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Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Part Two: Searching for Alien Life, the UFO Disclosure Era, the Great Filter & How Much Time Earth Has Left | Dr. David Kipping
00:56:05
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. B. Alec.
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B
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
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A
And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. David Kipping, professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Columbia University and director of the Cool Worlds lab. In part one of our conversation with Dr. Kipping, he explained what it looks like to actually search for life on other planets. We also talked about what's so special about Earth and our evolution on this planet. Are we the most primitive life form out there or are we the most advanced? He also talks about the age of disclosure and how it's changing the way we search for life on other planets. In part two, we'll talk about what aliens might want with our DNA. Black holes, wormholes, Havana syndrome, and the impact of AI on the way we view science. We can't wait for you to hear part two of our conversation with Dr. David Kipping. Break it down. I'm wearing this T shirt that, that Jonathan got me, which I like very much because I like, you know, anthropomorphizing aliens. You know, there's. There's a lot of conversation and we. We recently had on a man who claims to be channeling an alien hybrid. Different story. His name is Bashar. And people all over the world listen to the channeling of Bashar. But one of the things that Bashar talks about and one of the things a lot of people talk about is that aliens are wanting our DNA and they are, you know, performing abductions and they are, you know, placing probes and, you know, all, all these things. And it' the subject of many incredible movies, right, Trying to understand what an interface, right, with aliens might look like? Can you imagine a world or a galaxy or a universe where aliens would be at the level of sophistication, where they could, for example, fly about undetected, but then selectively drop in? If they were at that level of sophistication, why would they want our DNA that they have to suck through our nose with a probe? I'm. I'm asking for a friend, but I'm asking for, you know, for sort of a. I'm not just trying to be, you know, cheeky here. I'm saying that, like, where, where is that level of interface? And how do we have conversations? Do we just shut that down and say, guess what? Anything that can fly undetected doesn't need to then suck you into a ufo? Or do we say all bets are off and maybe there are beings that are operating on a level that we literally can't understand?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I've heard that rash, that argument by some of my colleagues that it doesn't make any sense why UFOs, if they're so advanced, would be undetectable in some data and then trivially detectable by eye with a human eye, in other data, or with a simple camera and other data. I mean, it is often, by the way with cameras, I always find it amazing that the best image of a UFO hasn't improved since 1950. Right? Camera technology has exploded and yet we still have this grainy, crappy photo every time. That, that's. That's maybe a red flag, right? To some degree. But in terms of the motives, it's. It's impossible to debunk it. I think it's a waste of time to try to debunk motivation because we have no idea what the motives of Nadine would be. Maybe that. Maybe it's a teenager who's drunk and he's just flying around, you know, messing with us. I don't know. Like you can't. Whatever, whatever you say to someone who's, who really is a believer about that, they're not going to accept that as, as a. As a counterargument. I think when I hear these, these stories and I don't. I don't want to. I would never tell someone, well, you're wrong. That didn't happen because I don't know, I wasn't there. There must be some bare minimum who are just. Who are either fantasizing this or having a waking dream or something. That would be. You would. It'd be weird if that wasn't true because we. We have such vivid imaginations. You'd expect some fraction of time that'd be true. And Jill Tartar, who's often, you know, the movie Contact was about her and Carl Sagan wrote the book Contact with her mom.
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Can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired mostly. But she went to Carvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required.
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C
Did you have to fight a dragon?
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A
Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying. You'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply in mind.
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C
She's sort of seen as the mother of seti, the search for extra intelligence. She has this beautiful quote where she says that, you know, when we look for aliens, it's like a cosmic mirror. And what we're really looking for is a reflection of our own fears and our own dreams and aspirations. And so when we look for a planet that we think is undergoing nuclear war, that is a reflection of our own fear of nuclear war. And when we look for a planet that has achieved, you know, solar panels covering the planet, that's a reflection of our own dream of achieving this kind of eco utopia. And, you know, maybe with some of these stories of, you know, medical experiments or whatever, those are again, reflections of our own internal fears that are just manifesting in these different ways. And I think. Do you think that's very true, that everything we think about aliens is. Is. Is pretty much just. It's coming from us? It's. It's a manifestation of our own, you know, aspirations and dreams. And so I think that is. There's a lot of us in these stories more than there is aliens in these stories.
- [05:47]
B
I mean, all of our narratives have that aspect to them, whether it's extra sensory abilities, God, aliens as well. We're all trying to find our place, right, and how we fit and how the world around us works. What I'm about to say, I don't think contrasts that, but in the same regard, it does shed more light and intrigue on the things that we used to think are ridiculous. And recently, the Havana Syndrome has come up again as one of the topics that was dismissed over and over again, where these people are experiencing very intense medical issues, headaches, nausea, impacts on their vision, and it was totally dismissed like they're absolutely crazy. And now 60 minutes through nine years of research, has been releasing episodes on the fact that there are some crazy, previously unknown weapons that could shoot wavelengths that impact people in a way that we could never have imagined. So I'm. I think people hear that and then get to thinking they're like, well, what else? Really can't we.
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C
To extrapolate from that?
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, I agree with you that we need evidence. But it's like sometimes in the absence of enough evidence, people are trying to put those pieces together and say, what else haven't we just figured out yet?
