets, bigger planets, exoplanets give you a bigger wobble. So this is gonna really start to, to find planets that we currently are not good at seeing, and will give us much more information about the composition, not just, oh, here's an exoplanet, but here's all the exoplanets in this system. This is what, this is the composition of this stellar system. And so we'll learn a lot more about how these systems evolve-

• 47:51Speaker 04

  And also, like, how extraordinary is our solar system compared to all these others? Once we have the full complement of planets around other exoplanets.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, how unique or rare is our solar system?

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  We don't really know the answer to that question yet.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  It might be common. It seems rare at this point, but we, we have a biased selection. We don't know how, you know, how unique or how common we are.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, very biased sample.

• 48:09Jay Novella?

  Steve, did he also mention, like, is- Is it a trillion pixel camera on there? It was incredibly large.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  It wasn't a trillion, it was, it was gigapixels though, in totality. But it's able to take a number of like megapixel images, like I think it's 100 megapixels. It's huge. It's, it's, it's, you know, every time we set up a new telescope, it has better technology than the one before it, obviously. So we're positioning this telescope at the, just very, this is a little nerdy point, at the L2 Lagrange point.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  I was just gonna ask where if it was at a Lagrange point. I was so excited.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's at the L2. Do you guys remember, there's five Lagrange points for any two-body system. Right, so what is a Lagrange point? Basically means it's a, if you have a two-body system, there have overlapping gravitational fields, like the four, there are gravitational forces. There are different points in that system where the gravity is essentially like a well, right? So like the bottom, being at the bottom of a valley. So things will tend to collect at those points. There's the L1 point, like if you have the Earth and the Sun, the L1 point is between the Earth and the Sun. The L2 point is farther away from, from the Sun, from the Earth. Then you have L3, which I think is ahead of the Earth in its orbit. L4, which is behind it in the orbit.

• 49:22Jay Novella?

  So there's no gravity there?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  It's not that there's no gravity, it's that the gravitational forces cancel out and then, so it's like anything.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  It would take energy to get out of that gravity well.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the bottom, think of it as being in the bottom of a well, right? Yeah, things will tend to fall into there. But, these points are not always perfectly stable. Because, there's other things in the solar system, right? It's not just the Earth and the, and the Sun. The Moon is there, the other planets are there. And those other things cause gravitational disturbances, right? There's a disturbance in the force of gravity. And, that will tend to cause anything at one of the Lagrange points to drift away. It's actually, the telescope, the Webb is also at the L2, but they're not in the L2 point. They're orbiting it, right? So now you think, you know those things where you drop the quarter in and it goes around? They demonstrating the gravity well?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  That's what, these are, these are orbiting the L2, Webb and Roman are both orbiting the L2 Lagrange point. And they're specifically in orbits, actually, Roman's not there yet, it's a million miles away, it'll take a few months to get there. When it get, when it settles into its orbit, it will specifically be far away from the Webb so they don't interfere with each other.

• 50:29Jay Novella?

  How big is, are these Lagrange points?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Um, well, it's a point. Um, but, it's, you know what I'm saying?

• 50:35Jay Novella?

  That was a really dumb question.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  No, I, I, but, what is the effective radius around a Lagrange point?

• 50:42Jay Novella?

  That's exactly, that's exactly what I was thinking.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  The, the, uh, the Roman telescope will be orbiting at about, uh, 250,000 miles away. So about the same distance as the Earth, the Moon is from this, from the, from the Earth.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  Is that far from the Lagrange point?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it'll be orbiting around the Lagrange point at about a quarter of a million miles.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  I know, it's so big. I, I thought it's maybe like a garbage patch in the future.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 51:05Jay Novella?

  You could have a lot of stuff in the Lagrange point.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could put a lot of stuff in orbit around that Lagrange point. Now, but again, it will tend to drift away if you, if we didn't have, uh, rockets to keep it into place.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  Station keeping, yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it has to be, it has to keep it from drifting, so-called station keeping. And the, uh, there's enough fuel on the Roman telescope to keep it in position for 10 years. So that is the absolute limit on its lifespan. However, NASA built in a refueling port on the Roman telescope.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Even though, we currently do not have anything that can refuel it.

