Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett World-Renowned Physicist: The Truth About Aliens! UFOs Are Definitely Robotic - Michio Kaku About this episode Theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku has spent 70 years searching for the single equation that could explain everything in existence. He reveals why there’s almost certainly life beyond Earth, how quantum computers will soon crack every bank account and digital codes, and why the secret to human immortality already exists!
Dr Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, co-founder of String Field Theory, and Professor at the City College of New York. He is one of science's most prominent public communicators, and is also the author of bestselling books such as, 'Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything’.
He explains:
◼️Why aliens almost certainly exist but will probably never reach us
◼️Why travelling to the nearest star would take 70,000 years, and the only way around it
◼️What 70 years studying the universe taught him about the meaning of life
◼️What caused the Big Bang and the theory that says new universes are being born right now
◼️What's inside a black hole and why it might be a doorway to another universe
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Transcript 16,955 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Immortality is tantalizing close.
0:02 Steven Bartlett? And you think it's possible within the laws of physics and biology?
0:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, in fact, we know that there's a clock in our body called a telomeres that tracks how long we're gonna live. And there's something called telomerase which stops the clock, which means that we can live forever. That's the good news. But the bad news was, we found out that cancer also uses telomeres and telomerase to live forever. And so the question is, can we apply that to humans without waking up the cancers? But this is not science fiction. This is the future.
0:30 Steven Bartlett? And for 71 years, you've been studying physics and how science will shape human destiny. So how is life likely to be different in the future?
0:37 Speaker 00 Well, decade by decade, we see the enormous progress that we humans have made. For example, we'll probably be on the moon, maybe on to Mars. And also, the artificial intelligence will help us to cure cancer and many diseases. However, for the first time in human history, we have the potential of destroying ourselves with designer germs, nuclear weapons, perhaps artificial intelligence. Like, this is a quantum computer. This is so powerful that even the CIA is worried about the fact that these could break into any known computer.
1:07 Steven Bartlett? Including banks, even Bitcoin?
1:09 Speaker 00 That's right. So capitalism would vanish, society would come to a halt.
1:13 Steven Bartlett? And what about humanoid robots?
1:15 Speaker 00 I would look seriously at the possibility of merging with them so that we don't have a civil war. Realize that we're at the edge of a knife. You tilt it the wrong way, and there's world's war. You tilt it the other way, and there's food and luxury for everyone. And it's up to us to decide which way the knife will go.
1:32 Steven Bartlett? Dr. Michio Kaku. I've waited a long time to ask someone these questions. Where do you believe we came from? Do you think it's plausible that in fact we are living in a simulation? And then, is there any evidence when we look out at the stars that there is non-human life out there?
1:49 Speaker 00 Okay, so first of all.
1:55 Steven Bartlett? Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. It's the algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.
2:29 Steven Bartlett? Dr. Michio Kaku.
2:31 Speaker 00 That's right.
2:33 Steven Bartlett? For anyone that isn't aware of you and your work, and they're wondering whether they should listen to what you have to say today because they don't know your work and they've not gone through the books and the interviews that you've done, how would you describe your experience?
2:46 Speaker 00 I work in something called string theory, which we think is the theory that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life. The theory of everything. The theory that explains the Big Bang, the formation of star's galaxy, formation of the Earth, life. I'm a physicist, working in the theory of everything.
3:03 Steven Bartlett? What is the theory of everything?
3:05 Speaker 00 An equation perhaps no more than one inch long that will allow us to quote, "read the mind of God." These are Einstein's words. The theory of the Big Bang, the theory of creation itself, the theory of everything.
3:18 Steven Bartlett? I want to explain this in terms that even the most sort of novice viewer could understand. The theory of everything is an equation that explains.
3:26 Speaker 00 Everything.
3:27 Steven Bartlett? Physics.
3:28 Speaker 00 No, no, no, everything. Because from physics comes chemistry, comes chemistry, comes biology. And from that comes our universe.
3:37 Steven Bartlett? Is it things like gravity and space and time?
3:40 Speaker 00 Gravity, light, the nuclear force. There are four fundamental forces of the universe. There's the gravitational force which keeps us here, the electromagnetic force which lights up our world, and the two nuclear forces. We want a theory that explains all four.
3:58 Steven Bartlett? You know, when people watch your interviews and they read your books, what do you think is the fundamental question that they're typically seeking to answer?
4:08 Speaker 00 What does it mean for me?
4:11 Steven Bartlett? What does what mean for me?
4:12 Speaker 00 The physics of the future. That as we physicists create the future, we're the ones who understand what is possible, what is not possible, and what is plausible. How does that affect the average person?
4:23 Steven Bartlett? And there's an element of all of us that's just trying to figure out how we got here. Where are our places in the universe?
4:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, especially for people who are philosophical or religious. They want to know, what does it all mean? I mean, where did I come from? Where is the universe going? They want to know the answer to the big questions, the question of meaning. And that's what we physicists do.
4:47 Steven Bartlett? And they want to know if we're alone in the universe?
4:49 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, that too. That's a byproduct of what we do is look for extraterrestrial intelligence.
4:54 Steven Bartlett? You've been doing this for many, many decades now. You've been studying the nature of the universe and physics. Is there a fundamental misunderstanding that you're aware of that the average person still believes?
5:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, people think that physics is for eggheads, that it's just doing equations on a blackboard and totally divorced from the average person. They don't realize that everything about their life, about electricity, about magnetism, about the nuclear force, about the industry, everything comes from physics. But the average person thinks that physics is for eggheads. It's for equations you put on a blackboard in a cartoon. Nope, it's everywhere.
5:37 Steven Bartlett? In the last couple of weeks, you've been asked to do lots of interviews because Trump has released the UFO files.
5:45 Speaker 00 That's right.
5:46 Steven Bartlett? Before we get into lots of other subjects and physics generally, probably start by just tackling this question head on. Do you think that we are alone in the universe?
5:57 Speaker 00 No, we're not alone because the galaxy has 100 billion stars, of which maybe 10% have planets that are Earth-like or are similar to Earth. But the question is, can they visit us? A Saturn V rocket would take 70,000 years just to reach the nearest star. Hop, skip, and a jump, 70,000 years. So a civilization that could reach the Earth would be hundreds, thousands of years more advanced than us. So I'm a physicist, we look at that. Space warps. Is it possible that a flying saucer or a race could create a space warp so they can visit us?
6:36 Steven Bartlett? Space warp?
6:37 Speaker 00 Bending space.
6:38 Steven Bartlett? Is that possible?
6:40 Speaker 00 Well, gravity bends space all the time. The question is, can you bend space enough so that you can go faster than the speed of light so you can visit the nearest star? That's a question mark. We physicists look at that, but we have no definite answer. But it's possible.
6:56 Steven Bartlett? So when these people say that, you know, I had a podcast recently where two people explained to me that there's been some very unusual sightings of UAPs. And they use this as evidence to say that aliens exist. Do you think those sightings are actually extraterrestrial life? Or do you think it's just people hallucinating and seeing, I don't know, light orbs and misunderstanding what they're looking at?
7:23 Speaker 00 Well, there are three types of observations. Close encounters are the first kind is when you see something in the sky, first kind. Close encounters are the second kind is when you have something tangible, an engine, a body, a wreckage of a UAP. That's second kind. Close encounters are the third kind is when you actually encounter them and shake their hand. Now, where are we? We're at close encounters of the first kind, where we see things floating in the sky, but we don't know what they are. We don't have anything tangible. Now, in science fiction, we've captured the flying saucer. We have the aliens in a cage or so forth. That's the movies. We have yet to see an alien in a laboratory.
8:07 Speaker 00 We have yet to see an alien ship. In other words, people say, "I saw something." Now, what does that mean? I'm a physicist. We go where the, we go where the observation goes. And we have no observations to verify what you saw. Except, of course, sensationalists who say, "I've seen the bodies." Okay, show us.
8:30 Steven Bartlett? So from that, I conclude that you don't believe alien life has arrived here on Earth?
8:36 Speaker 00 I know, I'm open to the possibility. 95% of the sightings we can, we can explain using the known laws of physics. 5% are either optical illusions or they are evidence of visitation. You can't rule it out. So I'm open to the idea that maybe they're here. Now, President Trump has released the first mountain load of 160 encounters of alien technology, we think. But we haven't yet seen a close encounter of the second kind. When that happens, that's a game changer. When we have a piece of UFO hardware, that would nail it to the wall right there.
9:16 Steven Bartlett? There's a narrative that the US government or generally governments around the world wouldn't want the people to know about aliens because they're not ready for it? Do you buy that?
9:26 Speaker 00 That's the traditional excuse for not revealing these things. But the other excuse is there is a cover. It's a cover for the stealth bomber. It's a cover for the fact that the military does experiment with aerodynamically novel forms of transport. And so those are the reasons why the military keeps it a secret and actually lies about these things. But now, it's leaking out. Congress, the President of the United States, they're demanding these sightings to be declassified. So we physicists now are analyzing them to see whether or not they're really real or not.
10:04 Steven Bartlett? Is there any evidence when we look out at the stars that there is non-human life out there? Is there anything that you've seen when you look at other planets and how they're operating that might suggest there's a different type of life there?
10:20 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, but there's no tangible evidence for it yet, though.
10:23 Steven Bartlett? Give me one example.
10:25 Speaker 00 Well, for example, they could look at Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the planet Earth, right?
10:30 Steven Bartlett? How far away is that?
10:31 Speaker 00 Four and a half light years. And if you take a look at the Alpha Centauri system, the closest system to the Earth, you have red stars that could have life on them. We're not sure. They're not super hot, super large, in which case it would be very difficult to get life forms off the ground. But the point I'm raising is that the Milky Way galaxy, our backyard, has 100 billion stars. And the probability of life existing among those stars is almost 100%. The question is, can they reach us? That means, is it possible to create a space warp such that you can break the light barrier so that you can travel across the galaxy and visit the Earth?
11:13 Steven Bartlett? And did you say that was theoretically possible?
