Our World of Particles with Brian Cox

Summary

StarTalk Radio - Episode Summary: "Our World of Particles with Brian Cox"

Release Date: January 28, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of StarTalk Radio, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson engages in an enlightening conversation with his British colleague, Professor Brian Cox. As prominent figures in the scientific community, both hosts delve deep into the realms of particle physics, cosmology, and public science engagement. The discussion spans Cox's academic journey, his contributions to particle physics, the mysteries of black holes, and the ongoing quest to understand the universe's fundamental components.

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Biographical Insights: Brian Cox's Journey in Physics

Brian Cox begins by sharing his academic background. He earned his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from the University of Manchester, specializing initially in astrophysics before shifting his focus to particle physics. Cox recounts his doctoral research at the DAISY laboratory in Hamburg, where he worked on electron-proton collisions and diffractive scattering.

Notable Quote:

[02:14] Brian Cox: "I've never left [Manchester]. So I started there doing my undergraduate degree postgraduate."

Cox's career trajectory took him from Fermilab in Chicago to CERN in Geneva, where he contributed to the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). His move into public science engagement was sparked by funding challenges, leading him to recognize the importance of communicating scientific value to the broader community.

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The Intersection of Particle Physics and Public Engagement

Neil and Brian discuss the critical role of scientists in advocating for research funding. Cox emphasizes that public support is essential for maintaining scientific endeavors, stating:

Notable Quote:

[09:43] Brian Cox: "One of the reasons talking to government that they had cut the research budget was that they didn't think anyone cared."

Cox reflects on Richard Feynman's philosophy, highlighting the duty of scientists to pursue knowledge irrespective of public opinion, yet recognizing the necessity of public understanding to sustain scientific progress.

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Understanding Particle Physics: The Role of the Large Hadron Collider

The conversation shifts to the workings of the LHC at CERN. Cox explains how protons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and collided to break them apart, allowing scientists to study fundamental particles.

Notable Quote:

[17:25] Brian Cox: "We collide protons together at high energy, and we collide a lot of protons together at high energy."

Cox elaborates on the discovery of the Higgs boson, a pivotal moment in particle physics that confirmed the Standard Model's predictions. He marvels at the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physical sciences," a concept introduced by Eugene Wigner, underscoring the profound connection between mathematical theory and physical reality.

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The Future of Particle Physics and Beyond the Standard Model

Despite the landmark discovery of the Higgs boson, Cox points out that particle physics remains an evolving field with numerous unanswered questions. He discusses the challenges of increasing the LHC's energy levels and the strategy of high luminosity upgrades to enhance collision rates and statistical significance.

Notable Quote:

[28:42] Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "So then you win on the statistics."

Cox touches upon theories like supersymmetry and string theory, which propose the existence of additional particles and dimensions. These theories aim to address phenomena such as dark matter and the cosmological constant problem, suggesting that our understanding of the universe's fundamental forces may still be incomplete.

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Black Holes and Gravitational Mysteries

Transitioning to astrophysics, Cox and Tyson discuss recent advancements in black hole research. Cox highlights the significance of observing black hole jets and gravitational waves, which provide insights into the behavior of matter and spacetime in extreme conditions.

Notable Quote:

[44:17] Brian Cox: "Confusion about how things behave in the vicinity of black holes."

They reference historical solutions like the Schwarzschild and Kerr metrics, which describe non-spinning and spinning black holes, respectively. Cox emphasizes the importance of multi-wavelength observations and gravitational wave detections in testing these theoretical models.

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Public Science Engagement: Brian Cox's "Horizons" Tour

Brian Cox shares his passion for making science accessible through his "Horizons" tour, a world-spanning series of talks that blend live performances with scientific discourse. The tour features orchestral music alongside discussions on cosmology, black holes, and the origin of life, aiming to inspire and educate diverse audiences.

Notable Quote:

[53:35] Brian Cox: "Science is a necessary bright and vivid light that casts a very well delineated shadow."

The integration of classical music serves to juxtapose the emotional and philosophical dimensions of scientific inquiry, enriching the audience's understanding and appreciation of the universe.

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Exploring the Solar System: The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life

The dialogue shifts to the search for life beyond Earth, with a focus on missions like NASA's Europa Clipper. Cox outlines the scientific rationale for targeting Jupiter's moon Europa, which is believed to harbor a subsurface ocean capable of supporting life.

Notable Quote:

[56:01] Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "An entire show devoted just to that."

Cox discusses the conditions that make Europa a prime candidate for life, including its stable, long-lived ocean and potential hydrothermal vents analogous to those on Earth that may have facilitated the origin of life.

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Fundamental Particles and the Standard Model

Returning to particle physics, Cox provides an overview of the Standard Model's fundamental particles, including quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons. He explains the hierarchical structure of particles and the ongoing efforts to discover particles beyond those currently known.

Notable Quote:

[72:24] Brian Cox: "So, unless you can potentially have access if there were extra dimensions in the universe that are configured in the right way."

Cox addresses the intricacies of particle interactions and the importance of understanding the proton's internal structure to advance collider experiments like those conducted at the LHC.

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Concluding Thoughts: The Ever-Evolving Quest for Knowledge

As the episode draws to a close, Cox reflects on the continuous nature of scientific discovery. He emphasizes that each revelation leads to new questions, propelling the scientific community forward in its quest to unravel the universe's mysteries.

Notable Quote:

[75:09] Brian Cox: "It's one of the great mysteries. So we don't know why that pattern is there, but it's clearly telling us about the building blocks or the underlying theory, which we don't know."

Tyson and Cox reaffirm their shared commitment to advancing public understanding of science, celebrating the collaborative spirit that drives both their professional and outreach endeavors.

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Final Remarks

Brian Cox's participation in this episode underscores the symbiotic relationship between theoretical physics and public engagement. Through captivating explanations and relatable analogies, Cox bridges the gap between complex scientific concepts and the curious minds of the audience. This conversation not only highlights the current state of particle physics and cosmology but also inspires listeners to appreciate the profound journey of discovery that defines our understanding of the universe.

Closing Quote:

[76:39] Brian Cox: "It's proper rock and roll. I got roadies. I've got everything."

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Stay Connected

For listeners eager to explore more about particle physics, black holes, and the cosmos, Brian Cox's "Horizons" tour offers a unique blend of science and art. Additionally, his latest series on the solar system is available on various streaming platforms, including Apple and the BBC.

Subscribe to StarTalk Radio on SiriusXM Podcasts+ or Apple Podcasts to continue your journey through the stars with Neil deGrasse Tyson and his esteemed guests.

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This summary captures the essence of the "Our World of Particles with Brian Cox" episode, providing a comprehensive overview for both seasoned listeners and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Now streaming, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command. Gather your people.

[Brian Cox]

We're gonna need every one of them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In section 31, a new star Trek original movie on paramount.

[Brian Cox]

Plus, Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits Merca. What a cute idea. This is chaos.

[Brian Cox]

Let's get messy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Don't miss Star Trek. Section 31 now streaming exclusively on Paramount. As you set resolutions for 2025, consider how learning a new language can enrich your life. Whether through travel, career advancement or cultural appreciation. Rosetta Stone's immersive lessons guide you to think in a new language from day one. Bravissimo, mi amico. Bravissimo. That was an impression of Italian people after they've seen me perform on stage. Today, StarTalk radio listeners can take advantage of Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership. For 50% off, visit RosettaStone.com StarTalk that's 50% off. Unlimited lifetime access to 25 language [e-mail] StarTalk welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is Star Talk Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today we are featuring my exclusive one on one interview with my friend and colleague from across the pond, Brian Cox. Brian, welcome.

