Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.

Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians.

Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.

Let's hear it for our super producer, mister Max Williams.

Rock.

We've got someone throwing up some hands there in celebration.

You were Noel Brown.

I am Ben Bullen, and we are please this punch over the Moon to have a very special episode today.

Noel, we are exploring some heady concepts that no offense to us.

We're not qualified to explore on.

Our own Well sure when I qualified to explore much on our own weekend by Yeah, today we're talking about one of our favorite topics, which is mind science of the mind or brain science or mind science of the brand.

I know there's a band called mind.

Science of the Mind, and I just always thought that was fun and a nice catch all for these types of explorations.

But it's true.

We're joined by our buddy or hey cham from Science Stuff of Science Stuff, Fame of Daniel and universe, and he's coming to us from the void, the emptiness that is the origin of all.

Things in the universe.

Yeah, we're gonna.

Talk about Hello, Hello, or hey, thank you for joining us.

How are we feeling today?

Oh, I'm feeling pretty good.

It looks like I'm in a black hole, but that's just mind recording booth.

With a soud proofing now, or hey, you are a polymath.

We were talking earlier, not too long ago, when we were asking you to hang out with us on air.

I just want to give your bona fides for the audience.

I'll keep it brief so it's not, you know, too embarrassing or anything.

But you have to be away for this, fellow ridiculous historians, our pale.

Jorge doctor cham is not only the creator of the fantastic web comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper short name PhD Comics, but is also a PhD grad from Stanford University has published multiple books.

You've worked with in PR You created the PBS Kids series Eleanor Wonders Why.

Most recently, you have masterminded the new podcast Science Stuff, which ask deep questions in a I think one of the things that amazes me the most personally about it is how you are able to take very complex concepts and break them down into an approachable, understandable way, which is really we always say it right in science.

That's the hallmark of that's the hallmark really knowing what you're talking about, being able to elegantly explain it.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, it's a super fun show.

Signce stuff.

We just try to make science fun and accessible.

You know.

We start with very interesting and fascinating questions that you know, we think everyone wants to know the answer.

Do you like is your dog lying to you?

Yes?

Really definitely?

Is?

That's right?

That's right?

It might be pet dependent or questions like do you really have to wait thirty minutes after eating to go swimming?

You know, I think we all need to know.

That yes, yeah, do you have pets?

Do I have pets?

Sort of?

I have kids?

Does that count?

Oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot.

I'm also true?

Also true.

Well, you know it's funny.

We we actually come from a similar background that we didn't go to Stanford uh and we are not PhDs, but we did come from the stuff world of Internet explaining edutainment as we like to call it, the house stuff works family of you know, articles and podcasts that are other podcast stuff that I want you to know is one of and ridiculous history really is spiritually is kind of like a continuation of that.

Whole sort of de mystification through exploration, you.

Know in podcast form, and you know, science stuff is absolutely a continuation of that de mystification exploration.

Yes, yes, on this podcast as well.

Now or hey, as we're as we're diving into some of these big questions history of brain science, the history of the the Big Bang theory not the TV show and other heady concepts, could you tell us a little bit about your your own origin story in your words, because I think it's something that would be quite amazing for our audience.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure, what's the ridiculous history of forehead champ?

Here we go.

So I was born and raised in Panama.

Actually my grandparents were from China, but they emigrated there.

My parents were born there.

They worked for the Panama Canal.

I worked there one summer.

Superb Yeah, okay, actually it was really bored.

I worked in like the AC, like the HVAC, you know, design department.

I feel like they probably do need a lot of air con.

They did, that's right, it is critical to keeping us cool.

But yeah, then I came to the US.

I went to actually Georgia, tig to study engineering which is near where you all are.

And then I went and then I decided I wanted to study robotics.

I was like, wait a minute, you can get a job making robots.

I was like, yeah, sign me up.

If I could just interject really quickly, I'd love to get your hot take on the state of robotics and specifically some pretty funny pr let's say kerfuffles involving Elon Musk's company, and like robots that are supposed to be sentient and self propelled but are actually being remote controlled by interns from other rooms.

Any thoughts on.

That, poor he Yeah, I think we're all doomed.

Friends, these are the ones pulling the strings.

Robots look pretty pretty amazing.

I have to say, I didn't think we get there so quickly.

You know, It's part of the reason I kind of changed fields.

But yeah, it's pretty amazing what they can do now and how they can basically move with humans around the world.

Well, I guess what I was getting at those is, you know, they are definitely mechanically amazing, but I don't know that they're fully there yet in terms of you know, the singularity and all of that, because you know, Elon's having them kind of serve drinks as bartenders with the impression that they're actually doing all of this on their own.

But then there are actually folks like remote controlling piloting them from other places.

