YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Konstantin Batygin: Planet 9 and the Edge of Our Solar System | Lex Fridman Podcast #201

Konstantin Batygin: Planet 9 and the Edge of Our Solar System | Lex Fridman Podcast #201 — Transcript

by Lex Fridman · 25,208 words · 4,484 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00the following is a conversation with
0:01constantine bategan
0:03planetary astrophysicist at caltech
0:06interested in
0:07among other things the search for the
0:10distant the mysterious
0:11planet nine in the outer regions of our
0:14solar system quick mention of our
0:16sponsors
0:17squarespace literati on it and
0:20and i check them out in the description
0:22to support this podcast
0:24as a side note let me say that our
0:26little sun is orbited by
0:28not just a few planets in the planetary
0:30region but trillions of
0:32objects in the kuiper belt and the oort
0:35cloud that extends over three
0:37light years out this to me is amazing
0:40since proxima centauri
0:42the closest star to our sun is only 4.2
0:45light years away
0:46and all of it is mostly covered in
0:48darkness
0:50when i get a chance to go out swimming
0:51in the ocean far from the shore
0:53i'm sometimes overcome by the terrifying
0:56and the exciting feeling of not knowing
0:58what's there
0:59in the deep darkness that's how i feel
1:02about the edge of our solar system
1:04one day i hope humans will travel there
1:06or at the very least
1:08ai systems that carry the flame of human
1:10consciousness
1:12this is the lex friedman podcast and
1:14here's my conversation
1:15with constantine bategan
1:18what is planet nine planet nine
1:21is an object that we believe
1:25lives in the solar system beyond the
1:27orbit of neptune it orbits the sun
1:29with a period of about 10 000 years
1:33and uh is about five earth masses
1:36so that's a hypothesized object there's
1:38some evidence
1:40uh for this kind of object there's a
1:41bunch of different explanations
1:43can you give like an overview of the
1:46planets in our solar system how many are
1:49there
1:49what do we know and not know about them
1:52at a high level
1:53all right that sounds like a good plan
1:55so look the solar system
1:57basically is comprised of two parts the
2:00inner and the outer solar system
2:02the inner solar system has the planets
2:05mercury venus
2:06earth and mars now mercury is about
2:0940 percent of the orbital separation
2:13of where the earth is is closer to the
2:15sun venus
2:16about 70 percent uh then mars is about
2:21160 further away from the sun than is
2:25the earth
2:27these planets that we uh one of them
2:30we occupy right are pretty small okay
2:33they're
2:34too leading order sort of heavily
2:36overgrown asteroids
2:38if you will um and this is
2:41this becomes evident when you move out
2:44further
2:45in the solar system and encounter
2:46jupiter which is 316
2:48earth masses right 10 times the size
2:53you know and saturn is another huge one
2:5690 earth masses at about 10 times
2:59uh the separation from the sun this is
3:02the earth and then you have uranus and
3:03neptune
3:04at 20 and 30 respectively for a long
3:08time
3:09that is where the kind of massive
3:12part of the solar system ended
3:15but what we've learned in the last 30
3:17years
3:18is that beyond neptune there's this
3:21expansive field of icy debris a second
3:25icy asteroid belt in the solar system a
3:27lot of people have
3:28heard of the asteroid belt which lives
3:31be between
3:32mars and jupiter right like that's a
3:35pretty common thing that people like to
3:37imagine and draw on lunch boxes and
3:40stuff but beyond neptune
3:41there's a much more massive much more
3:44radially
3:45expansive field of debris pluto by the
3:49way
3:49it belongs to that second
3:52you know icy asteroid belt which we call
3:54the kuiper belt it's just a big
3:56object within that population of bodies
3:59oh pluto
4:00the planet pluto the the dwarf planet
4:03the former planet
4:04you know why is pluto not a planet
4:06anymore
4:07i mean it's tiny were you used to size
4:10matters when it comes to planets
4:11100 100 it's a actually a fascinating
4:15story
4:15when pluto was discovered in 1930
4:19the the reason it was discovered in the
4:21first place because astronomers at the
4:23time were looking for a seven earth mass
4:25planet
4:27somewhere beyond neptune it was
4:29hypothesized that such an object exists
4:31when they found something they
4:34interpreted that
4:35as a seven earth mass planet and
4:37immediately revised its mass downward
4:40because they couldn't resolve the object
4:42with the telescope so it looked like a
4:43just a point mass you know
4:45star rather than a physical disk they
4:48said well maybe it's not seven maybe
4:49it's one
4:50right and then so over the next um you
4:53know i guess 40 years
4:54pluto's mass kept getting revised down
4:57downwards downwards downwards until
5:00uh it was realized that's like 500 times
5:03less massive than the earth i mean like
5:06pluto's
5:07surface area is almost perfectly equal
5:11to the surface area of russia actually
5:14and you know russia is big but it's not
5:15a planet
5:17well i mean actually we can we can touch
5:19more on that that's that's another
5:21discussion
5:22uh so in some sense earlier in the
5:25century pluto represented
5:27kind of our ignorance about the edges of
5:29the solar system
5:31and perhaps planet nine is the thing
5:33that represents our ignorance
5:35about now the modern set of ignorances
5:39about the edges of our solar system
5:41that's a good way to put it by the way
5:42just
5:43imagining this belt of astero of debris
5:46at the edge of our solar system is
5:48incredible
5:50can you talk about it a little bit what
5:51is the kuiper belt and
5:53what it what is the oort cloud yeah
5:56okay so look the simple way to think
5:59about it is that if you imagine
6:01you know neptune's orbit like a circle
6:04right
6:05kind of uh maybe a factor of one and a
6:08half 1.3
6:10uh times bigger uh on a radius of
6:141.3 times bigger you've got a whole
6:16collection of icy objects most of these
6:19objects
6:20are sort of the size of austin you know
6:23maybe maybe a little bit smaller if you
6:26then
6:27zoom out right and
6:31explore the orbits of the most long
6:34period kuiper belt object these are the
6:36things that have the
6:37biggest orbits and take the longest time
6:40to go around the sun
6:43then what you find is that beyond a
6:45critical
6:47orbit size beyond a critical orbit
6:48period which is about 4 000 years
6:51you start to see weird structure like
6:54all the orbits
6:55sort of point into one direction and
6:59all the orbits are kind of tilted in the
7:01same
7:02way by about 20 degrees with respect to
7:05sun this is particularly pronounced
7:07in orbits that are not heavily affected
7:09by neptune
7:10so there you start to see this weird
7:12dichotomy where there are
7:14objects which are stable which are which
7:17neptune
7:18does not mess with gravitationally and
7:21unstable objects the unstable objects
7:23are basically all over the place
7:24because they're being you know kicked
7:26around by neptune the stable
7:29orbits show this remarkable pattern of
7:31clustering
7:33we back i guess five years ago
7:36interpreted this pattern of clustering
7:38as a gravitational one-way sign the
7:41existence of
7:42a planet in a distant planet right
7:45something that is shepherding and
7:46confining
7:48these orbits together of course
7:51right you have to have some skepticism
7:54when you're
7:54when you're talking about these things
7:56you have to ask the question of okay how
7:58statistically significant
8:00is this clustering and there are many
8:02authors that
8:03have indeed called that into question we
8:06have done
8:07our own analyses and basically just like
8:10with all statistics where
8:11you know there's kind of like you know
8:13multiple ways
8:15to uh do the exercise
8:18you can either ask the question if i
8:21have a telescope
8:22that has you know surveyed this part of
8:25the sky
8:26what are the chances that i would
8:27discover this clustering
8:30that basically tells you that you have
8:32zero confidence
8:34right like that's not that does not give
8:36you
8:37a confident answer one way or another
8:39another way to do the statistics which
8:41is what we
8:42prefer to do is to take to say we have a
8:45whole
8:46night sky of discoveries in the kuiper
8:49belt
8:50right and if we have some object over
8:53there
8:54which has right tension and declination
8:56which is a way to say it's
8:57there on the sky and it has some
9:00brightness
9:00that means somebody looked over there
9:02and discovered an object
9:04of was able to discover an object of
9:06that brightness or
9:08brighter through that analysis you can