[Brian Cox]

Oh, it's great to be back.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh my gosh. Oh, it's. It's been. Been too long.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, and we don't usually get to do it in person. It's usually over zoom or something.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, let's get some of your biography out there. For stateside people who might not fully know who you are, you cut your teeth as a particle physicist, is that correct?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, initially, I mean. Actually my degree is the University of Manchester, by the way, in the uk. I've never left. So I started there doing my undergraduate degree postgraduate.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What do they call you there now? You are professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester and Royal Society. As in the Royal Society of London? Yeah, we're all society professor of public engagement in science. So we're kindred souls across the Atlantic.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So okay, so you never left. Is that cause they wanted you so badly or that no one else wanted you?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, probably the latter. But I started, it was actually physics with astrophysics, my degree. So I did a degree in physics with astrophysics, then PhD in particle physics. Although the first year was I was working on supernova neutrinos, so I crossing over astroparticle physics, as we would call it. Then I got into particle physics, went to the DAISY laboratory in Hamburg and worked on electron proton collisions, so called diffractive scattering.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I've seen DAISY online, I've seen Daisy simulations of things they simulate like colliding black holes and things. Fascinating.

[Brian Cox]

Daisy D E S Y the Deutsche D esyron of synchrotron.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. They have a public facing platform.

[Brian Cox]

See, I didn't know that. I didn't know because the accelerator is no longer operational, but it's a huge lab in Hamburg. So I did my PhD there, that's in particle physics. Then moved to Fermilab in Chicago for a while and then to CERN when we were building a large hadron collider. But I've always.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

CERN Switzerland?

[Brian Cox]

Yes, in Geneva.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And remind me, that's the European center for Nuclear Research. French acronym. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

Because it was founded in the 1950s and at the time. So it was part of the reconstruction of Europe really after the war. So that lab was founded, I think it was 1954. 1953. And so is nuclear physics at the time. There wasn't really such a thing as particle physics, I suppose at the time. And now it's by far the world's largest accelerator. Classical physics lab.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I mean the center of mass of that whole world left the United States when we stopped funding our super.

[Brian Cox]

Yes, I see in Texas.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

Ssc Superconducting.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Superconducting Super Collider.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I would have called it a super duper collider that may might have kept its funding at that point. But yeah. So Europe still leads the world in nuclear particle research.

[Brian Cox]

It's a very international lab. I mean it is the world's collider. So although it's based in Switzerland and France, I would say it's a world lab.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that's very diplomatic of you.

[Brian Cox]

Well, it certainly is. I mean the US had a tremendous presence there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

For example, while you're saying all this to me, you're not describing this branch of your life as a musician. So just briefly there is that remind me of that.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So when I was 18. So traditionally you would go to university there, start a physics degree. But I didn't because I was in a band, a rock band that I joined just before.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Your parents loved that fact.

[Brian Cox]

No, they did actually. They loved it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I could go to college and major in physics or continue with my band.

[Brian Cox]

Well, but do you have that thing like a gap year we call it, where you say, well, I'm going to take a Year off the studies before I go to college or university. And so I'd said that. I'd said I'm going to be in this band and I'm just going to do it for a year and then I'll go and do physics. But then we got a record deal, a big record deal with A and M Records. This is in 1986, 1987. It's a long time ago. A big record deal. And so I came to Los Angeles and recorded an album with a. Actually produced by Larry Klein, who was married to Joni Mitchell at the time. And so we recorded some of it in Joni Mitchell's studio in Los Angeles. And then we toured with. My first professional gig with that band was with Jimmy Page and Jimmy Page.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you open for Jimmy Page?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, we opened for Jimmy Page and Gary Moore, who'd also been in the band Theme Lizzie and then Europe, the Final Countdown. So you know this song, the Final Countdown and Carrie was a big hit here in the us so we opened for them, made a couple of albums. So I did that basically for five years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it charted actually.

[Brian Cox]

No, we just. We did big shows. It was a rock and roll band. And then. And then we. I left that band, went straight back to Manchester and went to start a physics degree as one. But then in that little gap that I joined another band who then had some hit records. So a band called Dream. This is in the early 90s now. And we. We. They didn't have a record deal when I joined them and they got a record deal as well. So when I was at university, I was in this band. We had a number one hit in the UK and Australia with a song which violates the second law of Thermodynamics, which you'll love, called Things Can Only Get Better, which is clearly incorrect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Certainly Things can only get worse globally in the universe.

[Brian Cox]

Exactly. And then. So, yeah, so I had a two.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That song. What helped it. If I remember correctly, some political candidate adopted it as their theme song.

[Brian Cox]

Tony Blair. It was a very.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tony Blair.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, it was Tony Blair in 1997.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The became associated with his election.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And came back actually into fashion. Cause we just had a change of administration in the UK and that song came up again. And it came up and it got quite popular again. So I did Glastonbury this year with the band.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, that's that huge place?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, the big festival.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's the hu. Any huge scene of musicians in the UK is at that location.

[Brian Cox]

Well, it's the world. I mean, it's probably the biggest festival in the world, I would imagine. I would guess it's a huge festival.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you and Brian May, those.

[Brian Cox]

We are the two. He did it the other way around, though. He got extremely. Well, yeah, he got extremely famous and then finished his PhD in astrophysics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Okay. Brian May, a lead guitarist of Queen. Yes. Yeah. So let's pick up some of the physics. We are both here right now in Las Vegas at a World Skeptics conference. Yeah, we're both skeptics. I mean, any scientist is a skeptic. But the problem is, when the world does weird things, who's going to put them in check? Somebody's got to show up at the scene and say, no, that's not how that works. The laws of physics prevent that, or some. So you've had to do this in the uk, right? There's certain resonances between the United States and the UK about how people misthink things. What was your baptism into this world?

[Brian Cox]

Well, actually, I mean, I was only interested in doing research for a long time. So as a postdoc in that part of my career, I didn't want to know about anything else other than doing research. And that's all I did. But I can't remember when it was now. But there was one of those regular funding crises, as you'll know from here in the US when government support, in particular for research, dipped. And so I got involved in trying to fight that. And we realized, I mean, it's kind of obvious, I suppose, but we realized that one of the reasons talking to government that they had cut the research budget was that they didn't think anyone cared. So they thought it was a simple thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's democracy.

[Brian Cox]

You could just. And so we as a community, we learned again, we've learned it over the years, but we learned again that popular support for what we do is important. And where does the support comes from? It comes from understanding. And there are many reasons, by the way, why talking to people who are not in science about what we are doing as scientists is important. One of them, of course, is just purely democratizing knowledge. We taxpayers fund, at least in part, what we do, and therefore they have a right to know. So there's that level. But on the other level, which I think you're suggesting as well, what science does, I think it's not about knowing the facts. It's not about really. It's not about knowing the universe. 13.8 billion years old, for example, or it's 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. We could talk about that later, actually. Does that mean it had a finite origin in time? In the past anyway, but it's not.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Put a pin in that. We'll get back to that. Okay.

[Brian Cox]

It's not about knowing facts so much as understanding something about the process by which we acquire reliable knowledge about the world. And science is the process by which we acquire reliable knowledge. And so I think that it may be realized. Well, yeah, I think in the sense that nature is there, the job of a scientist is to find out how it works. And of course, as Richard Feynman and many others have famously said, it doesn't care who you are or what your opinion is or how popular you are, how many votes you got or anything, how much money you've got. It doesn't care. So in that sense, I think it is a unique pursuit because the standard by which your opinion is judged is external to us. It's nothing to do with humanity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Nature is the ultimate judge, jury and executioner.

[Brian Cox]

So I think I became involved initially just on that very narrow idea that we wanted to make sure that people understood what we did and what the value of it is. And then that branch that became bigger and bigger in my career and branched into television and live shows and all sorts of things. But it came from that I wasn't interested in communicating science. I was just interested in doing it for a very long time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you had a certain duty and responsibility to the world.

[Brian Cox]

Well, I think we all do. I mean, I've realized sins that I think actually Feynman again said, it's a very brilliant essay that anyone can download from 1955, I think it is called the Value of Science. It's just four pages and it's there, it's on Caltech's archive, I think. And in there he says that it is our duty as scientists, our duty knowing the great value of. He calls it, he defines science as a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, which, which is a beautiful, just merely satisfactory. It's philosophy of ignorance. You start out from not knowing. And he said the great value of the satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great value of freedom of thought. To proclaim that freedom and to try to protect it for all coming generations, essentially says at the end, but I like the framing, it is our duty as scientists to do that as well as do our job, which is to find things out about nature, about the natural world.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And in this conference I am to bestow upon you the Richard Dawkins Award for Science and Reason.