And I just don't think that's it's a funny.

I think it might be a little over hype right now, but I think we're almost there, you know, Like just imagine taking all that AI that's happening online and then putting it on a robot, and you're gonna have robots drawing us as studio ghibli in.

Like a week probably, yes, And then they'll also be able to set up on you know, the boardwalk of your local tourist attraction New age.

Right now, what we're talking we're talking about how I'd love that you mentioned there, Orge, that these breakthroughs and innovations arrived much more quickly than previous scientific consensus had concluded.

When we tell the story of robots, Noelt's see if I can pull off this segue.

We're talking about a culmination of a vast, vast chasm of history, and it's fascinating to me, and I think to all of us that human beings are now creating technology that arguably human beings themselves don't fully understand.

And that question only becomes more interesting when we think about the origin story, not just of you, Orgey, not just of our silly little show, but the origin of what we call the universe.

And I must confess not being the brightest crayon in the box, I have often been amazed by how how much scientific rigor goes into understanding the history of the universe until you get to a certain point, and some of the smartest people in the world will say, yeah at one point, and then the universe, so what is.

The Big Bang?

Yeah?

The Big Bang is this theory that like everything that you see in the universe right now, like all the stars and planets and galaxies, everything out there, and all the stuff that you can't even see or field, all that, at some point about fourteen billion years ago, was crammed into a space smaller than a pinhead.

So imagine all those trillions of stars out there crammed the small space like that, and actually should be smaller, but a pinnate is usually the smallest thing people can imagine.

And then at fourteen billion years ago, it all just kind of suddenly expanded and exploded out into the universe we see today.

That's the basic gist of it.

Okay, now, cool, got it?

Sorry, I got some questions, just.

A couple of.

How they get everything so small, How they get everything so small and then then became regular sized or like way bigger than regular size.

I don't understand.

I'm sorry, my pen sized brain cannot.

This is a This is currently the most widely still accepted theory right now.

How did people begin sort of coalescing and agree on this?

Is there a pivotal moment where someone particular academic or something found irrefutable proof of the Big Bang?

Yeah?

Yeah, it's a super fascinating story.

It involves like Einstein being sketchy with this math.

It involves people discovering things through pigeonproof.

It's really kind of an interesting story.

We're in.

Pigeon poop.

Yeah, yeah, that usually gets people going there.

But you know, like if you think about like hundreds of years ago or even before, like the nineteenth century, when you look down into the night sky, you just see stars, right, You just pinpoint to stars, and you actually don't see that many, and they're all pretty static, right, Like they're not moving like the Earth moves, and so they move them the sky.

But you know, a year after year you look at these stars and they're basically the same, like the constellations are still the same.

So I think mostly for the throughout of human history, people thought, oh, the universe is just the way it is, and maybe it's always been like that, or maybe it got created in a snap by some deity, but it's not really changing, and it's kind of like that's all you can see a few stars, so maybe that's the whole universe, right, because like if the universe was had more stars, we would see them, right yeah.

And so that's what mostly people thought.

But then one interesting one, it was moment.

One interesting moment was in the nineteen ten when Einstein was like working out how gravity works, how physics works, and he sort of came out with this theory about the whole universe called general relativity, and the theory kind of told him something weird, which is that the universe should be either shrinking or expanding.

Those were kind of the two options.

And he's like, whoaha, whoa, that's that's crazy.

I mean, Einstein, but even for me, that's crazy.

Either or right, yeah, or kind yeah, basically that's what the math kind of told him.

And you know, he looked out at the sky and he thought, we're not shrinking, we're not expanding.

Something weater.

So there's something famous called the Einstein fudge factor.

So like he just like added a number at the end of the equation to make it seem like the universe was not changing at all.

Hey, God, isn't that kind of bad science?

Like isn't that sort of like an example of someone having a pre conceived idea about something and just sort of being like, nah.

No, let's just fix it so that this is the result that we get.

Yeah, yeah, it's not great.

It doesn't look good on Einstein, And later on in his life he basically called it like the biggest blunder of his life, of his career.

So he added this fudge factor.

And then in nineteen twenty four, people kind of figured out that the universe was bigger than it seemed.

So like when you look at into the nice Guy, you see stars, but you also see these kind of like fuzzy things.

They look like little cotton balls, and people that just thought like, oh, those are like gas clouds, right, Like there's just like little fuzzy things in the universe.

But then someone called Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, basically figured out that these things are not fuzzy clouds of gas.

There are actually galaxies, and so there's this guy is just full of these galaxies.

So basically our universe went from like we're like about the size of the Milky Way to like, we're trillions of times bigger than that.

And think if it is like being able to oom in and oom in and oom in, and every time you oom there's another layer with more stuff and more stuff.