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C
Yeah, I mean, I was reading recently about a story this reminds me of is Alchemy and Isaac Newton with gold. So, you know, people were convinced at the time you could probably turn base metals into gold, especially lead. We thought you could turn to gold. And it seems strange to us, but, you know, at the time it was thought, well, this, if this was true, this would be Great, and we could become rich. And we really wanted it to be true. And so that's, you know, that's kind of an important bias. And I always think it's amazing that Isaac Newton, we didn't know this until like we discovered his writings in the 20th century, but he spent like as much time doing, you know, inventing calculus and physics as he did trying to turn lead into gold. And it seems in hindsight bizarre that he would do that. But you know, we, he was, he was motivated by not only this, this dream of what he wanted to be true, but just these, these, there were these stories at the time, right, that this could be possible. There were these people who were saying, these charlatans mostly who were saying, you know, to kings, I can turn lead into gold. And so I think the less is not that, you know, not to dismiss the Havana syndrome thing at all, but just that we're often wrong. That's the lesson that we often hear these rumors and when we hit, when these rumors originally come out, it's very difficult to say whether it will pan out to a yes or a no. And so that's, that's why I try to remain with UFO stuff. Just very open minded about what the, what the real answer is. But I don't think the lesson to take away is these rumors often end up being true. I think because we've seen time and time again it goes the complete opposite direction as well. There are many cases where it ends up being true, but there's also a lot of cases where it was complete BS and, and we kind of, we, we forget about those cases. And we have that problem in, in medical journals and nutritional science a lot where you hear about the, the, the positive cases, oh, eating tomatoes, you know, increased your libido by 10% or something like this. But you never hear about the negatives where they did that experiment 10 times, it made no difference, but they couldn't get it published because no one wanted to publish that stupid no result. And so we often don't give as much emphasis as probably we should to all the times that we were wrong. And when you put that all together, you get this balanced picture that we, we just often we have to make mistakes and we have to mess up and that's, that's the nature of how science works.
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A
Well, and I think also, you know, one of the things that, you know, persnickety people like me get very frustrated about is, you know, yes, it's important and amazing that we can disseminate information and people can look things up about their health and learn things about the world in ways that previously could not. But many people sort of don't know what to look for or how to read data. And, you know, I think we've all learned bits and pieces about how, for example, you know, pharmaceutical companies can selectively publish the data that supports the mass dissemination of medication that actually may not be doing what they say that it does. Right. That's astounding and makes me lose faith in humanity. But that's for a different episode. But I think that this is one of those things that when you have, you know, also a political climate for us where we're told not to trust, it sort of grows this sort of notion that my experience is the entire experience and what I think when I read an article is true as opposed to what is the data. And, you know, I go over this with my mother, God bless her, who will see something on Instagram and say, oh, my gosh, I didn't know that, you know, insert, insert the food, the treatment, the celebrity, like, whatever it is. And I think that's sort of something that, you know, for. For people who are kind of trained in the ivory tower of academia, there is a different set of standards. Right. And that doesn't necessarily translate well to kind of popular media.
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C
Yeah, for sure.
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A
I'd like you to take us down a black hole, because one of the other things we wanted to talk to you about was black holes. You know, the. The sort of simple notion of why black holes don't make sense. Can. Can you walk us through, you know, for someone who's like, I really want to. And we've had Jan11 on, like, literally the black hole person, you know, But I wonder if you can try and walk us through a layperson's explanation, because I think a lot of people want to understand this, and they want to understand the conflict that happens when we imagine a black hole. And it opens up the possibility, obviously, for conversations about wormholes, but if you can talk a little bit about sort of like energy conservation and, you know, mass conservation and things like that, help us understand what we should know about black holes, why they should delight us and confound us, and also what some possible explanations are for the paradox that they present.
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C
Yeah, so there's, I think, probably the. The biggest paradox you're alluding to there is this thing known as the black hole information parado. You know, black holes are just incredible. It's actually wild to think they're really out there. Sometimes you just have to, like, take A step back and think this is not just like an idea. Like we know those actually exist, and it's terrifying. There's these things out there which nothing can escape from. I think it's such a bizarre idea. But I guess the paradox here is that we know that there's plenty of black holes. It's probably of order of like a million or so in our own Milky Way. We only know of maybe dozens in a row Milky Way that have these accretion disks. That's when stuff is falling in. It rubs together a lot of friction. It gets very hot, and we can see it. But there's probably lots of black holes which are almost naked. They just. They're just floating through space. There's nothing really falling into them at the moment. And so we just can't see anything. They are black, of course. That's why you can't see them. The, the paradox of the, of them is really about what happens to the stuff that falls in.
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A
I'm sorry, wait, wait, wait a second. Did you just say they're floating around?
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C
Well, maybe not floating is the right word, but they are. They are moving through space. Yeah. With some peculiar velocity. Yeah.
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A
Okay. This is something I've never thought about. I've always studied black holes or thought about black holes as sort of like static. They have the ability to move, though. This is a new piece of information for me.
- [13:44]
C
Well, it's not like by their own power.
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A
Sure.
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C
Everything in the galaxy is moving.
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A
Right.