[Brian Cox]

Bestow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Bestow, yes. The Richard Dawkins award is something I won last year and I was called back in to bestow it upon you.

[Brian Cox]

It's a great honor.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It will be a delight for me. It takes place tonight. Yeah, I look forward to that. And just the idea that science and reason is something maybe it's sad that it's something that needs to be rewarded because if it's one of these awards that if the world functioned just right, you wouldn't need it.

[Brian Cox]

And also, you know, although I said, as Feynman has said, it's in a sense our duty as scientists, it is also true that not all scientists want to want to do that or feel comfortable with it. As I said, I didn't want to do it initially. Now I very much enjoy it and think it's very important. But it's so we don't need everybody to do it, but some people will and that's important.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Now Streaming Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh takes command. Gather your people.

[Brian Cox]

We're gonna need every one of them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In Section 31, a new Star Trek original movie on Paramount.

[Brian Cox]

Section 31 is just a place for people to bend the rules.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Starfleet is here to make sure no one commits murder. What a cute idea this is. Cha Aussie.

[Brian Cox]

Let's get messy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Don't miss Star Trek section 31 now streaming exclusively on Paramount. Plus.

[Brian Cox]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hello, I'm Finky Brooke Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Brian Cox]

This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So let's talk physics. Take me to the frontier of particle physics today. What's going on at cern now that the Higgs boson is discovered and the Nobel Prizes were granted, what are they doing now? Well, do they just close shop and go home?

[Brian Cox]

No, I mean, particle physics is because we're talking about quantum mechanics, basically, it's statistical in the sense that you collide. What we do there is collide protons together at high energy, and we collide a lot of protons together at high energy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Protons have a charge so that you can put them in a magnetic field and accelerate them to very high speeds.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, so they go around. So the LHC in kilometers is 27 kilometers. And that's the number circumference. Yes, that's about 16 miles or something like that. And the protons go around that ring 11,000 times a second. So that's how fast they go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's fast.

[Brian Cox]

That's 99.999999% the speed of light.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So you've granted them energy so that when you collide them, you break them apart. You're basically deconstructing nature to see what residue comes out of it. When I think of doing that for anything else, it's going to break. Right. I don't take chairs and slam them together and still have chairs. I don't. I have a pile of kindling. Okay. So whoever thought it was a good idea to smash nature into itself?

[Brian Cox]

Well, I suppose Ernest Rutherford, initially. So we go back to Manchester, the turn of the 20th century, and Rutherford was using radioactive decay to essentially produce the particles. I mean, it's just the decay of the decay of atomic nuclei that naturally happens to produce high energy particles, which he then fired into gold foil and bounced them off the foil. In doing that, he discovered the atomic nucleus. So one way to think about particle physics is that when you collide things together, what are you doing? You're really building a microscope. One way to think of it is that the higher the energy of the collision, the faster these things are traveling, the smaller the objects you can see. So we were talking about seeing for the first time in those experiments, the atomic nucleus. You move forward to the. Well, ultimately through the 50s and 60s, and we have higher and higher energy collisions. You start seeing that the nucleus is made of protons and neutrons, and then you start seeing it in the 50s and 60s that the protons and neutrons are made of smaller things called quarks. And so we discover those that. We've not discovered anything smaller than that, by the way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is it because you don't have enough Energy to bust up a quark.

[Brian Cox]

Yes, well. Or to resolve what's inside it, let's say, to build a microscope.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because right now the inventory of fundamental particles includes quarks.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So somebody saying that's fundamental, which sounds a little like the Greeks saying atoms are fundamental.

[Brian Cox]

Oh, no, they won't be fundamental. You're absolutely right. But. But they look poor point. Like, from the point of view, from the energies that we can generate today. But that's one side of particle physics. So we've been exploring the structure of matter, which is historically, you know, it goes back to Rutherford, I suppose.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And again, you have confidence that when you break matter apart, you didn't break the matter, you're just deconstructing it.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, really. I think the way to think about it, I mean, you think about what a collision is. So let's say you collide, as we did in my PhD, electrons and protons together. So you get an electron beam and a proton beam and you smash them into each other. What's actually happening? What's actually happening is one way that the collision can happen is that the electron can emit a photon, which is a particle of light, and the particle of light goes. And it hits the proton. Now, the wavelength of that light, which is telling you how small a thing you can see is proportional to the energy of the thing. That's how hard we're smashing the things together. So the faster you smash together.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

So the faster you smash together, the higher the energy, the smaller the wavelength. So the smaller the things that you can see. So that's a way of thinking about particle collision. So it really is a microscope in that sense. That analogy works.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm just thinking, if I were a proton, I wouldn't want to be busted apart into quarks. That would not be a nice day for them.

[Brian Cox]

In some ways, I suppose it's like having. It's kind of like having an X ray, I suppose, isn't it? You're right, though. You hit them hard enough and they fall to bits. But that would be the same for you. But we would try not to hit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, except the bits that I fell into, no one's considered them fundamental bits of Neo. Right.

[Brian Cox]

But the other way to think about particle physics, which is, I think. So you say the Higgs particle you mentioned. So that's not in the proton. You're not. You're not smashing the things together and finding a Higgs particle buried in there somewhere. The other side is really. So you think about Einstein's famous equation equals MC squared. So energy and mass are interchangeable, let's put it like that. So it also says that if we have loads of energy in these collisions, then we can make new particles that are extremely massive, much more massive, that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Would come spontaneously out of the available energy that would otherwise be doing nothing.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So we have, when you collide protons together at these energies, you have plenty of energy there to make a Higgs particle, for example, or a top quark, which is a very heavy particle as well, far more massive than the protons. So that's, I suppose, the way to think about trying to manufacture Higgs particles so you can observe them. You need enough energy to make them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you're not just busting them apart, you're creating an opportunity to view more massive particles than would otherwise be available to you.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, and the other thing to say, so to get a complete picture is these very massive things like Higgs particles, they have a very short lifetime. So you make them and they decay away into lighter particles very, very fast. So you don't see the Higgs particle. What you see are the debris from the decay of the Higgs particle. And the, the challenge of particle physics is to detect all those bits that came off, basically. And by the way, you also have the bits of the protons that all got smashed up as well. So it's a big mess. And we have more than we don't.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See how dying these.

[Brian Cox]

It's very hard because you don't only have one proton collision per. We send the particles around in little bunches, basically. So you can get 10, 20, 30 collisions at the same time. Only one of them, on a very good day will be an interesting one. And then so you've got to sift through all this, which is the difficulty or the professional challenge, let's say, of particle physics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

With that reasoning, there's always some next energy level that you haven't visited, where more and interesting physics can reveal itself.

[Brian Cox]

And this is where it gets challenging at the moment, because. So the so called Standard model Higgs particle, and I should just saying for a minute, that thing, the existence of this thing was Predicted in the 1960s by Peter Higgs and others. And it was a suggestion, a theory, a guess, let's say at the time, mathematically motivated, almost purely by the way, mathematically motivated of how things get mass in the universe at the most fundamental level. So how the quarks and these, these very heavy things called the W and Z bosons, how those things got mass. And so it was a mathematical construct, it predicted that there should be, in the simplest case, one, this thing, the Higgs boson, but there could be more complicated versions. And so we knew that if we collided protons together at the energies that we generate at the Large Hadron Collider, then we would either discover the Higgs boson and prove this theory to be correct, or we knew that if it wasn't there, we would see something else. So we had a very clear idea from experiment and theory that we were going to discover something with that machine, and you don't know what it is. It turned out it was the simplest thing. It was this thing that Peter Higgs had dreamt of all those years ago, which is astonishing, by the way, 50 years after the prediction. And there's a great essay that you might know by Eugene Wigner called the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Physical Sciences. I think that's one of the best examples. It's an astonishing achievement that we got it right. And so we discover the Higgs boson.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To put precision on that. Wigner's point in that paper. It's not that math in a vacuum, no pun intended, makes discoveries. It's the mathematical representation of a physical idea. And then you pursue the math and it applies to the universe, but only if the physical idea has captured reality in some fundamental way.

