The Beginning of the Universe with Brian Keating

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Episode Summary – "The Beginning of the Universe with Brian Keating"

Podcast Information

• Title: StarTalk Radio
• Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Description: Science, pop culture, and comedy collide on StarTalk Radio! Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and Director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, along with his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities, and scientific experts, explore astronomy, physics, and everything else there is to know about life in the universe.
• Episode: The Beginning of the Universe with Brian Keating
• Release Date: May 6, 2025

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Introduction The episode kicks off with Neil deGrasse Tyson introducing the theme of cosmic queries, focusing on cosmology. He welcomes Brian Keating, a distinguished astrophysicist and the Principal Investigator of the Simons Observatory, to delve into the complexities of the universe's origins.

Guest Introduction Timestamp: [02:33] – [04:07]

Neil deGrasse Tyson introduces Brian Keating, highlighting his role as a leading scientist in cosmology and his involvement with the Simons Observatory. Brian shares his enthusiasm for being on the show and references his podcast, “Into the Impossible Podcast,” inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum about pushing the boundaries of the possible.

Discussion on BICEP2 and the Simons Observatory Timestamp: [06:03] – [21:42]

Brian Keating recounts his pivotal work with the BICEP2 experiment, which aimed to detect gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that could provide insights into the Big Bang. He explains the challenges faced, including the initial excitement of a potential groundbreaking discovery, followed by the subsequent retraction when it was determined that the signal detected was actually cosmic dust interference.

Notable Quote:

Brian Keating [09:58]: "This discovery launched into motion what would become the Simons Observatory."

He discusses the collaboration with Jim Simons, a philanthropist and mathematician, who funded the Simons Observatory to further investigate the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with enhanced precision. The conversation delves into the technical aspects of measuring B-mode polarization and the significance of multiple wavelength observations to distinguish cosmic signals from local dust.

Theoretical Concepts: Inflation and the Multiverse Timestamp: [14:15] – [32:45]

The discussion shifts to theoretical frameworks that explain the universe's uniformity and fluctuations. Brian elaborates on inflation theory, proposed by Alan Guth, which suggests a rapid expansion of the universe that accounts for its current uniformity despite the quantum fluctuations present at the Big Bang.

Notable Quote:

Brian Keating [15:19]: "We have to assume [the cosmic signal] may not be there just because we want it to be there."

He touches upon the controversial concept of the multiverse, proposing that our universe might be one of countless others, each born from quantum fluctuations. This leads to a deeper exploration of how these theories can be tested and potentially falsified through observational data from the Simons Observatory.

Data and Experiments: CMB and Polarization Timestamp: [22:17] – [43:21]

Brian provides an in-depth explanation of how the CMB serves as a cosmic "film" capturing the state of the universe 400,000 years post-Big Bang. He describes the technical nuances of polarization measurements, the significance of detecting B-mode patterns, and the extreme precision required—fluctuations at the nanokelvin level above the average temperature of 2.7 Kelvin.

Notable Quote:

Brian Keating [24:22]: "We have to cool our detectors down. To my colleague Suzanne Staggs at Princeton, she's built detectors that operate at 0.1 degree above absolute zero."

He emphasizes the importance of multi-wavelength observations in separating cosmic signals from galactic dust, a lesson learned from the BICEP2 experiment’s initial misinterpretation.

Q&A Highlights Timestamp: [29:47] – [51:14]

Listener questions address fundamental cosmological inquiries, such as the origins preceding the Big Bang, the nature of the Higgs field, and the randomness of CMB anisotropy.

1. Origins Before the Big Bang:

   • Question from Reuben and Eli [29:57]
   • Brian responds by acknowledging the limits of current scientific understanding and the possibility of cyclic models involving previous universes undergoing "big crunches" or "bounces."

2. CMB Longevity and Evolution:

   • Question from Alan Rayer [35:25]
   • Brian explains that the CMB will remain in our observational frame indefinitely unless the universe expands significantly, stretching the wavelengths of the CMB photons beyond detection.

3. Isotropy vs. Anisotropy in the Universe:

   • Question from Yogesh [41:00] and others [41:20]
   • Brian clarifies that while the universe is largely isotropic, minor anisotropies are crucial for understanding the distribution of matter and the role of quantum fluctuations in structure formation.

4. Higgs Field Distribution:

   • Question from Kara [46:10]
   • Brian discusses the Higgs field as a scalar field with potential variations across spacetime, linking it to the origins of mass and its possible connections to inflationary theories.

5. Impact of Early Universe Studies on Earth:

   • Question from Eric Venus [48:10]
   • Brian reflects on how understanding the early universe can influence future scientific advancements and societal decisions, drawing parallels to historical knowledge shaping human progress.

Conclusions and Closing Remarks Timestamp: [55:55] – [57:31]

As the episode winds down, Neil, Chuck, and Brian recap the significance of studying the universe's origins. Brian promotes his upcoming book, "Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner," aimed at guiding STEM enthusiasts in their scientific pursuits. The hosts commend Brian for his contributions to cosmology and the public understanding of science.

Notable Quote:

Neil deGrasse Tyson [57:07]: "This has been a Cosmic Queries CMB edition. As always, I bid you to keep looking up."

The episode concludes with acknowledgments and promotional mentions for Brian's work and the continuation of StarTalk's mission to educate and inspire through the intersection of science and popular culture.

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Key Takeaways:

• BICEP2 Experiment: Initial misinterpretation of gravitational wave signals due to cosmic dust interference highlights the challenges in cosmological measurements.
• Simons Observatory: A robust project funded by Jim Simons aimed at refining the detection of B-mode polarization to validate inflationary theories.
• Inflation Theory & Multiverse: Explores the rapid expansion of the early universe and the speculative idea of multiple universes arising from quantum fluctuations.
• CMB Polarization: Detailed measurement of nanokelvin-level fluctuations in the CMB to uncover the universe's primordial secrets.
• Scientific Inquiry: Emphasis on the importance of addressing big questions with humility, acknowledging unknowns, and the continuous pursuit of knowledge.

Resources Mentioned:

• Brian Keating's Books:
  • Losing the Nobel Prize
  • Into the Impossible Podcast
  • Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner (Upcoming)

For more insights and resources, visit Brian Keating’s website at briankeating.com/starTalk.

Subscribe to StarTalk Radio Keep exploring the cosmos with new episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ for ad-free listening and early access. Start your free trial on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.

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This summary encapsulates the engaging discussion between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Keating on the complexities of the universe's beginnings, the scientific endeavors to understand them, and the broader philosophical implications of such knowledge.

Transcript

[Brian Keating]

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[Chuck Nice]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Chuck, love me some cosmology.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, yes, without a doubt. It makes me look good every day.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mythology.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's. Oh, that's right. We're talking about cosmology on this show. Yeah, it's a good one, too.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to just look at what, how people used to think of the universe. I want to know what's going on right now. And that's what we did. Oh, we got it all in that episode. Coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. We're doing cosmic queries today, and guess who brought them all. Chuck. Nice Chuck, man.