Right, Yeah, Yeah, it kind of blew people's mind.

And that's that's.

The observable universe, right, which we'll come to find.

Yeah, could you tell us a little bit about because I think it's a phrase that can be misleading to a lot of lay folk.

You hear the phrase observable universe and you automatically think, yeah, man, I got up earlier today.

I observed all kinds of stuff there.

So what is the observable universe?

Why is that an important concept?

Yeah?

Yeah, Basically it turns out that the universe is so big we can't see all of it yet, like there are parts of the universe that are so far away that we haven't been able to see them.

A because the light light has a speed it and b because the universe is not infinitely old.

We figured out that the universe is fourteen billion years old, so basically we can only see things that have been able to get to us in those fourteen billion years.

Because if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at a cool little pictogramograph of the Big Bang expansion, and it's sort of a timeline as well, because it's sort of this cone shaped whether they'm on one end, they sort of tapers into like this flat circle.

And the first stars are calculated to have formed four hundred million years ago, and those are the ones that were like, those are the ones that we are like seeing or those are the ones that we have not seen yet.

I'm just like, because it is a time travel equation as well, right, because of the way light works.

So I'm just trying to wrap my head around there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So stars are being made all the time in the universe, and then they have been been made all throughout the history of the universe, and stars also die have been dying throughout the universe of stars explode, some of them just kind of taper on and simmer for a long time.

So the stars you're seeing, they could have been born, Like, if they're close to us, they were probably born recently.

If they were really far away, they were probably born a long time ago.

That's kind of cool.

It's it's one of my favorite things to think about whenever I can get away from the light pollution so abiquitous in in you know, various human cities.

Uh, I don't know the answers that I think you have explained it in the best way.

I have heard.

Sorry, Carl communications on this one.

Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about how the concept of dark energy plays into this.

I've always been fascinated with dark matter and dark energy.

But isn't that that's a force that aids or in some way has contributed to this whole expansion.

Yeah proposition, Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, Well, probably the best thing we know about dark energy is that it has a cool name, and then and that's about it.

It's actually related to the Big Bang as well.

So kind of picking up the story in the nineteenineteen twenty nine, Hubble not only discovered that those fuzzy things were galaxies.

He also discovered that they were moving away from us.

So, you know, like if you've heard of the Doppler shift, the fact like kind of what cops used to measure your velocity when you're speeding down the highway.

Obviously always within the speed limit, but that's how measure your.

So you can also hear it in an audio form as sound source moves away from you, it is interpreted as almost like a pitched kind of envelope, like it sort of changes in pitch as it moves away, which I believe is an oral representation of the Doppler.

Yeah, that is exactly.

Is this related to what's called wretch?

Exactly, That's what it is.

Yeah.

So like you know, like when an ambulance is driving towards you, it kind of sounds like higher pitch, but it's a move that's a mooves passed you away from you.

It sounds a little bit lower woo woo woo.

The same thing is happening with light because light kind of behaves like a wave, and so you can tell from the redshift of the light of galaxies that they're moving away from us.

That is both fascinating and frightening for some reason I cannot I cannot yet articulate.

In this language.

So the universe is running away from us.

Anybody with abandonment issues just think about that.

True?

Yeah, well, and how does this affect us in a functional way?

Like it's super interesting and knowing about all this history, but is this something that that is there is sort of an actionable you know, effects in our in our daily lives kinda.

Yeah, So, so how they measure the galaxies are all moving away from everything's moving away from each other, but from our perspective, it looks like it's moving away from us.

And so that's how they extrapolated the Big Bang.

Basically, like if everything's moving apart, if you just run the clock back, that means everything at some point was really scrunched together.

And that's kind of the Big Bang.

And that's kind of what dark energy is, which is that A little bit later, or actually kind of recently, they found that the galaxies they are not just moving away from us, They're getting faster and faster.

It's like they're not just moving away from us.

It's like they're hitting the pedal to the medal, trying to get away from us.

As fast as possible.

Wow, well we've all seen Earth.

We can't play, you know, we will see what's going on.

I'd have to imagine that has to do with some sort of like exponential curve perhaps, or just some the way things sort of like over time, you know, kind of the curve sort of becomes steeper.

And I don't know me trying to put it in.

I'm a sound guy, so maybe I'm thinking of it in those terms.

But can you explain a little bit about why non occurs?

The soul's speeding up?

Yeah, so the universe is expanding faster and faster and nobody knows why.

And that big question mark about why.

That's what scientists call dark energy, because you're like, you need something to be pressing the pedal on these galaxies, something's like, you know, pushing them away and the and so you need some kind of force, some kind of energy, and so they don't know what it is, so they just call it dark energy.