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C
So, I mean, the solar system is orbiting around the center of the galaxy and has a fairly circular orbit. But there are some objects which orbiting in highly elliptical orbits and they're not stable. They will move around. We had an interstellar asteroid, three of them pass through the solar system quite recently. So stuff can hit each other. It can go through solar systems. It's a messy, busy place out there.
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A
Okay, got it. It's just like, it changes a little bit of computation that I'm doing about them to picture them as a receptacle for potentially everything that never comes back. And we don't know what's happening in there. But also it moves about because then it asks the question, like, what vector are things moving on? If it's. Anyway. Okay, keep going.
- [14:35]
C
Yeah. I mean, there is a chance a black hole could pass through the solar system. It'd be very bad day for us, Right? It's. It's possible. It's not very likely, but it is possible. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I wouldn't lose sleep about that particular chance, but it is possible.
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A
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- [19:17]
C
But yeah, the question is what happens to stuff that falls in. When something falls in, obviously the, it adds to the mass of the black hole. So if you throw in a book like an encyclopedia with all of the, the words and the information inscribed on those pages, at the very basic level, the black hole just gets one encyclopedia heavier. That's about it. That's all that really happens to it. But the, and I think we could live with that if that was the end of the story. We could be like, well, the information on those pages and even just the matter itself more at a quantum level, is just somehow hidden behind that event horizon. It stays there forever. And that's okay. But the problem that black holes introduced was really because of Stephen Hawking who suggested that they, they lose mass over time, they evaporate. And we now have, we haven't got direct evidence that they do this, but it is widely accepted that this has to be true to make sense of them. With quantum theory, you can actually, actually see this happen with acoustic versions of black holes. So you can create kind of sonic versions of black holes in the laboratory. And they also produce this so called Hawking radiation where they will evaporate over time. So we really have lots of reasons to think this is something they really do. It just happens on vast time scales. I mean, trillions and trillions of trillions of years that they will slowly lose mass. So eventually the black hole goes away. You know, this, this mass will just completely disappear and it will just pop out of existence at a certain point far in the future.
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A
Yeah, that, that's troubling because you're thinking of all the mass that has been added to it as it goes around the galaxy like a giant trash can from which there is no return. Things just can't disappear. Matter cannot just disappear.
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C
Right. So I think the energy in the mass conservation, we can, we're okay with that actually because all the mass that goes in comes back out as photons and of course equals MC squared. So you can, you can keep all your books in, in order there, the account. You know, if you're measuring your budget, everything makes sense. The problem is information actually not, not necessarily mass. There was this, you know, complex information, this entropy encoded within that book and presumably it hits the singularity. You know, if you calculate how long it takes for things to hit the singularity, it's not that long. It's of order of, depends on the black hole. But it could be anywhere from seconds, hours. So eventually this stuff will hit the singularity. And the singularity is thought, I mean, we don't know, no one's ever peered inside one, but it's thought to be this point of infinite density. And so that is complete destruction of any information. It should totally destroy it. So then what? This raises a problem with quantum theory, because quantum theory says all processes are essentially reversible. That if you write down the Schrodinger equation, the equation of how, you know, we think, think systems evolve in a quantum universe. You can always time reverse them and get the, and, and everything makes sense. Whereas here you can't time reverse it, right, because it's destroyed. There's, there's an end point to the story. You can't go back. Once it's crossed that horizon, it's, the information is gone. And so this kind of violates, I mean, a simpler way to think about it is just that quantum theory demands information conservation. There's the conservation of energy, the conservation of mass. And quantum theory says there's really, there should be a conservation of information. And black holes seem to just ruin that story for quantum theorists. And so this is where there's a fascinating intersection of general relativity, which is a theory of, of, of, of how spacetime folds and moves and bends, of which one of the consequences is a black hole, and quantum theory, which is a theory of the very, very small. And it's. Black holes seem to be the keyhole where both of those two worlds talk to each other in a way that we don't see with any, almost any other system. And so that's why I think so many particle physicists, quantum physicists and cosmologists, everyone in, in the physics world are so fascinated with them because they, they can solve so many problems because they are the bridge between all of these different scales, in a sense. And so there's a lot of work going on, a lot of thinking. I'm sure Janice spoke about some of this, about how, how, how can that information get out, out? Because it has to for this, for this theory to make sense.
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A
What about this kind of concept of wormholes? Obviously this is something real that has been expanded in, you know, kind of popular culture to include conversations about, you know, kind of anomalies like the, you know, Sci Fi show or, or even sort of the multiverse. Can you speak a little bit to wormholes and how that leads to these other conversations?