[Chuck Nice]

Hey, that's right. I bought the goods.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You brought the goods.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, I did. We got the, we got all that. We got everything that you ever wanted to know. And I'm going to read four of them because that's how many we get.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But I think. But they're very fleshy replies.

[Chuck Nice]

I, I, the way I look at it is we have a reservoir of inquiries, and that gives us fodder for discussion, and eventually all of these questions will be answered.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right. And these questions, all from our Patreon supporters. And we love them.

[Chuck Nice]

We love.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We're going to do cosmology today. Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

I did my hair very special today, so I'm very happy about that. I'm glad that we're doing cosmetology.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cosmetology, yeah. That's what it is. So we've got with us today One of the most active scientists in that space, the space of cosmetology, Brian Keating. Brian, welcome to Star Talk.

[Brian Keating]

It's nice to be with you in person, finally.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. Yes. Yes. You're active on social media, and I was honored to be a guest on your podcast.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. Two time guest. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Two time guests. What's the name of it?

[Brian Keating]

It's called the into the Impossible Podcast. Named after Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum that the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to go beyond them, into the impossible.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh. Did he realize that once you get into the impossible, it is the possible?

[Brian Keating]

Well, I don't know if you realize that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Don't be too rational about this, Chuck. You've been thinking about cosmology, especially signatures of the big bang.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Your whole career.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. This is what I've been doing. I dedicated my life to understanding, you know, what happened on the Tuesday before the Big bang. Can you answer that question? Not really.

[Chuck Nice]

Sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tuesday. Wait, let me get your pedigree out of the way here. So you're Chancellor's Distinguished professor of Physics in the Department of Physics, UC San Diego. But are you the student's distinguished professor? Nah.

[Brian Keating]

You know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, I don't care what the Chancellor thinks of you.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Brian Keating]

I just teach to him. He finally said, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You go to golf, you have private lessons.

[Chuck Nice]

That's funny.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're also principal investigator the Simons Observatory. We've got a whole Simons thing down here in. In the city.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

At the Flat Iron Institute.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. Yeah. Jim is a titan of the city. Fortunately, passed away Last year age 86.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Jim Simons.

[Brian Keating]

Jim Simons, yeah. He's a philanthropist, a mathematician. He was. Had multiple careers. He worked for the government. He broke codes during Vietnam.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You said philanthropist and mathematician, but not in that order.

[Brian Keating]

Not in that order. And also, I forgot, I left out one thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Reverse order.

[Brian Keating]

I left out one thing. A hedge fund manager. 26, richest person in the world. But one. One thing that's most important I left out is. Is that his wife, Marilyn Simons, has the distinction and honor not only of having an asteroid. I mean, a lot of people have asteroids, but we got an asteroid named after Jim.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Anybody's got an asteroid.

[Chuck Nice]

But Marilyn, let's be honest, the solar system is littered with them. They're basically space garbage.

[Brian Keating]

Garbage.

[Chuck Nice]

Let's be honest.

[Brian Keating]

Can't give them away.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just a man who does not have an asteroid.

[Brian Keating]

Join me.

[Chuck Nice]

Join.

[Brian Keating]

You and me both. I don't have one other, but. But Marilyn has the honor, the Distinction of being my. One of my first babysitters. So she got experience. Early experience with dark matter, but she changed her diapers. That's right. Dark matter is where she got her experience with.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

Age. Age 2 or 3. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow. So you guys go way back.

[Brian Keating]

Way back. Before the. Before the birth. Before my own personal big bang, as Chuck said nine months earlier.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what's up with the Simon Observatory? What's your relationship to it again?

[Brian Keating]

So I'm what's called the principal investigator.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So I'm the co founder of IT along friend. David Spergle.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

And Mark.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We came up together in graduate school and. Yeah, yeah. David Spergle is on an earlier episode of Star Talk as the chair of the committee representing NASA investigating UAPs.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And he's also in our archives.

[Brian Keating]

He's also that he took over from Marilyn Simons as a president of Simons Foundation.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Brian Keating]

So he had to kind of withdraw from the Simons Observatory. Otherwise. Conflict of interest.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Conflict of interest. Is that.

[Chuck Nice]

What is that? Is that a thing?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that what.

[Brian Keating]

What.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Really?

[Brian Keating]

For people like David. Yeah. Very ethical.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

So in 2014, in this very city, there was published in the front page of the New York Times, on March 17, St. Patrick's Day was published an article that said, space ripples herald the origin of the universe. And it was an announcement that the BICEP2 experiment had detected what are called gravitational waves, primordial waves of the ripples of space time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So bicep, that's an acronym. What's that acronym for?

[Brian Keating]

I created the acronym. It was a Background Imager of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization is bicep. You want something?

[Chuck Nice]

You want something? Yeah, exactly.

[Brian Keating]

I don't. Description.

[Chuck Nice]

What's it looking at? Space guns.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Guns. Okay, so give me back the acronym.

[Brian Keating]

The Space Gun Show Background Background Imager of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization. Now, why is that so clever? Why is that not just a dad joke? Well, the signal that we're looking for is called polarization. And that polarization pattern, if you were to be able to see it with special polarized glasses we'll get to in a few seconds, you would see a swirling, twisting or curling pattern. So I wanted to make BICEP the muscle that does curl. And I got away with the dad joke even before I had kids.

[Chuck Nice]

I see what you did there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See what you did there.

[Chuck Nice]

That's not bad.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It only exercises one muscle. No other muscle curl is the bicep.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, very good.

[Brian Keating]

So, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what Were you on that project?

[Brian Keating]

Well, I founded the previous predecessor experiment called Creatively Bicep 1, first incarnation of it. And just like with your iPhone, every couple of years you upgrade it. You get more pixels, you get more. But the cool thing about it, literally.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that it's in orbiting.

[Brian Keating]

No, it's in the South Pole. Antarctica. Oh, so it's at the very bottom.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I knew that.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, that's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so penguins would call it the top of the world, but. That's right.

[Brian Keating]

I don't want to be too, you know, polar bear specific.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

Eccentric. So we. So I created that experiment along with my late great colleague and mentor, Andrew Lang, Tragically took his own life. Soon after we got our first data from the second version of the experiment. But that's another podcast. But that experiment was. Was built intently to do nothing else but measure these waves of gravity, if they existed. And we thought, oh, we'll never detect it. It's minuscule. We're looking for signals that are 1 billionth of a Kelvin above the CMB's average temperature, which is 2.7 Kelvin.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

So it says the minuscule. We didn't think we'd do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We had to try it, though. So the challenge there, scientifically is. Is to see a signal that low, given the fluctuations that are already there.

[Brian Keating]

And the Earth, the atmosphere. Yep, exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All radiating into the. Into the experiment.

[Brian Keating]

That's right, Exactly. Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

It's literally a string with a bell on it.

[Brian Keating]

But the crazy thing is in. In 2014, you know, we announced. We did it. We saw this kind of needle, you know, in a. It's actually like a piece of hay in a haystack. You know, it's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So can you find the hay in the haystack?

[Chuck Nice]

That's funny.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Piece of hay. You know what you do with the needle. You actually, Iron man said this in. In one of the movies, but we all knew this, right? If you want to find needle in the haystack, just burn down the haystack.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And the needles left.