• 51:43Jay Novella?

  But still, that's cool.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  So they are, they are, as you say, betting on the come, right? They are, say, alright, if in the next 10 years, we develop a rocket that can get to the Roman telescope and refuel it, we'll have a refueling port there, ready to go. Now, I was, interesting, Bob asked me a question, I didn't know the answer to, so I looked it up. Like, well, how do we have to refuel it before it runs out of fuel? If it completely runs out of fuel, how long will it take before we no longer can rescue the Roman telescope? And the answer is really just a few months. Maybe a year at the outside. After that, it will be tumbling, and it will have drifted too far away from its orbit, that it will be unrecoverable. So basically, we gotta get to it.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  Reasonable technology.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  We gotta get to it in 10 years, if we're going to extend its lifespan. But then we could theoretically extend its lifespan for a lot longer. It's, the, the equipment is all run by solar panels, which could last 30, 40 years.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Oh, that's gonna be a documentary on Netflix called Rescuing Roman in 10 Years?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Alright, Christian, tell us about training baby robots.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  Yes, of course. What else would I talk about? So, so I have a question, so, so question, people who are parents, and I guess you, all of you are, are parents. Have you ever heard of the mobile paradigm? I'd say, you're, you're, you're, you don't count Steve, I guess, because you know all this stuff.

• 53:05Jay Novella?

  Related to the Mobius strip?

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, uh, uh, uh, mobile. Mobile, like, like, as in Alabama? Like Alabama?

• 53:11Jay Novella?

  M-O-B-I-L-E.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  L-E, mobile.

• 53:13Jay Novella?

  I haven't heard of it.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  Okay, so, well, you know a mobile in a crib? You know, spinning thing over a crib? I mean, maybe Steve, actually, I, I know I just dissed you, but, uh, but maybe you could give your, what's your understanding of the moba, of the mobile paradigm?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's supposed to be neurodevelopmental, right? You wanna stimulate the child, give them something three-dimensional to look at, to manipulate. They learn that they can manipulate things and what the cause and effect is. So it's just, it's supposed to enhance neurodevelopment.

• 53:37Jay Novella?

  And also, shapes and colors, right, are also a good part of this?

• 53:39Speaker 04

  Or specifically, so, one of the key experiments from my reading of this, is the idea is that if you take a baby, you put a baby in a crib, and they have a little spinning mobile above them. And you say, attach an arm or a leg, like with a ribbon, up to the mobile. So they see that like, and if they were to move that arm, it'll move the mobile, okay? And these experiments will show that, that these babies who, you know, at around three-ish months, four-ish months, will start to, will move the mob, the limb attached to the mobile more than the limbs that aren't attached to the mobile.

• 54:11Jay Novella?

  But maybe they're just trying to get their arm free?

• 54:13Speaker 04

  It, uh, you can take that up with the experimenters, Jay. That's a good question. So, it's, it's possible, they just wanna break free. But, uh, but, but this is seen as one of the, one of the paradigmatic studies, one of the key, you know, one of the keys of understanding what they call contingent learning. And that's what Steve was talking about. When we talk about contingent, we don't mean like, oh, what happens if something, something goes wrong? What's the contingency? We mean that one thing is contingent upon another thing. Cause and effect, this thing causes effect. So this is, the whole field is called contingent learning. And that's, and this, this is understanding of developmental, um, neurology, or, that's the right, that's the right phrase here.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  And the idea is, it was like, this is, these are all interesting theories of, of understanding, uh, and aggregating data and understanding of how babies learn. But how would you test novel theories, or different implementations of a theory, different terms in the theory? How would you test that when a baby is just gonna learn how the baby learns? How do you change the learning algorithm of a baby? You don't. You make a robot instead, with, give it a different learning algorithm. So in this study, between researchers at the University of Hamburg and the Czech Technical University, they did a study, and I love the title of it, it's called Robot in a Crib. Right, so, Robot in a Crib is the title. And, and they put a little baby-looking robot called the iCub.