So if the if the world's brightest minds, the eggheads and the boffins, if they're like police investigators on the case of universe expansion, they've got this big board right with their suspects.

You know, there's there's a little thumbnail picture of gravity there pictures a strong weak nuclear force.

They've got this one picture that's just a question mark and they wrote dark energy.

Yeah.

Basically, well they call it dark because you can't see it, and it's an energy because it's like causing acceleration, it's causing things to move.

Uh, And it's kind of really relevant to us because we since we don't know what it is, we don't know what it's going to do in the future.

So like in the future, dark energy might be like, oh, you know what I'm done, I'm gonna stop accelerating the universe, in which case then gravity might take over the whole universe and then scrunches down back into a little tiny spot fun like at the Big Bang.

Yeah, oh no, reverse Big Bang.

Yeah.

They called it the Big Crunch, very imagination, a big crunch.

Not to be confused with the serial brand.

That's that must be the h that must be what gave me that terrifying, inexplicable sense of unease.

So you don't know what it's going to do, yeah, nor when right or when.

Yeah, it might be tomorrow, it might be in the trillion years, and nobody knows.

Oh my gosh, everybody be nice to your friends.

Just in case.

Can you tell us a little bit about this guy, George I believe.

I'm sorry, I'm maybe over on saying his name, but it's my understanding that his paper is what kind of solidified some of the first discussions of the Big Bang theory that were then kind of accepted.

Yeah, yeah, sort of.

So like if we go back to the point where we didn't know what those fuzzy things in this guy were, So we could see these fuzzy things in the sky, and we could tell that they were red shifted.

So like they because they were moving away from us.

The light kind of gets slower and so it turns red.

When light gets slower, it turns red, and so they, like we could tell these things were red shifted and so moving away from us.

And so he was a guy who kind of floated the idea that maybe means things are moving away from us and maybe means things are expanding.

And to date, when we're talking about concepts like this, right, we are able to gather a lot of data.

We are able.

To draw or construct our most reasonable national theories about it.

But as anybody reading pop science in the news today or throughout history knows there for one person that makes an agreed upon, you know, going theory, there are easily a rogues gallery of dozens of other people who come up and say, yeah, but what if I had another idea?

So I would love to hear just from your expertise, would love to hear some of your favorite alternative explanations for the universe, because I know, you know, science stuff has been talking about black holes quite recently.

One of one theory that I think came back into resurgence quite recently was a group of scientists Now I'll have to find their names who proposed that proposed an old theory that the universe was not created by a big bang, but instead dwells within somehow within a super massive black hole.

What are you?

What are your Some of your favorite alternative theories bonus points were crazy?

Yeah, well, I think that ranks up pretty high.

So we recently did an episode on scigence stuff about what could be inside of a black hole and we had we had five theories and this was number five, like like the most craziest one, and the is that you know, if you take a black hole and you throw two rocks into it, Like you throw a rock in one direction and a rock in the other direction.

They're both going to fall down to the center, but near the center of the black hole, those rocks are going to be moving so much that one of them is actually going to kind of curve around the center of the black hole inside of what's called the singularity and actually hit the other rock that you threw in that was going the other way.

Because everything gets warped inside of a black hole down to a point.

So those two rocks are going to hit each other, and they're going to hit each other with so much energy that it's going to have the same or more energy than what was at the Big Bang.

And so scientists think like, oh, whoa, So these are just two rocks hitting each other inside of a black hole, and it's probably happening all the time in every black hole that we know out there, and it's energy as big as a Big Bang.

Maybe that's how our universe started, Like our universe could just be two rocks hitting each other inside of a black hole, and that's where that's that's where we are right now, and inside of our universe you can have more black holes with more universes and instead of those universes, you can have more black holes with more universes inside of them.

Not to get too like sci fi about it, I guess, but given that potential for all of these infinite you know, other universes, doesn't it seem a little bit kind of I don't know, self centered to think that this is the only universe that supports life and that this is the only universe that has like, you know, stuff going for it.

Always kind of had a hard time accepting that.

Like, I don't know if I believe in extraterrestrials and not much more of an atheist and agnostic than any kind of religious person, but I have a hard time believing that this is all there is, given these infinite possibilities.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's not even getting into like the multiverse, which is like this, yeah, his ex version of multiple universe.

This is like the actual just in our universe, there could be other universes and other people in those as well, a world.

In a grain of sands, right, as they used to say, this is okay, this is fascinating.

First off, again, not being an expert, I love the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide vibe of explaining the universe as two rocks bumped together and then everything happens.

This, also, I think, leads us to a fantastic and natural segue on something that has been an area of fascination for ourselves and a lot of our audience members for a long time, quantum physics.

We've been circulating this clip from a fantastic professor named Rama Murty Shenkar, and he had this line where he's speaking with his students and it's the day they start studying quantum physics, and he says, here's my goal.