[Chuck Nice]

And then that's all right because needles don't burn.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Or take an electromagnet and. Yeah, you'll find the needle like that.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So.

[Brian Keating]

So this experiment was designed to do one thing only, and we never thought we'd do it. If we detected it, we'd be, you know, kind of the onus is on the experimentalist. You know, you want to know enough that you can detect it, but you have to, you know, not fall victim to the most pernicious of all scientific fallacies, which is confirmation bias, right? You're looking for something. Oh, you found it. Eureka. But we did. We found it. And I remember telling my wife, you know, this is gonna win somebody a Nobel Prize. You know, spoiler alert. You know, my first book's called Losing the Nobel Prize. So it wasn't this guy and it wasn't any of us because it was retracted later on as Neil mentioned, we had the dude go through the humiliation of. After being on the front page of the New York Times press conference at Harvard. You know, real show all around the world. Cnn, everybody.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what was your academic affiliation at the time?

[Brian Keating]

So I was a professor at UC San Diego, where you are now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yep, gotcha correctly.

[Brian Keating]

I've been there 21 years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they probably were running with this.

[Brian Keating]

Oh, yeah, we were on the front page of the. The most. The most important paper of record, the San Diego Union Tribune. Which.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The Union Tribune.

[Brian Keating]

I was on the COVID of it. Yes, exactly. So that discovery launched into motion what would become the Simons Observatory. Because that day I got a call from Jim Simons. He had already been funding a predecessor experiment of mine called the Simons Array, which is a small grouping of telescopes. Mean also look at the same signals, but other signals too. And he called me up in that distinctive voice after, you know, smoking merit cigarettes without filters, you know, for 60 years. He started smoking when he was in his, you know, late teenage. Don't do that out there. Doctors. Yeah, he was a chain smoker.

[Chuck Nice]

Hey, Brian, how are you?

[Brian Keating]

Exactly what he sounded like, but more Boston.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Ch.

[Brian Keating]

I just got more Boston.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I can't do Boston. Plus it doesn't sound good in Boston. That's wicked. Like, you know, wicked like. Yeah, that's the diner waitress voice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

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[Chuck Nice]

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[Brian Keating]

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[Chuck Nice]

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[Unknown]

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[Brian Keating]

I'm Kaish from Bangladesh and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we left off in your complicated life where you had the BICEP2 experiment that reported what would later be determined to be an erroneous detection. Meanwhile, Jim Simons, seeing what you're seeking, wanted to participate in that puts you head of an early version of the Simons Observatory, some variant Simon's Array. But then the BICEP2 result comes out.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Which is not good for him.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Because BICEP2 is leading the world to. Well, we think has, has discovered this. These, these ripples.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, but, but really they haven't. But he doesn't know that.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

So he's like, bro, what's up with my money?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right? Okay, I want it back.

[Brian Keating]

So he calls me up and I'm like, I don't know what to say because I knew in the back of my mind there could be problems with the result and we might need to confirm it with another instrument, which later turned out to be the case, or that we were actually right. And yeah, maybe I might have to say, look, you gotta get your. I gotta give you back your money. I gotta have some integrity and, you know, and refund your money, so to speak. And I was going crazy because where'd he get, you know, $10 million and give it back to.

[Chuck Nice]

No, that's. Let me tell you something. That's when I just ran out of integrity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Money and integrity at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

$10 million, no more integrity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So then how was it determined? Yeah, yeah, because I remembered this. I wasn't close to it, but it was happening. It was a very important. It was an important episode in science, actually. Okay, so now let me see why it's so important.

[Chuck Nice]

Can I, before you even get there, can you tell me exactly what was missing from the discovery that invalidated.

[Brian Keating]

Absolutely. Let me take one giant step back. Why are we doing any of these projects to begin with? So looking for gravitational waves. Take yourself back to 2000, 2014, right. We hadn't detected. Ligo had not made its detection of gravitational waves.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Obama was president.

[Brian Keating]

Ukraine had not been invaded the first time.

[Chuck Nice]

Hold on, guys, give me one second. I'm staving off. Once he said Obama was president, I'm like, oh God.

[Brian Keating]

The elevator had not been ridden. Escalator.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, go ahead.

[Brian Keating]

How to annoy Chuck. So at that phase, we had not detected gravitational waves directly as LIGO had. We had indirect evidence that they existed. But. But there was a theory that had been promulgated since the early nineteen nineteen eighties by Alan Guth. So the inflationary theory is the answer to the question, what caused the Big Bang? What made the Big Bang bang? And the postula is that there's a so called quantum field that filled the whole universe that fluctuated out of nothing. And the universe became.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Came into existence as quantum quanta do. Yeah, they do stuff out of nothing all the time.

[Chuck Nice]

They are the magicians of the universe.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Everything quantum.

[Chuck Nice]

Watch me pull a universe out of my head.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's exactly what you're doing on a fluctuation.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Brian Keating]

All right. So this discovery, if it were true, if it were confirmed, would be tantamount to discovering the Big Bang itself, which it was done not far from here by Penzias and Wilson. Discovery of the cmb, the cosmic microwave background, which is what butters the bread around the Keating House.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Penzance Wilson at Bell Labs in Jersey.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly. Not too far from here by mistake too.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, it's across the Hudson River. That makes it far.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I know you're in here from San Diego.

[Chuck Nice]

Don't, don't listen to. He's a Manhattan, I'm a New Yorker.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He lives in New Jersey.

[Chuck Nice]

That is true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You got Long island roots.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What town?

[Brian Keating]

Stony Brook. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. That's where Jim and my dad were professional.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's why that would be the case.

[Brian Keating]

So. So inflation. So we claim that we discovered this. So that's why everyone said this is going to win a Nobel Prize. Because they want a Nobel Prize for discovering just the heat left over from the Big Bang. All the more so for discovering what ignited the spark that ignited the Big Bang.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Brian Keating]

So that why I designed BICEP originally, then it became BICEP2. Like the iPhone, gets new detectors, cameras. We upgraded it so we ended up building this telescope. And then when I got this call from Jim Simons, I was in this pickle. Right. Because I don't know what to say. I kind of invented. I was kind of the father of the predecessor experiment to BICEP 2. BICEP 1. And you know, it's definitely the father of that. And then I was involved with this new project that he was funding. Now what ended up happening was we had relied on data not from our own instrument. Actually, someone had taken a picture of a PowerPoint slide from our arch nemesis, the Planck experiment. So the Planck experiment is a billion euro experiment. BICEP was a mere 10 million dollar US dollar European Space Agency out at L2 at Lagrange Point, orbiting around the sun, the Earth, the farthest, coldest, deepest, darkest, incredible team. Thousand people working.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So Earth's sun, L2.

[Brian Keating]

Earth, sun, L2.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what JWST is.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, exactly. It was one of the first. The second one, after hanging out, they're just park chilling. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Like they're on stakeout. Two cops on stakeout sitting there at L2. You should you go for coffee this time. I went for coffee last time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It is true. Because they're like parked there. Yeah. As Earth orbits the Sun.