• 55:35Speaker 04

  I've seen it before, like, oh, they got an iCub. They, and they put it in a crib, and put a mobile above it. And the little mobile has little QR codes on it, okay? So, the camera can see this mobile, and what did they do? They do one of these experiments where they attach one of the limbs with a string to the mobile. And they equipped it with a very, with a very particular, their own, their own brand of machine learning algorithm, deep learning algorithm, to try to get this robot to learn how to predict the motion of this mobile. So they're trying to predict it. And the thing is that what they wanted to see is if they come up with different artifacts of the mobile paradigm, if they pop out of this robot learning algorithm when it's done. And turns out that they did, to the best of my understanding.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  And it was published, the study was just published, um, in Science Robotics. And what they found, what was, was very important, that the robot came up with a new strategy to both explore, be curious, but also exploit what it's learned. And this is a classic concept in robot learning, or in machine learning in general, this explore versus exploit, uh, conundrum. If you think you know everything, you can try to exploit that information to do as best you can. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna move my arm around, because I know that, that arm will move around, right? Or I could explore around, do all kinds of stuff, and maybe I don't do very well, but I might discover something new.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  And, they found this explore-exploit trade-off coming out of their algorithm, for this little robot baby that was kicking around. And so, they posit that this is a nice little platform where you could try different variants of these algorithms to see if they better match how babies learn in the crib. And you also get this only creepy-looking, kinda creepy-looking baby in a crib. That's what you got. So I thought that was pretty interesting. I, if I had known this, I would have taken my son's leg and tied it to a mobile, and then, set up a webcam, and have what may.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  It kinda reminds me of the movie Robots, where they, you know, how like they're, they are born as baby robots? Born, you know, they're created, and then they have to get, they get their replacement parts where they get bigger and bigger? Which, is it cartoonish? But when you think about it, you know, maybe, the best way to train embodied AI, embodied meaning the AI is in a robot, it's receiving sensory information and it's controlling the physical world, is to have it learn like people learn, by interacting with the world around them and going, that would imply going through a stages like people go through. So it's not unreasonable to grow robots that you want to have, right? So the AI learns to be a robot?

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a field called lifelong learning in robotics. And now the robots are not growing per se. Uh, but that is a goal because currently the dominant paradigm in robot control is deep reinforcement learning for a lot of different, a lot of different approaches to robotics.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 58:28Speaker 04

  So that is an approach where you take a robot and you specifically train it in a computer simulation, okay? You build a pretty good computer simulation, you put your robot in there, and not just one robot, you put thousands of copies of that robot. And you give it a task which you define via a reward function, you know, like you, you give, it's like you give it a cookie if it did well, right? And that cookie happens to just be a numeric function. And over generations, it'll train a neural network to better achieve that reward. And then when it's done, you're like, wow, great. If my simulation was good enough and my training was good enough, I can take this neural network that was learned in the computer simulation, and then I can transfer that in one shot to the robot and hopefully it works.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  And that's how you get like Michael Jackson dancing robots these days. They're using that approach. But it's not doing anything that you're talking about, Steve. It's not, it, it is not like growing with a body. And also, it's not trying to learn cause and effect in the way that this contingency learning is, is learning, okay? Or like this mobile paradigm. It's just saying, if I do this thing, good things happen. Not, if I do this thing, it causes this and then maybe a good things happen, which is good if you want to have an agent that's capable of interacting in the world in a predictable way.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Right. And also dealing with the chaos of the actual world, not a specific task in a controlled environment.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  Also that, for sure.

• 59:54Bob Novella?

  And they can interact with, you have people on there as well, interacting, you know, realistically, because they're real, they're real people.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Christian, does the reward actually matter?