9:10construct a whole map
9:12on the sky of kind of where all of the
9:14surveys that have ever been done
9:16have collectively looked so if you do
9:18the exercise this way
9:20the false alarm probability of
9:24the clustering on which the planet nine
9:26hypothesis is built is about 0.4
9:29wow okay so there's a million questions
9:31here one when you say bright objects
9:34why are they bright are we talking about
9:36actual objects within the kuiper belt or
9:37the stuff we see through the kupper belt
9:39this is the actual stuff we see in the
9:41kuiper belt the way
9:43you go about discovering kuiper belt
9:44objects pretty easy
9:46i mean it's easy in theory right hard in
9:49practice
9:50yeah all you do is you take snapshots of
9:53the sky
9:54right choose that direction say and take
9:56you know
9:57the high exposure snapshot then you wait
9:59a night
10:00and you do it again and then you wait
10:02another night and you do it again
10:04objects that are just random stars in
10:06the galaxy don't move
10:08on the sky whereas objects in the solar
10:10system will slowly move
10:11this is no different than if you're
10:14driving down the freeway
10:15it looks like you know trees are going
10:18by you faster than the clouds right this
10:19is parallax
10:21that's it it's just they're reflecting
10:23light off
10:24of the sun and it's going back and
10:26hitting this there's a little bit of a
10:28glimmer
10:28from the different objects that you can
10:30see based on the reflection from the sun
10:32so like
10:33there's actual light yeah it's not
10:35darkness that's right these are just
10:37big icicles basically that are just
10:39reflecting sunlight back at you
10:41it's then easy to understand why it's so
10:44hard to discover them because
10:46light has to travel to you know
10:48something like 40 times the distance
10:51um between the earth and the sun and
10:54then get reflected back was it like an
10:56hour
10:56travel or yeah that's right that's
10:58something like that because the
11:00the earth to the sun is eight minutes i
11:02believe um
11:03and so something you know yeah yeah in
11:06that
11:06in that order magnitude so that's
11:08interesting so you have to
11:10like account for all of that and then
11:12there's this huge amount of
11:14data pixels that are coming from the
11:16pictures
11:18and you have to uh integrate all that
11:20together
11:21to paint a sort of like a high estimate
11:24of the different objects
11:25can you track them can you be like
11:27that's bob like can you like
11:28yes exactly in fact uh one of them is
11:32is named joe biden i mean i'm not like
11:35this is not even a joke
11:36right is there a trump one or no no no
11:39no
11:39i don't know i haven't checked for for
11:41for that but
11:43uh like the way it works is if you
11:46discover one
11:47you right away get a license plate for
11:49it okay
11:50so like the first four numbers is the
11:53first
11:53year that this object has appeared on
11:56you know
11:57in the data set if you will and then um
12:01there's like this code that follows it
12:04which basically tells you where in the
12:06sky it is
12:07right so one of the really interesting
12:10kuiper belt objects which is very much
12:12part of the planet 9 story is called
12:15vp113
12:16because joe biden was vice president at
12:19the time
12:20you know got nicknamed biden
12:23vp113 said yeah you got nickname button
12:27beautiful
12:28what's the fingerprint for any
12:31particular
12:32object like how do you know it's the
12:33same one okay just kind of like
12:35yeah from night to night you take a
12:37picture how do you know it's the same
12:38object
12:39yeah so the way you know is it appears
12:41in almost exactly the same part of the
12:44sky except for the move but it moves but
12:46this is why actually you need at least
12:48three nights
12:49because oftentimes asteroids
12:53which are much closer to the earth like
12:55will um
12:57appear to move only
13:00slightly but then on the third night
13:02will move away so that third knight
13:04is really there to detect acceleration
13:07now
13:08the the thing that i didn't really
13:10realize until
13:12you know i started observing together
13:15with my partner in crime and all this
13:16mike brown
13:17is just the fact that for the first year
13:21when you make these detections
13:23the only thing you really know is
13:25confidence is where it is on the night
13:27sky
13:27and how far away it is okay that's it
13:30you don't know anything about the orbit
13:32because over three days the object just
13:36moves so little right the that whole
13:38motion on the sky is entirely coming
13:41from
13:41motion of the earth right so the earth
13:43is kind of the car
13:44the object is the tree and you see it
13:46moving so then
13:48to get some confident information about
13:51what its orbit looks like you have to
13:52come back
13:53a year later um and then measure it
13:56again
13:56interesting to do three nights then come
13:58back a year later and do another three
14:00nights
14:01so you get the velocity the acceleration
14:02from the three nights and then you have
14:04the
14:05maybe the additional the additional
14:07formation
14:08because an orbit is basically described
14:10by six parameters
14:11so you at least need six independent
14:13points but in reality you need
14:15many more observations to to really
14:18pin down the orbit well and from that
14:20you're able to construct for that one
14:22particular object in orbit and then
14:24there's
14:24of course like how many objects are
14:27there
14:27there's like four-ish thousand now
14:31but like the
14:34in the future that could be like
14:36millions
14:37oh sure oh sure so in fact these things
14:40are hard to predict but there's a
14:41new observatory called the vera rubin
14:44observatory which is coming online
14:47maybe next year i mean with covet these
14:49things are
14:50a little bit more uncertain but they've
14:52actually been making great progress
14:54uh with construction and so that
14:58uh telescope is gonna sort of scan the
15:01night sky
15:02uh every day automatically and it's just
15:05it's such an efficient survey that it
15:07might uh increase the census
15:10of the distant kuiper belt the things
15:12that i'm interested in
15:14by a factor of 100 i mean that would be
15:16that would be really cool
15:17and yeah that's a that's an incredible
15:20uh
15:21maybe i mean they might just find planet
15:25nine
15:26i mean that's like almost like literally
15:28pictures like visually
15:29i mean sure yeah like the first
15:31detection you make all you know is where
15:33it is in the sky and how far away it is
15:35if something is you know 500 times away
15:38from the sun
15:38as far away from the sun as is the earth
15:40you know that's planet nine that's when
15:42the story concludes
15:44and then you can study it right now you
15:46can study yeah by the way
15:47i'm going to use that as like i don't
15:49know a pickup line or a dating strategy
15:51like see the person for three days and
15:54then don't see them at all and then see
15:55them again in
15:56in a year to determine the orbit and
15:59over time
16:00you figure out if sort of uh
16:03from a cosmic perspective this this
16:05whole thing
16:07i have no dating advice to give i was
16:09good i was going to use this as a
16:11metaphor to uh to somehow
16:13uh map it on to the human condition okay
16:16you mentioned the kuiper belt what's the
16:17oor cloud
16:18if you look at the neptune orbit as uh
16:22one then the kuiper bell is like 1.3 out
16:25there
16:25and then we get farther and farther into
16:27the darkness what
16:28so okay you've got the kind of main
16:30kuiper belt was about
16:32say 1.3 1.5
16:35um then you have something called the
16:37scattered disc
16:39which is kind of an extension of the
16:40kuiper belt it's a bunch of these
16:42long very elliptical orbits that hug
16:47the orbit of neptune but come out very
16:49far so
16:50that the scattered disc
16:53with the current senses like the some of
16:56the
16:56longest orbits we know of
17:00um have a
17:03semi-major axis so half the orbit length
17:06roughly speaking of about a thousand
17:08thousand times the distance between the
17:10earth and the sun
17:11wow now if you keep moving out okay
17:15eventually once you're sort of you know
17:18ten thousand to a hundred thousand
17:21roughly that's where the oort cloud is
17:23now the oort cloud is a distinct
17:26population of
17:27icy bodies and it's distinct from the
17:29kuiper belt it's in fact it's so
17:31expansive
17:32that it ends roughly halfway between
17:36us and the next star um it's it's edge
17:39is just
17:40dictated by to what extent does the
17:43solar gravity reach
17:45solar gravity reaches that far yeah so
17:47it has to
17:49wow yeah so in fact