[Brian Keating]

Think about getting a validation out there. I mean, it's not easy. So Jim calls me up, what's going on? And what to do next. So we ended up discovering that we didn't see this pattern that would be the imprimatur of the Big Bang. We didn't see this cosmic swirling curls from the Big Bang.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who determined you didn't see it?

[Brian Keating]

We, along with our competitor, the Planck teams that we worked together to find out that actually what we saw was nothing more than some cosmic schmutz, some dust.

[Chuck Nice]

It was cosmic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The people who study dust.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To them, it's their livelihood.

[Brian Keating]

One astronomer's dust is another astronomer's lost Nobel Prize. So it wasn't a blunder, Chuck. It wasn't like we left, you know, put our thumb over the camera or something like that. We actually measured exquisitely. Precisely. Precisely. This signal that is astrophysical in origin at the billionths of degree Kelvin level. I mean, it's an exquisite.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But it's a local signal, not a Big Bang signal.

[Chuck Nice]

It just happened to be a different signal.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. That's all. So congratulations on the precision of the marrow. It is actually, you idiot, interpreting it the wrong way.

[Chuck Nice]

However, what it did was it's like, oh, this thing works.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's experimental.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. The most precise measurement of what's called an astrophysical foreground. Something in the. In the foreground in the, you know, space between you and the cosmos that is made in the astrophysics that's actually the same material that makes up meteorites. And I brought some meteorites for you guys here. So dust is ubiquitous. And the same type of dust that obscured our measurement and prevented me from winning a Nobel Prize is actually the same stuff that the planets are made of. And so it's identical to that happens to be magnetic, and it produces radiation and heat. And so we saw it and we misinterpreted it as the signal from the British infrared. Infrared and microwave emission.

[Chuck Nice]

Yep.

[Brian Keating]

So Jim Simons, upon hearing this, he's like, well, what do we do? And then when we retracted the claim that we had detected inflation. Humiliating. This is a human. This is not like an easy thing to do.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

Still, he said, I want to go for the signal more than ever now, but we have to remove the dust. So it's a good thing like you said, Chuck? Yeah, it's actually a good thing. When you make a mistake, you say, oh, I got to refine what I do. It's like you go out to your car, there's dust on the windshield. I got to clean the windshield.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, except you're not going out to the unit, the galaxy and removing the dust. You're removing the dust signature in your day.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly. So how do you do that without a vacuum cleaner or a dust devil?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You need ways to do that.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly. So what Jim was wise about and what David Spergel had figured out, because he was one of the ones that killed off the BICEP interpretation, he figured out we need to have multiple colors of light. BICEP2 only had one color of light. We couldn't see multiple colors. And when you have multiple colors, you learn about the spectrum, you learn about the characteristics. So what Simon's observatory now does and why Jim funded that is it can the cosmic signal, if it's there, we have to assume it may not be there just because we want it to be there, but it can also see the dust. And when you have the signal, you have the cosmic signal plus the dust signal. We have a telescope.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That just what you're saying in your one band of light.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You could not distinguish the cosmic signal from the local signal. In two bands of light, they each will show up differently in two bands.

[Chuck Nice]

And now you'll be able to identify.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And now you've been able to take it.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And take it out.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But that's not what I remember most about this episode. I remember the ambulance chasing theorists who came behind this false result thinking it's real. Coming up with an explanation so they can get their Nobel Prize, too.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what I remember.

[Brian Keating]

I got emails.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's, like, 100 theorists. How many theorists?

[Brian Keating]

Well, there's 1800 papers published about it. It's my most cited paper, embarrassingly enough. But, yeah. So it was. It led to. So this disaster, in some sense, led to the initiation of this new, most powerful instrument ever made to do the cosmic microwave background.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that's the Simons Observatory, of which you are PI.

[Brian Keating]

Yep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Congratulations.

[Brian Keating]

Thank you very much. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That's very cool.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a great story.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Brian Keating]

Thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, we got to write a book. We got to get to. Oh, he should write a book about it. We're all familiar with Polaroid sunglasses, and some subset of those who own them know what they're doing, but I think most people don't. It's just a type of sunglasses that you want.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I always have polarized sunglasses with me in my backpack, just because you never know when you need to pull.

[Chuck Nice]

You need to hide from the paparazzi, and their flash might bounce off of something. So I need polarizing sunglasses to block out that bounce light.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So catch us all up on how and why polarized observations work.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So light has three primary properties. It's color spectrum, its intensity, how bright the light is, and also something called its polarization. Least familiar property of light and light is an electromagnetic wave. So when a wave oscillates the plane that it's oscillating up and down in the electric field, vectors are going up, down like that, and the magnetic field vectors are going like that.

[Chuck Nice]

So it's two waves. One's going up and down. I'm sorry, two.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

One's going up and down is going side to side.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Magnetic. Electromagnetic.

[Chuck Nice]

Electromagnetic, okay.

[Brian Keating]

And when light interacts with matter, you see, like, a glare. You see a reflection there. Well, but polarized sunglasses do is that they oppress and suppress one of those.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oppress.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You see, you're sitting between two people here who take a different understanding of that word.

[Brian Keating]

All right, fine.

[Chuck Nice]

Sure does know that one day.

[Brian Keating]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

We's gonna be able to get through.

[Brian Keating]

See the mountaintop excusing the polarizer sunglasses.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Clean the other side.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, sometimes I just feel tired. Like I'm tired, light. Tired, light.

[Brian Keating]

Oh, man. We gotta get all of this into the B roll. All right, good. The way that polarized sunglasses work is that they actually suppress one of the two polarization states of light. It happens to be the horizontal one. And that's why you want to wear them at the beach. Or you want to wear them when you're driving because you get that glare. Or skiing. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. When you're skiing. And that's why they're more expensive, because you have to add this film that has molecules that are actually made of polymers that actually suppress one of those two states of light, but let the rest in because you don't want to be totally dark.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

So polarized sunglasses suppress one of the two polarization states of light. They make the light 50% darker. Also in photography, called neutral density film density. Exactly. Yeah. So the film that's on these. On these glasses actually knocks out one of the two polarization states of light, the one that is responsible for the glare that you see the glare. So that means if you have two of them and if they are oriented just right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So here's some light coming through.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. Okay, so this is a very expensive demo here. So this is actually knocking out half of the light in there, because only half. It's an unpolarized source. So half of it's polarized one way, half it's polarized the other way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The source is unpolarized.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

And then if you put another polarized source in front of it, and as I rotate it, eventually the axis of polarization will be orthogonal, and that will block out 100% perpendicular. Do you see a perpendicular.

[Chuck Nice]

There it is.