Right now, I'm the only one who doesn't understand quantum mechanics.

In about seven days, all of you will also be unable to understand quantum mechanics.

The famous physicist Richard Feinman is famously quoted as saying, like, if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics basically, like, not even the smartest people in the world really understand it.

Yeah, And I guess that's what I was getting at in terms of, you know, there comes this crossover point where you have to accept the things that you don't know and Ben and I have often talked about, is that the point where things become in the realm of spirituality or in the realm of magic or all of that.

You know, it just seems like.

There has to be room for the things we don't know, and what is the scientific communities perspective on that.

The guy that I mentioned earlier, this dude La maitre Belgian astronomer or cosmologist.

Rather, he was also deeply religious person and you know, had a lot to do with talking about this Big Bang theory stuff, but also kind of looked at it in a way that reconciled it with the creation of the universe, like in a religious sense.

I just wonder what your thoughts are around around that and where those worlds meet and if there's room for these worlds to coexist.

Yeah, yeah, well well I should I say, well, I should sort of clarify so people don't understand quantum mechanics because it's like it's based on math that's very unintuitive to us, Like we're not trained, like our brains get involved to really kind of have an intuitive feel for like things that are random and things that are in two places at the same time, or they have probability of being at the same place at the same time in this universe.

And so most of what people know about quantum physics comes from experiments.

So like, if you run experiments, this is what the universe tells you.

That's how things are.

And so when people say they don't understand it, it's like people are saying, like, well, it's crazy that it is that way, but that's you know, if you poke at the universe, that's what it shows you how it is.

And so it's experimentally based.

This is what I wanted to just clarify.

But yeah, I think science is very clear, and scientists are very good at saying only things or believing in things, only in things that they know they can prove with experiment.

Yeah.

Yeah, we've often I try to condense that thought down, often by explain it this way.

Science attempts to answer how thing occurs, right, and spirituality metaphysics, who could call it, attempts to address why that occurs.

So the how and the why can sometimes seem quite separated.

And then when you get to the bleeding edges of physics and our understanding, the two things get weirdly combined, you know.

And I've do it since we'd audio podcast, I'm doing little hand gestures.

Yeah, and I think that just the last thing on this la maitre dudes and just fascinating to me.

I want to dig more into him.

He had this to say about exactly what you're talking about.

As far as I can see, such a theory, talking about Big Bang remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question.

It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental being.

For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God.

It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in.

The beginning of the universe.

I just think that's a badass quote.

Yeah, yeah, I mean there are definitely things that are beyond what scientists can say or even understand, and and there are things that may possibly never be able to be understood by scientists.

But until then, you know, we just gotta use our best approach to understanding the world, which is science.

It's better than making things, so it.

Is, no doubt it is.

It's it's that even if you add a little bit of fudge.

To your equation, Yeah, yeah, it happens, you know.

It happens.

We're just humans.

I love these It happens while.

We're on much happens.

Or a could you tell us about the history of quantum physics.

We know that there's something afoot right with the double slit experiment.

The other the other concept and popular culture would be like Schrodinger's cat.

For instance, when did people really start clocking onto this idea of quantum physics and later quantum mechanics, Like was there was there a light bulb moment?

Was there like one guy or one person who stood up and said, eureka, I'm in two places at once.

Yeah, what's rarely like one guy or girl?

You know, it's usually a group of people.

But what's fascinating about quantum physics is it all?

It also happened within the same like ten years, ten, fifteen, twenty years at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

So the way I think of physics is like think of coke, Coca Cola coke.

Right, there's classic coke and then there's New Coke.

I guess if you're old enough to remember new Cooke of Coke zero didn't.

New coke didn't do super super well.

People love Coke ero.

I think that's better.

Okay, there's classic coke, there's a coke ero, and so classic coke is what people call classical physics, like think of Newton and f eicals Ma, And the best analogy is to think of like a old table, like how the billiard balls knock on each other, how they bounce each is how you can like aim one and hit one at an angle and know that which angle they're both gonna come off from.

That's like classical physics, and that's kind of how the whole world around this to our eyes and ears works, Like if I throw a ball at you, you're gonna basically know where it's gonna go and you're gonna be able to catch it right.

And so that's classical physics, very pretty simple stuff.

But around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the physicists started kind of looking closer at things and noticing weird things, like they notice that the energy, like the light that comes from something that's hot, it's kind of weird, like there's some weird things about it.

They notice that like if you shine a light on some metals, electrons will kind of pop off, but only like it's certain frequencies of light or certain settings of light, or it's not proportional to how much light you shine on it, and so there are all these like weird things at the microscopic level.