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  The, the reward matters a ton. Like literally, like, uh, if you talk to a researcher who's working on deep reinforcement learning, the, I will always ask the questions, like, how much do you tune the reward function? And a lot of times you'll get like a sheepish grin of like, a lot. You know, basically, because the reward function is like, I'll say it's for walking, it's like, move forward, don't fall down, and do this, and do that, and do that. And each of those ands are little plus signs between terms in an equation, which are all multiplied by some number. Who chose that number? Some guy, some gal chose that number. Is that a good number? Who knows? So it matters a ton, right? And you have to turn the thing you want to do into an equation. That's not always trivial.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  There are a lot of interesting techniques to get rid of that step. There's all, frankly, the most popular one is to, don't give a reward for the task, just tell it, do what that person's doing. Give it a ton of informations on people, imitate a person. And right now, we're currently, and there's a lot of human imitation going on in the control, but totally, Jay, the reward matters a lot. It's a great question.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jay, just to put it in terms you can understand, like, the, you wanting to eat spaghetti and meatballs has a reward function. And you wanting to maintain a thin profile is a different reward function. And the question is, which one has a bigger number?

• 1:01:19Jay Novella?

  Can you, it's too complicated, dumb it down for me.

• 1:01:23Bob Novella?

  Meatball, good.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the real, the real point, though, is that, that, that there's a lot of analogies between how neurological function and AI and robotic function. And it seems to me, at least in broad brushstrokes, that, you know, because again, 30, 40 years ago, the thinking was, oh, we need to make robots really smart in order to get them to walk. And like, well, that's not how we walk though, right? You don't have to think about walking. And, and then robotic, robotics evolved it more in sort of a neurological direction. It's like, you just need a subconscious sort of network that knows how to do this task. It doesn't need artificial general intelligence to be able to do this task. So it's, you're getting kind of a hierarchical organization that's not dissimilar to our

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  own brains, right?

• 1:02:10Bob Novella?

  I'll never forget, years ago, I read-

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Gotta say yes, it's a podcast.

• 1:02:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yes, yes. Years ago, I read about a program using genetic algorithms to evolve these connected cubes of, of a virtual substances to, uh, to, to, to locomote on the ground, to move on the ground. And they said, they said to the program, get from point A to point B and do it any way you can. So we're using these genetic, genetic algorithms, it evolved over time. And some of them developed multiple legs to run fast and it was very efficient. But some of them came up with very novel, novel ideas. One robot grew really tall and then it fell in such a way that it could go up and, and move in, in, you know, to the left and get to the, and to get to that destination. So it solved the problem in a, in a creative way that no programmer in his right mind would have thought about.

• 1:02:57Bob Novella?

  But, and that, that's probably not a good way for robots to move, but it, it just shows you that these genetic algorithms-

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  But you know, babies do that sometimes, too. Some babies learn how to scoot. Ever seen a baby do that? And sometimes they get really good at scooting.

• 1:03:10Bob Novella?

  On their butt, right?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  And, yeah, they just sort of scoot on their butt. And, and then it delays their walking because they can get where they want to go by being really good scooters, you know?

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, we call those local minima in the optimization world, right? Locally, these are good, but globally, there's a better solution and we can't define.

• 1:03:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah, you don't want to take scooting into adulthood, trust me.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  All right, Bob, you're gonna reproduce for us the, the great Galileo leaning tower of Pisa experiment.

• 1:03:36Bob Novella?

  All right. So this is fascinating stuff. So researchers recently redid the legendary experiment by Galileo where he dropped the weights from the leaning tower of Pisa, right? Uh, what I love about this story, and they did it in space, by the way, am I burying the lead there? They did it in space. So it was just a fascinating experiment. But what I really love about this, this, uh, this study, though, was that it was, it shows that this very simple idea could lead to something dramatic, like redefining what gravity is and the creation of general relativity. So I love that connection. So I'm sure you all remember, uh, 17th century, Galileo dropped apocryphally, you know, he, he maybe did it, we're not quite sure. But the idea, the story goes that he dropped the heavy and the lightweight and they fell

• 1:04:19Bob Novella?