11:16 Speaker 00 It's theoretically possible, yeah. But unfortunately, you need energy, fantastic amounts of energy. But the laws of physics do allow for the possibility of space warps. I mean, you've seen space warps on Star Trek. But where did Star Trek get the word "space warps"? It comes from physics.
11:33 Steven Bartlett? I also heard you telling, I think it was Joe Rogan, you were telling a story of one particular star that reduces in its intensity by 20%?
11:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, there is a star that oscillates.
11:47 Steven Bartlett? What does that mean?
11:48 Speaker 00 So it drops by about 20%.
11:50 Steven Bartlett? So it's, it's reducing its light.
11:54 Speaker 00 Output.
11:55 Steven Bartlett? By 20%.
11:56 Speaker 00 That's right.
11:56 Steven Bartlett? How often?
11:57 Speaker 00 We don't have to wait for centuries. It's within a matter of months to years.
12:01 Steven Bartlett? A star that reduces, frequently reduces, its light output by 20%?
12:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, which is very unusual. It's the only one we saw, we've seen so far.
12:10 Steven Bartlett? You explained one of the theories, I think, when you first talked about this, was that a civilization might have built something around that star?
12:18 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, that's one of several theories that a civilization that advanced would have tremendous energy needs. And the easiest way to get energy is by encircling the mother star with an envelope. And the envelope then would absorb most of the energy. In fact, that was an episode of Star Trek. They meet a star that is totally enveloped by a metal shell, the aliens left it centuries ago. But, you know, it can't be ruled out.
12:46 Steven Bartlett? The theory goes that an advanced civilization will surround it with like a metal sphere to capture its energy.
12:52 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:53 Steven Bartlett? And that would explain why we see a 20% reduction in the light output?
12:59 Speaker 00 No, they think that it's probably an orbiting, an orbiting globe that eclipses the mother star. Rather than envelops the mother star, it simply goes around the mother star and eclipses it.
13:12 Steven Bartlett? Oh, so it'd be like a big ball that circles the star, extracting its energy?
13:16 Speaker 00 And then it would cause a dip, it would cause a dip in the intensity of light.
13:20 Steven Bartlett? As far as we see it?
13:21 Speaker 00 As far as we see it, right.
13:22 Steven Bartlett? Because this big ball is sometimes moving in front of it?
13:25 Speaker 00 That's right, exactly.
13:26 Steven Bartlett? Why couldn't it just be a planet?
13:28 Speaker 00 Planets are not that big. Planets are about, about 1%, like Jupiter. It's about 1% the size of the Sun. So the sunlight would drop by about 1 or 2% if Jupiter goes in front of our Sun.
13:40 Steven Bartlett? Oh, I've got you.
13:41 Speaker 00 So this is much bigger, it's huge.
13:44 Steven Bartlett? You've, you've written a lot of books about the universe and physics and everything in between. I've waited a long time to ask someone this question. And it's a very broad question. And the question is, where do you believe that we came from? Where do you believe that life came from? Where do you believe this universe came from?
14:08 Speaker 00 Well, the universe came from the Big Bang. The question is, where did the Big Bang come from, right?
14:14 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so what is the Big Bang?
14:16 Speaker 00 The Big Bang is a cosmic explosion that took place around 14 or so billion years ago that created the expanding universe.
14:26 Steven Bartlett? How do we know that happened?
14:28 Speaker 00 Because we have evidence of its expansion that took place, you know, 14 or so billion years ago. We see the stars moving away from us. So think of a big balloon, a big balloon with points of light on the balloon. And the balloon is expanding, and the stars are moving away from each other. That's what we see today. Not moving toward each other. All those stars are moving away from each other, like the sphere is expanding. And so we believe in the Big Bang theory. And we believe that the universe is expanding rather than contracting.
15:02 Steven Bartlett? Expanding into what?
15:04 Speaker 00 Hyperspace.
15:06 Steven Bartlett? What's that?
15:07 Speaker 00 Well, we live in a four-dimensional universe. Three dimensions of space, one dimension of time. We live in a four-dimensional universe. But in string theory, we believe that there are 11 dimensions altogether.
15:19 Steven Bartlett? String theory is something that you came up with?
15:23 Speaker 00 I came up with string field theory, which is one of the branches of string theory, right?
15:27 Steven Bartlett? And what is string theory?
15:29 Speaker 00 String theory says that what is a proton, what is an electron, they're nothing but vibrations of a string. So from a distance, this looks like a point particle. From a distance, this is an electron. But if you could magnify that, we find that it's not really a point at all. It's really a vibrating string. And each vibration corresponds to a node. So this would be a proton. This would be an electron. This would be a neutron. This would be a neutrino. That's why we have so many subatomic particles.
16:06 Steven Bartlett? Okay, so to simplify this in a way that I understand, you're saying that at the very base layer, particles are the same, but they're just strings that are basically vibrating differently?
16:18 Speaker 00 That's right.
16:18 Steven Bartlett? And that would be the sort of foundational matter of everything?
16:21 Speaker 00 That's right. Everything is basically a vibrating string. So when the string vibrates in this direction, we call it an electron. If it vibrates in this way, we call it a proton. So why do we have so many subatomic particles? How many of them are there? Hundreds. We've seen hundreds of subatomic particles. And how could Mother Nature be so malicious to create a universe at the fundamental level based on hundreds of different kinds of strings vibrating in different directions? Well, it's really just one string. One string that can vibrate in different modes. Each mode is called a particle.
17:01 Steven Bartlett? Why does it need to be a string?
17:03 Speaker 00 We don't know why things are. We just, I'm a physicist. We just try to figure out the way things really are. But it would explain why there's so many particles. We used to think there was an electron, a proton, and neutron, and that's it. That's it, period. Nope. We've seen pi mesons, we've seen lambda particles, omega particles, hundreds of subatomic particles. Why did we build atom smashers? Outside Chicago, outside Geneva, huge gigantic atom smashers smashing atoms apart. Why? Because then, from the debris, we began to figure out these vibrations are particles. And we can categorize them. We can give them names. And that gives us a quote, "a theory of everything."
17:47 Speaker 00 So we have what is called the standard model, which explains all the subatomic particles other than gravity. And we create these particles with their atom smashers.
17:58 Steven Bartlett? Which is the big machines where they fire atoms at each other in Geneva and so on around the world?
18:02 Speaker 00 That's right. It's the Large Hadron Collider, right? But now we realize that there's another octave. There's another layer even beyond what we see with the Large Hadron Collider. Dark matter. Dark matter is invisible matter that surrounds the Milky Way galaxy. And we don't know what it is. There's a Nobel Prize waiting for somebody who could figure out what dark matter is. It's invisible matter. Invisible matter that surrounds the entire Milky Way galaxy. We think that we cannot yet prove that it's nothing but the next octave.
18:35 Steven Bartlett? What do you mean by octave?
18:36 Speaker 00 Vibration. In other words, this would be the lowest vibration, which corresponds to an electron. But there are other vibrations much bigger, and they would correspond to a higher octave.
18:46 Steven Bartlett? How do we know it's there if it's invisible?
18:48 Speaker 00 Well, this is a guess. But it turns out that when you do the math and you look at the vibration of a string and you look at the higher vibrations, some of them are invisible. In other words, they don't interact with light. Now, we know that this interacts with light before we can see it.
19:03 Steven Bartlett? The tape.
19:04 Speaker 00 But these are the lowest vibrations. Some of the higher vibrations are invisible. And so we think that's what dark matter is.
19:11 Steven Bartlett? I guess this all comes back to the question. We're talking about the Big Bang. You know, scientists tend to agree that there was some kind of Big Bang because when you look at the universe, it's expanding outward. So one would, if you rewind time, at some point, there was a central point where something, where an explosion occurred. If you reverse time.
19:34 Steven Bartlett? I mean, it begs the question, what caused the Big Bang?
19:40 Speaker 00 Well, we don't know, but there are theories. String theory is a theory even before the Big Bang. It's a theory of everything. The Big Bang, in some sense, is a misnomer because it disguised the fact that we're ignorant. We're ignorant of what caused the thing to bang. String theory, there was no bang. That is, it did collapse, if you go backwards in time. It did collapse, a very small thing, and then came out again. It bounced.
20:06 Steven Bartlett? Oh, okay.
20:07 Speaker 00 So we think that there could be a bubble bath of universes.
20:12 Steven Bartlett? What do you mean by a bubble bath of universes?
20:14 Speaker 00 Our universe is a bubble of some sort, and the bubble is expanding, and that's called the Big Bang theory, which fits all the data. But we think there are other bubbles out there. In other words, string theory says that we live not just in a four-dimensional world, but in a 11-dimensional world. These other dimensions, we cannot see. But we think that the universe coexists with other universes. There's a bubble bath. Think of bubbles, soap bubbles floating in the vacuum.
20:44 Steven Bartlett? What about marbles? So when you're talking about bubbles, you know, could, you mean like, kind of like this?
20:52 Speaker 00 Right, okay, give me the big bun.
20:55 Steven Bartlett? All of them.
20:57 Speaker 00 All right, okay. So let's say this is the sun.
21:00 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
21:01 Speaker 00 And these are planets, asteroids, whatever. And they're going around, they're going around the sun. Why? Why are they going around the sun like that? Okay? It's because this exerts gravitational force that is pulling these things toward, toward the sun. The Earth is just one. Asteroids are none of the other. Saturn, Jupiter. They're nothing but planets going around the mother star. And so then the next question is, why? Why is it that planets are going around the sun? It's because the sun is warping the space around it. It's creating a shallow depression. Space is not flat.
21:45 Speaker 00 This is Einstein's achievement. You go in this direction, seems flat. You go in this direction, everything seems to be flat, right? But no, the Earth, for example, is round. But it looks flat, but it's not. The universe looks flat, but it's not. It's curved. That's why planets go around the mother star. Because gravity is a byproduct of the warping of space. And that's why we are sitting on this chair right now. Why are we here? How come we're not flying in outer space? The Earth is spinning, right? If the Earth is spinning, we should be flung out into outer space. So how come we're here?
22:25 Steven Bartlett? Gravity.