[Brian Cox]

Although it was. I think it was a very mathematical framework which became the standard model of particle physics, based on ideas of symmetries and all sorts of beautiful ideas which really have mathematical foundations. So there's an aesthetic sense, I think, built into that model, and that would.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Be the pure mathematical. See, my people in astrophysics, we have enough embarrassing historical examples of chasing elegance and greedy.

[Brian Cox]

Kepler.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Kepler. I'm saying, look at Kepler.

[Brian Cox]

But I think the genius of Kepler is that he had these Platonic solids, these ideas.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. He's got the pyramid and the cube and the this. And.

[Brian Cox]

But then he rejected it based on data.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Brian Cox]

16.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But his. His thought was, the universe is beautiful and divine and perfect, and these solids are perfect. Planets are in the universe, so it must be a connection. He spent 10 years looking at it.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, but then.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But then he rejected it.

[Brian Cox]

And then the laws of planetary motion, which. Which are indicative of a very beautiful thing, which is Newton's law of gravitation. An inverse square law.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

And so there is a. There's a beauty underlying it, but only.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

After he had to scrap this other beauty that he had presumed it would be. That's why we step lightly when someone says, I have this beautiful idea. Yeah. Okay, let's Hear it.

[Brian Cox]

But it is true. And I think it's one of the great mysteries there is historically. Einstein's theory of general relativity is another example where a quest for simplicity and beauty and elegance, which are judgments, the human judgments, has led to very, very precise models of the way that nature works.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Given that cern, which has the Large Hadron Collider, LHC discovered the Higgs boson, if you're going to discover more particles, presumably you have to keep upgrading the system as the LHC was compared to what was there before, so that you can ever, with ever greater force, bust into the particles and see what's lurking.

[Brian Cox]

So we can't increase the energy of the LHC very easily or even easily, or we can't really at all. That would be a major change to the machine. But what we can do and are doing is so called high luminosity upgrades, which means you collide more protons together. And the thing about.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So then you win on the statistics.

[Brian Cox]

Of the classical physics is a quantum mechanics. And so things happen statistically. So it's, you know, one in. I don't know the numbers, I've made one in 10 billion collisions. You'll produce something interesting, a Higgs. It's less than that. So when giving yourself more collisions gives you more chance to discover new particles, and it gives you more particles like Higgs bosons to explore.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you get a Higgs particle after however many collisions, and that's kind of rare, if you have more collisions, you'll get more Higgs. Yeah. To improve your statistics on what the hell the Higgs is.

[Brian Cox]

Because we want to know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But then there could be a reaction that's even rarer to manifest than the Higgs.

[Brian Cox]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And if your sample wasn't large enough, you would just never go there.

[Brian Cox]

Yes. You wouldn't see it if you just made one thing, one particle, you know, one. Whatever it is, Higgs prime, whatever. If you made one of those, then you wouldn't see it if you made one of them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Sounds like a hundred superhero nemesis. I'm Higgs prime, you know, I've come to destroy, by the way.

[Brian Cox]

And we do look for those things, the Z prime, the Z boson, we look for the Z primes because they can be signatures of extra dimensions in the universe, by the way. So we look for this stuff, but the point is that if something is very, very rare, then you won't really see it. If you just make one or two of them, you need to make hundreds or thousands or whatever it is to see them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. It's like how many people have to live in a city before you stumble on someone who's seven feet tall?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. That's statistics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Statistically, you need possibly millions.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So the upgrades are the upgrades that we can do, and you have to upgrade the detectors, the cameras that we use, as well as the machine.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so you kept the same hole in the ground.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, because we don't want to dig another one of those or change all the magnets around, which are very expensive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Does that hole go through more than one country, or is it all contained in Switzerland?

[Brian Cox]

France and Switzerland.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Okay.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, most of it's in France, actually.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Brian Cox]

Only a little bit of it's in Switzerland.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Cox]

So that's one thing. And the other thing is this Higgs that we've discovered. The question still remains, is it the simplest one, the Standard Model Higgs, it's called. Or is it something more complicated? How does it behave? So the analogy in planetary science would be, we discovered a moon. And so you go, great, then you would like to know about the moon. You don't want to just say, we've discovered this moon. It's a dot. That's fine. As you said, they're interested.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You want to characterize it in whatever way you can.

[Brian Cox]

For that, you need a lot of them to observe. So it's exciting and it's challenging because I think for the first time, it's probably true to say in particle physics, we don't know if there's anything else just around the corner which is bad, but it's also good. I suppose it's just science. I mean, ultimately, it's neither bad nor good. It's the way nature is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what triggers whatever next round of physics is complete. You get those people that show up and say, there's nothing left in physics to discover.

[Brian Cox]

Well, they'd be.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They show up every few decades.

[Brian Cox]

Utterly wrong.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

They're not even worth. I mean, you know, there's tremendous progress. Be me. It's such an exciting time in fundamental physics at the moment. Particle physics. Not only particle physics, but we said gravitational astronomy, the exploration of the force of gravity, black holes, quantum information, which is related to quantum computing, and all sorts of. All that stuff is, to me, utterly fascinating. There's some really interesting stuff. I read some stuff the other day which I don't fully understand, actually. Some of the progress in string theory. It's interesting because, just as an aside, it's linking. It seems to me, it's linking one of the great mysteries, which is the so called cosmological constant. So the fact that we observed that the universe is accelerating in its expansion.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And Nobel Prize has been given for the observation, not for the understanding. Yes.

[Brian Cox]

He's a friend of mine who by the way, didn't believe his. He didn't believe it when he saw it because it wasn't in the air, this idea. He was looking at light from supernova.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Brian Cox]

Supernova.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm on a paper with Brian Schmidt.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm like very minor author. You have to scroll down. And then my name is in the supernova date.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But it was analysis of high redshift supernovae and I totally enjoyed that work. But he obviously went on and made an entire sort of branch of his career on it.

[Brian Cox]

So there's this remarkable idea which comes from that, which is in Einstein's theory, this idea that you can have a kind of energy in the universe, let's say, or a thing, whatever it is, because we don't know what it is. But something that makes the universe, the rate that space stretches increase, which is. So that's there and it's observed. It's one of the great mysteries because I think it's the smallest number in all of physics by what is it? It's something like 10 to the power minus 122 or something. Inappropriate units.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Brian Cox]

Which is absolutely ridiculously so. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny thing that's causing this rate of expansion. But it's not zero. And so the question becomes why is it tiny?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why is it tiny and not zero?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. Because if it were even slightly bigger, we wouldn't be here. So the universe would have been blown apart. So it seems very unusual. But I saw the other week, the other day actually, that there's some research that's linking that in the framework of a string theory or M theory to dark matter. So there's a kind of an idea that if you fix that, you get a prediction out that there should be dark matter. But it turns out it's to do with extra dimensions and gravitons in extra dimensions and things. But it's quite interesting. So I think there are some very interesting areas of string theory where progress is being made quite remarkably.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do string theorists need a fuller or better inventory of particles? So, for example, are we still looking for a graviton? Are we still looking for, you know, every. You shake a stick and there's a physicist proposing a hypothetical particle to explain dark matter to explain.