[Brian Keating]

So now it's completely orthogonal or perpendicular, as you would say. And then as I rotated slightly the off axis now it lets in some light. So that's how polarization works. That's why you can see through the glare. It doesn't affect your eyes. It doesn't hurt your eyes when you're skiing, as you said. And so that's what these instruments are doing. They're looking for polarization, not of optical light, but of microwave light from the Big Bang, the leftover heat from the Big Bang. So remember I said inflation. Inflation is this theory that there's this quantum field that fluctuated that produce everything that we know and love about the Big Bang. It would also produce what are called gravitational waves, waves in the fabric of space time itself. Those waves would perturb the electrons, the protons, early hydrogen atoms in the universe. When the CMB, or cosmic microwave background, was produced about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when light interacts with matter, as you see from the glare, it becomes polarized. That matter would be polarized. That matter, in its orientation would change depending on how much gravitational wave energy was present when the CMB was produced. So it's actually a gravitational wave detector. We're using the photons of the cosmic background as a type of film, if you will, and onto which these waves of gravity, if they exist, and only.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If they exist, they get.

[Brian Keating]

They get a polarization to them, a curling, twisting pattern of polarization that called. We call it B mode polarization. Wow. So it's a lot of logical stuff, but actually it's very well tested and very well theorized. It just hasn't been detected yet.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's quality physics going into that.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's super cool, man.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, literally. And we have to use. We can't use, you know, we can't use an iPhone. We gotta cool our detectors down. To my colleague Suzanne Staggs at Princeton, she's built detectors that operate at 0.1 degree above absolute zero, right. Using isotopes of helium. And she does incredible stuff. And they're superconducting detectors. They're basically little thermometers. So, you know, you go outside, and not in New York, but in San Diego, you go outside, you can see the sun with your hand. You can basically detect where the sun is using its infrared and that your skin can absorb infrared heat. Well, so too, we can have detectors that can see microwaves and infrared radiation, but they have to operate where it's really cold. Otherwise it's like building, you know, the biggest, you know, James Webb space telescope and putting it in Manhattan.

[Chuck Nice]

And so what's the fluctuation of temperature that you're looking for between what the universe has cooled to and what would have been present right at the big Bang?

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly what we're looking for. So there'll be deviations in about a part in a billion. So a nanokelvin. So in other words, if the universe on average is about 2.7 kelvin, okay. It would be 2 point plus a nanokelvin in that direction and 2.7 minus one nanokel. So you're looking at the ninth decimal place, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So a billionth decimal of a degree above.

[Brian Keating]

Absolutely. From.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Chuck Nice]

And somebody gave you money to do this, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow. So here's what.

[Chuck Nice]

That's insane.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So let me drive home why we need inflation. Okay, okay, because.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me tell you why. Okay, because we're going through a transition in this direction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's 2.7. What's the. Give me a few more decimal places.

[Brian Keating]

2.726.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's 2.726 degrees in that direction. In the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I look in the other direction, right? It's 2.76 degrees. Right. And how the hell do they know to be the same temperature as each other to a thousandth of a degree?

[Brian Keating]

It's 90 billion years light years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The temperature fluctuates by degrees.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly by whole degrees.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In this corner, that corner over there, near a lamp. The whole universe is at that.

[Chuck Nice]

Just one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so what Guth said was the way to get that to be the case. When the universe was small and all talking to itself in equilibrium temperature, equilibrium. Then it quickly expanded so fast it couldn't go out of equilibrium with itself. So it all has the. The markings of that same temperature from a bajillion years ago.

[Chuck Nice]

That's so cool. Hence the justification for inflation.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Yes. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Because all of that expansion all at once, rapidly, it gives you the uniformity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Across the entire expansion.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Brian Keating]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct. Okay, I'm done.

[Brian Keating]

We need you.

[Chuck Nice]

Aquarius on the stakeout. Oh my God.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That's insane.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It is insane.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean that is literally. Who thinks like this? Who thinks like this? My God. Wow. That's brilliant. I mean that's. That's it. That's really.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the inflation explains it, but then we needed a cause for the inflation and we had to pull that out of our ass. What was that?

[Brian Keating]

Basically, I mean, it results. It's related to what's called the multiverse.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

Basically without the multiverse, you don't get inflation in most models, according to muscle.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

And that's causes some people like.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's a phase transition, Right?

[Brian Keating]

It's a phase transition.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

And the actual dynamics of it can be explained using quantum field theory, which is a theory. Everywhere in space there's a quantum field.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, you guys, right now you sound like an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. They love phrase phase transitions.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let's get to the questions now, come on.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. All right. Oh man, I got so excited I put the guy. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Keating, 10 year old Reuben and 6 year old Eli here from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

If everything was compacted into one tiny dot, smaller than a speck of dust before the Big bang, what indeed formed the dust? What was around prior to the Big bang? Doesn't this mean that there was another universe that collapsed to. To form ours? So what's the deal?

[Brian Keating]

I wish that those young people would have said. I have a very simple question for you. You know.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

They're basically asking what caused the big. It caused the universe to start expanding in the first place. So the. The mark of a good scientist should be. We don't know. We don't know for sure.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

And there are alternatives.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what he says when he doesn't know something. It's the mark of a good scientist when he doesn't know.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. And my wife sends me to the. To the grocery store to get a.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Crappy scientist who should have known and doesn't.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, good.

[Brian Keating]

Well, that's why we call it research. My PhD advice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What you mean is it is not known in the field. Not that you don't know it exactly, but perhaps you should.

[Brian Keating]

We are trying to know the answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We is the full community.

[Brian Keating]

Yes, the community of scientists, but specifically on the Simons Observatory, their very question is the question the Simons Observatory is in part designed to answer. Was there. Was there any sense? Stephen Hawking used to say it's nonsensical to ask what happened before the Big Bang because time came into existence.

[Chuck Nice]

I was going to say, he said.

[Brian Keating]

It'S like asking what's north of the North Pole, which we all know. Santa Claus. Right. There's got to be Santa Claus up there. But in reality, we can answer that question in the affirmative. As you actually hinted at. There could have been a universe that existed beforehand that actually collapsed in what we used to call a big crunch. Now we call it a bounce. They're actually some of the most eminent theorists on Earth, including those that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I never like crunch because that implies it's brittle and it makes a crackling sound.

[Chuck Nice]

But it's cereal revenue and delicious. Anything with the word crunch in it. Cap'n would be good.

[Brian Keating]

Cap'n? How do they punctuate that? So the actual answer is we're trying to determine not what happened, because in science you can't prove something happened like you can prove one plus one equals two or one times one equals two. As you talk, spiritual friend Terrence. But in reality, we can't prove them a physical fact, but we can falsify alternative models. So if we see this twisting, roiling, twisting pattern of polarization called curl modes or B modes, that will falsify the other models that there was a big crunch, that there was a previous existing universe in a cyclical model. So we could can prove those wrong in getting more data about this, if we do see it, that would be the death knell for the alternative models, and that would be a huge triumph in the history of cosmology.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so you don't know the answer. Okay, next question.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, glad we cleared that up. All right, this is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, it's good to know that floating ideas do have ways of being tested. Exactly. And rejected.

[Brian Keating]

Because some things, you can just conjecture anything, literally, like thousands of theorists did, that are consistent and after the fact. But the key thing is to do.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It before you want a prediction, not a postdiction.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Retro.

[Brian Keating]

Retro.