22:26 Speaker 00 Gravity, what is gravity, though? That's just a word, right?
22:29 Steven Bartlett? Just because the mass of the Earth is so much greater than us that it pulls us in?
22:34 Speaker 00 Okay, well, why is it pulling us in? Einstein says that the reason why the Earth is pulling us in is because the Earth warps the space around us and is pushing us into the floor. That's why the solar system works the way it does because the sun grabs the planets and forces the planets to move in a curved line because it's curved space that is causing it to move this way.
23:01 Steven Bartlett? And going back to what you were saying about the bubble bath idea.
23:04 Speaker 00 Right. Then the question is, are there other stars? Yes, are there other galaxies? There are billions and billions of planets out there. We think that the whole shebang is curved. Nothing would inhabit inside the skin of this gigantic bubble. Now, we're saying that maybe there are other bubbles out there. A multiverse. A multiverse of universes, parallel universes. In fact, where multiverse has gotten into the literature, comic books now refer to the multiverse. Spider-Man and things like that. So it's even part of the vernacular, the common language of the average person that we believe in parallel universes.
23:45 Speaker 00 So yeah, these parallel universes come from physics.
23:50 Steven Bartlett? And the other thing that comes from physics is black holes?
23:53 Speaker 00 That's right. If this star becomes so massive that its gravity is so great that it pulls the entire shebang in like this, and then that would be a black hole. And we now believe that at the center of almost every galaxy we see, and there are trillions of galaxies, we think that at the center of these galaxies, there's a black hole.
24:20 Steven Bartlett? Even our galaxy, the Milky Way?
24:21 Speaker 00 Even our galaxy, right. If you look in the direction of Sagittarius, the constellation Sagittarius, there's a black hole there. So tonight, go outside, look for the constellation Sagittarius, and there's a black hole at the center of our own backyard that holds the Milky Way galaxy together.
24:41 Steven Bartlett? So how did it get there?
24:42 Speaker 00 Well, we think that it's a remnant of the Big Bang, that when the Big Bang exploded, clusters of matter begin to contract other clusters of matter. And this is where the galaxies and the planets come from. The condensation of the matter ejected out of the Big Bang gives you the galaxies, the solar systems, and the planets.
25:02 Steven Bartlett? So if I use this as an example, there was the Big Bang, and all the pieces flew everywhere. And then because of gravity, the pieces came together. And they got so, so, so big, so much mass, that they collapsed inwards?
25:20 Speaker 00 We're not sure exactly which came first. The galaxy came first, or the black hole came first? But let's assume for the moment that the black hole came first. Gas concentrated into a small area called the black hole. And then it drew all the other stars and galaxy around it to create the Milky Way galaxy. We're not sure, but that's one possibility of where it came from. And where did that come from? That in turn came from the explosion that created the universe roughly 14 billion years ago.
25:52 Steven Bartlett? Am I right in thinking black holes, they are extremely dense, like, areas of matter? And if you were to go near one, everything that goes near it gets sucked in?
26:01 Speaker 00 That's right, and you never get out again. If this is a black hole, there is a ring or a sphere surrounding it, a point of no return. You go towards the black hole, and you pass this, this ring. And then you go into the black hole, never to be seen again. It's a point of no return.
26:20 Steven Bartlett? How do we know that?
26:21 Speaker 00 Well, we've never seen it happen, but we can calculate the escape velocity. In other words, if you want to leave the Earth, how fast do you have to move to leave the Earth? Seven miles per second. Our astronauts travel seven miles per second to reach the moon. Okay? That's called escape velocity. So every gravitating piece of matter has an escape velocity. For the Earth, it's seven miles per second. What about the escape velocity of a black hole? It's the speed of light. That's why if you fall through the event horizon of a black hole, you never come out. Because otherwise, you would have to go faster than the speed of light, which is not possible. So you go in, but you never come out.
27:05 Speaker 00 That's why it's called black holes.
27:07 Steven Bartlett? What's in there?
27:10 Speaker 00 If you knew, you'd win a Nobel Prize.
27:13 Steven Bartlett? This area has loads and loads of mass inside it. It's sucking things into it. So one would assume that there was a lot inside there. But it's tiny, right? Black holes are tiny?
27:23 Speaker 00 We don't know how big they are. We think at the very center, it could be very small. We're not sure. No one's ever been there because if you go past the event horizon, you never come out again.
27:33 Steven Bartlett? What do people think is inside a black hole? Because I'm thinking of, it's just this area in space that looks black on a, when you look at it. And it can suck in planets, anything?
27:46 Speaker 00 If I were to take a guess, I would say that it's an entrance. It's a gateway, perhaps to another universe. We think, for example, if I have a warped space, and you fall into warped space, if the warped space is powerful enough, it may come out again on the other side. So there may be another universe on the other side of a black hole. We're not, we're not sure, of course. If you want to go to Alpha Centauri with a Saturn V rocket, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star with our most powerful rocket. Very impractical. You need a shortcut.
28:29 Speaker 00 And that's, that's the gateway called a wormhole, which is very similar to a black hole. A little bit different, but very similar.
28:37 Steven Bartlett? How long have you been studying physics in the universe now?
28:41 Speaker 00 Since I was eight years old, I've been studying the universe.
28:45 Steven Bartlett? Seventy-one years.
28:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, when I was eight years old, a great scientist had just died. It was in all the newspapers. And the newspaper said that he failed on his last try to create a theory of everything. So I was fascinated by this idea that this man was attempting to find the final theory.
29:09 Steven Bartlett? You're talking about Einstein?
29:10 Speaker 00 That's right. Later, I found out the man's name was Albert Einstein. And at that point, I said to myself, that's for me. That's what I want to work on. I want to be part of this great journey to complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything. And that's what I do for a living. I work with Einstein's equations.
29:30 Steven Bartlett? So for 71 years, you've been trying to understand the universe and create this theory for everything. In that time, how is your perspective on God developed?
29:44 Speaker 00 Yes. Most of my family were Buddhists, coming from Japan. But my father was a Christian and put me in Sunday school. So I had the benefit of two religions as a child. Now I'm a physicist. And physicists are, quote, agnostic. They don't take a position. They simply go where the physics takes them, into areas that are distasteful, mysterious, whatever. You go where the evidence goes. And that's what I am today. In other words, we have the laws of physics. We have string theory, which takes us to the instant of the Big Bang and even before, even before the creation of the universe.
30:28 Speaker 00 But then the next question is, where does string theory come from? Okay? At that point, we have to say that that's where our ignorance takes over. We simply don't know.
30:39 Steven Bartlett? What about simulation theory? Do you think it's plausible that in fact, we are living in a simulation?
30:48 Speaker 00 I would say the answer is probably no.
30:50 Steven Bartlett? Probably no.
30:51 Speaker 00 That's right. Simulation theory is basically saying that the universe is a puppet show. And there's a script. We're, we're living out the script because somebody is pulling our strings. First of all, that violates quantum theory. Quantum theory believes in probabilities. Probabilities that I'm sitting here today. Probabilities that maybe one day I'll go into outer space. We can calculate the probabilities of atomic events, chemical events with accuracy that is incredible. But simulation theory is not one of them.
31:26 Steven Bartlett? The theory, which was proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom, says that there's three possibilities logically. Either number one, that human-like civilizations always destroy themselves before they get to the point where they can do advanced, hyper-realistic simulations. And if you think about things like, I know, virtual reality at the moment, or video games, and you imagine them on a spectrum. If they just get 1% better a year, at some point, they are indistinguishable from this reality that we're experiencing now. So theory one, we wipe ourselves out before we get to the point where we're advanced enough in hyper-realistic simulations. Theory number two, or possibility number two, is that advanced civilizations do exist,
32:10 Steven Bartlett? but they have zero interest in simulating their ancestors, which would be us. Or theory number three is that we are a simulation. And civilizations do survive, and they do run millions of simulations because there would be millions of fake universes, and only one can be base reality in this scenario. And the mathematical odds are incredibly high that we are currently living inside one of those simulations and not in base reality.
32:32 Speaker 00 Well, my personal point of view is, there's option four that you don't mention. And option four is that there is no simulation at all. That all this talk is nothing but fairy tales. Fairy tales that we tell our children to amaze them about the universe. But you see, the universe is based on probabilities. Probabilities that uranium will fire, for example, which gives us nuclear weapons. Probability that hydrogen can fuse, and that gives us stars. So the universe is based on probabilities, not on simulations.
33:08 Steven Bartlett? Do you think what we're seeing, this is a strange question to ask because, again, there's so many definitions within it. But do you think what we're seeing is real? Like, do you think this is, you know, because people do psychedelic drugs, and I hear about things like DMT. You inhale a little bit of smoke, and suddenly everything you see is different. And you meet, people talk about how they've met other types of life when they've taken an inhale of DMT. They've interacted with some type of other life form. So I guess all this is to say that if our perceived reality is that fragile, where we inhale one of smoke, and suddenly we're amongst a different life form, then it makes us question whether this is real at all.
33:52 Steven Bartlett? And also, like, just to extend that a little bit further, if one inhalation of smoke, and I guess you could think about that as a bunch of small particles, can interrupt something in my brain that causes me to believe that I'm in a different universe, then doesn't that prove that my reality is just the projection of a very fragile, small amount of particles that are right now lined up so that I see you and this?
34:20 Speaker 00 Well, I think the answer to that is that what you consider to be reality is really a partial fiction. That your senses are limited by what your senses can retrieve from the outside world. But it's only a teeny-weeny little fraction of what actually exists. Look at the electromagnetic spectrum of light, for example. You can't see all the ultraviolet radiation, the infrared, X-rays. This room is full of realities that you can't see. Most of what you see is a fragment, a teeny, eensy, weensy little fragment of reality. You can't see cosmic rays. You can't see ultraviolet radiation.