17:52imagining this is a little bit
17:53overwhelming so there's like a giant
17:57like vast
18:01icy rock thingy it's like a sphere
18:04it's like you know it's like it's an
18:05almost spherical structure
18:07that engulfs that encircles the sun
18:11and all the long period comets come
18:14from the oort cloud they come the way
18:17that they appear
18:18i mean for already i don't know hundreds
18:20of years
18:21we've been detecting occasionally like a
18:24comet will come in
18:26and it comes seemingly comes out of
18:28nowhere
18:29the reason these long period comets
18:31appear
18:32that very on very very long time scales
18:35right
18:36these oort cloud objects that are
18:37sitting you know 30
18:39000 times as far away from the sun as is
18:42the earth
18:43actually interact with the gravity of
18:44the galaxy the tide
18:46effectively the tide that the galaxy
18:49exerts upon them and their orbits slowly
18:51change and they elongate
18:53to the point where once they their
18:56closest approach to the sun starts to
18:59reach
19:00a critical distance where ice starts to
19:02sublimate
19:03then we discover them as comets because
19:06then the ice comes off of them
19:08they look beautiful on the night sky etc
19:10but they're all coming from
19:12you know really really far away so is
19:15there
19:15are any of them coming our way from
19:18collisions like how many collisions are
19:20there
19:20or is there a bunch of space for them to
19:22move around yeah there's zero it's
19:24completely collisionless
19:25out there the physical radii of objects
19:29are so small compared to the distance
19:31between them
19:32right it's just it is truly a
19:35collisionless
19:36uh environment i don't know there i
19:39think that probably in the age
19:42of the solar system there have literally
19:45been zero collisions in the word cloud
19:48wow when you like draw a picture of the
19:50solar
19:51system everything's really close
19:53together so that everything i guess here
19:55is
19:56spaced far apart do rogue planets
19:59like flying every once in a while and
20:00join not rogue planets but rogue objects
20:02from
20:03out there oh sure oh sure yeah join the
20:05party
20:06yeah absolutely uh we've seen a couple
20:08of them um
20:09in the last three or f or so years uh
20:12maybe four years now
20:13uh one the first one uh was
20:17the one called it's been
20:20all over the news the second one was
20:23comet borisov
20:25discovered by a guy named borisov
20:30yeah so the way you know they're coming
20:32from elsewhere is
20:33unlike solar system objects which travel
20:36on elliptical paths
20:37around the sun these guys travel on
20:40hyperbolic paths
20:41so they come in say hello and then
20:44they're gone
20:44and the fact that they exist
20:49is totally like not surprising
20:52right the neptune is con constantly
20:55ejecting
20:56kuiper belt objects into interstellar
20:59space our solar system itself
21:01is sort of leaking icy debris and
21:04injecting it so
21:06presumably every you know planetary
21:08systems around other stars do exactly
21:10the same thing
21:11let me ask you about the the millions of
21:14objects that are
21:15part of the kuiper belt and the part of
21:17the ore cloud do you think some of them
21:18have
21:19primitive life it kind of makes you sad
21:22if there's like primitive life there and
21:24they're just kind of like lonely out
21:25there in space
21:26like how many of them do you think have
21:28life like bacterial life probably a
21:30negligible amount
21:31zero you know like zero was like a plus
21:34on top
21:35uh right yeah
21:38um if so you know if you and i
21:42took a little trip to the interstellar
21:44medium i think we would develop cancer
21:47and die uh real fast right that's rough
21:50yeah it's a pretty hostile radiation
21:53environment
21:54you don't actually have to go to the
21:55interstellar medium you just have to
21:57leave the earth's magnetic field too
22:00and then you're not doing so well
22:02suddenly
22:03so you know this this idea of
22:07you know life kind of traveling between
22:10places it's not
22:12it's not entirely implausible but you
22:14you really have to
22:16twist i think a lot of parameters one of
22:18the problems we have is we don't
22:20actually know how life originates
22:22right so it's kind of a second order
22:25question of survival in the interstellar
22:28medium and how resilient it is because
22:31we we think you require
22:34water but and that's certainly the case
22:37for the earth but you know we uh
22:41we really don't know for sure that said
22:44i will argue that the question of like
22:46are there aliens out there
22:48is a very boring question because
22:51the answer is of course there are right
22:53i mean like
22:55we know that there are planets around
22:58almost every star um
23:02of course there of course there are
23:04other life forms life is not some
23:06specific thing that happened on the
23:09earth and that's it
23:10right just that's a statistical
23:12impossibility yeah um
23:14yeah but the the difficult question is
23:16before even
23:17the fact that we don't know how life
23:19originates i don't think we even know
23:21what life
23:22is like definitionally yeah like
23:24formalizing a kind of picture
23:26of in terms of the mechanism we would
23:29use
23:29to to search for life out there or even
23:32when we're on a planet
23:33to say is this life is this rock that
23:37just moved
23:38from where it was yesterday life or or
23:41maybe not even
23:41rock something else i got to tell you i
23:44want to know what life
23:45is okay and i want you to show me
23:50uh i think there's a song to basically
23:53accompany every single
23:55thing we talk about today and probably
23:57uh half of them are love songs
23:59um and somehow we'll integrate george
24:01michael into the whole thing okay
24:02so your intuition is there's life
24:04everywhere in our universe
24:07do you think there's intelligent life
24:09out there i think it's entirely
24:11plausible
24:11i mean i it's entirely plausible um
24:16i think i think there's intelligent life
24:18on earth
24:19um and so yeah taking that like say
24:23whatever this thing we got on earth
24:25whether it's dolphins or humans
24:27say that's intelligent definitely
24:29dolphins
24:30i mean have you seen the dolphins
24:34well they do some cruel stuff to each
24:36other so if cruelty
24:39is uh is the definition of intelligence
24:41that they're pretty good yeah and then
24:42humans are pretty good on that
24:44regard then there's like uh uh pigs
24:47are very intelligent i got actually a
24:49chance to hang out with pigs recently
24:51and they're um aside from the fact
24:54they're trying to
24:55eat me they're very uh
24:58they're very they love food they love
25:00food but there's an intelligence to
25:02their eyes that was kind of
25:03uh like haunts me because i also
25:06love to eat meat and then to to me the
25:09thing
25:10i later ate and i was very intelligent
25:14and uh almost charismatic with the way
25:16it was expressing its uh
25:17himself herself itself was uh was quite
25:20incredible
25:21so and all that to say is if we have
25:25intelligent life here on earth if we
25:26take dolphins pigs
25:28humans from the perspective of like
25:30planetary science
25:31how unique is earth okay so earth is not
25:35a com
25:35common outcome of the planet formation
25:38process
25:40um it's probably a
25:44something on the order of maybe a one
25:46percent effect
25:48and by earth i mean it's not just an
25:50earth mass planet
25:52okay i mean the architecture of the
25:55solar system
25:56that allows the earth to exist in in its
26:00kind of
26:00very temperate um
26:04way one thing to understand
26:07uh and this is this is pretty crucial uh
26:10right it's that the
26:11earth itself formed well after
26:14the gas disk that formed
26:18the giant planets
26:21had already dissipated you see stars
26:24start out
26:25with you know the star and then a disc
26:27of gas and dust that encircles it
26:29okay from this disk of gas and dust
26:33big planets can emerge and we have
26:37over the last uh you know two three
26:39decades discovered
26:41thousands of extra solar planets as an
26:43orbit of other studs
26:44what we see is that uh many of them
26:48are you know have these expansive
26:50hydrogen helium
26:51atmospheres the fact that the earth
26:55doesn't is deeply connected to the fact
26:58that
26:59earth took about 100 million years to
27:00form so we missed that
27:03you know train so to speak to get that
27:05hydrogen helium atmosphere
27:07that's why actually we can see the sky
27:10right that's why the
27:11sky is uh well at least in most places
27:14that's why the
27:15the atmosphere is not completely opaque
27:18um
27:20with that you know kind of thinking in