[Brian Cox]

Wouldn't it be cool if the dark matter were related to Gravitons, which is that this is not my field. I only heard of it the other day, but it sounded interesting. But it just shows you that we. So to go back to lhc, we have the Higgs particle, as you said we had expected. I would say most particle physicists expected there would be other particles discovered.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's a particular theory in that same experiment.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, lhc. So there's a particular theory which, motivated by string theory a long time ago, called supersymmetry, which is a property of the universe. We.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's been around for many decades. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

And it came initially from either from string theory or from some other. And got incorporated in. I can't remember historically which way it came, but it's. But it essentially predicts that there are double the number of particles that we see, fundamental particles at this energy. So, so we. And they would have been great candidates for dark matter, by the way, which is an astrophysical discovery. So we should say. I suppose the one, the one sentence description of dark matter is that we see the universe. There's far much more matter in the universe than we can see.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See, I would put it differently. I would say there's far. It's not dark matter, it's dark gravity. Well, you say matter. We don't know what it is.

[Brian Cox]

Well, it's true. So you see it through its gravitational interaction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it's dark gravity. Yeah, we don't see otherwise. You get newspaper headlines say, oh, we must abandon our ideas of dark matter. Well, if it's not matter, it's still there. Okay, it's misnamed.

[Brian Cox]

Yes, I see what you mean. I mean, that's a cool newspaper, by the way, that would have a headline.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like that, that it goes there at all.

[Brian Cox]

It's usually about a football player. And so I'm on board with that newspaper.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm just saying if we don't know what it is, we had no business calling it matter at all.

[Brian Cox]

So the thing to say, though, is called dark gravity. The best.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Which sounds cool.

[Brian Cox]

So you build model. You build models. And it is true that the best model that fits all the data, which is not just the way that gravity, that galaxies rotate and collide and the way that gravity galaxies kind of lens light and all those things, but also the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the oldest light in the universe, and how that worked and how the ripples, the sound waves went through the early universe and all that, you put it all together and it fits. If you have a light ish particle that does not interact with light but interacts weakly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So this would be another category of particle in the particle soup that has gravity but doesn't interact electromagnetically or only very weakly. And so it just.

[Brian Cox]

All right, so that's a model, though. You're right. So that's a model which is kind of, I would say, the baseline model.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. People assume that. And I. I don't have a problem with it. But if anything happens to that model, it gets shown it can't be true. People say, oh, then there is no dark matter. No, there's still dark. It is a measurement in the universe.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, I understand.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We've just misnamed it.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, I agree. The measurement is just galaxies spin around too fast, but too fast or the way they collide and so on. There's quite a lot of independent measurements of this thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So tell me about a graviton. I mean, is that a real particle?

[Brian Cox]

I think most physicists would say that quantum mechanics requires. Is the base. Is the base theory. I think the reason I'm careful is because there are some people who would say general relativity is a thing, space time is a real thing and all that. But I think generally most people would say quantum mechanics is underlying it and that if you have an interaction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In other words, quantum physics is foundational to the universe in ways that even general relativity would not be.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So we could talk about this later. But the idea that space and time, or space time emerge from a quantum theory is very fashionable at the moment, partly because of the study of black holes. So we could talk about that. So given that, then you. So I should say just people who are watching and listening that. So how would we picture the electromagnetic force in particle physics? So we know that if you put light charges together, they repel and so on. So what's happening there? Or if you bring magnets together. Right. They repel each other. Everybody knows the North Pole together, and they repel. So what's happening in particle physics terms? You picture that as the exchange of a photon. It's a particle of light, goes from one particle to the other and essentially carries the force. So that's how a particle physicist would picture that force. All forces.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Have we successfully applied that to gravity?

[Brian Cox]

No. So that's the point.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Give me a more resonant.

[Brian Cox]

No, they're very strong. I suppose I'm trying to find the right word for it. I think it's. That's why I said conviction. It's almost. I don't know of any physicist who would disagree with that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because if you can't fold it into the quantum world. You don't really have a right to start looking for a graviton because you're going to say the graviton is the mediating particle.

[Brian Cox]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's the way the photon is the mediating particle.

[Brian Cox]

So. And that's. I don't think you'd find anyone who would disagree with that statement.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Cox]

Although. I don't think you would. Although it is true to say that because gravity is so weak. So this is the other thing to say. It is tremendously weak compared to the other three forces of nature of which electromagnetism is one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because I tell people you've surely done this in class. They say, well, how weak is gravity? Well, I can pick something up off the floor against the wishes of Earth.

[Brian Cox]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The whole Earth is pulling on this ball and I can just pick it up off and kick it.

[Brian Cox]

And you're using electromagnetism. That's what's happening. So your muscles and all that thing. So this is all electromagnetic force, which completely destroys, as you said, the gravitational force. But gravity is only additive, so it only adds up in the universe. So it is the dominant force on cosmic distant scales. That's the point about gravity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Here's a calculation I haven't verified, but it sounded legit, very verifiable. I just never. I was too lazy. That if you take like the space shuttle in its glory days and you take one. Remove the electrons from one cubic centimeter in the nose of the main tank and take all those electrons and put it at the base of the launch pad, it could. Would not be able to launch. The attraction between the electrons at the base of the launch pad and the net positive charge at the top.

[Brian Cox]

Right. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is enough to prevent it from launching.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, That's a cool idea. Yeah, I could see that. That would be.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. Actually it would.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Borrow a whole.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's not a realistic experiment, but to get some sense of the forces involved.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. That's a really nice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So gravity is weak. That somehow bails you out of this problem.

[Brian Cox]

Well, it just means that you can't. We don't have experimental access to them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Cox]

Because it's so weak. So.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Whereas we do have experimental access to photons.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. Unless you could potentially have access if there were extra dimensions in the universe that are configured in the right way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just always throwing in extra dimension. Well, whenever you need it.

[Brian Cox]

You know, it is interesting though, that string theory works in 10 dimensions and only 10 dimensions mathematically. So that's an interesting observation. Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I don't have the background to be an authentic string theory skeptic, but I know physicists who are. And so, yeah, I think there are.

[Brian Cox]

I mean, it depends, I think it depends what you mean by string theory. I mean, there was that if you go back, you know, a few decades, you talk to Brian Greene, for example, and when he started working in this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Area, he was a friend of StarTalk.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, he would have his great book. The Elegant Universe is a beautiful description of string theory. And so I think the idea initially with the hope, was that you'd have a theory and you could write it down. It's a theory of everything, and it would predict the universe as we see it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then you go home and I.

[Brian Cox]

Think that's gone as an idea. But the basic idea of these, I mean, why is it called string theory? It's because particles are not point. Like these strings are like little strings, little loops. But that idea, I think, is still at the foundation of most modern theoretical physics in this area. But it's got much more complicated and it's been much harder. I think the initial idea that you could just predict everything from one number maybe has gone away.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

One simple equation on one line.

[Brian Cox]

But there is tremendous progress being made in string theory. So it's, it's not gone away, it's just become more complicated, I would say.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, thanks for catching me up on this. At this conference, you're giving a talk on black holes.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And there's some recent announcement. The biggest jet from a black hole ever discovered. Ever. Yeah, ever. I, I, when I was asked about it by the press, I simply said there's always a biggest jet in the universe. And so now this one is that.

[Brian Cox]

It's the A380.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Cox]

Airbus A380. It's a fantastic aircraft.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did I undersell the significance of this huge jet? So what if it's the biggest one? Unless there's some interesting physics that's coming out of it.

[Brian Cox]

The area that I have, I share, a PhD student who's working in the area, is more, is more theoretical. It's about quantum information, the way the information behaves inside and outside a black hole. What happens to things that fall in. But in terms of the astrophysical work, if you go back, you know, not long ago, we didn't really have any observation of how things behave in the vicinity of black holes. And so I would put it in that box. We've got several observations now we've got the radio telescope observations from the Event Horizon collaboration that has shown Us how the magnetic fields work, for example, around the black hole in the Milky Way, we've got these jets which are giving you access to the magnetic structure, presumably in the way that they spin.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thank you for putting it in that context. Now I can understand. It broadens the astrophysical data set on which we can sharpen our hypotheses for what's going on.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, because they're hard things to observe. And of course you can't observe the interior because it's inside this thing called the event horizon. But what you can do, and we are doing is observe the way that material behaves in the vicinity of them. Or the other remarkable thing we've been able to do in the last few years is watch them collide and see how the ripples in the fabric of the universe come out and we can detect those ripples. So all these things are allowing us to probe these objects and it's worth remembering that they were present, they were described. Non spinning ones were described fully by the work that Carl Schwarzschild did in 1916. So months after Einstein had published the theory of general relativity, he didn't know it at the time, but the mathematical description he found, which describes how space and time are distorted in the presence of a star, a non spinning star, is kind of important. Those fully describe a black hole that isn't spinning.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If I remember correctly, he would die in the First World War. I don't think he made it out of the war.