35:03 Speaker 00 So what I'm trying to tell you is that you live in an illusion. It's a good illusion for survival. But in terms of being able to see the full spectrum of reality as it exists, no, there's no way. So you think reality is everything? Nope. It's only a tiny, tiny, eensy, weensy little fragment of reality. And then talking about this reality, that's a fantasy on top of a fantasy. The first fantasy is that you think that what you see is real and everything. That's the first fantasy. The second fantasy is, there's a fantasy within the first fantasy. So you're, you're going layer upon layer of fantasies. Now, let me give you another example.
35:46 Speaker 00 Let's say you hear rustling in the forest. You think it's a tiger there. Nine times out of 10, there's no tiger there. But how come your senses are constantly alerting you to the tiger? And that is evolution. Evolution gives you the ability to see things that are not really there at all because it's good for survival. One time, there is a tiger, and it saves your butt. In other words, why are we here today? We're here today because our senses are overactive. Our senses think there's a lion, there's a tiger there, where there's no lion or tiger there at all. But it was good for our survival. Okay? So our senses are only necessary for our survival.
36:31 Speaker 00 That's why we cannot see infrared. We cannot see ultraviolet. We cannot see the whole spectrum of reality, radio, everything. We can't see it all because it was not necessary for our survival.
36:44 Steven Bartlett? Why does life matter in the universe? Like, what, what function does life have in the universe?
36:50 Speaker 00 I think we create our own meaning individually. I think there's no universal meaning for life in general. But I think each of us create our own meaning.
37:01 Steven Bartlett? I was saying this because you were talking about, you know, survival. And I was just wondering if there was some universal reason why survival is so important to the universe.
37:11 Speaker 00 Survival is important for the universe because we, survival writes history. If there's no survival, there's nothing to write. There's no memories, there's no stories to tell, nothing. There's just the vacuum of space.
37:24 Steven Bartlett? I was also asking that, I guess, because you were saying how we only see one version of reality. And so one would assume, therefore, that there's another version of reality that we can't even see. I mean, I've heard this before from physicists. You know, and if you just think about different animals, the bat sees a different version of reality to the whale.
37:43 Speaker 00 Like sonar, for example.
37:44 Steven Bartlett? Sonar, for example. Even my dog. My dog seems to see a completely different version of reality than the one I see.
37:49 Speaker 00 It smells much better than you. Olfactory nerves of a dog are infinitely better than our olfactory nerves in our nose. They have a different reality.
37:58 Steven Bartlett? I guess it begs the question, like, what is all of this, then?
38:02 Speaker 00 We're talking about the meaning of life, for which I have no answer. Sorry about that.
38:07 Steven Bartlett? I guess that was what I was asking. But I wasn't asking, that wasn't what I was intent on asking. But that's the base question, which is, what's the point?
38:14 Speaker 00 I'm not even sure if the universe has a point. But my personal attitude is, we create our own point. We create our own world and meaning within that world. It could be different from another person's meaning and understanding of the world, but it's good enough for me.
38:30 Steven Bartlett? What do you think of the human's sort of proclivity to imagine a god and to assign meaning and morality to that god? And say, well, you know, because we do have this, we do live with this kind of god-shaped hole in our lives where we don't really know where we came from. We don't know what the point is. So I understand why it's tempting to say this book that someone wrote once upon a time that says, this person, this thing created us, and these are the rules. And this is what good is, this is what bad is. This is what we get if we follow the rules. You know, as humans, we want that.
39:03 Speaker 00 Yes, and I think there's a reason for that. And the answer is evolution. What holds animals together? The alpha male, the top dog. As humans became more intelligent over millions of years, humans bicker. We argue. We challenge the leader. And then tribes would fall apart because you need some glue. You need some glue to hold it together. And if everyone becomes intelligent uniformly, there's no glue anymore. Everyone bickers, I'm the leader, no, I'm the leader, so on and so forth. So what happens is, one person comes up and says, I'm stronger than you. And I talk to somebody even stronger than me, God.
39:45 Speaker 00 And if you disobey me, then God will strike you down. In other words, God is a glue. God is a glue that holds sentient beings together when there's no reason to hold them together anymore. And they bicker, and then the tribe falls apart. What holds the tribe together? God. Who is God? Well, God is not here, but the Son of God is here. And the Son of God says, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, and you gotta obey me. Why? Because I'm the messenger. I'm the Son of God. So I think religion has a definite purpose. The purpose of religion is a glue to hold sentient, intelligent beings together.
40:30 Steven Bartlett? What do you think consciousness is?
40:32 Speaker 00 Consciousness, I think, is a question of awareness, the ability to create ideas about, you know, why, I mean, what does it mean, meaning to give meaning to things? Otherwise, things become meaningless. So I think that's the purpose of consciousness, is to give us an awareness of meaning.
40:52 Steven Bartlett? Do you think these big questions will ever be answered around like where we came from, what the point is? Do you think we'll ever have answers to these things?
41:00 Speaker 00 Probably not. However, we have this instinctive urge to to explore, to look for new territories and new ideas. And that is what I think keeps us going. Animals do not have that. You can't tell a dog, aren't you thrilled that we're going to this new new house, this new whatever, right? And dog says, no, just give me my my dinner. So I think that humans are different. The purpose of the front part of our brain, the cerebral cortex that holds us together, is a time machine. It asks the question, what's going to happen in the future? If you don't believe me, go to your dog tonight and ask your dog, what did he do last night?
41:45 Speaker 00 And the dog will just bark. No interest in what's happened yesterday, what's happened tomorrow. We constantly think about the future. We can't help it. We are constantly thinking about what's for dinner tomorrow, who's my friend, who's my enemy? What's gonna, what am I gonna do next year? What college am I gonna go to? We are obsessed with the future. That's what separates us from the animal kingdom. Animals do not care about the future, they just care about survival. We on the other hand are obsessed with the future because that's where our survival lies. And why is that? Because we don't have claws, we don't have fangs, we don't have huge muscles,
42:30 Speaker 00 we can't run very fast, we can't fly. We're not like the animals. We are dependent upon the front part of our brain. And that's what we ask these questions that you just asked. Why are you asking these questions? Because you're programmed to ask these questions, animals are not.
42:49 Steven Bartlett? I mean, on the subject of intelligence, there is now new types of intelligence amongst us. One of them is referred to as artificial intelligence, which is actually modeled on how the brain works. You know, I've sat here with some of the experts in AI and they've told me that they learnt a lot about the human brain and how it reasons and how it processes information with these neural nets, as they call it, which is a concept that has been inspired by the brain. And with that, they've started to build these very intelligent machines, which a lot of people are now using in terms of large language models like ChatGPT. But but we're going further and further into the world of artificial intelligence. So, I mean, one's gonna, one would reason that the future looks very, very, very different
43:33 Steven Bartlett? because of this new type of intelligence and that it's going to accelerate maybe a lot of the discoveries and, you know, that we've we've pondered about today, but also that it's going to change life as we know it. And I mean, some people even think that human life won't be the dominant form of intelligence in such a world. What do you think?
43:51 Speaker 00 Yes, I think that is a definite problem. Right now, I think a lot of our robots have the intelligence of a bug, an insect. They don't plan, they can't articulate their thoughts and so so forth, but they carry out orders very well. But eventually, it's only a matter of time before they become as smart as a mouse, then as smart as a rabbit, then as smart as a dog or a cat, and finally as smart as a monkey. At that point, they are potentially dangerous.
44:23 Steven Bartlett? The AI models, though, that are available now are PhD level in terms of intelligence.
44:30 Speaker 00 No, you cannot talk PhD physics with them. They're programmed, they're programmed to have certain ways of thinking about certain things, but they're not original. You can't come up with a new theory of physics talking to a robot. They basically take what is programmed into them and work with that. Now, eventually, they may become creative, okay? But I think that's going to take several decades before we are at that point.
44:59 Steven Bartlett? When you say creative, what's your definition of creative in that context?
45:03 Speaker 00 Robots right now take what is available to them and rearrange things, like writing a book.
45:08 Steven Bartlett? Isn't that what humans do? Don't we take information and rearrange it?
45:11 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, but we come up with new ideas.
45:13 Steven Bartlett? Based on that information? The AIs can make a photo that has never existed before. So isn't that by definition?
45:19 Speaker 00 On the basis of what did exist before. In other words, something new, but basically a rearrangement of something that already existed.
45:27 Steven Bartlett? So I'm saying, you know, the Michael Jackson documentaries just come out recently and you see Michael Jackson, the way he moves and you look at it and go, wow, like, no one's ever moved like that before. And then my friend sent me this video, which was what Michael Jackson was actually inspired by. And it's this, I'll throw it up on the screen so other people can see. But it was something that came before Michael Jackson and it was this guy who moved in this very interesting way. And when I watched this guy, I saw Michael Jackson. And so you look up someone like Michael Jackson and you go, oh, my God, an unbelievable creative genius artist. But even he was inspired by, by, see if I can get it to play. Even, you see, even he was inspired by this individual. And then if I if I play it forward, I mean, this is how Michael Jackson moved.
46:10 Speaker 00 Right? Well, art, the bottom line of art is mimicry. That's the bottom line of art, except you arrange things in an original way, so it looks fresh.
46:20 Steven Bartlett? Am I right in thinking that with Newton, he took the existing laws of physics and he?
46:28 Speaker 00 Which were negligible.
46:30 Steven Bartlett? And he proposed?
46:31 Speaker 00 There were no laws of physics before Newton.
46:33 Steven Bartlett? And he proposed a question? And then he tested that question and found an answer.
46:39 Speaker 00 He asked himself a question, how come the earth goes around the sun? And he came up with an idea that was totally different from what people had had thought about before. He came up with calculus, he came up with the inverse square law. So what I'm saying is true creativity comes from almost nothing and it's like a supernova. Well, creativity of a robot is imitative. Now, there's nothing wrong with that because, of course, imitative artwork is still artwork, but it's imitative.
47:09 Steven Bartlett? Do you believe people like, like the big AICOs and Elon Musk, when they say that AI will lead to new discoveries in science?
47:18 Speaker 00 That's possible because there's so many laws of physics that are known that many of the new laws of physics are imitative and you rearrange them and combine them in different ways. So it's possible that the big breakthroughs of the future will be guided by breakthroughs of the past. There's nothing wrong with that.