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C
Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm so. It's, it's actually my next, My last video, my last video on Cool Worlds was all about worms. It's very well timed because I spent a lot of time researching wormholes in preparation for that video, people originally thought black holes could be connected to wormholes in a sense. And Einstein actually wrote about that with this idea called the Einstein Rosen Bridge. But the version he imagined was not a wormhole a human being or even a particle could ever take. It was a slice through space. But particles always have to go forwards through time. And because the very fact we have to go forwards through time prevents you from ever like tunneling through the black hole and coming out of the other end of what would be some kind of hypothetical wormhole or hypothetical extra universe. So if you look at the math, you can kind of reflect the math and predict, oh, there should be another universe, there should be the inverse of the black hole, the white hole on the other side. And in principle if you could travel infinite speed, you could control of work your way through that. But in, in real physics it's, it's, it's doesn't seem possible. So then Kip Thorne, who of course famous for Interstellar because he was the science adviser in the movie Interstellar, he was actually prodded by Carl Sagan to start thinking about this. And Carl Sagan when he was writing Contact that we've already mentioned, was asking Kip Thorne, you know, is there a way, I know that Einstein Rosenbridge doesn't work, but could you imagine a way of making this work? And so him and Morrison Thorne came together and they came up with an actual traversable wormhole. It really did work. And they kind of reverse engineered it. They said, well, here's a wormhole, let's solve the equations to figure out what the mass has to look like to create it. And the solution they came up with works, but it requires this weird thing of negative energy. And so that's where everyone kind of scratched their head and was like, well, how would you do that? There are some examples of negative energy that we know of, like the chasm effect for instance, in, in physics. But this would be a huge amount of it. I mean you're talking like Jupiter, masses of negative energy put in one place. But maybe an advanced civilization could do that. And then further, I think people often stop there and they say that's the big problem, you need negative energy, but you also need to basically take two regions of space time and glue them together by the negative energy. That, that's actually the harder part. It's not, it's not having the negative energy in one place. It's then grabbing somehow like a God God grabbing space time in two separate places and somehow putting them together and gluing it with, with the negative energy. That's the part that people don't talk enough about as a big problem, like how, how the hell are you supposed to do that? Because we live in the space time. So you almost have to be outside of the space time to create the wormhole in the first place. It's like a chicken and egg type problem. So, you know, that's. That still remains one of our most realized mathematical descriptions of what a wormhole might look like. Like in a sense for human beings to pass through. But recently there's been a lot of work looking at microscopic wormholes that could naturally emerge inside these black holes, especially charged black holes if you put a bit of charge on them. It's thought that wormholes, microscopic Planck scale wormholes are inevitable inside black holes. And that could be a way of explaining this information paradox that we talked about, because maybe the information tunnels out, out using these microscopic wormholes and somehow gets back out into the, into the universe. So that's one of the leading ideas actually to solving this paradox, is that wormholes are real, but they're just very, very small and they live in on the interior of black holes and are a way of stuff getting out, basically.
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A
Is there an alternate version of all of us on the other side of those wormholes?
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C
I mean, possibly, I mean we. Yeah, it depends what kind of. For these microscopic ones, they really do live in kind of of regular space time if you like. You don't have to do anything too exotic. But certainly for the original Einstein, Rosenbridge, or even to a certain extent, what Kip Thorne had in mind, it's not obvious what that other universe is. Is it just a distant part of our universe? Is it a completely separate universe? It's never defined. You don't have to define it to write down it, to write it down. Mathematically you don't have to define what it is. You just have to say there is another space time region and you, you figure out what you want that to be. But that, that's all the math says. So you'd have to. You know, I always think it'd be faster if I had the option of how to die. And I could do anything. I want the universe. I think I would fall into a black hole, right? Because I think that would be amazing. Because you would be the only, only you could know what's inside it, right? Because you can never send back out, only those who fall through the event horizon know what's inside the black hole. And you would, you could survive in principle for maybe a few Hours for some of the big black, and you wouldn't be totally ripped apart immediately. You could pass through the event horizon, as Cooper showed us in interstellar, and see what it's like. And that would be awesome because otherwise there's no way to know until someone does it.
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B
I stopped at. You won't be ripped apart immediately.
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C
Yeah, you will eventually. Yeah, you will eventually be ripped apart. If you're okay with spaghettification at some point, maybe you have a cyanide pill. As you start to feel stretched, you're like, okay, this is. Is. This is the moment. I've seen enough at this point.
- [29:20]
B
The getification is our new focus here on the podcast. Are you familiar with the work of Donald Hoffman and his exploration that there is a space outside of space time that controls the simulation? Or you can take yourself out of his version of what he believes is reality and space that in so doing, changes the. Our ability to. To be constrained by the current laws of. Of this. Of this space.
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C
Well, some of those ideas ring a bell, but not. Not specifically Hoffman's ideas. So maybe you can talk more about that.
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B
Yeah, I don't know if I can summarize properly, honestly, but basically, you know, his version, his belief that this is a simulation and it's not, we're not living in a computer game, but that the world is simul. Brain is constructing the reality around us.
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A
And also at a very. At a very basic level, you know, when we spoke to him, we titled the episode everything you see is a lie because he took even the basic explanation of, you know, how we perceive visual information. And, you know, at the most basic level, we think that we are seeing the world, right? Like, this is how we're raised to see the world. But there is an alternate reality, right, which is all the wavelengths that are not absorbed, right, by all the. The things that we are again, saying, this is a table and this is a computer, and I know what red is, right? So his sort of framework, you know, comes from that. That everything you're seeing is filtered. You know, it's filtered not just through, you know, kind of brain structures, but it. It's filtered through, you know, a. A construct.
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B
Very helpful. And his belief is that, you know, know, the thing next behind me isn't actually there until I turn to render it, and then it exists again. He is working with mathematicians and experts on the hard science that can create the ability to control our version of reality, basically manipulate the headset in his analogy. And so in so doing, that breaks open the limits of. Of our Physical limitations. And it could mean, you know, moving about the world outside of the current limitations. And it could be changing our ability to, you know, repair physically and so on and so on. But was just curious if, if like there's. There's elements of the wormhole math that seem to over overlap here.