[Brian Cox]

No, he died in 1916. So shortly after. Not in action.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not in action.

[Brian Cox]

I think he died from diseases that he was on the Russian front.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It could be war related, but not.

[Brian Cox]

I think it was, you would argue, war related.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So we've got more than a century of mathematical foundation for this.

[Brian Cox]

And then you go forward to six with no data.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No data, no.

[Brian Cox]

And then so it takes another 50 years, by the way, for someone to work out what it looks like for a spinning one, which is Roy Kerr. It's a famous Kerr solution. But those two solutions are there. They're in Einstein's theory, in a sense, and they describe the black hole. But observing them is something that we haven't been able to do till recently.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And multi wavelengths as well.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So now we have radio observations, the gravitational wave observations.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'll be a little kinder to that.

[Brian Cox]

Well, because the thing is, as you said right at the start, science is about, yes, having ideas, building theories and so on, but it's really fundamentally about testing those theories. And so we can talk about these theoretical objects black holes. But really and they are rich theoretically. But ultimately you've got to make observations and that's where these jets and seeing how material behaves gives you access to the magnetic fields and how the thing's spinning and what it's that's important. Foreign.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. It's a tour that's been going on for quite a long time. It wasn't meant to really, but we've ended up playing to over 400,000 people across the world with this tour.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait. You're not a musician. You say playing. Get your vocabulary straight.

[Brian Cox]

I'm. Look, I'm rock and roll, basically. And when we play to foreign, we have five trucks and two tour buses. It's brilliant. So I'm reliving my life as a.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So did I see a version of that when you came to the city?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, it was very early on. Just after. It was just after.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, you have these screens that interlock.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then the whole stage is.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And that was a very early iteration of this. And so it's changed a lot. Before I laid it to rest, this tour and develop another one, I wanted to bring it back here in the form that it is now, which is so radically different from what it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it's celebrating the universe with and for the.

[Brian Cox]

It is the public. It also morphed into. There's a version that I do with the symphony orchestra, which is great fun. So I did it at Sydney Opera House, actually, initially, last year. And it's a big orchestra because it's 90 piece symphony orchestra because of the music that I chose. And so the reason, by the way, as a slight digression, it's part of this tour. The classical music is a big part of the tour. So it starts with Sibelius, Fifth Symphony, the third movement. And that was because a conductor friend of mine called Daniel Harding, I said to him, what should Stanley Kubrick have used in 2001 as a joke? What should he have used? He immediately said, Sibelius, Fifth Symphony. And it was written in 19, same year that General Rel Civicy was published. But it's the basis of almost every science fiction theme you've ever heard. You'll hear everything and it's beautiful. So the idea, which I've always strongly believed, but it came to my mind as I was doing this tour, is that if we're talking about deeper philosophical questions which are raised by cosmology, I say right at the start, what does it mean to live a finite, fragile life in an infinite eternal universe? Because. And I say, of course, I don't.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Know the Answer, does that uplift people or depress them?

[Brian Cox]

Well, but as you know, the moment you contemplate the scale of the universe, and I should say we don't know whether it's infinite, we don't know whether it's eternal. Right. But it could well be infinite and eternal for all purposes. It kind of is right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

On a human scale relative to a human scale. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

So immediately when you contemplate the size and scale of the universe, you ask questions about our place and quite vividly, what does it mean to live these little finite, fragile lives? And so I think I try to approach those questions and you realize, or I realize that there are other lights you can shine on that problem. And science is a necessary bright and vivid light that casts a very well delineated shadow, which is giving us some. Obviously it's the framework within which we operate. But there are other lights. So you realize that Mahler, for example. So we use Marla in the classical concepts. Mahler thought a lot about what it means to live a finite, fragile life. And he gave a very eloquent answer, many eloquent answers in his symphonies. And he was once asked, by the way, what are you trying to say? What's this answer? And he said, well, if I could say it, I wouldn't have written the music.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good answer.

[Brian Cox]

You have this music, I love that. So the music. So there's composers that I chose and they are in the tour that we're going to do this coming year, next April 2025. 2025. They're in there as music. The composers were chosen because they explored this question and gave very eloquent answers. So it adds to, I think, the more philosophical exploration of the questions that are raised by the signs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What's the name of the tour called?

[Brian Cox]

Horizons.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Horizons, that's easy enough to remember. Okay, very cool.

[Brian Cox]

But there's a lot of black holes in it as well, I should say. So it's an exploration of the ideas that I.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Black hole has a horizon of its own.

[Brian Cox]

They have horizons, yes, but also life in the universe, the origin, evolution of life. Speculations. We could talk about speculations on how many civilizations there might be, as a guess.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, this thing about life in the universe, you've done many, many TV series and most recently one on the solar system, where the search for life is a main theme.

[Brian Cox]

Well, yeah, we just saw as we speak, last week, the Europa Clipper spacecraft was launched.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Brian Cox]

On the way to Europa, we have.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

An entire show devoted just to that. We visited the Jet Propulsion Labs and I Felt the excitement of everyone there.

[Brian Cox]

It's great, isn't it? It's the first spacecraft I've seen major spacecraft being built. So I saw the Clipper. And the thing is, the scale of that thing is it's the largest spacecraft, isn't it, that's ever been sent into space.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, if you add. Well, if you add the. Oh, the most massive it may be. But there's another important fact. Solar panels have gotten more efficient in the day. Back if you were going to explore beyond the asteroid belt, you couldn't use solar panels if the intensity of the sun wasn't high enough. This one has a very deployable large solar panel that'll help it along without having to rely entirely on the nuclear decay. Plutonium.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So it's a huge spacecraft.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Brian Cox]

And the point is that Europa, Jupiter's moon, is a prime candidate for a habitable world in what we know. Almost certainly. I'm always the people who I know who work on the mission say, don't say we know. We're almost sure there's a saltwater ocean below the surface. I think it's pretty indisputable now, so. Pretty sure it's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. But whatever is the skepticism, what would it be were it not a global ocean?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, it's very difficult. And that's from many measurements.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Was it made of ammonia? I mean, there's not, you know, water molecule is not rare. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

So it looks like salt water.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And we have a lot of comparative planetology with is it the Arctic? When it freezes over, you have these chunks of ice that will break and refreeze and readjust and you can compare the images and you'd think you were looking at the frozen Arctic.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. So it looks. And there's more water in that ocean than all the oceans of the Earth combined. Geologically active. There are questions about how the ice cracks and moves on the surface. So it's a fascinating mission. So that's Europa. Mars, of course, which you've probably spoken about many times on this podcast. Enceladus is another one, Saturn's moon. Even out to Pluto.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I mean, even it solves the ones we see, the plumes geysers, I guess. Yeah, yeah. At the right sun angle, you can see who took those pictures. That must have been a Cassini. Right, right, right.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And also there's some measurements from Cassini. The particles in those jets of water, which are consistent with hydrothermal vent activity on the floors and hydrothermal vents are one of the plausible candidates for the origin of Life on Earth.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Brian Cox]

So you seem to have everything. The one thing I think Europa's got that arguably nowhere else has, is it looks like that ocean has been there for many billions of years. That's the baseline scenario.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And we evolve life in less time than that here on Earth.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. Present what, 3.8 billion years ago?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

8Ish. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Cox]

And the Earth's four and a half billion years old, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, yes.