47:37 Steven Bartlett? Are you concerned about AI at all?
47:39 Speaker 00 I'm concerned about AI in the larger perspective, that one day they could learn to do things that are bad, learn to kill, learn to maim, to harm people. Realize that every invention that we've made in the past, like the bow and arrow, could be used for good and bad, everything, okay? The bow and arrow could be good for game, for food, for eating, but a bow and arrow could be good for slaughtering your your next door neighbor. Any new invention has a double-edged sword to it. And so I think that so far, most of the applications of artificial intelligence have been positive.
48:23 Speaker 00 We're talking about labor costs, we're talking about creating wealth, we're talking about making things faster, cheaper, better. That's all great, but you can also create artificial intelligent weapons as well. And the battlefield is where it's happening. And if you take a look at what's happening in the Ukraine and Russia, already we're talking about aerial weapons that can use wires to lock on to their target. And they use artificial intelligence to guide them with this wire. And they cannot be stopped using the usual techniques.
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51:11 Steven Bartlett? Going back to this this question of the the Big Bang and where we all came from. If you had to posit a guess as to what caused the Big Bang, would you land on this bubble bath theory that you talked about, where there's just lots and lots of universes, some of them are contracting and expanding? Is that where you would personally land?
51:31 Speaker 00 Probably, if you take a look at empty space, we now believe that empty space is frothing, frothing with little bubbles, bubbles that pop into existence and then annihilate and go back into nothingness again. So even pure nothingness is chock full of activity. And one day, we think, one day, one of these tiny little bubbles decided not to go back into the vacuum, but to keep on expanding and expanding. And that became the Big Bang. And so the theory says that the universe is dynamic and that universes are being created all the time.
52:08 Steven Bartlett? What about Adam and Eve and this story?
52:12 Speaker 00 What about Adam and Eve?
52:13 Steven Bartlett? You don't think this story is true, that there was a garden, Adam and Eve, Adam eat the apple, put your clothes on, behave yourself, and then, you know, we all come from there?
52:23 Speaker 00 Well, I think there's evolution and evolution did create life forms that are single-celled, multi-celled, and then cells with a nervous system like fish. And then fish became land, moving organisms. So I think there's a linear progression.
52:42 Steven Bartlett? But you don't believe the story is told in the First Testament of the Bible around how humans came to be? God created the world in seven days, you don't believe that stuff?
52:51 Speaker 00 Well, I think it's a fairy tale, I think it's a very compelling fairy tale. But I think that even the people who teach religion realize it as a metaphor, that we don't really mean 24 hours in a day because that deals with the earth. In the universe, there could be other worlds where a day is not 24 hours. A day does not look like what the Bible says in Genesis. So I think it's a, it's a way to organize your religion into a way that is digestible and and people can understand it and it touches people, which is, which is the purpose of religion. The purpose of religion is to touch people, to bring them together into a commonality. And that's what the story of Genesis does.
53:35 Speaker 00 Religion, in some sense, is a way to help people, to show people guidance, the good life, so that you don't terrorize other people, that you make life better for other people. Not that it explains the meaning of existence, but it gives you a reason for existence.
53:56 Steven Bartlett? And you would consider yourself to be an atheist?
53:58 Speaker 00 No, I'm agnostic. I believe that there's a lot of truth because it's a way of behaving. It's a way of learning how to be good to your neighbor. It's a glue that holds things together. Not that it gives meaning for life, but it shows the way.
54:15 Steven Bartlett? It shows the way. And the subject of morality is often so intrinsically linked to religion, which is what is good and what is bad. Where does your morality come from, doctor?
54:25 Speaker 00 Well, I was in the United States Army for two years. And at that point, I had to face death and I had to face war. It was the height of the Vietnam War. There were 500 GIs dying every week, every week. Life Magazine published an issue where they had the pictures, just the pictures with no commentary, of all the GIs that died that week, with no commentary, no I told you so, just the pictures of those people that died. And then I realized that I would have to put my life on the line
55:07 Speaker 00 because my number was up and people were going into the military. And people were realizing, well, war is the way people, you know, work out their differences. But then I began to realize, being in the military, that there is a morality there. I began to realize that the people that we were fighting had their own religion. They had their own way of looking at good and evil and whatever. And they were willing to sacrifice their life for their own freedom. I began to question religion at that point. Is it just a glue that holds people together? Is there a deeper meaning to the whole thing?
55:52 Speaker 00 So one day I was learning how to throw hand grenades. And our our sergeant, who was explaining to us how to throw a hand grenade, had scars on one side of his face, big scars on his neck. And we asked him why. And he said, well, one day, a little Vietnamese boy came up to him. And the Vietnamese boy says, candy, candy, you want candy? And the GI says, no, no, no, get away from me, I don't want candy. Well, the little boy showed what was in his hand. It was a hand grenade. It was not candy at all. And the little boy threw the hand grenade at the sergeant.
56:34 Speaker 00 Well, the sergeant immediately saw what the danger was and he hit the ground as soon as he could, flat on the ground. The grenade exploded and one half of his body got saturated with shrapnel. And then you have to ask yourself a question. Why would a young boy do something like this? It's because he believed in something. And I think there was a real big lesson for me. And that is, you have to believe in something. You have to believe in the goodness of men and also the fact that men can do evil. And you have to fight for what you think is right. And therefore, it's not just a question of we're number one, we're going to win this war.
57:17 Speaker 00 I used to sing a song in the morning, I want to go to Vietnam, I want to kill a Charlie Kong. I used to sing that every morning at four o'clock in the morning. And then I ask myself now, why? Were we on the right side or the wrong side? And then at that point, you begin to question what is right and what is wrong. And then you realize, maybe I'm on the wrong side.
57:43 Steven Bartlett? Maybe I'm on the wrong side. I mean, it goes back to all the conflict happening at the moment because we're ideologically captured by whatever our own religious beliefs are and that's causing us to turn against each other, each other and cause so much pain and suffering in the world. Do you think there's any chance that this could at all change? Or is this just part of the human condition?
58:04 Speaker 00 Well, if you take a look at the human condition, you realize that warfare has been an integral part of our evolution as a species. Even in the animal kingdom, animals will fight against other animals. And so my hope, however, is that we're different from the animals. We have a brain, we can make moral decisions. Animals do not understand the meaning of a moral decision. Animals is survival, is who's stronger, who has the food. We don't necessarily have to engage in that conflict. And so I would hope that we use the brain that we have to think through and create a better world.
58:48 Steven Bartlett? One of the things I heard when I was very young about the universe, and I guess this was inspired by some theory within physics, was that there are infinite amounts of worlds out there. And I heard this, I heard someone say, if the world is infinite, that means that there's someone like me, a Steven Bartlett, who has an identical life to me up there somewhere, out in the stars, who's living a identical life to mine, maybe other than, instead of in this cup, there's lemonade instead of coffee. This is what they call, is it called the many worlds theory? Where they think there's theoretically?
59:21 Speaker 00 A version of the many worlds theory. But most many worlds theory simply says that there's an infinite number of universes and worlds out there, none of them necessarily identical to ours, but independent of us, that that is a distinct possibility.
59:37 Steven Bartlett? But if there's infinite numbers, that means there's one just like this, identical to this.
59:41 Speaker 00 Not necessarily, you can have an infinite number of things that don't repeat. So in other words, you don't necessarily have to have another civilization that is exactly like ours. You could, but it's not necessary if you believe in an infinite universe.
59:57 Steven Bartlett? It's true, I guess. Do you think that's plausible, that there's an infinite number?
1:00:01 Speaker 00 It's plausible, when you look at the, when you look at the night sky. You're overwhelmed by the majesty of the night sky. And then you realize that we're nothing but a dot. A dot on this gigantic disk called the Milky Way galaxy. And if this is the Milky Way galaxy, then here we are thinking that this is the entire universe. Which is nothing but a pinpoint on the Milky Way galaxy. And how many galaxies are there? We're talking about trillions of galaxies that are out there. Each one containing roughly 100 billion stars.
1:00:35 Steven Bartlett? How are we supposed to feel about this? I did this star tour a couple of months ago in LA where it all it was was a guy took me out to a field. Not even a field, it was the desert in Joshua Tree at nighttime. And he just explained how far away all the stars are. And then I looked through a telescope and he was like, okay, this thing you're seeing here is a galaxy. And it's a gazillion miles that way. And this one is a galaxy as big as the Milky Way and it's a gazillion miles that way. It made me feel a lot of things. It made me feel, one, irrelevant from a cosmic perspective. It also relieves one's anxiety. If anyone's anxious about this life, you kind of feel like you're not, you don't matter that much. But also it can make you feel like it doesn't matter, like there's no point.
1:01:17 Steven Bartlett? Because I think there's a certain ego to humans where we want to think it really, really, really matters. Now, it might matter to us, but does it actually matter to the universe? Does our lives matter to the universe?
1:01:29 Speaker 00 Well, I like to think of it slightly differently. I think on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, there's an alien. Who's writing the same equation that I'm writing down right now, in different language, in different notations. But he's also discovering string theory. And there are a lot of galaxies out there, each one with an individual saying, gee, I think I discovered something new about the universe. And these laws are universal. The equations that I'm writing down right now are identical in different language. With the equations that they're writing down billions of light years from us. And that gives me a sense of oneness. It gives me a sense that wow, we're part of a fellowship.
1:02:13 Speaker 00 We're part of a camaraderie. We're on the same quest, a quest to understand the nature of matter and energy. We're on the same boat. Even though we speak different language, even though we're on different sides of the universe, we're all part of the same club.
1:02:29 Steven Bartlett? Don't you think it's plausible that we're going to destroy ourselves before we, we ever figure that answer out? Or before we get to meet these aliens? Because the technology we've been able to create so far, like nuclear weapons and even things like AI. You play this forward, just on, you know, you talked about probabilities being the most important thing. The probability that one of these egomaniacs who has the launch codes for a nuclear weapon. At some point decides that they're unhappy or they feel threatened is pretty high if you just extend time. I mean, the probability goes up theoretically with every year that passes. That someone is gonna do, make a mistake that wipes this out.