[Chuck Nice]

Good day, gentlemen. This is Matt from Oklahoma. My burning question is about the origins of the universe. What exactly are we trying to gain by looking into the past? Will it help advance the population on Earth in a technological standpoint, or is it solely for the history books? I got a feeling that Matt D. Has a little problem with your work.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

As polite as that was. Yeah, he's really questioning your existence.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I have to justify it to myself and the taxpayers as well, and I don't mind that. And actually, I want to ask you guys that as they step in, because Matt's not here, what's the most. What's your favorite day on the calendar every year?

[Chuck Nice]

My favorite? My birthday.

[Brian Keating]

Your birthday. What about you, Neil?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I like the four cardinal points of the calendar. Yeah.

[Brian Keating]

Okay, so what are those?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The equinoxes and the solstices.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, okay.

[Brian Keating]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

You know what? When he was like, I like the four cardinal points, I was like, jesus, Neil. But then I was like, oh, my God, he actually does. Because as long as I've known him, he's the only person that points those days out to you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Like, if we're texting on that day, he will point out to you, like, all those days.

[Brian Keating]

I look forward to those days because that's when he's on Twitter. I know. That's the only time he's gonna get.

[Chuck Nice]

That's what I am. That's correct. So go ahead.

[Brian Keating]

So you mentioned it, and it's related to yours. So it's your birthday. What is a birthday? What is. Sometimes people say Christmas, their anniversary, the kid's birthday, whatever you want, but it's a beginning. And why do you like that? Because you have no idea from firsthand evidence what happened before you were born, do you, Chuck? You have to rely on other people's witness, eyewitness testimony.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, I had video.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Brian Keating]

I don't want to see that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, he. He was reincarnated, so he has knowledge.

[Brian Keating]

He had his own big crunch, too. So people want to know what happened before they came here. It's the ultimate in history, and that fulfills a need in us. Like, does knowing history create, you know, some excess GDP or something? No, but it's part of being a well rounded, educated, civilized society. And knowing the answers to the big questions is what makes us different from the animals. We're the only people. Homo sapien means one who is wise, not one who knows. It's one who is wise. So we have wisdom, that is to ask questions that perhaps have no answer. But that's what makes us unique and different from all other species.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, listen, I think it's my existence.

[Brian Keating]

Just.

[Chuck Nice]

I think you. And did you defended yourself well?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We'll give them that.

[Chuck Nice]

So there you go, Matt.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, give me some more.

[Chuck Nice]

Here we go. This is Alan Rayer, who says hello. Dr. Tyson, Dr. Keating. I always wondered how and when will CMB last in our frame of reference? When will radio waves kick in? Should I say crb?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, I like. Let me preamble that by saying radio waves at one point, not that distant, past included what would later be called microwaves.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And microwaves are simply small radio waves. Microwaves, and they're really like a few centimeters. And radio waves are even longer than that. So historically it's still radio waves, but since we have a word for it, we use it small radio waves, we call microwaves. Okay, pick it up from there.

[Brian Keating]

So the. If you go out into the universe and you make a little box and it's one cubic centimeter, okay. Inside of that box will be mostly nothing. There might be maybe. Maybe a proton or neutrino, but Mostly there'll be 419 photons from the Big Bang. And they all have an average wavelength of about 2 millimeters on average. There's a spread. It's a black body. So that 2 millimeter wavelength over time has stretched from much, much shorter wavelengths. From before that, it was infrared, then it was optical, then it was ultraviolet, and eventually it was gamma ray when the universe came into existence, highly energetic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, I don't think that was a photon that you can describe that way. Moving through the volume before recombination, right?

[Brian Keating]

Oh, yeah, I know it was. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You can think, can you? Yeah, I'm thinking of the free photon. Since then, that's a temperature from which it. But you're saying we're.

[Brian Keating]

Okay, we can extrapolate back to it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You can go before that. It's just not a free photon.

[Brian Keating]

It's not. It's not a free photon.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, fine.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's scattering. It's a scattered photon. Okay.

[Brian Keating]

Just as you did that video recently. That's beautiful. About how long it takes for a Photon to get out of the sun.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes. Okay.

[Brian Keating]

Tightly coupled matter and radiation. The universe been expanding and cooling. So eventually it will get into the radio waves. But you know, keep paying your taxes because that's going to take billions of years. Universe has to go expand by more than a factor of 10 from where it is now, which could take more than a factor of 10 times the age of the universe.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because the wavelength 10 times bigger is basically when we start calling it a radio wave. So the universe has to be 10 times bigger because it's stretching.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Brian Keating]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

That's so cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the answer is yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

You're just not. Don't see it, buddy.

[Brian Keating]

I don't know if you want to spend money on the, on the trademark of that pattern.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. But, but just to clarify, before it was the cosmic microwave background, it was the cosmic visible background.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. Infrared.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Infrared background. Then the cosmic visible. Cosmic optical. Well, visible. Yeah. And then ultraviolet on the other side. And with a cosmic X ray background.

[Brian Keating]

Yep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then gamma ray background.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I love it.

[Unknown]

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[Chuck Nice]

We all know about the science behind the golf swing, but now it's time to take it to the next level. PXG has developed the Black Ops driver so golfers don't have to sacrifice distance for forgiveness. And the science proves it. The PGX Black Ops driver is a game changing breakthrough in golf engineering. They're adjustable to deliver a combined MOI of 10,000 plus for unreal forgiveness. So you don't have to square the the ball perfectly for it to go straight and get distance. Add PXG's advanced material face technology and you get incredible ball speed that pushes distance to the absolute limits. More forgiveness, more distance. No sacrifices. PXG Black Ops driver. Hit your tee shot straighter and farther. The proof is in the science. And for a limited time you could save up to 20% on your entire order. Head over to pxg.comstartalk that's pxg.com star talk to save up to 20% on your entire Order. Pxg.com start talk restrictions apply. See site for details. This is Yogesh Jag who says Hello Lord. Nice. Dr. Keating and my personal astrophysicist. I love that Yogesh from Nagpur, India. My question is, is the CMB anisotropy really random? For those who may not know, what.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is anisotropy means not isotropic. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That makes sense. And why would we. And then not just. Why isn't it just a. A right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

Anyway, okay, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So tell me about isotropy.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So isotropy is the feature that you have complete uniformity and things look the same. Same. And they are the same homogeneity. It's similar in every direction. In every direction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No matter which way you point the tower, no matter what.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So if you're ever flying on an airplane and you're in the car, you.

[Chuck Nice]

Go through a cloud.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And go through a cloud.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. And that cloud to you, when you look out the window, it looks perfectly isotropic anywhere you look out the window. And if you're in the cottage, it's the same brightness. It's the same brightness. It kind of looks like you're inside of a ping pong ball. Everything is the same brightness and intensity. That's isotropic. That's perfect isotropy. The principle of looking the same everywhere. But anisotropy just means fluctuations from that, from that amount.

[Chuck Nice]

So it's not that. It's not that you look in one space, you'll see something different than you look in the other space.