[Brian Cox]

So it looks like you have a habitat that's been stable there. And I think that you can't frame that with anything.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In fact, it was taught that it took about a half a billion years on Earth to get life going, but we were able to revise that number down because in the early Earth, these periods of heavy bombardment, it's not fair to start the clock while we're still getting slammed by still accreting leftover rocks from the solar system, as the temperature of the surface of the Earth is high enough to prevent complex molecules. Give us a chance, please. So the, the periods of bombardment subside, Earth's surface cools. Now start the clock and then it's about 100, 100 million years.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. So that's like that. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons, I think that, I think if you speak to many biologists, they would say that might suggest that given the right conditions, then whatever the origin of life is, there's a reasonable probability given the right conditions, because it happened quickly here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Brian Cox]

So, but that, now that's not, that's not definitive in any sense, but it's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Certainly tempting to go there.

[Brian Cox]

But then, but what I find very interesting then is though, when you ask, okay, but when did life get more complex than a single cell? You're. Then I don't think there's any evidence in the fossil record back beyond about 600 million years ago.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It took a while. Yeah. We languished as single celled creatures three billion years. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

Plus. But it seems.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I think people who think about this problem are honest about that. And so in the search for life on other planets, we're really looking for single celled organisms.

[Brian Cox]

Well, it would be remarkable to see anything more complex. Well, it'd be remarkable to see a single cell because then you'd know, especially if it were biologically different. So you can really show that it's got a different origin because it's worth saying that on Mars that material is exchanged between Earth and Mars. So it's not obvious that you can.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you make all these points in your series. So where can people Find your series. It's streaming, I assume.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah, we've got. The new one is just on at the moment, actually.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what I'm saying.

[Brian Cox]

The solar system. So that will appear on Apple, I suppose, at some point. Apple plus and other places. Yeah, I mean, at the moment it's on the BBC, so streaming on the BBC and then it will head off around the world. One of the coolest things I think about Europa is that the. The habitat, the potential habitat requires Jupiter because the heating that is liquid because of the. But it also seems to require. Well, it requires the other moons, IO and Ganymede, to keep it in this orbital resonance which keeps feeding the energy in from the gravitational field.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The family affair. Yes.

[Brian Cox]

But it also might need the material from the volcanoes of IO on the surface of Europa because they might provide what we call the oxidant. Right. So life is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you're saying that the. An I.O. which is badly stressed.

[Brian Cox]

It's just one big volcano.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's one big volcano. So it spews volcanic substance faster than escape velocity, apparently. And then.

[Brian Cox]

Which lands on Europa and it goes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Into pathways that intersect other moons, Europa included. And you do this for a billion.

[Brian Cox]

Years and then the chemistry. And then it gets irradiated.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It helps out the chemistry.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So one of the theories that I've spoken to were on the Clipper mission said is that that's part of the battery of life, that chemistry. So life. I can't remember who said it, but he said life. Someone said it's an electron looking for a place to land. That's what life is. In one way, you can see life as electrons moving around, but that means you need the chemistry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that all we are, just electrons looking for a place to land?

[Brian Cox]

Well, that's what all description.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'd rather be dust in the wind, whatever all we are.

[Brian Cox]

But I find that wonderful because then you've got this habitat which is a system. And as you said, comparative planetology you mentioned earlier, it's also true of Earth, isn't it? You can't understand Earth without understanding the system, the solar system. You need to understand the moon and how it stabilizes the spin axis. And you need to understand, of course, the sun and the way it interacts with Earth and so on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm a few years your senior. I don't know if you would remember this, but I definitely do. The era where no one was thinking or caring about moons in the solar system. We have a dead moon orbiting us. Oddly large, but fine, let's go look at the planets. And so every mission out to the planets, they looked over their shoulder and found moons, which had way more geologic diversity than anything we're finding on the planet.

[Brian Cox]

You know, I found it interesting because.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I mean, when you were in school, where were we?

[Brian Cox]

Pre Voyager. Well, Voyager.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So see, I'm pre Voyager. And Voyager turned the moons into worlds. Yeah, that's what happened. Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Cox]

So the idea you have a habitable zone in a solar system, which is the zone within which, if you have a rocky planet orbiting and everything's right, then, and the atmosphere is right, you could have the conditions to support life on the surface.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, liquid water. Liquid water. Right.

[Brian Cox]

And so. And so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But that turned out to be needlessly limiting.

[Brian Cox]

Well, exactly. So you just say, well, Mars, Earth, Venus in our solar system, that's it. But then you find the habitable zones around gas giants. And that, as you said, that was the great discovery of Voyager. I would say.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it began with Voyager. Really? For sure, yeah.

[Brian Cox]

It should be early 1980s. Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I'm delighted, even as a particle physicist, you get to also platform the solar system because you have the name recognition.

[Brian Cox]

But that's why I said I started with astrophysics. I really just wanted to. To be an astronomer. So I've always been, I've got a telescope.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You confess to me this is a safe space to do that.

[Brian Cox]

I ended up in particle physics. It was almost. So I was doing astrophysics, that's what I was doing. And I thought, I want to be an astronomer. University of Manchester has the Jodrell bank radio telescope, for example, which is one of the big radio telescopes in the world still. And so I.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That wasn't the one that discovered the first pulsar, was it?

[Brian Cox]

No, that was Cambridge.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cambridge, Cambridge.

[Brian Cox]

Jocelyn Belbank discovered something else.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I mean, just George L Bank.

[Brian Cox]

It was one of the first. So it's pioneer. It's one of the pioneering. Does a lot of the work on the Crab pulsar and so on. But it was. So I thought I'd be an astronomer and I have a telescope. That's what I do. I sit there and look, you're in.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The club, we accept you in the club. Even though you drifted to particle physics and space exploration.

[Brian Cox]

So that's all. But it was at university I just got interested in mathematics. I didn't think I was very good at mathematics at school, but I found out with a bit of practice then, I. I enjoyed it. So I ended up really getting more into theoretical physics and went that way. So that's Why I ended up in particle physics. Really. But then now, of course, every opportunity I get, I seem to drift back.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because the universe is cool and black holes. I don't want to brag about the.

[Brian Cox]

Universe and black holes actually are where they intersect. Absolutely. Particle physics and general relativity, astronomy and.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The Big Bang itself, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With your particle physics hat, where are we with neutrinos now? I thought they're sort of fully understood. We solved the neutrino problem in the Sun. A Nobel Prize was given for that. Is there anything left to discover? This elusive particle that belongs in the, I would say, tree of life. In the particle tree of life, Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

I mean, there are. Neutrinos are fascinating things that they're very, very, very. They're almost massless, but not quite.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that matters.

[Brian Cox]

That should ring bells, you know, it's like, why. That's the thing about science, isn't it? You go, well, why is this unusually light? Or maybe it isn't. Maybe the other things are unusually heavy. But it's telling us something.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it's only neutrinos, how hard it is to interact with them. That gives me any belief at all in some other set of particles that might exist that we don't interact with. Because neutrinos are our own species.

[Brian Cox]

Well, they interact through the weak force, but that's us.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's our little world here. Right. Any other symmetric particles? There are other forces that mediate them, is that correct?

[Brian Cox]

There would be. So if you have extensions to the standard model of particle physics, then you'd. You can have forces that change things into other things, and so different forces. But as far as we know, as far as the zoo that we have discovered is described by the three forces. The strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism. And then hanging out there, as we've discussed, is gravity in really a different framework at the moment?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I corralled Steve Weinberg in elevator one day, and physicist, I'm telling you, I'm telling the audience.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. Particle physicist, one of the greats.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And he went to my high school. Let me. Allow me to add one of our prize winner, one of our Nobel laureates from my high school. And I said, how can you live with yourself at night given how many particles there are? Come on. There's like. I lost count. What does this mean about our universe? And he said, it's not how many particles there are, it's how many laws we have that describe them all. And it's only just a few I thought, damn. Good answer.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. I remember Steven Weinberg.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good answer.

[Brian Cox]

I think I'm right in quoting him as saying that he almost wished black holes didn't exist because they're so perplexing, that it would be just easier. And he was kind of joking, of course, because physicists love a mystery. But he was almost like, this is too difficult. This too bizarre. Maybe nature doesn't make them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God. So you see, he's invoking human limitations on the capacity of nature.