1:03:10 Steven Bartlett? And the more advanced our science gets, presumably, I mean, again, I'm just theorizing. The higher the probability that we create something that can destroy ourselves.
1:03:19 Speaker 00 Well, I like to look at it slightly differently. I say to myself, what is the smallest unit of history? And I say it's the decade. Anything smaller than a decade, you get random fluctuations, noises, accidents taking place in a decade. But if you look at human history, decade by decade by decade. You realize that, oh my God, just a few decades ago, it was horse and buggy. Before that, we just had plows. Before that, we were barbarians. And you begin to realize that we've come a long ways. Not that we hit the end, but we've come a long ways just in the decade by decade analysis of the history of the human race.
1:04:03 Steven Bartlett? And we've got closer to being able to destroy ourselves.
1:04:05 Speaker 00 That, that's true too, because before we couldn't destroy ourselves. Now, for the first time in human history, we have the potential of destroying ourselves with designer germs. With nuclear weapons, with perhaps artificial intelligence. We didn't have that capability before. And it's only been in the last 80 years or so as a consequence. So I think that first of all, it means that every decade tremendous progress is made. There's no doubt about that. But second, run a knife's edge. You tilt it the wrong way and there's world's war. You tilt it the other way and there's food and luxury for everyone. And it's up to us to decide which way the knife will go.
1:04:50 Speaker 00 But my point is decade by decade, we see the enormous progress that we humans have made. The next question is, what about the next few decades? That's a big question mark.
1:05:03 Steven Bartlett? Do you think humanity are going to be able to travel out there amongst the stars and become multi-planetary? Like someone like Elon Musk is planning?
1:05:11 Speaker 00 Well, I think it's for certain that we're gonna go not just to the moon, but to Mars. And maybe even beyond that. Maybe not in our lifetime, but in our grandchildren's lifetime. We may break through and visit other planets within our solar system. Now, to go beyond that, we require some sort of warp drive. Because of the fact that the nearest star is probably orbiting Alpha Centauri. Which is four and a half light years away from the planet Earth. So you realize it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to begin the colonization of the nearby star systems.
1:05:54 Steven Bartlett? If you could answer any one mystery of the universe. You know, I just, I have it down here, the answer. What, what would you seek to answer?
1:06:03 Speaker 00 Well, it's what I'm seeking for my entire life. And that is we want that one equation, which is the secret of the universe. We have the electromagnetic force equation that's like half an inch long. We have the equation for gravity that's also about half an inch long. So why not the theory of everything, maybe an inch long? We're not there yet. But I think it does exist. And if we were to find it, that would give us an understanding of the entire universe. And I think we're very close.
1:06:36 Steven Bartlett? You think we're close?
1:06:37 Speaker 00 I think we're close.
1:06:38 Steven Bartlett? What makes you think we're close?
1:06:40 Speaker 00 Because so far, the theories that we do have are almost like magic. You look at the history of the equations of physics and you realize they get, they get simpler and simpler and simpler with time. You can write down Newton's equation, Backstreet's equations, the equation for the nuclear force on one sheet of paper. One sheet of paper. The force that governs gravity, we don't have that yet. But we have the other forces and the equations are very simple. And that's why I think that the final equation will also be simple.
1:07:13 Steven Bartlett? One of the things that are, that sometimes inspires me is that when you look at nature. Or when you look at something like the human brain, you see the same patterns as you see when you look up at the stars. And I'm one of the, I mean, I'm so fascinated by the nature of the human brain because it seems to be so, so powerful. And it also seems to have patterns we see in the wider universe. Do you ever think about this? About the brain and how astonishing it is as a, as a thing?
1:07:39 Speaker 00 Well, when I look at the animals, that makes me triply impressed. The fact that animals cannot share in that, that we see a universe that the animals cannot see. We see patterns, we see meaning, we give rhyme and reason to what we see. With animals, it's just, where's my dinner?
1:07:58 Steven Bartlett? Do you think the brain is as fascinating as the universe is fascinating?
1:08:03 Speaker 00 I think the universe is more fascinating. No matter how fast we are with physics and the mathematics of physics. Pure mathematics is still more, more profound.
1:08:14 Steven Bartlett? You wrote this book called The Physics of the Future. How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. If I was alive in 2100, based on everything you know about physics, what am I likely to see, experience? How is life likely to be different in that future?
1:08:32 Speaker 00 Well, I think we'll probably be on the moon, maybe on to Mars. And perhaps even dream about sending the first space probes even beyond that. We're talking about being able to use artificial intelligence to send probes out there. Of course, we're not going to go to the stars. That's, that's a few hundred years into the future. But I think that we will begin to, to understand the solar system within this century. And this also means that we'll have artificial intelligence, a cure for cancer. And maybe one will aid the other. Maybe artificial intelligence will help us to cure cancer and many diseases.
1:09:13 Speaker 00 And longevity, perhaps we'll begin the process of solving the immortality crisis.
1:09:19 Steven Bartlett? Do you think we will be able to live forever in the near future?
1:09:21 Speaker 00 I think there's a possibility that we may have an indefinite lifespan. I think that's a possibility.
1:09:27 Steven Bartlett? And you think it's possible within the laws of, I guess, physics and biology?
1:09:32 Speaker 00 Yes, at the end of our chromosomes, every cell, there's something called the telomeres. And the telomeres are like a clock. They get shorter every time a cell reproduces. And when the telomere gets so short, it frays, falls apart and you die. So we have a time limit. We've also discovered telomerase, a chemical that stops the clock. This was incredible when it was first announced. That if there's a clock in our body called the telomeres that tracks how long we're gonna live. And there's something called telomerase which stops the clock, then can we live forever? Well, that was the good news.
1:10:14 Speaker 00 Then the bad news was, we found out that most of, to our shock. Cancer also uses telomeres and telomerase to live forever. Why does cancer kill you? Because they are immortal. In principle, they could, they could live forever. And so it means that the secret of immortality is tantalizing close. We do know that there are cells that make immortality possible, but there's a price to pay. The price to pay is you don't want cancers to also follow you. So here's the trick of the game. We have a whole bunch of top people in the sciences and medicine. Looking for ways to extend the human lifespan with the telomeres.
1:10:58 Speaker 00 Without waking up the cancers that make cancer possible.
1:11:05 Steven Bartlett? One of the things you wrote a book about two years ago in, or three years ago now in 2023. And that's when it was published, is this thing here.
1:11:14 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:11:15 Steven Bartlett? What is this?
1:11:17 Speaker 00 This is the future. This is a quantum computer. It's a computer that computes not on transistors, which is old fashioned. It computes on atoms. Think about that. The ultimate object beyond the transistor that you can compute with is the atom. And how do transistors work? Transistors can be up or down, up or down, it's called digital.
1:11:43 Steven Bartlett? Can you demonstrate that on there and this is your other?
1:11:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, so think of this as a cell. And the cell could either be switched on.
1:11:50 Steven Bartlett? Yeah.
1:11:51 Speaker 00 Or switched off. If you take a computer and open it up, what do you find? Switches like this. They're called transistors. Transistors that tell you whether it's on or off. Now, that's digital. This is the revolution of today. This is the revolution of tomorrow. Not just up or down, of in-between. How many states are there between zero and one? In principle, an infinite number of states between zero and one. So this is the basis of a digital computer. This is the basis of a quantum computer. Quantum computers are so powerful that even the CIA is worried that one day, perhaps in the future.
1:12:34 Speaker 00 They'll be so powerful, they'll be able to break into any known digital code. So even the CIA is worried about the fact that these could become so powerful. That they allow you to break into any known computer. So these are called quantum computers. Why are they powerful? Because they compute not on transistors, they compute on atoms. And you can't get much smaller than an atom and have stable matter. But that's what quantum computers can do and they exist. This is not science fiction, they already exist.
1:13:07 Steven Bartlett? So just to simplify this in a way that I can understand it. Normal computers are very, very simple like this switch. They, they kind of exist in a linear direction.
1:13:16 Speaker 00 Up or down, on or off.
1:13:18 Steven Bartlett? Kind of binary, yes or no.
1:13:19 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:13:20 Steven Bartlett? Whereas a quantum computer is more like this, where it can, it can process information in so many different directions. At the same time, so that it's going to be way more powerful.
1:13:29 Speaker 00 Way more powerful than up and down.
1:13:32 Steven Bartlett? And I was looking recently and Google did an announcement, actually this year. Where they basically set a deadline for the cybersecurity world. And they started to warn governments and banks and other tech giants. That because they have a quantum computer now that is very, very powerful. They're worried that it will be able to crack a lot of the digital worlds that we all rely on, including banks. Even Bitcoin, which was quite interesting. And they've set 2029 as the, the deadline for everybody to get their shit together. This is a massive threat to things like Bitcoin, which is Bitcoin is essentially secured by a equation. That they believe quantum computers are going to be able to very easily crack.
1:14:16 Steven Bartlett? And if they do that, then everyone's Bitcoin, for example, is, is at jeopardy. But beyond Bitcoin, what does the world look like in a world where we have these incredible computers?
1:14:26 Speaker 00 Well, first of all, who's doing this work? And it turns out the CIA is following this work very carefully. Because with this, you'd be able to crack any code. Why is it that a thief cannot steal your bank account today? It's because that thief does not have your digital code. If a thief has your digital code, there goes your life savings out the window. Capitalism would vanish, society would come to a halt, there'd be civil war. There'd be all sorts of chaos taking place. But codes are there not to be broken. To break a code, you have to have another code.
1:15:05 Speaker 00 And so the CIA and other organizations create these very complicated codes that you have to master. Quantum computers can do it. But we're not there yet, but it's coming. I don't know when, some people say in a few decades, some people say sooner. I don't know. I just know that the world is gambling that we'll find a way to stop. Quantum computers from breaking into digital computers.