  and they hit the ground at the same time, even though one was very heavy and one was very light. My favorite demonstration of this is on, when they did it on the moon. Do you remember they had a hammer and a feather? And they dropped it on the moon and it fell and hit the ground at the same time. And of course, with no atmosphere, the air resistance was not a factor. So the feather fell just as fast. And it's just an amazing, an amazing video. So, and then, so now what this study is about is on the Chinese space station, Tiangong, uh, they did this experiment, but with quantum objects. They used two different clouds of rubidium atoms. They were different isotopes, so one was heavier than the other one. And in the experiment, they were falling, uh, for, for much longer than they have in, in, uh, experiments on Earth.

• 1:05:02Bob Novella?

  Uh, it was within the experimental apparatus, so they fell for maybe 10 or 12 seconds, which was a long time. They did that over and over and over, averaged the results. Uh, they found that, you know, they fell at the same rate to five parts in 10 million, the different rubidium atom, atom clouds. Now I have to do a skull demo, because when do you get a chance to do this experiment? But I'm doing it with skulls. I've got a heavy metal skull and a light wax skull.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Why do you have those?

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Don't, that's, you don't want to go down that-

• 1:05:30Bob Novella?

  You don't want to go down that rabbit hole. So let's do the experiment real, real fast here. I hope I can let go of them at the same time. So, boom, hit the ground at the same time for those-

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Now, does that have the same precision as the rubidium atom experiment?

• 1:05:43Bob Novella?

  This was only accurate within, with four parts per 10 million. So it was not quite, not quite there. So what's happening here? What, what is happening here? What is this demonstration of? It's a demonstration of the idea that within Newtonian mechanics, mass reveals itself in two different ways. You've got gravitational mass, which is how an object responds to a gravitational field. So then there's inertial mass, and that's the resistance of an object to acceleration. So those, those are two ways that mass is divined in, in Newtonian mechanics. So what's happening, what's happening is this with, with the skulls. You've got a skull that's being pulled by gravity more strongly, but it resists acceleration. You've got the opposite with the wax skull.

• 1:06:25Bob Novella?

  It's, it's not being pulled by gravity very strongly, but it, it does not resist acceleration nearly as much. So these two effects perfectly cancel themselves out as it's falling. And as this experiment and other experiments have shown, gravitational mass and inertial mass are identical, absolutely identical, as far as we could tell with our scientific methods, uh, that we have. So, uh, even Newton's, Newton's equations show the same exact thing. Acceleration and gravity are, are the same. So for Newton, it was like, here's my equations, you know, what else do you want? But Einstein, thinking about this, was like, why? Why are these two things, why is nature's different types of mass? Why are they absolutely identical? They don't have to be identical. There's no reason for them to be identical.

• 1:07:10Bob Novella?

  So he was thinking, what's, there might be some underlying, some fundamental reason in nature why these, why that is, why that is so. So then we come to his, his thought experiments, Einstein's famous thought experiments. So guys, what happens in free fall, in terms of gravity? What happens in free fall?

• 1:07:26Jay Novella?

  You scream, you're falling.

• 1:07:29Bob Novella?

  Screaming, after they're screaming, but what's really, what's happening when you're free-falling, gravity seems to disappear, right? You could be falling down with this very light skull, and you're both free-falling. Gravity is there, but there's no experiment you could really do to show that gravity is there, because you're all weightless.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  You're in an inertial frame of reference.

• 1:07:50Bob Novella?

  Right. So, when Einstein was thinking about this, it's like, he was thinking that gravity and acceleration can be two sides of the same thing. So that's one of his thought experiments. The other one was his famous elevator, his elevator thought experiments. Imagine an elevator in space accelerating at 1G. If you shine a light beam into that elevator, the light beam hits the elevator, and as the elevator's increasing, the light beam is going to continue, and to an observer in the elevator, it's going to look like it's curving. To Einstein, that meant, well, that means if there's an equivalence between gravity and acceleration, then gravity should cause this curvature as well. So gravity could curve light as well, and we know that's exactly what gravity does.