- [31:57]
C
Yeah. And also the holographic principle, it reminds me of. So yeah, with one of the discoveries of studying the mathematics of black holes is that it is possible to actually equate wormholes with quantum entanglement in, in certain descriptions of the universe. This thing called anti de sitter space. If you, if you write down the equations of, of. Of what happens anti desist space, you can basically have quantum entanglement on the boundary of this, of this antidecity space. Look like wormholes on the interior. But the wormholes are just holograms. They're not, not. They're not really there. They're just projections of the quantum entanglement. And so you can kind of unify these two apparently disparate ideas which both seem to allow for instant communication as being just mirrors of the same thing, just different ways of thinking about them. And the holographic principle is, is got a lot of interest right now in physics that if you extend this, then all 3D objects in the universe are actually just really projections of this 2D surface out into 3D universe. And I think it's amazing that that seems to work. Like if you take the whole universe, the observable, the Hubble volume, and you just take that surface, you could take all the information that's inside that 3D volume and put it on the surface and it would fit on there. Exactly. Which seems like really compelling argument for this holographic principle, which is, is obviously very disturbing for our own sense of who we are and what we see. Like nothing's. Nothing's really there.
- [33:30]
A
Mayim Bialik's breakdown is supported by Cozy Earth. So many of us know that the role of mom can feel like a thankless job most of the time. I cannot overstate how meaningful it feels to be cared for in those quiet moments that no one sees. This Mother's Day Cozy Earth creates comfort designed for the rhythm so many women live every day. From the softness that greets her in the morning to the comfort that helps her unwind at night. Thoughtful by nature and gentle in every detail. It's a small way to give back to the person who gives so much. So how do you thank someone for a thousand small moments? This Mother's Day Cozy Earth offers a gentle reminder that the comfort she gives can be hers too. Cozy Earth's robes wrap her in softness with thoughtful details that move with her and hold her spacious pockets, Adjustable ties and cozy silhouettes make every moment feel intentional. Whether it's plush, quilted, waffle or stretch knit, each piece is made with care. Cozy Earth slippers with plush shearling and thoughtful footbeds wrap her feet in warmth, turning everyday moments into little acts of care. Versatile, breathable and cozy, these slippers move with her and keep comfort lasting all day. Try it for yourself. Thoughtfully made for the women who give comfort all day with softness that feels like care in return and becomes something she'll reach for again and again. Cozy Earth is backed by a 10 year warranty because the comfort she deserves should last just as long as her love does. Let this Mother's Day be a reminder that she deserves care too. Discover how Cozy Earth turns everyday routine into moments of softness and ease. Head to cozyearth.com, use our code BREAK for an exclusive 20% off. And if you see a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here on Mayambialik's Breakdown because home starts with Mom One of the things that I wonder if you can speak to and we've spoken a little bit about, you know, sort of what popular technology has done to science in terms of information coming in many cases anecdotal information. It's also introduced a lot of the conversation around science, sort of, you know, what the government knows about, let's say, other aspects of, of our existence. And I think that one thing that we're seeing that is changing the way that science functions at all is AI. And I wonder if you can speak a little bit to some of the exciting things that AI is doing that that impact science and also some of the dangers of the, the entry of AI into sort of scientific r reliability and consistency.
- [35:59]
C
Yeah, it's, it's a very fast moving train. And so my thoughts on this, like many people are evolving almost daily as, as we see the capabilities change and the use cases change and people try different things and make different mistakes and different successes. I have to say up to about a month ago personally, I wasn't really using AI very much. I know you said you don't use it at all. I was using a little bit with ChatGPT for just sort of proofing things, maybe rewording some stuff, things like that. And then when I started using the more coding versions of it, like Claude Code for instance, I was really Kind of blown away because I did a podcast about this, a solo episode where I went to Princeton and they were all basically singing praises about how great this, this coding framework is and that it was a better coder than they were were. And you know, these were very reputable software developers in terms of making astrophysics simulations and things. So I was really surprised by that. So I thought I'd try it out for myself. And I, I would say it's not such a question of it being better, but just way faster. I mean, it can just do stuff. You have the idea and it would maybe take you a couple of days to, to put it together. It will just do it in an hour or two, but it will make mistakes. And then you spend another hour or two fixing those mistakes with it and identifying them. Then it's still four hours. It's still a much more efficient use of your time than spending two solid days banging your head against the wall trying to get it to work. So it's. It's like many tools, you know, like the. When the Internet first came around or Wikipedia or, you know, when Python exploded in terms of its use among scientists. It's a tool that makes it easier for us to do the. The menial tasks that you often have to do in science to get to the interesting part, like completing your bibliography for your.
- [37:56]
A
The. Which almost made me give up on getting a doctorate.
- [38:00]
C
Right. That's a very painful thing. I would. Actually, that's one of the case. I'd be worried about using AI actually because I've noticed it. It seems to hallucinate references a lot. I don't know what is about references.
- [38:10]
A
I don't care. I just needed something in those, you know, 100 pages.
- [38:14]
C
Like if you just want filler, something
- [38:16]
A
in there anyway, go ahead.