1:15:36 Steven Bartlett? You've been working on physics for the last, what's, we said, what, 71 years? As a kid, I, I was reading about how you started making your own atom smasher, I guess you'd call it. A particle collider machine.
1:15:50 Speaker 00 That's right. When I was in high school.
1:15:53 Steven Bartlett? That's a very strange thing for a high school kid to be doing.
1:15:56 Speaker 00 Well, I was fascinated by the work of Einstein and the work of people working on subatomic particles. And I got interested in antimatter.
1:16:06 Steven Bartlett? Antimatter?
1:16:06 Speaker 00 Antimatter is the opposite of matter. When I combine matter and antimatter, I get a bomb. So you have to be very careful that you don't marry matter with antimatter. And antimatter behaves the opposite of ordinary matter. If ordinary matter goes clockwise in magnetic field, antimatter goes counterclockwise in that same magnetic field. And so as a science project, I wanted to photograph the tracks of antimatter. So I got hundreds of miles of copper wire, built a cloud chamber. And I was able to prove that I could photograph the tracks of antimatter. And for that, I won grand prize at the San Francisco Science Fair. And that began my, my career.
1:16:50 Speaker 00 Just before I graduated from high school, I decided to top that by creating an atom smasher. A 2.3 million electron volt beta-tron particle accelerator. It consumes six kilowatts of power. Everything that my mother's house had, it would absorb. And that was the goal, to build a machine that would create my own beam of antimatter. So I got started very early. And I said to myself, this is for me. This is what I want to do for a living.
1:17:20 Steven Bartlett? Every time I've tried to improve something in my life, like my businesses, my health, my relationships. I've noticed that the biggest shifts have come from being better informed. And when it comes to our health, most of us know very, very little. So when our team was approached about partnering with Function Health, it felt very much aligned. Their team has developed a way of giving you a full 360 degree view of your health. Many of the things that are going on in your body in the form of different tests. You do one blood draw and it gives you access to over 160 lab results. Hormones, heart health, inflammation, stress, toxins, the whole picture. I use it and so have many of my team members.
1:17:55 Speaker 02 You sign up and you schedule your tests. And once you're done, you get a little report like the one I have here. I can see my in-range results, my out-of-range results. And there's a little AI function too. So if I have any questions about my out-of-range results, I can just go in there and ask it any question I want. And these tests are backed by doctors and thousands of hours of research.
1:18:12 Steven Bartlett? It's $365 for a yearly membership. Go to functionhealth.com/DOAC and use the code DOAC25 for $25 off your membership. I've done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn, which is unexpected, is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting here for two, three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it.
1:18:53 Steven Bartlett? So you can sit at home, as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the diary of a CEO conversation cards. And it is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond your team together. And I have to say, they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other. And that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world, in the analog environment, connecting human to human. It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to thediary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now. Is there anything you discovered through your work in physics?
1:19:35 Steven Bartlett? That changed your day-to-day behavior and life? How you treat people, how you show up, what you think matters?
1:19:43 Speaker 00 No, but the one thing that did change my attitude toward life, other people, was being in the army. Yeah, that was a game changer that changed everything I knew, which I thought I knew. Before then, I was single-mindedly focused on physics, just physics. Do physics well, that was my life. But after seeing warfare up close, I began to relive this more to life than warfare.
1:20:11 Steven Bartlett? I think I asked this in part, because last time I spoke to a physicist and he talked to me about how the nature of reality is not what I think it is. And that there's multiple, I guess, dimensions. And that I'm only seeing a fraction of what is real. Which I think all physicists agree upon. It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory or something, but actually logically, it makes a lot of sense to only see what you need to see to survive.
1:20:33 Speaker 00 That's right. What you see, your conception of the three-dimensional world is only the tiniest sliver of actually exists.
1:20:41 Steven Bartlett? And when I heard that, it made me open-minded to. A lot of the things I thought were conspiracy nonsense. It made me open minded to ghosts. Maybe ghosts are real.
1:20:54 Speaker 00 Well, I wouldn't go that far.
1:20:55 Steven Bartlett? Well, you know, maybe another dimension where there's another, there's spirits that can see me, but I can't see them.
1:21:01 Speaker 00 Well, there could be other such dimensions as within the realm of possibility.
1:21:06 Steven Bartlett? What do you think happens when we die? Do you think, do you think that's it? Or do you think there are, there's a possibility that there's ghosts and that our spirit, our soul goes somewhere?
1:21:15 Speaker 00 I don't see it happening because your brain, your personality, your thoughts are electrical. And when you die, the electricity turns off. There's nothing propelling thinking anymore. Thinking requires a lot of energy, even ghosts. If ghosts exist, they would still require a lot of energy to keep the thoughts going. But that's why I don't believe in ghosts, because I don't see an energy source that propels the ghosts.
1:21:42 Steven Bartlett? People talk a lot about spirituality. They talk about, you know, things like shackles and a lot of spiritual people talk about vibrations. It's a phrase that I often hear in the spiritual communities. Do you believe in anything like that in terms of humans having energies and being able to feel each other's energies?
1:22:00 Speaker 00 Well, I think that if a person emanates a certain aura or a vibe, that doesn't necessarily mean they're radiating something.
1:22:09 Steven Bartlett? Is there any physics behind that idea?
1:22:11 Speaker 00 I think it's psychological that you are tuned, tuned into a certain personality, a certain way of movement. I think it's psychological rather than physical.
1:22:22 Steven Bartlett? What is, what is something you believe that you haven't proven?
1:22:26 Speaker 00 Well, there's a lot of things that haven't been proven. All I can say is maybe, maybe not, like flying saucers. I don't say they don't exist or they exist. I say maybe, I just haven't seen concrete evidence for them, that's all. So there's a lot of things that I'm not going to definitely say no, like ghosts. I don't think there are ghosts, but I can't prove it. Maybe there is some afterlife of some sort, but it does go against what is measurable. We've seen no measurement of somebody that has been able to pick up vibrations from a ghost.
1:22:57 Steven Bartlett? How would you like to be remembered? Someday, long after you're gone, do you care about being remembered? Do you care about legacy?
1:23:05 Speaker 00 Well, I care about leading a good life that I feel comfortable with. And if you, if your books and your teachings and your lectures, if they live on beyond you, that's a bonus. It means that you had an impact. It means you touched people. You touched people's lives with ideas. And when I go down the street, quite a few people come up to me and they say, I saw you on this show. I saw you on that show. And that gives me a nice feeling. Of course, after I'm gone, there's no, nothing to feel. But when you're still alive, it gives you a nice feeling, knowing that you've had an impact, knowing that you've changed somebody's life. Several people have come up to me and said, I became a physicist because of you.
1:23:49 Speaker 00 So that's a nice, nice way to view reality, that you touch people.
1:23:57 Steven Bartlett? Is there, is there anything that you used to think was a conspiracy theory that you now know to be true?
1:24:04 Speaker 00 Well, I like to debunk, so as soon as someone says something outlandish, I say to myself, sure, sure.
1:24:10 Steven Bartlett? But that's what I mean, like you've, you know, you're a debunker. So at some, some stage in your life, you must have had the experience of thinking something can't be true and being proven wrong.
1:24:20 Speaker 00 Usually when I make predictions, they come out to be true. Maybe the timeline is a little bit exaggerated, but they turn out to be true. So I haven't made any predictions or observations that were later shown to be false.
1:24:33 Steven Bartlett? What predictions are you making now then about the, the nature of reality in the future?
1:24:38 Speaker 00 Well, I talk about the nature of string theory in the future, whether or not we really will have a theory of everything. Flying saucers, I talk about the fact that even though we have no evidence today, you know, there's a mountain of these things being declassified now. Maybe we'll pick up shreds of evidence.
1:24:53 Steven Bartlett? Did you look at the declassified information that Trump released on UFOs?
1:24:57 Speaker 00 Yeah, I've looked at the whole, the whole batch, 160 or so sightings.
1:25:01 Steven Bartlett? Was there anything in there that was compelling to you?
1:25:04 Speaker 00 No, just lights dancing in the sky without any commentary, so you don't know what they are. But they could be extraterrestrial. But you see, these things are two dimensional. They're taken by a camera, which is flattens the image. Therefore, to judge distance is very tricky.
1:25:22 Steven Bartlett? Do you believe that you're looking at extraterrestrial life forms when you watch these videos of UFOs?
1:25:30 Speaker 00 I'm open to the idea. I don't think there's any smoking gun yet, but I'm open to the idea that these are extraterrestrial.
1:25:36 Steven Bartlett? You see some of them going up and then down and then into the ocean and coming back up again. Do you, when you watch that, do you think these are aliens? Or do you just think it's people that have misunderstood what they're looking at?
1:25:45 Speaker 00 I leave open the probability that it could be one or the other. There's no aha moment where I say that it's nothing but reflection, it's nothing but an optical illusion. There's no aha moment.
1:25:58 Steven Bartlett? If you had to bet everything you love and cherish on either side of the fence, that non-human life had made contact with the earth at some point in some form or not. Which side would you place everything you love and care about on yes, aliens have made contact with this earth in some form or no?
1:26:18 Speaker 00 Well, I would have to say, I don't know.
1:26:20 Steven Bartlett? If you, but if you had to.
1:26:21 Speaker 00 I know it's a cop out.
1:26:22 Steven Bartlett? No, but you know, if everything on the, was on the line, one would have to move yet to yes or no. And I would personally, I would personally probably say, probably no, if you made me bet everything.
1:26:37 Speaker 00 I'd say maybe yes.
1:26:39 Steven Bartlett? You'd say yes.
1:26:39 Speaker 00 But no, no, no, no, maybe yes. Very important, the word maybe, I'm a, I'm a scientist and somebody's going to use that against me by saying, you said on television that this and this is true. No, I said maybe. That doesn't mean it actually is true. It just means I open the possibility that it's true.
1:26:57 Steven Bartlett? But if you were held at gunpoint, doctor, and at gunpoint, they said, right, you've got to say yes or no. And if you're right or wrong, that determines your fate.
1:27:10 Speaker 00 I would have to say maybe. I know what you're getting at. You want to like, you know, corner the fox, right?