So the thing about quantum physics is that it really only sort of applies to things at the quant the really really tiny like atomic or close to atomic sizes.

That's when you really see the weird quantum stuff.

Like in our everyday lies, we're not gonna like your cat is not gonna be in two places at the same time, if it's a live or it's dead.

It's one of those two things.

But if you get down to like atoms and you like you ask, like, is where is this atom?

You're gonna get some weird answers like sometimes the atom is here, but then you measure it a little bit later on it's over there.

And sometimes you measured a little bit before where you thought it would be, but no, it's over here.

And that's when you get these weird quantum effects.

Reality seems negotiable.

That's spooky, uh, because that's what we call it, right, spooky Actually.

Is this is this where quantum entanglement comes in.

Forgive me if I'm jumping the shark here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So when people talk about like quantum physics, they usually mean like a couple of like two or three weird things of how things behave.

One of them is this idea that like things can be in two places at the same time, or they can be up and down at the same time.

A quantum entangum quantum entanglement is another one where like if you have two fuzzy things, they can sort of and make them interact.

Now they're sort of coupled in this weird thing where like if you take one cat that's maybe a labor dead and another cat's maybe a labor dead, and you have him interact, now you have like four possibilities, like both cats could be delave, if both cats could be dead, and so things just get kind of like complicated, and all those possibilities are now happening at the same time.

So this is.

This is something that for a lot of people might be dismissed as an academic truth.

There's a series of observations.

You might read this in the paper or I guess see it online or on your phone now, and then you say, Okay, that's cool, but how does that apply to me?

And it feels like, the most immediate answer to that now would be the ongoing breakthroughs in what we call quantum computers.

Could you tell us a little bit about what a quantum computer is, or what quantum computing is, how it differs from you know, the machines we're using to record this episode.

Today, right right, Well, bet let me tell you something amazing, which is that every computer is quantum.

Oh man, what this has to do with the processing power?

Right?

Yeah.

Basically, so the way microchips were sort of invented, you know, we're talking about transistors in like silicone chips and all that, that was all due to quantum physics.

So some dudes in Bill Labs back in the fifties sixty seventies they're like, oh, there's this thing called quantum physics.

I wonder what we can do with that.

And then they thought, well, maybe we can make tiny little transistors the size of several atoms.

And that is the only reason that we have iPhones and Internet and that we're talking and people are listening to us right now.

Oh my gosh, guys, we're quantum.

We just went quantum of this episode.

We have quantum left.

It's true.

We quantum left the shark.

But when people talk about quantum computing, isn't that sort of a stand in that maybe is a little bit of a misnomer, but about just more and more exponentially powerful processors.

Yeah, yeah, so I said, every computer is quantum, but quantum computers are a different kind of computers that are also quantum.

But so it's a computer in which the circuits are so so small that they're actually down like at the single atom, single electron, or single sort of quantum particle level.

And so it turns out that when you make a circuit with quantum particles, then you can do quantum maths like you can do the math that happens in the quantum universe, the quantum world, and that math is really good at solving certain things.

So it's not probably not good for like video calling or listening to podcasts, but it's like super incredibly good at, for example, like breaking passwords cryptograph.

Because it can do it can just run so many patterns like to the point where it'll it'll it'll more or less process of elimination down to the correct solution because of how quickly it can run all of these you know scenarios.

Right, exactly right.

Like, if I wanted to guess your password right now using like an iMac or a computer, I would probably have to program the computer to like guess every number from here to ten trillion, and that would just take a really really long time.

But like a quantum computer, because it can do quantum math, it can, like you said, kind of feel things out all in parallel, and once you do the math and the quantum kind of notation, then like the answer kind of like bubbles up to the surface and then you sort of get your your password almost right away.

That's wild.

Yeah, I know.

Cryptography is one of the one of the big applications that a lot of people talk about, right, breaking codes, encryption, decryption.

What are some other potential uses of this this kind of new gen of computing.

Yeah, now that's about it.

That's what that we know of that we know of so so like we just happened to randomly in the nineties, some computer scientists was like, you know what, this breaking of password is really hard, but maybe we can use quantum computer.

Then you figured out that you can use quantum mass to break that problem.

Now scientists think that there may be other problems like that, like who knows, like you know, you know, finding the nearest habitable planet maybe could be solved by a quantum computer faster or something like that.

You know, I'm totally making that up.

But the idea is that there might be like big, big problems out there that we don't know about yet that quantum computers are really good at solving.

And the other thing that people say quantum computers are good for is just simulating physical nature, you know, because the world is quantum once you get down to Adams, and so you kind of need a quantum computer to be able to simulate that better.

That's fascinating because then that implies that humanity has created or discovered a thing that can potentially solve problems.

Humanity has not yet figured out how to ask.