• 1:08:34Bob Novella?

  So the point here is that these were these critical conceptual jumping points that led to ultimately to general relativity. This very simple experiment showed that gravity isn't a regular force. It is absolutely different from the strong force and the weak force, electromagnetism. It's fundamentally a different thing. Also, that matter and energy curve spacetime was the other huge insight. And objects and light in space follow the geometry of spacetime. That's why it's curved, which we experience, which we see as gravity. So this leads to one of my favorite quotes. "Matter and energy tell spacetime how to curve. Curved spacetime tells matter and energy how to move." Think about that.

• 1:09:17Bob Novella?

  That's kind of a distillation of general relativity. So I'll end, Steve, with this. So remarkably, just the fact that a heavy and a light object hit the ground at the same time contained one of the critical clues that redefined gravity for us, for scientists, for the world, and ultimately led to general relativity, one of the greatest theories. So that's why this experiment was so fun to learn about.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is amazing to think that that little experiment basically led to general relativity. Did you follow the implications all the way through to the end?

• 1:09:47Bob Novella?

  Yeah, there was a lot to it, but those were the critical leaps.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  There were steps along the way.

• 1:09:51Bob Novella?

  Absolutely, lots of steps.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  All right. We have enough time to play one of our favorite games, Science or Fiction?

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Now, in this game, I'm going to give you two items that are true and one that is fake, and you have to tell me which one is fake. We're going to first, so no information from the peanut gallery, we're going to get the opinions of the people on the stage first, then I'll ask you guys what you think. Now, there's a theme. The theme, again, I tried to go with the Dragon Con-esque theme. The theme is, these are all stories of science fiction, and all from the 19th century, that remarkably predicted true later technology. Okay?

• 1:10:45Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  And remember, two of these are true. All right, so, item number one, in 1865, in an 1865 novel, and its sequel, Jules Verne described launching a manned capsule from Florida, which flew around the moon, altered its course with retro-rockets, splashed down in the Pacific, and was recovered by the US Navy. Item number two, Mark Twain anticipated the Internet in 1898, imagining the tele-electroscope, a global network of telephone lines people could use to access news in real time and chat with others from their own home.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  And item number three, in his 1868 utopian novel, Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy predicted the credit card, a small card that would electronically track transactions for a rolling line of credit. Okay, we're going to start, to my left, with Christian. So, Christian, tell me which one of these, I just caution you, if you have absolute knowledge, don't give it away, but just give your reason for which one of these you think is the fiction.

• 1:11:55Speaker 04

  Excellent. Well, good news for you, I do not have absolute knowledge on this, bad news for me. So, thinking of these three things you put out there, one of them has to be completely made up, or, I mean, it's hard, I wonder, it's hard to make like, one detail change, Steve, I'm trying to get on to your tactics.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  It's always, you're not as familiar with the game as Jay and Bob are, but it's always different enough, it's never like, oh, this one subtle insignificant thing. It's got to be significantly different.

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm a big fan, Steve, don't get me wrong, I know, I'm just trying to play your game. Number one, this whole Apollo mission prediction, that sounds so Jules Vernean. That sounds so Jules Verne. And so, I'm going to go, I'm not going to double second-guess myself, I think I know where I'm going with this one, okay? I'm going to go with number one's all right. I think that's the science, all right? Number two, Mark Twain predicting the Internet? The fact that I haven't heard of this is astounding to me, if it's true. So, I'm leaning, I'm skeptical of that one.