- [38:18]
C
And no one reads references anyway, so it probably doesn't even matter. But one. One note. I had a story recently because I was in. In Denver for an exoplanet conference meeting and a colleague spoke to me and she said about AI that her student had written this really beautiful first draft of a paper, had really nice figures, the explanations were clear. And they submitted it to a journal and got the referee report back. And then the student took. She didn't admit this, but after much digging it was found out. This is what she did. She'd taken the referee report and the paper and put it into ChatGPT or whatever it was and got back the next version of the paper. The whole thing. I mean, this is, this is, I think, what you shouldn't do with AI. You shouldn't give it the entire damn thing and just say, solve that. You need to like really break it down. And so what she got out was absolute garbage. The paper was like twice as long, all the figures were ruined, made no sense. And the advisor was really had to prod her and be like, what, you know, what tools did you use to do this? And eventually actually got it out of her that she had just literally copied and pasted the damn thing and ruined the project. And so they had to go all the way back and, you know, and undo that damage. So I'm hearing both cases. Like I think people, I do think people who are more senior, like myself as scientists, know how to advise graduate students, know how to advise undergraduate students in research. We break down the problem into small bite sized pieces for them and then we let them do it, we test it and we know the checks to do. Like we know these order of magnitude calculations. We get a piece of paper and we check. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's in the right ballpark. That seems to make the right sense. We know how to do those checks. Whereas I think students coming in often aren't familiar with how to break down problems like that. And they have this overwhelming faith that it'll work. And it can be ruinous in those cases. So it is a tool that's very powerful, but can in the wrong hands, can just lead to absolute nonsense. And of course there's lots of journal papers which are being submitted right now which are complete nonsense, which appear to be AI generated. So it's a big problem.
- [40:26]
A
I mean, I've, I've also heard of, you know, students who are not using AI who also have to run things through an AI checker. So it doesn't seem like you're using AI when you're not. Which is incredibly maddening because imagine being accused, right, of using AI when you've done the research and did not. I mean, that level, you know, of kind of fear is, it's raising a very interesting generation of students to say the least.
- [40:56]
C
Yeah. And I think also you see it with, with sometimes with my videos and maybe you've encountered this as well with YouTube. I think the YouTube audience is getting very frustrated with AI content, AI generated content. And the AI slop is like the, the slogan, right? That goes around and sometimes you work really hard on video. There's no way I involved it whatsoever. You put it out, they'll watch the first 10 seconds and say AI slop. Because they, they, they're so they're so hit with so much of it, this avalanche of AI stuff that they're, you know, their, their barometer has been almost desensitized a little bit to it. And so they just, they just kind of call everything that, that surprises them. You make any kind of surprising statement and think, well, that must be AI. And so it. We, we in this era of people just not trusting what they're seeing. And some people are probably watching this podcast thinking this whole thing's AI but no, we're really talking to each other.
- [41:51]
A
We're all part of the simulation anyway as we're hurtling towards a black hole.
- [41:55]
C
Right. So it is, it's having, it's having a big impact in, in public trust, in science, in the use case of science. And of course, I think the mo. The greatest danger really is probably as we've heard about many, often within businesses as well as interns and those sort of training of junior scientists people, because it is so much cheaper and easier often to be lazy and just get the AI to do it rather than a graduate student that I do worry about the exposure of graduate students to breaking down problems because it's so tempting for senior people just to Skip to the 20 bucks a month answer rather than spending a hundred thousand dollars a year to actually teach someone how to think.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah. And this is something that if we ever do get to meet in person, I'd love to just chat with you over a beer because, because, you know, as a, as a undergrad and as a graduate student, I was trained to do all sorts of things that were mind numbing and boring. You know, I learned to code like, I learned to code so we could process and smooth MRI scans to create a, you know, atlas of the human brain. And it's like, those were important hours, weeks, months and years of my life. But I wonder, you know, how much are we learning versus how much do we need to automate so that our, you know, minds are, you know, ready for other challenges? Our producer Valerie and I both like cute things, and we'd like you to explain what a baby universe is because A, it sounds cute and B, I just think we need the explanation from you.
- [43:33]
C
Yeah, I think. Well, there is the idea that you could. There's many different contexts in which baby universes actually could emerge. There is this idea that our universe is not the only universe called the multiverse. And it's often spoken about in terms of explaining kind of come back to God almost and like, you know, creation. Like, why is it that all the Constants of nature seem to be perfectly balanced to allow for life because any kind of small perturbation to them would generally make atoms even, impossible. So it's kind of wild that even anything is possible. You know, structure is possible at all.
- [44:12]
A
Law.
- [44:13]
C
So some people might lean on a creator to explain that. But a lot of scientists lean on this idea of a multiverse that there's, you know, millions and millions, billions of universes out there. And they're in this higher hyperspace domain, maybe you call it the brain or the bulk or something. And they'll all be different sizes, and those sizes will ultimately be set by how fast they expand. So we have a cosmological constant which causes the universe to expand, expand, and it's tuned at just the right rate. Actually, coincidentally or not, that galaxies are possible because if you made the universe expand too quickly, everything would just fly apart and you'd never have anything. Like we'd all just be dust, like, spread out. But if you made the cosmological constant really small, then actually the universe would barely expand and then it would come back down and crush. And so that might be a baby universe in that. In that instance, like a very small universe that pops up, but it wouldn't live very long. It would just collapse back down into itself. And of course, we couldn't live in those baby universes because they wouldn't last long enough for galaxies or. Or people to ever emerge. And similarly, we wouldn't emerge in the gigantic universes because they just spread apart too fast. And so this is kind of this anthropic reasoning to explain why. Why is everything seemed the way it is. Let's invent other universes. I'm not. I think a lot of scientists are a bit uncomfortable with it. It's weird to say there's just loads of universes out there that that's how we get round of it. But it. It does avoid the God situation, which a lot of scientists are desperate to avoid that at all cost costs.