1:27:15 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, well, to some degree, yeah, I'm trying to corner the fox. But I'm, but I'm doing it to understand where your intuition or your, your bias lands because.
1:27:27 Speaker 00 I see there's not enough conclusive evidence. There's no aha moment. I do see a lot of maybes.
1:27:32 Steven Bartlett? A lot of maybes.
1:27:35 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's probably the intellectually honest answer is maybe.
1:27:41 Steven Bartlett? But if I was forced to fall on one side of the fence, I'd, I'd probably say no. Because I don't have enough conviction to say yes. I see no evidence to say yes, other than, you know, some sightings of some things. But I'm open minded. Maybe it'll change. Doctor, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you in my diary is, what is the best strategy to deal with failure?
1:28:16 Speaker 00 I think the best strategy to deal with failure is try it again. I think on the first try, you're bound to make mistakes because it's a learning curve. And that learning curve is, is instructive. It teaches you. It teaches you to try it again, but make a slight change. Make a slight change and hope that changes in the right direction. If not, make another change and see whether that puts you in the right direction.
1:28:41 Steven Bartlett? If you could go back to when you were that seven year old kid that was just getting into physics and.
1:28:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, eight year old, yeah.
1:28:47 Steven Bartlett? Eight year old and give him any advice that would best serve him for the next 70 years. What advice would you have given him?
1:28:55 Speaker 00 I'd say carry on. I've made a lot of decisions that I feel good about, decisions that made me a better person. For example, when I went into the army, at that point, I thought, what could be worse than facing death on the battlefield? To die on some unnamed hill in some unnamed land. And then I began to realize, well, yeah, that's a possibility, but there's another possibility that you may survive, that you may learn from that experience. If you're not here to learn, okay, so be it. But if you are here to learn, you gain wisdom by being in the military. And that I think is a positive thing.
1:29:35 Steven Bartlett? We were talking about UFOs and alien life at the start of this conversation. And one of the questions that's adjacent to it is if alien life were to come here at some point. Do you think they would have empathy for us? Or do you think that's potentially a human trait? Do you think they, you know, because in the movies they attack us.
1:29:54 Speaker 00 Well, if I were to shoot in the dark, I'd say, first of all, they're robotic. They're not organic at all.
1:30:00 Steven Bartlett? Really?
1:30:00 Speaker 00 Because they exhibit maneuvers that would crush the bones of any, any living creature that we know of. These flying saucers can zigzag. They can dive from 70,000 feet all the way down. They can dive underwater. These require skills and tensions and vibrations that would crack any known US device in half. And there they are, executing these things. Either they're fake or they're extraterrestrial. So I think that they have a technology that we can only dream of.
1:30:34 Steven Bartlett? So when we're looking at these UAP images and videos, if they are to be real, then you're saying there's no life in them at all. And it's actually just machine intelligence?
1:30:44 Speaker 00 That's right. In fact, that's probably one reason why they don't come out and greet us like in the movies. In the movies, they always come out and say, hello, earth man. No, I personally think they're robotic.
1:30:55 Steven Bartlett? This question of empathy, do you posit that they might be empathetic? Do you, do you posit they would want to destroy us? I mean, what would?
1:31:02 Speaker 00 Will they destroy us or will they want to? The answer I think is no, because they could have done it years ago. You realize that if you go back, even the Bible makes reference to a UFO. If you take a look at Ezekiel, Ezekiel saw the wheel in the sky. And some people say there was no wheel, that was a UFO. So who knows for sure? But if the aliens really wanted to destroy us, they could have done it years ago. They don't have to wait. But if you go to a zoo, even if the zoo is lifelike to the point where the animals themselves don't even know they're in a zoo. It's peaceful that you can observe them without necessarily revealing your presence.
1:31:47 Speaker 00 And in that sense, it could be like living in a zoo. Not that they want to gawk at us and laugh at us, but just observe us.
1:31:56 Steven Bartlett? So you think that they will be, they won't want to destroy us, which is comforting to hear.
1:32:01 Speaker 00 I think if they had the chance to destroy us and they wanted to, they could have done it decades ago.
1:32:07 Speaker 00 But here we are.
1:32:09 Steven Bartlett? It's an interesting idea. When you talked about this extraterrestrial life potentially being robotic, it does, my, it kind of makes sense to me because we're on a course to create humanoid robots and robots that can, I was actually watching this morning, there's a video that one of these humanoid robot companies are streaming. And it's they're streaming a humanoid robot working on a production line for four hours straight. So everybody can watch and all it's doing is sorting packages out, but it's been going for four days straight. And if you play this forward, you go, this robot can go walk across the office and it can charge itself back up once it runs out of battery. And then they show it going back to work again. When I say play forward, I mean, imagine this technology continues to improve on the trajectory it's on.
1:32:52 Steven Bartlett? The battery technology gets better, the intelligence gets better. And then theoretically, this robot will be able to build a spaceship theoretically and travel into the universe theoretically at some point, if you imagine any rate of improvement. So it's theoretical that, okay, humans might not be able to survive the crushing forces of that speed, but a robot could.
1:33:13 Speaker 00 My personal attitude is that we should eventually merge with them.
1:33:17 Steven Bartlett? Merge with the robots.
1:33:18 Speaker 00 That's right. That's my personal feeling, because people talk about whether they're good, whether they're bad, so on and so forth. Well, the bottom line is that it can become more powerful. And not now, but who knows, maybe in the next century, they'll begin to make reasonable choices. They'll reason, they'll plot future histories. And at that point, it could be potentially dangerous. So what do we do? Either we become super powerful and meet the challenge, or we merge with them.
1:33:49 Steven Bartlett? When you say merge with them, what do you mean?
1:33:52 Speaker 00 Become like that, become part robotic herself, become superhuman.
1:33:56 Steven Bartlett? As in when we're born as kids, maybe we have an implant and it makes us, turns us into a robot or?
1:34:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, in other words, we are still looking the same, except we have superhuman abilities. And our brain is connected either directly or by remote control to a central nervous system that does the calculations and performs these calculations much better than we can. And we become superhuman.
1:34:22 Steven Bartlett? This is the, the video that I'm talking about. This is actually a live video. So this is live as we're watching. What they've got is they've got a human being here who's sorting the packages. And they've got, they've got the humanoid robot here. And they're just counting how many packages each of them can sort. And this robot has been doing this for four days straight.
1:34:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:34:46 Steven Bartlett? Anyway, you play this forward and it asks a big question about the future of humanity when there's humanoid robots.
1:34:52 Speaker 00 Well, I think menial jobs will go out the window like this, jobs that are repetitive, jobs that just require your arms and legs. Those jobs will be gradually phased out and new jobs will open up.
1:35:08 Speaker 00 New jobs that require thinking, human relations, organizing, directing other people. Robots can't do any of that stuff. Robots simply do what they're told to do repetitively. Okay. We make decisions. We know how to interface with other things. We plot, we plan. Robots can't do that. Now, that doesn't mean they can eventually, but it just means that the next step beyond this will be robots that can do a little bit of mental work. And it means that we have to retrain the workforce so that they can become masters of the robots. In other words, we are masters of tools, hammers, saws, whatever. We're the master of them. They're not the master of us. Okay.
1:35:52 Speaker 00 We tell the hammer and the, and the chisel what to do because we lord over them.
1:35:58 Steven Bartlett? Have you used AI agents before?
1:36:00 Speaker 00 I've used AI before, but not necessarily, which, which agent are you talking about?
1:36:03 Steven Bartlett? So I've got like on my phone, I can say, I need a new umbrella for my patio outside my house.
1:36:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:36:09 Steven Bartlett? And it'll go on the internet, it'll look at the prices, it'll look at everything.
1:36:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, I can just type on the computer screen a question. And the computer will come up with an answer.
1:36:18 Steven Bartlett? But you, you were talking about planning there. So I was saying that the agent basically makes a plan and then it spends a couple of, it could spend an hour executing that plan.
1:36:27 Speaker 00 Oh, you mean not just coming up with the plan, but actually executing the plan?
1:36:30 Steven Bartlett? It can do both. But I'm just saying, you were talking about how humans have this, you know, this ability to make decisions. I'm saying that the AI agent is making decisions like a human would.
1:36:40 Speaker 00 No, you tell it what to do. The computer is probably programmed to look for a reference, like in an encyclopedia, a handbook, the internet. In other words, if you say, I want to know the best car, it'll carry that out by looking at the internet, going through different cars. It doesn't need you to tell that. But if you were to ask something more complicated, go to the supermarket and buy these some eggs. No robot can do that.
1:37:07 Steven Bartlett? Have you been to LA? Because if you're in LA, there's all these robots just strolling around the streets delivering food. They deliver food in LA.
1:37:14 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, but that's just crawling on a sidewalk.
1:37:17 Steven Bartlett? That's what, that's what humans do.
1:37:17 Speaker 00 I thought you meant driving a car, driving a car and going up the stairs and whatever. That's just going on a sidewalk.
1:37:25 Steven Bartlett? Which is what a human does.
1:37:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, but humans can do a lot more.
1:37:30 Steven Bartlett? Okay, thank you so much, doctor. I appreciate your time today and I've learned so much about all of these fascinating things. And as always, when I listen to your content, I find myself more curious about the nature of reality. And I've realized how little we know, which makes me and I guess thousands of other people that have followed your work. Because I was going through your videos earlier on and so many of the top comments are people saying that you're the reason they worked harder in their physics classes.
1:37:54 Speaker 00 Oh, really?
1:37:54 Steven Bartlett? Yeah, I was on a couple of the podcasts that you've been on and so many of the top comments say exactly that. They say, you're the reason I worked harder. You're the person that made me more curious. And I just think that's such a wonderful thing, because as you said at the start, physics is the basis of everything.
1:38:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:38:07 Steven Bartlett? And the more we understand, the better the lives we could live.
1:38:11 Speaker 00 Right, yeah, I agree.
1:38:13 Steven Bartlett? Thank you so much.
1:38:14 Speaker 00 Okay, well, thank you.
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