27:22mind i
27:24i would argue that we're getting the
27:26kind of emergent pictures that the earth
27:28is
27:28is not you know everywhere
27:32right we there's sort of the sci-fi view
27:34of things where we go to some other star
27:36and we just land on random planets and
27:38they're all earth-like that's totally
27:40not true
27:41but the even a low probability
27:45event even if you imagine that earth is
27:47a one in a million
27:49or one in a you know one in 10 million
27:52occurrence there are 10 to the 12 stars
27:56in the galaxy
27:58right so you just you always win by
28:01by large numbers that's right by supply
28:03they save you well
28:04you've hypothesized that our our solar
28:06system once possessed a
28:08population of short-period planets that
28:10were destroyed by the evil jupiter
28:13uh migrating through the the solar
28:17nebula can you explain
28:18if i was to say what was the kind of the
28:20key outcome of searches for extrasolar
28:22planets
28:24it is that most stars are encircled by
28:27short period planets
28:28that are you know a few earth masses
28:32right so a few times bigger than the
28:34earth um
28:35and have orbital periods that kind of
28:38range from days to
28:39to weeks now if you go in
28:43and ask the solar system what's in our
28:46region
28:47right in that region it's completely
28:49empty right
28:50it's just it's astonishingly hollow
28:53and thank you from
28:57the sun is not some you know special
28:58star that decided that it was going to
29:01form
29:02the the solar system so i think you know
29:04the natural thing to assume
29:06is is that the same processes of planet
29:09formation that occurred
29:10everywhere else also occurred in the
29:12solar system
29:14following this logic it's not
29:16implausible to imagine that the solar
29:18system once possessed
29:20a system of intra mercurian
29:24like you know compact system of
29:27of planets so then we asked ourselves
29:30would
29:30such a system survive to this day and
29:33the answer is no
29:34uh at least our calculations um suggest
29:37it's highly unlikely because of the
29:40formation of jupiter
29:41and jupiter's primordial kind of
29:43wandering through the solar system
29:44would have sent this collisional field
29:47of debris that would have pushed
29:49that system of planets onto the sun so
29:51was jupiter
29:52this primordial wandering what did what
29:55did jupiter look like
29:56like why was it wandering it didn't have
29:58the orbit it has today
30:00uh we're pretty certain that giant
30:02planets like jupiter when they form they
30:03migrate
30:04the reason they migrate is you know on a
30:08detailed level perhaps
30:09difficult to explain but you know if
30:12just in a qualitative sense
30:14they form in this fluid disk
30:18of gas and dust so it's kind of like if
30:21i
30:21plop down a raft somewhere in the ocean
30:24will it stay in where you plop it down
30:27or will it
30:28kind of get carried around it's not
30:30really a good analogy because it's not
30:32like jupiter is being
30:34affected by the currents of you know gas
30:36and dust but the way
30:38it migrates is it carves out a hole
30:41in the in the disk and then uh through
30:44by interacting with the disk
30:46gravitationally right it can change its
30:48orbit the fact that the solar system has
30:51both jupiter and saturn
30:53here complicates things a lot right
30:55because it's you have to
30:57solve the problem of the evolution of
31:00the gas disk the evolution of jupiter's
31:02orbit in the gas disk plus
31:04evolution of saturn's and their mutual
31:06interaction
31:08the common outcome of solving
31:12that problem though is pretty easy to
31:14explain
31:15jupiter forms its orbit shrinks and then
31:18once saturn forms
31:20its orbit catches up basically to the
31:22orbit of jupiter and then both come out
31:24so there's this inward outward pattern
31:26of jupiter's
31:28early motion that happens sort of within
31:29the firm within the last million years
31:32of the lifetime of the solar system's
31:35primordial disk
31:36so do while this is happening
31:40if our calculations are correct which i
31:42think they are
31:43you can destroy these in this inner
31:47system of
31:48you know few earth mass planets
31:51and then in the aftermath of all this
31:54violence
31:55you form the terrestrial planets where
31:58would they come from in that case so
32:00so jupiter clears out the space and then
32:03there's a a few terrestrial planets that
32:05come in and those coming from
32:07the from the disk somewhere like one of
32:10the larger
32:11yeah what actually happens in these
32:13calculations is you leave behind
32:15a rather mass depleted like
32:19remnant remnant disk only a couple earth
32:22masses
32:23so then from that
32:26remnant population annulus of material
32:30over 100 or about 100 million years by
32:32just collisions
32:34you grow the earth and the moon and
32:36everything else you said amulous
32:38annulus and yours annulus yeah that's a
32:40beautiful word what does that mean
32:42well it's like it's like a disc that's
32:43kind of thin it's like a
32:45yeah it's something that is you know a
32:48disc that's so thin it's almost
32:50flirting with being a ring like
32:54i was gonna say this reminds me lord of
32:55the rings so like this the word just
32:57feels like it belongs in a toll canal
32:59okay uh
33:00so that that's incredible and so that in
33:03your senses you said like one percent
33:05that's a rare
33:06the way jupiter and saturn danced and
33:10cleared out and you know cleared out the
33:13the the short period debris and then
33:17changed the gravitational landscape
33:18that's a pretty rare thing too
33:20it's rare and moreover like you don't
33:22have to go to our calculations you can
33:24just
33:25ask the night sky how many stars
33:28have jupiter and saturn analogs the
33:31answer is
33:32jupiter and saturn analogs are found
33:33around only 10
33:35of sun-mic stars so they are they
33:37themselves like you kind of have to
33:38score an a minus or better
33:40on the test to you know on the planet
33:42formation test to become
33:44a solar system analog even in that basic
33:47sense
33:48and moreover um you know low lower mass
33:51stars
33:52which are uh very numerous in the galaxy
33:56so-called m dwarfs think like zero
33:59percent
33:59of them well maybe like a negligible
34:02fraction of them have giant planets
34:04giant planets are a rare
34:08you know outcome of planet formation one
34:11of the
34:11really big problems that remain
34:13unanswered is why we don't actually
34:15understand
34:16why they're so rare how hard is it to
34:19simulate
34:20all of the things that we've been
34:21talking about each of the things we've
34:22been talking about
34:23and maybe one day all of the things
34:26we've been talking about and beyond
34:28meaning like from the initial
34:31primordial solar system you know a bunch
34:35of disks with
34:36i don't know billions trillions of
34:38objects in them
34:39like simulate that such that you
34:42eventually get a jupiter
34:44and a saturn then eventually you get the
34:46jupiter and the saturn they clear out a
34:48disc change the gravitational landscape
34:49then earth pops up
34:50like that whole thing and then be able
34:53to do that
34:54for every other system
34:57in the uh every other star in the galaxy
35:00and then
35:01be able to do that for other galaxies as
35:03well
35:05um yeah so look maybe start from the
35:07smallest simulation
35:09like what is actually being done today i
35:11mean even the smallest simulation is
35:12probably super super difficult
35:14even just like one object in the kuiper
35:16belt is probably super difficult to
35:17simulate
35:18i mean i think it's super easy i mean
35:20like it's
35:21it's just not that hard um but um
35:25you know let's let's ask the most kind
35:27of
35:28basic problem okay so the problem of
35:31having a star
35:32and something in orbit of it that you
35:35don't need a simulation for like
35:36you can just write that down on a piece
35:38of paper this gravity
35:40would like yeah i guess i guess it's
35:42important to try to
35:44uh you know one way to simulate objects
35:47in our solar system is to build the
35:49universe from scratch okay
35:51we'll get to building the universe from
35:52scratch in a sec um but let me just kind
35:54of go through the hierarchy of
35:56what you know what we do two objects two
35:59objects
36:00analytically solvable like we can figure
36:03it out
36:03very easily if you just you don't i
36:05don't think you yeah you don't need to
36:07know calculus
36:08uh it helps to know calculus but you
36:10don't necessarily need to know calculus
36:12um three objects that are
36:14gravitationally
36:15interacting the solution is chaotic