- [45:42]
A
To speak to the sort of multiverse, you know, concept, we've had it explained to us, you know, in many ways that are elegant and beautiful and, you know, I think scientifically appropriate. But. But practically speaking, you know, what is your. What is your take? Like, if every electron has, you know, options for spin and there are infinite numbers of ways, you know, my favorite example, you know, for me to get from here to this door, there's an infinite number of possibilities, one of which includes me jumping out the wind, you know, flying to the Bahamas, you know, getting Married and coming back and then, you know, exiting the door. Right. What does that mean for the possibility of other versions of us, other opportunities, as Jonathan often describes it, sort of the sliding doors of our existence.
- [46:32]
C
Yeah, it might be the last great demotion or one of the last great demotions. I mean, we've had this sequence in history. Carl Sagan used to talk about this of, you know, we used to think Earth was the center of the solar system. And then we realized actually the sun is the center of the solar system. We're just a planet that goes around it. And then we realized there isn't just the solar system. Each star is also another sun, which also, you know, and they have other planets. And that changed our view. We had to get demoted again. The solar system is not special. And then we thought the galaxy, the Milky Way was all there was. And then we realized these other nebulae in the sky were actually other galaxies. And again, we got demoted. And so maybe in that sense it's just natural that this will continue. You and the idea that the universe is all there is is again eventually going to slip away from us. And even the sense of self identity that we are all there is, you know, I am the only version of me will also have to evaporate. Because if science has taught us anything, it's that every time we think we have the audacity to believe there's something special or unique about us, it just, it will pull that away. It's the ultimate humility machine in that sense. So it would be very in keeping with the history of all of our advance of understanding.
- [47:45]
A
This was really fantastic. We're really so grateful for you to help walk us through some of the most basic and most complicated concepts in the universe and galaxy.
- [47:55]
C
That was my pleasure. Yeah. And you know what? My wife is such a big fan of your podcast. Oh, yeah. She was like, you've got to do this one. Yeah, make sure. And I was like, yeah, we're doing it. Yeah, whatever.
- [48:06]
A
Amazing. Well, thank you so much. You know, Jonathan, um, I think that Dr. Kipping is delightful. I think that his pronunciation of words is very elegant. He also used some super big words like perturbation, which is like perturb, but perturbation. Also shout out to the word obliquity, like obliqueness.
- [48:31]
B
Also spaghettification.
- [48:33]
A
Spaghettification.
- [48:35]
B
You know what I'm going to say? Actually, anytime something feels uncomfortable, I'm going to to say this is starting to feel a lot like spaghettification. This conversation is spaghettifying me.
- [48:46]
A
This felt like, honestly, a fantastic sat List of words like whatever happens at Cambridge that created this guy, it's working.
- [48:56]
B
Next date night, let's jump into a black hole together and see what happens.
- [49:00]
A
I do want to actually mention this. And you know, a lot of what Dr. Kippings like lab, you know, explores is a lot of statistics, it's a lot of modeling, you know, it's a lot of mathematics.
- [49:13]
B
I can't, I can't focus on what you're saying because Valerie just sent us a gif of Will Smith being buried in a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, which is the greatest thing I've ever seen.
- [49:27]
A
We're trying to do an outro and Valerie is showing us spaghettification. The conversation about black holes. The fact that we're having conversations that are literally based on equations is just, it's unbelievable to me. Like when Einstein was studying this, when we're talking about Carl Sagan's interpretations of these things, these are conversations about things that exist. We only know they exist because we have the mathematical explanation for why they can't exist, exist. And that's why some people study physics.
- [50:04]
B
I don't know, there's something about like trying to understand some of the firsthand accounts that like, I want to sit down with the analysis of the craft that pilots have seen and recorded that are moving in ways that can't be explained. I want like a full review. And like I said, I want, yes, I want the physics, I want to understand the movement patterns. Like has he reviewed all of that information? And yes, there is an overwhelming data that has been released by the government. And I understand, I understand the approach. And at the same time, like, I really want more of a reconciliation. He was hedging. Obviously he doesn't want. You have to, I get it. You can't take a firsthand account. I get that.
- [50:52]
A
The reason is that one of the only explanations is that there is a conspiracy, there is a government coverage cover up that is protecting us from having access to information about aliens. That is the explanation.
- [51:07]
B
And he was like really open minded, right? Like he wants to believe and needs the burden of proof. And also, like, we can't think that everything that's being shared is delusional. You know, like, I can't imagine that these people are going in front of Congress and saying this exists. This happened to me. And it's a mass shared delusion like that. That doesn't track for me.