[Brian Cox]

Joking. He was just saying, these things are so baffling and so weird in some ways, I'd rather they weren't there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did he say that in his old age, so that he was getting tired of solving the universe?

[Brian Cox]

He was joking.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we're still trying to explore neutrinos, and as I understand, there's a new neutrino experiment that just came online.

[Brian Cox]

I mean, there are several. I mean, so, I mean, the fundamental question. They do seem the reason we're interested in them. Just. We're interested in them because they're three of the 12 fundamental particles. Right. So we are made of basically three particles. That's us and the electrons, protons and neutrons. Well, no. So the protons, neutrons are made of quarks.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh. So, okay, quarks.

[Brian Cox]

Downwards.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let's start from the Greek. We're made of atoms.

[Brian Cox]

You can start with we're made of.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Atoms and we're atoms in Greek means indivisible. Yeah, that's what that word means.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And it is remarkable, by the way. You say the Greeks, 2,000 years ago, we only discovered that the structure of atoms in the 20th century, or that atoms existed. Yeah. It was up for debate the turn of the 20th century. It was one of the debates in science. Is there such a thing as an atom? It's incredible.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Incredible. Yeah.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And Einstein, indeed, in 1905, one of his famous papers was on Brownian motion. Which one of the three famous papers in that year. One of the other one was special relativity, and the other one he got the Nobel Prize for was the photoelectric effect. The third one, Einstein, we should just.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Retroactively give him like a dozen Nobel Prizes.

[Brian Cox]

It's astonishing. He didn't get the Nobel Prize for relativity. He got it for basically the foundation to quantum mechanics. We discover there are matters made of atoms, and then we very quickly discover after that that the atom is electrons. Initially, we have this almost solar system like model that it's a nucleus, a dense nucleus with an electron going around it. And then we discover the nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. That's 1930s, by the way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The orbit model is still the symbol for an atom.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You know.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. The atomic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We kept it just because it's classic, you know, but that's. Atoms look nothing like that.

[Brian Cox]

No, no, no. And so then quantum mechanics comes in, tells you you can't have that because charged particles moving around in the vicinity of other charged particles radiate energy away and they wouldn't be stable. And that was known, of course. And so then you find that the nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. And as I said, the neutron. It's a 1930s discovery. So we're not that long ago.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm amazed when so much. You know, we're now in the centennial decade of the discovery of quantum physics back in the 1920s. And the whole 1920s was done before we discovered the neutron. That's crazy.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. It's almost living. It is living memory for some people, just about this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so let's get back to the fundamental particles.

[Brian Cox]

Then we discovered that the protons, neutrons are made of quarks.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Quarks.

[Brian Cox]

So they are, as far as we can tell, point like objects. So they're fundamental. They won't be. But as far as we can tell, they are experimentally.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we have the photon, the electron.

[Brian Cox]

Well, let's take the matter particles. So we have. So the up and down quarks make up protons and neutrons. So a proton is two ups and a down, and a neutron is two downs and an up.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Got it. And we have two quarks per energy stratum here. Correct.

[Brian Cox]

Well, so then. Yeah, so then we discovered. So we have this nice thing. So we have the electron, as you said, the up and down quark. And then the thing called the electron neutrino, which we. So we just talked about neutrinos, Only.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Four fundamental particles in anything we know or care about.

[Brian Cox]

So we have four of them. Yep, that's it. And then we have.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I can construct, uh, out of these particles. Yes, If I had the recipes.

[Brian Cox]

But then. So we have four of them. So that's it. There's four of them. And then the forces that mediate the interactions. Right, okay. And which we can also think of as being carried by particles, as we said.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Cox]

We have the photons, the massless particles, the electromagnetic force. We have the W and Z bosons, which do the weak nuclear force and the gluons, strong nuclear force.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And stick the quarks, aptly named gluon yes. Okay.

[Brian Cox]

And so that's it, it seems. Except that there are two copies of those that are identical, except they're more massive. So there's the charm and strange quarks and the muon and the mu neutrino. That's another family.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's the next level up in energy.

[Brian Cox]

They're more massive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

More massive. Okay. Okay.

[Brian Cox]

So you have the charm and strange and the muon and the mu neutrino.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then have another one.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. Which are. The bottom and top are sometimes called beauty and truth, depending on how you want to do it. The quarks and then the tau and the tau neutrino, and that's it, as far as we can tell. So Those are the massive 4, 812.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Fundamental particles and their antimatter counterparts.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. And then the antimatter counterparts. And so why. We don't know. So why? There are three. And with experimentally proven. Really, with some very small caveats. Only three generations, only three families of these things.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is there a reason for there to be only 3? Could there be 5 or 10?

[Brian Cox]

So we don't know. It must be something to do with the underlying. So it looks like a periodic table. So remember, you go back to Mendeleyev and the periodic table. How do you understand that pattern in the. In the chemical properties of the. Of the elements? You understand it when you know that everything's made of atoms.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I mean, the chemist arranged it, but didn't have any understanding of it.

[Brian Cox]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Quantum physics.

[Brian Cox]

Well, you need to know the structure. You need to know that there's a nucleus and there's, you know, hydrogen's got one electron and helium's got two. And carbon's alchemy only gets you so far. Yeah. So. So you understand chemistry, you understand the pattern when you understand the building blocks. Okay, so we don't know why that pattern is there, but it's clearly telling us about the building blocks or the underlying theory, which we don't know. So it's one of the great mysteries. So. So there's. So that's the zoo of particles, as we know, and then there's the Higgs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And just to be clear, when I attacked Steven Weinberg in the elevator, most of the particle identities I was referencing are different combinations of different quarks.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Come together.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So all these, like you said in the 50s, isn't that people were discovering all these things, and they're different combinations of ups and downs and strange and charm and bottom and so on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they exist in our universe, but again, they're Made of the more fundamental.

[Brian Cox]

Yeah. So basically, these things, the proton and neutron, they're kind of analogous to an atom in a way. So they're a thing. They're quite big things in particle physics, and they have an internal structure. And one of those. Yeah, and one of the things that I was involved in that we did back in Hamburg all those years ago was we were mapping the structure of the proton. So we're saying what. What is in the proton? How does it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mapping the interior structure of the proton?

[Brian Cox]

And we need that. We needed that for the lhc. So we need. Because we collide protons together. So. So we have very detailed maps, if you like. They call structure functions, but they're maps of the. Of the proton.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, Brian, thank you. Pleasure for joining me.

[Brian Cox]

I always love talking to you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We're kindred spirits in this world and I wish you great success with your spring tour. Does it go beyond the United States? Is it a world tour?

[Brian Cox]

It has been a world tour. We've been to, I don't know, 20 or 30 countries. As I said, we're probably approaching half a million people who've come.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so. So that's the.

[Brian Cox]

That we're at the. At the end, really, of this one. And so I just wanted to bring it back here. It's changed so much. We started in the States, actually, with it in its proto form, and now I just. I've loved doing it so much, and I just wanted to bring it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I just like the idea that a science talk is being given, but there are trucks that have to unload the staging for it.

[Brian Cox]

It's proper rock and roll. I got roadies. I've got everything.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do you have a tour T shirt with cities on it?

[Brian Cox]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Brian Cox]

I should have brought one T shirt.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Cox]

Oh, we've got everything. And we've done so many shows, I don't know how many it is. 150, 200. They don't all fit on one T shirt. So we've got different T shirts for different regions of the world.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Physics Takes the World. Very good, Brian. Again, thanks for being on the show. This has been an exclusive conversation between me and my good friend Brian Cox from the uk, who's coming stateside with a tour. And we're going to look for the solar system on it should be around. Yeah, yeah. If Dev does its BBC. How many episodes is it?

[Brian Cox]

Five.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Five episodes. We'll look for it. All right. This has been startalk. I'm your host, Neil Degrasse. Tyson, as always. Keep looking.