36:18doesn't matter
36:19how many simulations you do you the
36:22answer loses meaning after
36:23um after some time i feel like that is a
36:26metaphor for dating as well but go on
36:30now look yes yeah so so
36:33the fact that you go from analytically
36:36solvable
36:37to unpredictable you know when you are
36:40when your simulation goes from two up
36:42bodies to three bodies
36:44should immediately tell you that the
36:47exercise
36:48of trying to engineer a calculation
36:51where you form this whole
36:52entire solar system from scratch and
36:55hope to have some predictive answer
36:57is is a futile one right we will never
37:02uh succeed at such a simulation just to
37:04clarify you mean like explicitly having
37:06a clear equation that generalizes
37:09the the whole process enough to be able
37:11to make a prediction what do you mean
37:12actually like literally simulating the
37:15objects as a hopeless pursuit
37:16once it increases beyond three the
37:18simulating them is not a hopeless
37:20pursuit but the
37:21outcome becomes a statistical one
37:26and what's actually quite interesting is
37:27i think we have
37:29all the equations uh figured out
37:32right like you know in order to really
37:35understand this
37:36the formation of the the solar system it
37:38suffices to know
37:40gravity and magneto hydrodynamics i mean
37:44like
37:44the combination of uh maxwell's
37:46equations and
37:47you know navier-stokes equations for the
37:49fluids you need to know quantum
37:51mechanics to understand
37:53opacities and and so on but we have
37:57those equations in hand it's not that we
37:59don't
38:00have that understanding it's that
38:01putting it all together
38:04is a very very difficult and b if you
38:07were to run
38:08the same evolution twice
38:11changing you know the initial conditions
38:14by
38:15some infinitesimal amounts i'm you know
38:18minor change in your calculation to
38:20start with you would get the or you'd
38:21get a different answer
38:23this is one this is part of the reason
38:26why planetary systems are so diverse you
38:29don't
38:30have like a you know very predictive
38:32path
38:33for you start with a disk of this mass
38:36and
38:37it's around this star therefore you're
38:39going to form the solar system
38:41right you start with this and therefore
38:43you will conform this huge
38:45outcome a huge set of outcomes and some
38:47percentage of it
38:49will resemble the solar system you
38:50mentioned quantum mechanics and
38:52we're talking about cosmic scale
38:56objects you've talked about that the
38:58evolution of astrophysical disks can be
39:01modeled with
39:01uh schroedinger's equation i sure did
39:06why it's like how does quantum mechanics
39:09uh become relevant at when you
39:12consider the evolution of objects in the
39:14solar system yeah
39:16well let me take a take a step back and
39:18just say like i remember
39:19being you know utterly confused
39:23by quantum mechanics when i first
39:25learned it and
39:27the schrodinger equation which is kind
39:29of the parent equation
39:30of of that whole field you know seems to
39:33come out of nowhere
39:34right the way that the way that i was
39:37sort of explaining it i remember asking
39:40you know my professor is like but where
39:41does it come from is that like well just
39:43just like don't worry about it and just
39:46like calculate the
39:47hydrogen you know energy levels right so
39:50it's like i could do all the problems i
39:52just did not have any intuition for
39:55for where this parent you know super
39:57important equation came from
39:59now down the line i was remember i was
40:01preparing for my own
40:03lecture and i was trying to understand
40:05how waves
40:07travel in self-gravitating discs so
40:11you know again there's a very broad
40:15theory that's already developed but i
40:16was looking for some simpler
40:18way to explain it really for the
40:20purposes of teaching class
40:22and so i i thought okay what if i just
40:25imagine a disc as an infinite uh
40:29number of concentric circles right that
40:31interact with
40:32the with each other gravitationally
40:36that's a problem in some sense that um
40:39i can solve using methods from like the
40:42late 1700s right so i can write down
40:46hamiltonian well i can write down the
40:48energy function basically of their
40:49their interactions and what i
40:54found is that when you take the
40:56continuum limit when you
40:58go from discrete circles that are
41:00talking to each other gravitationally to
41:02a
41:02continuum disk suddenly
41:06this gravitational interaction among
41:08them
41:09right the the governing equation becomes
41:12the schrodinger equation
41:13and i had to think about that for a
41:15little bit did you just unify
41:17quantum mechanics and gravity no this is
41:20not the same thing as like
41:22you know fusing relativity and quantum
41:24mechanics
41:25but it did uh it did get me thinking a
41:28little bit
41:29so the fact that waves in astrophysical
41:32disks
41:33behave just like wave functions of
41:37of particles kind of like an interesting
41:39analogy because for me it's easier to
41:41imagine waves traveling through you know
41:45astrophysical disks or really just
41:46sheets of paper and
41:48the reason this is that analogy exists
41:52is because there's actually nothing
41:54quantum about the schrodinger equation
41:57the schrodinger equation
41:58is just a wave equation
42:01and all of the interpretation that comes
42:04from it
42:05is quantum but the equation itself
42:08is not a quantum being so you can use it
42:11to model
42:12waves it's way it's not turtles it's
42:15waves all the way down
42:16you can pick which level you pick the
42:18wave at and so it could be at the solar
42:20system level that you can use right
42:21and also it actually provides a pretty
42:24neat calculational tool
42:25because um it's it's difficult so we
42:29just talked about simulations but it's
42:30difficult to simulate
42:32the behavior of astrophysical disks on
42:35time scales
42:36that are in between a few orbits
42:40and their entire evolution so it's
42:43over a time scale of a few orbits you
42:45have you do a hydrodynamic you know
42:47simulation
42:48right you do that basically that's
42:52something that you can do
42:53on a modern computer on a time scale of
42:55say a week
42:56when it comes to their evolution over
42:58their entire lifetime you don't hope to
43:00resolve the orbits you just kind of
43:02hope to understand how the system
43:03behaves in between
43:06right you to get access to that as it
43:08turns out it's pretty
43:09um it's pretty cute you can use uh you
43:12can use the schrodinger equation to get
43:14the answer
43:15rapidly so it's a calculational tool
43:17that's fascinating by the way the
43:18astrophysical disks how what are they
43:22how broad is this definition okay so
43:24astrophysical disks span
43:27a huge uh huge amount of ranges
43:31they start maybe at the smallest scale
43:33they start with actually kuiper belt
43:35objects some kuiper belt objects have
43:37rings
43:38so that's maybe the smallest example of
43:40an astrophysical disc
43:42we've got this little potato shaped
43:44asteroid
43:45you know which is you know sort of the
43:47size of la or something and around it
43:50is are some rings of icy matter that
43:54object is a small astrophysical disk
43:56then you have
43:57saturn the rings of saturn you have the
44:00next set of scale you have the solar
44:02system itself when it was forming you
44:03have
44:04this then you have black hole discs
44:07you have galaxies discs are super common
44:10in the universe
44:12and the reason is that stuff rotates
44:15right i mean gravity works yeah so uh
44:17and those rings could be the material
44:20that uh composes those rings could be
44:24it could be gas it could be solid it
44:26could be anything that's right so
44:29the disc that made from which the
44:32planets emerged was predominantly
44:34hydrogen helium gas on the other hand
44:36the rings of saturn
44:38are made up of you know icicles ice
44:41little like
44:42ice cubes this big about a centimeter
44:45across
44:46that sounds refreshing so that's
44:48incredible hydrogen helium gas
44:50so in the beginning it was just hydrogen
44:53and helium
44:54around the sun how does that lead to the
44:57first formations of solid
44:58objects in terms of simulation okay
45:02here's the story um so you're like have
45:05you ever been to the desert
45:07yes i've been to the death valley and
45:09actually it was uh terrifying just as
45:11total tangent i'm distracting you but i
45:13was uh
45:14driving through it and i was really
45:16surprised because it was at first
45:18hot and then as it was getting into the
45:21evening there's this huge thunderstorm
45:23like