[Brian Keating]

That's right. Now, if the universe were perfectly symmetric at earlier times, the amount of matter was the same everywhere. The amount of dark matter was the same everywhere. Any exotic particles, everything was exactly identical. The universe would have no way to know where it should form a cluster of galaxies, a single galaxy, a planet, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So if you had perfect isotropy and Isaac Newton really realize this 300 plus years ago, perfect isotropy is incompatible with our existence because we don't see perfection wherever we look, we aspire.

[Chuck Nice]

We also know that. And that there's clumps of dark matter.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Which we know that we know.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Brian Keating]

So it's kind of what's called we.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Are clumps of matter.

[Chuck Nice]

We are types of matter ourselves.

[Brian Keating]

So the questions that yoga is asking, why, what is that significant of? And it's basically related to the fact that we formed in a region where there was an excess of dark matter.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Brian Keating]

Where did that excess of dark matter know where to coagulate regulate though? That's where inflation comes in. Because all fields, all quantum fields have tiny fluctuations in them. They're not, they are not isotropic either.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Quantum physics enabled this universe.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Brian Keating]

We are quantum fluctuation. We are the product of quantum. If inflation's right, we shouldn't presuppose that it is. We're looking to see if there is. So, yeah, so that those pools of dark matter knew where to coagulate because of the fluctuations in the quantum.

[Chuck Nice]

So now these fluctuations are they disruptions in the field itself that creates something pops out of the field and that's the. So the universe itself, is it just one big field?

[Brian Keating]

According to some, according to some that they, that the universe is in a particular instantiation of these conditions of our quantum field in what's called the multiverse. When we were kids there was just a universe. Right now there's a multiverse, which some say should be more encompassing. Just as we know we're just one star, one planet, there's one many, many billions of galaxies. There could be trillions or an infinite number of universes. But where do they inhabit? They inhabit the multiverse. The multiverse is the collection of all points in four dimensional space time and maybe higher space time that could ever will exist. So yeah, so we are a fluctuation in that greater space. You're absolutely right. And then within those fluctuations, it's like waves in the ocean. There are waves upon waves upon waves. And we are the manifestation of this infinite series of wave trains that perhaps dates back to the Big Bang itself.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So Chuck, as insulting as it sounds to accuse someone of being a fluctuation is actually quite the compliment, cosmically speaking.

[Chuck Nice]

That. All right, good question there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just a couple more.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, this is Brandon Christian. Brandon Christian says hello. Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice. Dr. Keating, this is Brandon from New Jersey. My question today is do we have any idea what could possibly be on the other side of the cmb, would it be considered a part of our universe if we were to discover it? Or would it be something else altogether?

[Brian Keating]

Okay, so the CMB is the shell of photons. It's a fictitious shell of photons that are coming to us from a particular event.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What do you mean, fictitious? What's that word show up in your send?

[Brian Keating]

Well, because it's an artificial, there's no place you can go where the CMB is. Which is what the question is asking. Right. The CMB is a representative of an event that occurred. It's the event at which the very first electrons fused with the very first protons, making the very first atom hydrogen. When that happened, the universe became transparent to those waves of light that were existing, existing beforehand. Those waves of photon then can free stream and come towards our telescopes. They come in all directions. So it's a moment as you look back in space, you're looking back in time. So it's a moment in time, and it looks like a shell to us. We look out, we see a shell of photons a little bit hotter here, a little bit colder there, but on average, 2.726 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero. There are tiny fluctuations in that. So beyond that just means earlier in time. So, yes, there were things earlier in time time, but it was a pretty boring life. It was pretty boring before that. 200.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's nearly 400,000 years before that.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So for 400,000 years, there was nothingness except for there was protons and neutrons and plasma and so forth and. And electrons. But there was no cosmic event. There's no place. There's no there there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, the universe was just glowing at these different temperatures.

[Brian Keating]

It was a plasma. It was almost uniform plasma.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, okay.

[Brian Keating]

Expanding, cooling, and then shifting and wavelength. Right, Shifting and wavelength.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go. Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Super cool. This is 1701. Kara. Who says, Greetings from Tennessee, Dr. Tyson and comrade. Nice. Why you gotta make me Russian? I have a cosmic query regarding the Higgs field. Is the current model of the Higgs field evenly distributed, or could there be areas in space time where the field is more dense?

[Brian Keating]

This is a great question.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I like that.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a really.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Could that mean that is giving different masses to particles over here than over there?

[Chuck Nice]

Over there?

[Brian Keating]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Wouldn't that be wild?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That'd be a messed up universe, though. What mass are you today or yesterday? Right.

[Brian Keating]

So a good friend of mine, Matt Strassler, guys should have him on, he wrote a wonderful book about this called Waves in an Impossible sea. And it's all about the Higgs field.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm glad that you just like that impossible word.

[Brian Keating]

I know. I love it. You'd be surprised how many books have the word impossible. Possible. So the Higgs field is what? And that's why it's impressive. Most people talk about the Higgs boson. That's not what's so fundamental. The Higgs boson is just one instantiation, one creation moment of a particular fluctuation of this field, called the Higgs field. Yes. It could vary from time to time. And the most exciting thing is that it's what's called a scalar field. I don't want to get too technical, but that's the first and only scalar field that we know about. The other one that's postulated but not known yet to exist, we hope we can, you know, shed some light on it, no pun intended, is the. The inflaton field. Those are scalar fields. They don't have what are called vector properties. They don't have properties. They only have a value. Like the temperature in this room is a scalar. It's a point. Every point in space, There's a value. 30 degrees Celsius. It's kind of hot over here. I'm talking. It gets even hotter. But the point is, it's a number at every point. But the Higgs field is a special case like that. The other types of field, like fermions, quarks, and other types of fields in photon fields, they are not. They have a sort of direction at each point in space, spacetime.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the gravitational field has a value and a direction that it wants to pull you.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So. So this just has a value.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Brian Keating]

Yep. So why do we care about that? So if it did vary, it could be connected the two. The Higgs field and the inflaton. So that would be really exciting. It would say that the particle, the field that is responsible for giving inertia and mass to massive particles, was in existence and coupled somehow to the origin of the universe itself. So maybe there's some connection between the masses of all particles that were, are, or ever will be, and this initial phase of the universe called the inflation.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Phase, something we haven't figured out yet because all the masses look pretty random.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. We have no fundamental theory that predicts.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of the masses of particles in the universe.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly. That's a great question.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, Eric. Venus. And he says, yes, like the planet and the goddess. He says, I understand that as we look further into the universe, we're looking further back in time. What have we learned so far about the early universe that we can expect to impact life on Earth in the near future? So is there anything looking back that we can use looking forward?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I like that.

[Brian Keating]

Yeah. So there's a lot of mysteries that we still don't know about. We don't know how the very first galaxies formed out of nothingness that was left over from the cmb. We don't know exactly how they went through this transition. It's called the cosmic Dark ages. So just as we learn about history, we learn about the actual medieval Dark ages that impacts decisions that we can make as a society. So too I think learning about how the early universe evolved, the types of physics that were in play. And yes, if there is as some hinting, there are some hints that actually some of the bulk properties of the universe, most particularly dark energy, is evolving. We need to know that. We need to know, was it different in the past? Was dark energy different value than it has today? Was the Hubble constant?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you thought it was constant for the whole universe and you laid, and we now might be true, that it has changed in the past, it could change in the future.