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  Number three, this whole credit card thing, that's so obscure, so obscure, that it feels like it could be true. Obviously, Steve plays games, as we know, and it could be he predicted Venmo, I don't know. But, so I'm going to go with number two, I'm going to go with my first gut instinct that if Mark Twain predicted the Internet, I'll be happy to be wrong, because I'm happy to tell that at every lecture I give.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Okay, Jay? I agree with Christian on the first one, I think Jules Verne could have come up with that idea of going around the moon and everything. He did spend time thinking about those things, and I don't think it's crazy for him to have of lots of predictions that were made, that he came up with something like that. Moving on to Mark Twain, you know, Mark Twain was very prolific, he was a philosopher, basically, you know, he had a lot of opinions on a lot of different things, and he was a novel thinker. So it doesn't really surprise me that he could have come up with this idea. It's not like he predicted the Internet, really, it was more of like, just a way for people to communicate with each other. It makes it sound a lot more impactful if you say it's the Internet he predicted, it really doesn't feel like that to me. So I don't know.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I agree with Christian, would have heard of it, you know, I have to question that, it's always a good thing to think about when you're trying to suss out something like this, but I think because there's so much, there's so many things that Mark Twain wrote about and talked about and wrote letters about and everything, it's not impossible to miss something like that. So I think that one is likely science as well. So I'm going to go with the third one is fiction. I just don't think someone predicting the credit card isn't just like, hey, I have a credit card, I'm sure you didn't call it that, but you have like, a rolling ledger that you walk around with or whatever. I think, it seems to me that that description you gave is very much of oversimplification of just how amazingly complicated the whole thing is, and I don't think that person really made a strong prediction, I think that one's the fiction.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Okay, and Bob?

• 1:14:53Bob Novella?

  For Mark Twain, I'm buying, thanks, I'm buying the Mark Twain one, I mean, it's Mark Twain, first of all, and the premise here is, you know, a global network of telephone lines. So it seems, doesn't seem too unreasonable to extrapolate that to something where you can share, you know, news and things like that. And so this one doesn't bother me as much as the other two. For Jules Verne, you know, if you said that he was talking about using a cannon, right, to shoot a capsule to the moon, I would believe it, but the idea that you actually, he actually thought of retro-rockets in 1865, and also the splash down in the Pacific and the US Navy, I'm like, wow, I've never seen that, I don't know if I believe that.

• 1:15:37Bob Novella?

  The third one here, the credit card, not familiar with that prediction, so it's one of those two. I'm going to go with, I had never heard of anyone predicting retro-rockets and, you know, US Navy picking up the splash-down capsule. I've never even remotely read anything about Jules Verne about that, I'll just have to say that one's fiction.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Oh, so we're all spread out, that's awesome. So now I'm going to survey the audience really quickly. The way we do this is I, I'm going to bring my hand down like this, when I get to hear, you clap for the one you think is the fiction. We're going to practice, all right, clap when I get to hear. Perfect, eh, not perfect, but good enough.

• 1:16:16Bob Novella?

  Almost.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  All right. So if you think that the Jules Verne one about going to the moon is the fiction, clap. If you think that the Mark Twain predicting the Internet is the fiction, clap. And if you think that the credit card is the fiction, clap.

• 1:16:33Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  That's pretty even. Which, to me, that's a victory, that it's even.

• 1:16:40Bob Novella?

  One and three.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:16:42Bob Novella?

  I'd give it to one and three.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit, maybe three a little bit, but it was pretty even. I'm going to take these in order.

• 1:16:48Bob Novella?

  Uh-oh, what does that mean?

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean anything, just take them in order. In an 1865 novel, and its sequel, Jules Verne described launching a manned capsule from Florida, which flew around the moon, altered its course with retro-rockets, splashed down in the Pacific, and was recovered by the US Navy. Bob thinks that's just too close to reality, too much, and he thinks that's the fiction. Jay and Christian think that one is science, and that one is science.

• 1:17:16Bob Novella?

  Damn it.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  That is amazing that he put all of that.

• 1:17:20Bob Novella?

  What the hell? I knew it meant something going first.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Now, I didn't say he launched the capsule with rockets.

• 1:17:27Bob Novella?

  No, I noticed that.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, the capsule was launched with a giant cannon, but he did have retro-rockets on the capsule to land on the moon.

• 1:17:38Bob Novella?