45:23it was raining and it got freezing cold
45:25like what the hell is
45:26it was the apocalypse yeah i had to like
45:29just sit there
45:30listening to bruce springsteen i
45:31remember and just thinking i'm probably
45:33going to die
45:34and i was okay with it because bruce
45:36springsteen was on the radio look
45:38when you've got the boss you know you're
45:40ready you're ready to meet the ball
45:42yeah so look i mean it's a good line
45:45so i'm sorry that's true um
45:48yeah by the way like to continue on this
45:50tangent i
45:51i absolutely love the southwest for this
45:54reason just um you know i know during
45:57the pandemic i
45:58drove from la to new mexico a bunch of
46:01times
46:02the madness the weather yeah the the the
46:05chaos of
46:06weather the fact that you know it'll be
46:07blazing hot one minute and then it's
46:09just like
46:10we'll decide to have a little
46:12thunderstorm maybe you'll decide
46:14to go back momentarily to like a
46:16thousand degrees and then go back to the
46:17thunderstorm
46:18it's amazing it's it's that by the way
46:21is chaos theory in action yeah
46:23right um but let's get back to talking
46:25about the desert yeah
46:27so in the desert um tumbleweeds
46:30have a tendency to roll because the wind
46:32rolls them
46:33and if you're careful you'll
46:35occasionally see this family of temple
46:37weeds where like there's like a big one
46:39and then there's a bunch of little ones
46:41that that kind of hide in its
46:43wake right and are all rolling together
46:45and still almost looks like
46:47you know a family of ducks crossing a
46:49street or something
46:50um or for example you know
46:53if you watch tour de france right you've
46:56got a whole bunch of cyclists and
46:58they're like cycling
46:59you know within 10 centimeters of each
47:01other they're not
47:02bffs right yeah but they're not yeah
47:04trying to be
47:05trying to write together they are
47:07writing together to minimize the
47:09collective
47:10uh you know air resistance if you will
47:13that uh
47:14that they experience turns out solids in
47:17the protoplanetary disk do
47:19just this there's an instability
47:23wherein solid particles right things
47:26that are
47:27a centimeter across will start to hide
47:30behind one another and form these clouds
47:33why because cumulatively that minimizes
47:37the solid
47:38component of the disk aerodynamic
47:41interaction with the gas
47:43now these clouds because they're kind of
47:45a favorable
47:47energetic condition for the dust to live
47:50in
47:50they grow grow grow grow grow until they
47:53become so massive that they collapse
47:54under their own weight
47:56that's how the first building blocks of
47:58planets form that's how the
48:00big asteroids got there that's
48:02incredible yeah so that
48:04is that simulatable or is it not useful
48:06to simulate no no that's simulatable
48:08um and people do these types of
48:10calculations
48:11it's it's really cool that's actually
48:14that's
48:14one of the many fields of planet
48:16formation theory that is really really
48:18active
48:19right now people are trying to
48:20understand all kinds of aspects of that
48:23process because of course
48:24i've explained it you know like as if
48:26there's one
48:28thing that happens turns out it's a
48:31it's a beautifully rich dynamic but the
48:34but qualitatively formation of the first
48:37building blocks
48:38actually follows the same sequence as
48:40formation of stars
48:41right stars are just clouds of gas
48:45hydrogen helium gas that sit in space
48:49and slowly cool and at some point they
48:53you know contract to a point where their
48:56gravity overtakes the thermal
48:58you know pressure support if you will
49:00and they collapse under their own weight
49:01and you get a little baby solar system
49:03that's amazing so do you think one day
49:05it will be possible to
49:07simulate the full history
49:10that took our solar system to what it is
49:13today
49:15yes and it will be useless okay
49:18so you don't think your story many of
49:20the ideas that you have about jupiter
49:22clear in the space
49:23like retelling that story in high
49:25resolution is not that important
49:26i actually think it's important but at
49:28every stage
49:30you have to you have to simul you have
49:33to
49:34design your experiments your your
49:36numerical computer experiments so that
49:39they test some specific aspect of that
49:42evolution
49:43um i am not a proponent of doing
49:46huge simulations because um
49:50even if we forget the information theory
49:53aspect of not being able to simulate in
49:57full detail
49:58the universe because if you do then
50:02you you have made an actual universe
50:05it's not
50:05the simulation right by simulation is in
50:08some sense a compression
50:09of information so therefore you must
50:11lose detail
50:13but that point aside if we are
50:16able to simulate
50:19the entire history of the solar system
50:22in excruciating detail
50:24i mean it'll be cool but it's not going
50:26to be
50:27any different from observing it
50:31right because theoretical understanding
50:34which is what
50:35ultimately i'm interested in um
50:38comes from taking complex things and
50:41reducing them down to something
50:43that you know some mechanism that you
50:45can actually quantify
50:47um that's the that's the fun part of
50:50astrophysics
50:51just kind of simulating things in
50:52extreme detail
50:54is we'll cool we'll make cool
50:56visualizations but that doesn't get to
50:58doesn't doesn't get you to any better
51:01understanding than you had
51:03before you did the simulation if you ask
51:05very specific questions then you'll be
51:06able to uh
51:08create like very highly compressed
51:12nice beautiful theories about how things
51:14evolved and then you can use those to
51:15then generalize to other solar systems
51:18to other stars and other galaxies and
51:21say something generalizable about the
51:23entire universe
51:24how difficult would it be to simulate
51:28our solar system such that we would not
51:30know the difference
51:31meaning if we are living in a simulation
51:35is there a nice think of it as a video
51:38game
51:38sure is there a nice compressible way of
51:40doing that or
51:42just kind of like you intuited with a
51:43three body situation
51:46is just a giant mess that you cannot
51:48create a video game
51:50that uh will seem realistic without
51:53actually
51:54building it so i'm you know i'm
51:57speculating but
51:58one of the yeah i know i know like
52:01you have a deep understanding of this
52:03but like for me
52:05i'm just gonna like speculate that for
52:08um at least in the types of simulations
52:11that we can do
52:12today inevitably you run into the
52:15problem of resolution
52:17right you're doesn't matter what you're
52:19doing it is discrete
52:21now um the way you would go
52:24about asking you know if what we're
52:26observing is that a simulation or
52:28uh or is that you know some real
52:31continuous
52:32thing uh is you you zoom in right you
52:35zoom in and try and find
52:37the you know the grid scale if you will
52:41um yeah i mean
52:46it's a it's a really interesting it's a
52:48really interesting question
52:49and because the
52:52solar system itself and really you know
52:55the double pendulum is chaotic
52:58right pendulum sitting on another
53:00pendulum
53:03moves unpredictably once you let them go
53:05um
53:06you really don't need to like inject any
53:09randomness into a simulation for it to
53:12to give you stochastic and unpredictable
53:14answers
53:15weather is a great example of this
53:18weather has a happen of time
53:20of you know typical weather systems have
53:22a happen of time of a few days
53:24and there's a fundamental reason why the
53:27force
53:28forecast always sucks you know two weeks
53:30in advance
53:31it's not that we don't know the
53:34equations that govern
53:37the atmosphere we know them well their
53:39solutions are meaningless though after a
53:41few days
53:42the zooming in thing is very interesting
53:45i
53:45i think about this a lot whether
53:48there'll be a time
53:49soon where we would want to stay in
53:51video game worlds
53:53whether it's virtual reality or just
53:54playing video games i mean i think that
53:56time
53:57like came in like the 90s and it's been
54:00that time well it's not just it's not
54:02just games i mean
54:03it's accelerated i just recently saw
54:06that
54:07wow and fortnite were played 140 billion
54:10hours
54:11and those are just video games yeah and
54:13that's like increasing very very quickly
54:15especially with the people
54:16coming up now and being born now and
54:18become you know becoming teenagers
54:20and so on let's have a thought
54:22experiment where it's just you and a