- [51:32]
A
I think that one of the things that's compelling, you know, is when we think about UFOs or UAPs, you know, whatever you'd like to call them. When we think about these things, for many of us, including myself, the only explanation, right, would be like, well, either this person's hallucinating and delusional, or UFOs exist, right? Like, those are my choices. But what's also true, and I don't think anyone would be surprised to learn this, is that there are many things that our government does experiments on. There are many things that our government is researching that they do not want the general public to know. There are many things from other countries that may be adversarial that are surfacing in our world that the government refuses to acknowledge. That's also a possibility. So while it is true that one possibility is that people are delusional or hallucinating or having some mass mental illness that, you know, has some epidemic proportions, or there are aliens, right, and this is a flying saucer, the other answer is there is information that we do not know that the government is not giving us. And you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that. But if we want an open and transparent economy, if we want an open and transparent defense system, yes, the government does need to tell us. What are you researching? I can handle it. I'm a big girl. I can handle whatever you're looking at. I can handle the truth.
- [53:12]
B
Can you? Can you really handle it, though?
- [53:15]
A
That's what Lou Elizondo is saying. Like, whatever fears the government pretends to be having, that, oh, if we tell people that aliens exist, it's going to be mass hysteria and it's going to be like the purge. Or like everybody could be, like, drinking Coca Cola in the morning. Like, people will go crazy.
- [53:31]
B
That's the example of people going crazy, just starting the day with a Coke.
- [53:36]
A
I just mean whatever. Whatever people might be trying to forgive the government. Oh, they're protecting you like they're your daddy, and they're going to protect you from all this information. I don't need that kind of protecting. I want to know what's happening. Happening. If you have evidence of a spaceship that is made of a material and you don't know how to make it, someone's making it. It's either Russia, China, like, name the country, or it's from some place other than this place. Let's all talk about it. I want Dr. Kipping on it. I don't want all these people on the Internet trying to explain it. I want scientists like Dr. Kipping and Adam Frank having access to this information and being able to say, guess what? What this is carbon based. This is silica bait. Like, I don't know. Let's do it. I'm ready for that revolution.
- [54:25]
B
Yes. And it also goes to the Havana syndrome energy weapon of it all, where it isn't extraterrestrial technology. It's actually technology that we didn't understand previously, but it was being deployed, and it was being deployed against us.
- [54:44]
C
Us.
- [54:45]
B
So who has it? Where did it get developed? How is it being used? How do we know how to protect ourselves from it or treat people who it's been used on? And without more information than we were at risk. So if there is technology and materials that we don't understand, it's true that it could be extraterrestrial, it could be something else, or it could be that there are advancements in science that we need to understand in order to keep pace with adversaries.
- [55:20]
A
Keep pace with adversaries. A number one objective right now. Seriously, it's important.
- [55:27]
B
One of my favorite lines and phrases he had was the misbehaving stars that he sees. Yeah, that's right. This one right here. And rocks falling from the sky. It was seen as crazy, right? You literally would have told. Someone would have said, this is happening.
- [55:47]
A
That's literally what happened.
- [55:49]
B
The pilots who are seeing this upside down, lightning, you may be like, what is happening up there? So I agree that there is so much more happening in our environment and in our atmosphere that we're still trying to understand. Understand. But that doesn't preclude there being extra sensory or other forces at play that we may not be able to understand. And it's true. Like, there are no aliens on AM radios trying to be like, hey, mime, I want to connect with you. So, like, it makes sense that that's not the case. But there have been a lot of movement, exo space debris that's been seen out there. That signifies that there could be things that we don't quite understand further than we can access.
- [56:36]
A
Absolutely. And look, I think. I think what Dr. Kipping is kind of showing us is that we. We need more information. We deserve more information, whether it's coming from the government or whether it's coming from the stars themselves.
- [56:49]
B
Also, one thing that he talked about that I think is. Is really important, and I really appreciated Robin Hansen's thought experiment because there's science and then. Then there's thought experiment. And the thought experiment helps us get out of the human centric mentality that we're going to meet, you know, an ET and they're going to come live with us and ride in our bike handlebar basket and then shoot us up to the moon. Like it could be very well that they don't have a physical form, that it is more of a consciousness at this point, not being in physical form on Earth. Like it could be that intelligent life, other places outside of Earth doesn't have the physical representation that we have. And then if you start to think about that, then their movement, their ability to appear that is totally different than we may have been imagining.
- [57:45]
A
I mean, this would be the, the, the big cosmic joke, right? What if we could solve the issue of aliens and telepathy and extrasensory perception and energy fields and what if there are beings that can communicate? But guess what? It's all through deep meditation. You can only access it when you're meditating. I don't know, maybe that's how we get to that consciousness plan plane. Maybe they visit people on psilocybin journeys. DMT Terrence McKenna said, the tiny little aliens.
- [58:23]
B
Show everyone your shirt. What does it say at the top? Things I do in my spare time.
- [58:31]
A
Really, really fun episode, Jonathan. Really, really glad we got to talk to Dr. Kipping and the work that he does is incredible. Please join us over on Substack. There's going to be a lot of conversation about this over there in our Breaker community, so please be part of it. We want to know what you think, what your experiences are, and how you can add to this larger body of knowledge that we're all collecting. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
- [58:57]
C
It's Mayim Bialik's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two non fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.
- [59:12]
A
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