[Brian Keating]

Exactly, yeah. And that could involve the properties of the space time itself, so called vacuum energy of the universe itself. And that could lead to again, a different scenario for the end of the universe. Everyone always talks about the beginning of the universe, the Big Rip, the Big Crunch. We don't know what would happen, but as I say, keep paying your taxes because it could be another trillion years before we find the answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I had another fast bit to that. It's not as dramatic as your answer, but I came of age when we had catalogs of peculiar galaxies and they were called peculiar. We didn't know what the hell they were. Only in the era of computing were we able to simulate what must have happened to ordinary galaxies to make them look like that. Because they're colliding with each other, train wrecks. And so once we learned that that had happened in the past to create this catalog of peculiar galaxies, we now say, hey, wait a minute, we're headed towards Andromeda. We're gonna be one of these simulations that somebody else says, hey, Dave, some.

[Brian Keating]

Future graduates in the future and say, hey, look at those two galaxies.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You over there, Is that beautiful?

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. Why look, they didn't always look like a sombrero.

[Brian Keating]

Why are there so many Kardashians in that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In milk drama, one more, last one.

[Chuck Nice]

Matt Newcomb says this. Hello, Dr. Tyson. Dr. Keating. Lord. Nice. My name is Matt Nukem, like Duke Nukem, and I'm from San Diego, California.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

San Diego, that's your hometown? I mean, your current hometown.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm curious about Simon's observatory ability to detect new particles. How do you know what to look for? And how, how does it collect that data?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tears.

[Chuck Nice]

From a fellow science educator.

[Brian Keating]

I'm on my lap.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Can you discover things you're not looking for? That's a side light to that question.

[Brian Keating]

Can you predict serendipity? So the CMB itself was discovered accidentally. They weren't looking for this glow of the Big bang, it's aftermath. So it's actually great. But there are. What I love about the Simons Observatory is that there are things we're swinging for the fences on. We don't know if inflation took place. If we see it, it could be the same hullabaloo as happened with bicycles.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just for our international. When you swing for the fences, it's a baseball reference and it means you're swinging for a very deep home run. And so you might strike out. Yeah, when you swing that way, you might strike out. But if you connect all the way.

[Brian Keating]

So yeah, for international listeners, think a cricket century. That's what.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's it. Oh, excuse me.

[Brian Keating]

That'll be even better. Look at that. So we're going for the cricket century, if you like. But there's things that are guaranteed to happen, they're guaranteed to know about. And that's the only particle of dark matter. Do you know that we detected dark matter? There's dark matter detection. It's called the neutrino. Neutrino has every property of dark matter. It just doesn't make up enough to so called, you know, make the universe flat and so forth. But we've detected dark matter, however, embarrassingly enough, shamefully enough, for physicists with their 17 elementary particles. We don't know the mass of three of those 17. We know the mass exquisitely accurately for the other 14, the Higgs boson, the electron, etc.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What don't we know?

[Brian Keating]

We don't know the mass of the three types of neutrinos, the three neutrino flavors. We have a lower bound and we have an upper bound, but we don't have a measure, measurement. It's like someone looking at Chuck and saying, oh, you're somewhere between, you know, one inch tall and a thousand feet tall. Like, it's interesting but not useful. Yeah, it's not exactly true, but not useful. That's a beautiful way to Phrase it. So what we're going to go after is the. Because we can take these early images of dark matter and the composition of the universe that is affected by them, we can effectively weigh the neutrino by getting enough of them together. They're very light, they're a million times less massive than the electron. At least they could be even. We can for sure constrain their properties. Weigh them if you will, but only by collecting them on the universe's most grand scales. Literally, to weigh enough of them, you need to measure a huge fraction of the universe's volume. And that's what we're going to do. So we're guaranteed to make an imprint on that and detect. Not new particles perhaps, but we could possibly detect new particles. We just don't know if they're out there. And that's why serendipity is so hard to predict.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow, that sounded like one of Yogi Berra's predictions. Predictions. It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future.

[Brian Keating]

When you come to a fork in.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The road, take it. Yes, there you go. This conversation about the beginnings of things reminds me just of how interesting that question is. We can spend all our lives studying what is what already exists, what will become of what already exists. What makes that scientifically accessible is that you can find some other object that's like it and do a different experiment on that to check for what properties it has, check for how it will respond to whatever you do to it, to see what it becomes in the future. We can do all of this. That's what most of science is. But there's a subset of scientists that are not content with knowing what something is or what it will be. They want to know where it came from, what are its origins. Sure, we did it for the Earth. There was a day we didn't know where the Earth came from or the Sun. We found other planets, we found other stars. We see them being born, and our star looks like that. We say, that's probably how our star was born. Okay, how about the galaxy? Well, we've got JWST helping us there. How did galaxies form? There's a point in the early universe where all that would have happened. We, we got top people working on that. But you keep doing this and you reach a point where, well, how did the universe begin? Is there another. Another universe to compare it with? No. Is there some? Some. No. What do you. We say, well, maybe there's a multiverse that would account for a beginning of our universe. But then all that does is Push the origins question back one more notch in the past. Fine. You can tell me how this universe got here. Now tell me how the multiverse got here and whatever made that, tell me how that got here. That's what makes questions of origins so challenging and so fulfilling when you finally arrive at those answers. And that's a cosmic perspective. This has been a Cosmic Queries CMB edition.

[Chuck Nice]

That's what it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what it was. That's what it is. And that's what it will be. Brian, thanks for coming. Thank you for having us. All right. And we can find you online where.

[Brian Keating]

Briankain.Com startalk I've got some special giveaways for your listeners as well.

[Chuck Nice]

Whoa. What? Look at that.

[Brian Keating]

Bars meteorites, but other types of meteorites. What?

[Chuck Nice]

He's the only guest that comes here and leaves swag. That's amazing.

[Brian Keating]

I love what you guys do. Seriously, I love what you guys do. You do the most important thing, which is to teach the audience, teach the public how important science is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. And you also your. Your book that you.

[Brian Keating]

Losing the Nobel Prize.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Losing the Nobel Prize.

[Brian Keating]

Into the impossible. Think like a Nobel Prize winner. And then in the fall, coming out on my birthday, September 9th, is focus like a Nobel Prize Winner. It's a self help guide for STEM nerds like me and Neil and. And maybe like you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Sounds like the publisher's milking that subtitle there. Go through life like a Nobel Prize winner. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Drive like a Nobel Prize. Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Breakfast like a Nobel Prize.

[Chuck Nice]

For exercise Like a Nobel Prize.

[Brian Keating]

You guys are giving me ideas. I got a franchise. You guys can do the blurbs on the back.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, you need to come up with one that says lay on the couch and watch TV Like a Nobel Prize. That one will be a bestseller, I guarantee you. I guarantee you that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, Chuck, Brian, always good, always a pleasure. Until next time, this has been Star Talk Cosmic Queries edition. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.

[Brian Keating]

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