54:23video game character inside a room
54:26where you remove the simulation they
54:28need to simulate sort of
54:31a lot of objects if it's just you and
54:33that character
54:36how far do you need to simulate in terms
54:38of zooming in
54:39for it to be very real to you as real as
54:42reality
54:43so like first of all you kind of
54:45mentioned zooming in which is
54:47fascinating because
54:48we have these tools of science that
54:50allow us to zoom in
54:51quote unquote in all kinds of ways
54:55uh in the world around us but our
54:57cognitive abilities like our perception
54:59system as humans
55:00is very limited in terms of situations
55:02so we might be very easily fooled
55:04some of the video games like on the ps4
55:08yeah like look pretty real to me yeah
55:11right uh i think
55:13you would really have to interrogate i
55:15mean i think even with what we have
55:16today
55:17like uh i don't know ace combat seven
55:20that's a great example
55:22right like i mean the way that the
55:24clouds are rendered
55:25uh it's i mean it
55:28looks just like when you're flying you
55:30know on a real airplane the
55:32the kind of transparency i think that
55:35the
55:35you know our perception is limited
55:38enough already
55:40to not be able to tell some of the uh
55:44you know some of the differences there's
55:46a game called uh
55:47skyrim it's an elder scrolls role
55:50playing game
55:51and i just uh i played it for quite a
55:54bit
55:55and i think i played very different than
55:58others like
55:58there'll be long searches of time where
56:00i would just walk around and look at
56:02nature
56:03in the game it's incredible oh sure it's
56:06just like the graphics is like
56:08wow i want to stay there it was better i
56:10went hiking recently
56:12it was like as good as hiking so look i
56:15know what you mean
56:16not to go on a huge video game you know
56:18tangent but like
56:19the the third like witcher game was
56:23astonishingly beautiful right especially
56:25like playing on
56:26on a good hardware machine it's like
56:29this is pretty
56:31this is pretty legit that said um
56:36you know i i don't resonate with the i
56:38want to stay
56:39here you know like one of the things
56:40that i love to do
56:43is to go to my like boxing gym
56:46and and box with a guy right like that's
56:49there's
56:50there's nothing quite like that physical
56:52you know
56:53experience like that's fascinating that
56:55might be
56:56simply an artifact of the year you were
56:59born maybe because if you're born today
57:02it almost seems like stupid to go to a
57:04gym yeah
57:05like you're going to a gym to box with a
57:07guy why not box with mike tyson when you
57:09yourself was like in his prime when you
57:12yourself are also an incredible boxer
57:14in the video game world for me there
57:17there's a multitude of reasons why i
57:19don't want to box with mike tyson
57:21right like no no no no you enjoy teeth
57:24and i want to have an ear no but your
57:26your skills
57:27in this meat space in this physical
57:29realm is very limited
57:31and takes a lot of work and you're
57:33you're uh you're a musician
57:35uh your incredible scientist you only
57:38have so much time in the in the day
57:40but in the video game world you can
57:42expand your capabilities in all kinds of
57:44dimensions
57:45that you can never have possibly have
57:47time in the physical world
57:48and so that it doesn't make sense like
57:50to
57:51to be existing to be working your ass
57:54off in the physical world
57:56when you can just be super successful uh
57:59uh in the video game world but i still
58:02you enjoy sucking and stuff
58:04yeah i i really struggling to get better
58:06i sure do
58:07i mean i think like these days with
58:09music music
58:10is a great example right we just started
58:13you know
58:14practicing live uh with my band again
58:17you know after
58:18not playing for a year and uh you know
58:21it's just it was terrible
58:22right which is just kind of a lot of the
58:25nuance
58:25you know a lot of the detail is just
58:27that detail that takes you know
58:29years of collective practice to develop
58:32uh
58:32it's just lost but it was just an
58:36incredible amount of fun
58:37way more fun than all the like studio
58:40you know sitting around and playing uh
58:42that i did you know throughout the
58:44entire year
58:45so i think there's something there's
58:47something intangible
58:48or maybe maybe tangible about being uh
58:51being in person
58:53i i sure hope you're wrong and that
58:56you know we that's not something that
58:58will get lost because i think there's
59:00like such a large part of the human
59:02condition
59:03is to hang out if we were doing this
59:07interview on zoom right
59:10i mean i'd already be i'd already be
59:14bored out of my mind
59:14[Laughter]
59:16exactly i mean there's something to that
59:18i mean i'm almost playing devil's
59:19advocate but at the same time
59:21you know i'm sure people talk about the
59:23same way at the beginning of the 20th
59:24century about horses
59:26where they're they are much more
59:28efficient
59:30they're much uh easier to maintain than
59:33cars
59:34it doesn't make sense to have you know
59:35all the ways that cars break down and
59:37there's not enough infrastructure in
59:38terms of roads for cars
59:40it doesn't make any sense like horses
59:42and like nature you could do the nature
59:44like where
59:45you know you should be living more
59:46natural life those are real you don't
59:48want machines in your life they're going
59:49to pollute your mind
59:50and the minds of young people but then
59:52eventually just cars took over so
59:54in that same way it just seems uh going
59:56back to horses
59:59just you know well you can be you can
1:00:01play uh
1:00:02uh uh what is it red dead
1:00:05red dead redemption redemption and uh
1:00:07you can ride horses in the video game
1:00:09more
1:00:09so let me return us back to planet nine
1:00:12uh-huh always a good place to come back
1:00:15to so now that we did a big
1:00:17historical overview of our solar system
1:00:19what is planet nine
1:00:21okay planet nine is a hypothetical
1:00:25object that orbits the solar system
1:00:27right at
1:00:28an orbital period of about 10 000 years
1:00:32and an orbit which is slightly tilted
1:00:36with respect to the plane of the solar
1:00:37system
1:00:38slightly eccentric and the object itself
1:00:41we think is five times more massive than
1:00:45the earth we have never seen planet nine
1:00:48in a telescope but we have gravitational
1:00:52evidence for it
1:00:53and so this is where all the stuff we've
1:00:55been talking about this clustering ideas
1:00:57maybe you can speak to the approximate
1:00:59location that we
1:01:01suspect and also the question i wanted
1:01:03to ask is uh
1:01:05what are we supposed to be imagining
1:01:06here because he said there's certain
1:01:08objects in the kuiper belt that
1:01:10are kind of have a direction to them
1:01:12that they're all
1:01:13like like flocking in some kind of way
1:01:16so that's the sense that there's some
1:01:17kind of gravitational object
1:01:19not changing their orbit but kind of
1:01:21confining them
1:01:22right yeah finding like grouping their
1:01:24orbits together
1:01:26see what would happen if planet nine
1:01:27were not there is these orbits that
1:01:30roughly share
1:01:31a common orientation they would just
1:01:34disperse right they would just become as
1:01:37a mutually symmetric
1:01:38point everywhere planet nine's gravity
1:01:42makes it such that these objects stay
1:01:45in a state that's that's basically
1:01:47anti-aligned with respect to the orb
1:01:50of planet nine um and
1:01:53and sort of hang out there and kind of
1:01:55oscillate on time scale of about a
1:01:57billion years
1:01:58that's one of the lines of evidence for
1:02:01the existence of planet nine there are
1:02:03others that's the one that's easiest to
1:02:05maybe visualize just because it's fun to
1:02:07think about orbits that all point
1:02:09into the same direction but i should
1:02:12you know emphasize that for example the
1:02:15existence of
1:02:16objects again kuiper belt objects that
1:02:19are heavily out of the plane
1:02:20of the solar system things that are
1:02:22tilted by say 90 degrees that's not
1:02:25we don't expect that as an outcome
1:02:28of planet formation indeed planet
1:02:30formation
1:02:31simulations have never produced such
1:02:34objects
1:02:35without some extrinsic gravitational
1:02:38force
1:02:38planet nine on the other hand generates
1:02:40them very readily so that
1:02:42provides kind of an alternative you know
1:02:46population of small bodies in the solar
1:02:48system that also get produced by planet
1:02:509 through an
1:02:51independent kind of gravitational effect