  Oh, you didn't say that.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  That's awesome. But he didn't, they didn't land on the moon, because their course, they were sent off course by interacting with a meteor, and they had to correct their course with the retro-rockets they would have used to land on the moon. But they weren't, they didn't get it quite right, and they just whipped around the earth and the moon and came back to the earth, lucky for them. And then they splashed down. Now, of course, the G-forces of the cannon launch would have killed them all, and splashing down without parachutes would have killed them also. And but Verne did do some calculations of orbital mechanics and G-forces, he just got it wrong, but he did try, he did try. So, but yeah, but all those details, launching from Florida, splashing down the Pacific, using rockets, getting picked up by the US Navy.

• 1:18:25Bob Novella?

  US Navy.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  All correct. All right, let's go to number two. Mark Twain anticipated the Internet in 1898, imagining the tele-electroscope, a global network of telephone lines people could use to access news in real time and chat with others from their own homes. Christian, Christian, you think that one is the fiction? Jay was saying that he thinks that's not a good analogy to the Internet. That is the Internet. The Internet is just a, you know, web of wires from around the world that we use to... But you didn't mention video games and porn. Yeah, of course. That, I mean, come on. The modern applications aren't there, but it's real time news and chat rooms and chatting with people around the world.

• 1:18:59Bob Novella?

  He did, that's true.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  That's the internet, and that one is science.

• 1:19:03Bob Novella?

  Wow, man.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  He predicted the essence of the internet. Very prescient. This was in a, yeah, a very little known short story he wrote, a story from the London Times, published in 1904, but he wrote it in 1898. Yeah, and it was, it was very prescient. I'd like to thank everyone for playing the game with me today. It's very nice to win science or fiction. Now, such these smart people, but you know, who is the smartest one? The majority of the audience, Jay and the majority of the audience were correct. So in his 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, which was, which was set in the year 2000, that far off year of 2000, Edward Bellamy predicted the credit card, a small card that could, would electronically track transactions from a rolling line of credit.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  That is the fiction. However, he coined the term credit card in that novel.

• 1:19:53Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  And it was a small card, but here's the thing, it was a punch card. It was not electronic.

• 1:19:59Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Because there was no electronics or computers.

• 1:20:02Speaker 04

  Significant detail, is that what you said, Steve, about that?

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  That's a significant detail.

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  It was a punch card, and it wasn't a line of credit either. What it was, was in his utopian society, everyone was equal, right? The government would just divide all of the profits from all of the government owned industries.

• 1:20:21Jay Novella?

  Oh, so it wasn't a line of credit, it was a line of bullshit?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  It wasn't.

• 1:20:24Jay Novella?

  Because that's, that's never gonna happen.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Hold on. So the, so every year, you would get a card, like that was like a cardboard, you know, hard cardboard card, and that was your money from the government for the year. And when you purchased something at a government store, they would punch out the value of...

• 1:20:44Bob Novella?

  It's like universal basic income, basically.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically, universal basic income, where they punch out, and then they would also, you would get a receipt, they would get a receipt, the receipt would go to some central banking or whatever. And if you didn't spend the money by the end of the year, it was gone. It would go back to the government. So it wasn't credit, and it wasn't electronic. It was a punch card for your government funds. But he did coin the term credit card, and it was sort of a credit card sized thing. And Bob is gonna close us out with a quote.

• 1:21:11Bob Novella?

  Okay. The quote is, "AI doesn't have to become conscious to change civilization, it only has to become competent."

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Who said that?

• 1:21:22Bob Novella?

  Who said that? That was told to me today by OpenAI's ChatGPT, GPT version 5.6 Soul, generated today, 2026. And the prompt was, "Give me a provocative quote for my science podcast." And that's what it said. That's what it said, and I absolutely agree with it. I absolutely agree with it. We talk about AIs gonna become self-aware and conscious, it's gonna be artificial general intelligence. Yeah, maybe, probably, but it doesn't have to. It, it could be super competent and not be aware or conscious at all, and that's something that people need to be focusing on.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  All right, we are out of time. Thank you guys for joining me on the panel here.

• 1:22:04Bob Novella?

  You're welcome.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Thanks all for joining us, and until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to [email protected]. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.