Yeah, exactly right, Okay, that's that's why that that leads us to another thing where we're gonna have to I think, no, we're gonna have to hang out with Jorge more often on the show if you'll have us Whorge.

Yeah for sure.

And also I was gonna just really quickly last thing about the quantum computing stuff as pertains to another show that Ben and I do together that I think you'd also be a great guest on for this topic.

Specifically, stuff they don't want you to know is is that there seems to be a sense that the escalation of quantum computers and their ability to do these things could potentially lead to a future where you can't have a secret password anymore.

It's just like that is passe at this point because there is no security because of how powerful these machines are.

And just by the fact that they exist.

Right, Like think of your bank accounts that that's anyone can get it into that.

Even if you have like cryptocurrency like bitcoin or dougecoin, the fund of computers could break that up and basically that would all be meaningless.

So what's the solution.

There is this like nuclear power type stuff where you have to keep it under wraps, where you got to.

Decide who gets it.

Like it's just I don't know.

It's scary when you talk about I.

Think everyone has to walk around naked.

That's the only solution is no more secrets.

Okay, fair, no more secrets.

See Atlanta Police Department.

I'm not a criminal.

I'm ahead of the curve.

No fully on board.

I think there's a lot more to discuss here.

We had some other topics that we were considering, but I think there was just so much here in Big Bang and quantum physics and now into quantum computing that we may well just book a part two for this soon down the road and explore some of these other topics that we had, like the history of neuroscience.

For brain science.

We were talking about this, and this feels like a natural I mean, the scary way to get into it for us would be to immediately ask you or hey, will will human civilization arrive at a point where without using the word AI, which I find problematic, will human civilization arrive at a point where one could create something as complex and as recognizable in function as an organic human brain?

Is that?

Like, is that where we're headed?

That might be where we're at right now.

No.

So the crazy thing is that a lot of these AI models that people use every day, they're super creative about like how how big they are or how complex they are.

Like if you try to find out like how many notes, which is kind of like the basic unit in an AI neural network, Like how many notes is Chad GPT four have or five Chad Chad GIPT five or any like nobody will tell you because they're all you know, trade secrets, and so some estimates out there are that these might be getting close or at least kind of like in the same order of magnitude or getting there to like how many neurons you have in your brain or how many connections you have in your brain, and so, like, you know, we were not too frustry to do later.

You're both talking to an AI right now.

I am an AI.

I wouldn't be surprised.

It's getting creepily, I mean, speaking of exponential you know improvement.

Remember when AI slop was just so obvious and was like pixelated and weirdly stretched and just bizarro, and it just seemed like kind of like a novelty, right yeah, But now it's just it's too good and I don't particularly like it.

And also I was seeing that some of the most popular pieces of content now on the internet are AI generated are you know, machine learning generated.

That's problematic in and of itself, and it's like, you know, we struggle with this whole idea of like we don't want to be luddites and get left behind or be old man screaming at cloud.

But it does feel like there's a real inflection point where you can't turn the clock back anymore, and it's not a good thing.

I certainly think that there is excellent, positive, life, world changing uses for these kinds of things, but it seems like corporations just trot this stuff out without really thinking about the knock on effects.

They don't.

I don't think they do it all.

They're just rushing to be the first.

And I think we are definitely an inflection point, as you mentioned, like there's things are definitely different now.

But I kind of think that.

This was only a handful of years ago.

No, it was Will Smith eating a bowl of spaghetti, you know, and it looked like absolute pixelated garbage.

And now you can make stuff that looks like the news.

It's pristine.

Sorry interrupt It blows my mind.

It's totally mind blowing.

Yeah, But I think back to the time when photoshop became popular.

M remember that, like before you could trust a photograph with a photograph, but at some point it's like, no, you can't trust any photograph at all.

I think it's just going to be the same for like video now, and you can't really trust any video that you see out there.

Well, it could go wrong.

Well, and like with photoshop, you know you have experts.

As it got better and better, who can be like, okay, these are the red flags, these are the things to look for it.

So you know this photoshop and there certainly still are big signs of AI AI generated stuff, But as it gets better and better, those signs are going to be fewer and fewer and harder and harder to see.

And you really are going to require experts or we've even talked about on stuff that I want you to know how there would need to be some validation form like of of footage, some sort of watermark or something to show that this was captured in real life through a telephone photo device, through a photographic device.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's going to come down to trust, like who do you whose camera do you trust that was not tempered with AI?

You know, whose motivation you feel is good?

And that gets even trickier because then when we were forced to resort to trust, which can sometimes be a subjective exercise, or force this uh to to resort to trusts as a currency or authenticator, then we we re enter the world of absolute wing nuts.

It makes me remember when we were working previously on some of the most popular conspiracy theories in Western culture, one of which being landed on the moon.

Right, that old, that old workhorse gets trotted out all the time.

I was talking with people who were Noel and our pal Matt.

We're talking with people who would genuinely bring up trust, and they would say, well, have you met any astronauts?

And we have.

I was like, yeah, I met some astronauts there, yeah, yeah, and that they said, well do you trust what was your vibe check on those astronauts?

And I'm like, they're kind of busy.

And that's extra tough though, Ben, isn't it?

As trust has just eroded so far in terms of trust of the media, in terms of trust of literally what is before your very eyes.

So these two things do not, unfortunately align particularly well do that.

And we're still arguing if the Earth is round?

There are people guys who are convinced shut.

Out Bob right right, airplanes and the night sky.

Have you ever met an astronaut?

They're the only ones you could see it.

Did you trust them?

But this is this is where we get to, uh, maybe if we want to put a potter on it, we could say I love your point there, Orge, about how this feels like a new iteration of similar inflection points, And no, I think you've nailed the perfect phrase for that.

Here's hoping humanity can address these same breakthroughs, the way that civilization was able to soldier through and adapt to previous huge game changers.

It all goes down to brain science.

And we don't want to put you on the spot, Orge, but we'd love to have you back on a future episode where we can we can learn from you about the very strange historical saga of humans attempting to study themselves.

Two questions, First, are you okay with that?

Would you like to hang out with us?

Yeah?

Absolutely?

Does this super fun?

Awesome?

Yes?

Okay, great?

That would have been an awkward day, yeah, if you were if you were too busy.

Second, w I know?

Secondly, one of our ending questions here, just as a tease for the wild history ridiculous, dare I say at times a brain science?

What's what are your favorite brain science like anecdotes or maybe quack science in that pursuit.

Oh yeah, there's a lot.

I've read a book with a neuroscientist about just the whole brain, the history of the brain, what we know about the brain.

You know, one of the most fascinating stories we have on there is the story of someone called patient HM, Henry Moulayson.

And basically have you seen the movie Memento, which was Christopher Nolan's basically first breakout movie.

This guy who could only remember thirty seconds at a time, Like, that's real, Like that's something that happens out to some people out there in the world, And it's actually something that happened to someone named Henry Moullayson a while a little while ago, and he was basically test subject for the rest of his life.

And that's uh, and through him is how we know a lot about how our memory works.

Like before we didn't know think that there were things like you know, mortar memory, short term memory, long term memory, uh, different kinds of memories and where they were in the brain.

But thanks to like basically the momental guy, we kind of figure all all of that out.

And it's fascinating to see like what he could remember and what he couldn't remember.

Amazing lots of perfect ties.

For the next episode where we have you back, where we talk more about the history of brain science, and I do just want to point out really quickly, to circle back to something that was said quite a while ago.

Max pointed out in the chat here that we do on Ridiculous History have multiple episodes about bird poop, not just one.

We went didn't get to the bird poop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got Uh that's gonna sound weird out of context, but yeah, Noel, you're correct.

We went through a burth phace.

Oh my gosh.

So hey, where can folks find your work?

We know we have science stuff still, episodes of Daniel and Jorhicks for the Universe.

You're a published author on many fronts of polymaths, has been put it, but give us the scoop.

Where can ridiculous historians out there check out your work?

Yeah?

The best way to find me is just search for science stuff.

One word on your iHeartRadio app or wherever you're listening to this, and please describe.

We tackle super fun, super fascinating questions.

We talk to experts, and we keep in light and fun and easy to understand.

So that's my thing.

And then if you're interested in some of my science work, I do have several books published.

There's one about kind of what we don't know?

About the universe.

There's one about the brain and what we don't know about the Brain.

And I also have a series of kids books called Oliver's Great Big Universe.

But please check out Science Stuff That's wow a.

Question about it.

It is a classic how stuff works style science exploration and Jorge is a.

Ace science communicator.

So we can't thank you enough for hanging out with us today on Ridiculous System.

This is super fun.

It was ridiculously fun.

YEA glad to hear you know what that's that's our ultro do.

I think it must be what a ride?

Can't wait for Part two?

Big big thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams Alex Williams who composed this track.

Oh Yes, and.

Huge thanks to Jonathan strick Land aka the quist Or A J.

Bahamas Jacob's aka the Puzzler Big Oh.

I can't imagine you know how fun it would be to get Bahamas and Jorge.

In a room together.

Unbelievable.

I think a singularity would occur.

Time space as we know it would break down, but like in the most fun way.

Imaginable and big big thanks to the Rude Dudes a Ridiculous Crime.

Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Eves, Jeff Coat and Noel Big thanks to.

You, man on you as well.

Let's see you next time, folks.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.