1:02:54so they're kind of
1:02:54there's basically five different things
1:02:58that the uh that planet nine does
1:03:01individually that are like kind of
1:03:04maybe a one sigma effect where you would
1:03:07say yeah okay if that's all it was
1:03:09maybe it's not no reason to jump up and
1:03:10down but because
1:03:12it's it's mult it's a multitude of these
1:03:15puzzles
1:03:16that all are explained by one hypothesis
1:03:19that's that's really the the magnetism
1:03:22the attraction of the planet nine model
1:03:25so can you just clarify so
1:03:28most orbit most planets in the solar
1:03:31system orbit
1:03:33and approximately the same so it's flat
1:03:35yeah it's like
1:03:36one degree they the difference between
1:03:39them is
1:03:40about one degree so but nevertheless if
1:03:42we looked at our solar
1:03:44system it would look and i could see
1:03:46every single object it would look like a
1:03:47sphere
1:03:48the inner part where the planets are
1:03:51would look
1:03:52like you know flat right the the kuiper
1:03:55belt
1:03:56and the asteroid belt have a larger
1:04:00um it gets fatter and fatter yeah that's
1:04:02kind of like becomes a sphere
1:04:03that's right and if you look at the very
1:04:05outside it's polluted by this
1:04:07you know quasi-spheroidal thing
1:04:10nobody's of course ever seen the oort
1:04:13cloud
1:04:14right we've only seen comments that come
1:04:17from the oort cloud so
1:04:18the oort cloud which is this right
1:04:21population of distant debris
1:04:23its existence is also inferred you could
1:04:26say
1:04:26alternatively there is you know there's
1:04:30a big
1:04:30cosmic creature that occasionally you
1:04:32know sitting at 20 000 au and
1:04:34occasionally throws an icy
1:04:36rock towards the sound like that
1:04:38spaghetti monster i think it's called
1:04:39okay
1:04:40i mean so it's a mystery in many ways
1:04:44but you can kind of infer a bunch of
1:04:45things about it
1:04:46it's by the way both terrifying and
1:04:48exciting that there's this
1:04:49vast darkness all around us that's full
1:04:51of objects that are just
1:04:53throwing just there yeah it's actually
1:04:55kind of astonishing right
1:04:57that we have only
1:05:00explored a small fraction of the solar
1:05:03system
1:05:04right that that really kind of baffles
1:05:07me because
1:05:08uh remember as a student you know
1:05:10studying physics
1:05:11you know you do the problem where you
1:05:13put the earth around the sun you solve
1:05:15that and
1:05:16like it's one line of math and you say
1:05:19okay well that
1:05:20surely was figured out by newton so like
1:05:22all the interesting stuff
1:05:24is not in the solar system but that um
1:05:28it's just plainly not true there are
1:05:31there are mysteries in the solar system
1:05:34that
1:05:34are remarkable that we are only now
1:05:37starting to just kind of scratch the
1:05:39surface of
1:05:40and some of those objects probably have
1:05:42some information about the history of
1:05:43our solar system
1:05:44absolutely absolutely like a great
1:05:46example is
1:05:47uh you know small meteorites right small
1:05:50meteorites
1:05:51are melted right they have they're
1:05:53differentiated meaning some of the
1:05:55uh iron sinks you say
1:05:58how can that be because they're so small
1:06:00that they wouldn't have melted just from
1:06:02the heat of their accretion
1:06:04turns out the fact that the solar nebula
1:06:07the
1:06:07the disk that made the planets was
1:06:09polluted by
1:06:10aluminum 26 is in itself a remarkable
1:06:13thing it means
1:06:14the solar system did not form an
1:06:16isolation it formed
1:06:18in a giant cloud of thousands of other
1:06:21stars that were also forming
1:06:23some of which were undergoing you know
1:06:26going through supernova explosions some
1:06:28of
1:06:28and releasing these unstable isotopes
1:06:33that of which we now see kind of the
1:06:35traces of
1:06:37it's so cool do you think it's possible
1:06:39that life from
1:06:41other solar systems was injected and
1:06:43that that was
1:06:44what was uh the origin of life on earth
1:06:47yeah defense permea idea um
1:06:50that's seen as a low probability event
1:06:52by people who studied the original life
1:06:54but that's because
1:06:55uh then they would be out of a job well
1:06:59i don't think they'd be out of the job
1:07:00because you just then say you have to
1:07:01figure out how life started
1:07:03and there but then you have to go there
1:07:05we can study
1:07:06life on earth much easier we could study
1:07:08in the lab
1:07:09much easier because we could replicate
1:07:11conditions that are
1:07:12from an early earth much easier
1:07:16from a chemistry perspective from a
1:07:17biology perspective
1:07:19you can intuit a bunch of stuff you can
1:07:21look at different parts of earth and
1:07:23just
1:07:23to an extent i mean the early earth was
1:07:26completely
1:07:27unlike the current earth right there was
1:07:28no oxygen so
1:07:30uh one of my colleagues at caltech uh
1:07:33joe kirchnick is
1:07:36certain right something like
1:07:40100 certainty that life started on mars
1:07:43and came to earth uh in on martian media
1:07:46rights
1:07:47um this is not a problem
1:07:50that i like to kind of
1:07:53think about too much like the origin of
1:07:55life it's a fascinating problem
1:07:57but you know it's not physics and i just
1:08:00like
1:08:01i just don't don't love it it's the same
1:08:04reason you don't love
1:08:04i thought you're a musician so music is
1:08:07not physics either so why are you
1:08:09showing 100
1:08:10physics
1:08:10[Laughter]
1:08:13okay no no look uh in all seriousness
1:08:15though i
1:08:16uh there are a few things that i really
1:08:19really enjoy
1:08:20i genuinely enjoy physics i genuinely
1:08:23enjoy music
1:08:24i genuinely you know enjoy martial arts
1:08:28and
1:08:28i genuinely enjoy uh my family i should
1:08:31have said that all in a reverse order or
1:08:33something
1:08:34but i like to focus on these things and
1:08:37not worry too much
1:08:38about about everything else you know
1:08:39what i mean yes just because there is a
1:08:41like you said earlier there's a time
1:08:44constraint you can't
1:08:46do it all there's many mysteries all
1:08:48around us
1:08:49so um and they're all beautiful in in
1:08:52different ways
1:08:53to me that thing i love is artificial
1:08:55intelligence that uh
1:08:57perhaps i love it because eventually i'm
1:08:59trying to suck up to our future
1:09:00overlords
1:09:01the the question of you said there's a
1:09:05lot of kind of
1:09:07little pieces of evidence for this thing
1:09:09that's planet nine
1:09:11if we were to try to collect more
1:09:13evidence
1:09:14or be certain like a paper that says
1:09:18like you drop it clear we're done
1:09:21what what is that required does that
1:09:23require us sending probes out
1:09:25or do you think we can do it from
1:09:26telescopes here on earth what are the
1:09:28different ideas for conclusive evidence
1:09:30for planet nine
1:09:31the moment planet nine gets imaged from
1:09:35a telescope on earth it's done i mean
1:09:36it's just there
1:09:37can you clarify because you mentioned
1:09:39that before from an
1:09:40image would you be able to tell yes so
1:09:43from
1:09:44an image the moment you see
1:09:48something something that is reflecting
1:09:50sunlight
1:09:51back at you and you know that it's
1:09:55hundreds of times as far away from
1:09:59the sun as as the earth you're done
1:10:02so you're thinking so basically if you
1:10:04have a really far away thing that's big
1:10:06yeah you know five times the size of
1:10:08earth that means
1:10:11uh that that's fine that is planet could
1:10:13there be multiple objects like that i
1:10:15guess
1:10:16in principle yeah i mean there's no
1:10:19there's no law of physics that uh that
1:10:20doesn't allow you to have multiple
1:10:22there's also no evidence at present for
1:10:24there being multiple i wonder if
1:10:26it's possible this is like just like
1:10:27we're finding exoplanets
1:10:29whether given the size of the or cloud
1:10:32there's basically
1:10:33it's rare and rare but they're sprinkled
1:10:35planet nine
1:10:37ten eleven twelve like these yeah
1:10:40some got thirteen after that yeah i can
1:10:43just keep counting
1:10:45so like just something about the dynamic
1:10:47system
1:10:48like it becomes lower and lower
1:10:49probability event but they gather up
1:10:51like they they become would they become
1:10:54larger and larger maybe
1:10:55something like that and i wonder i
1:10:58wonder if like discovering planet nine
1:11:00will just like be almost like a
1:11:02springboard it's like well what's
1:11:04what's beyond that it's entirely
1:11:06plausible the oort cloud itself
1:11:08probably holds about five earth masses
1:11:10or seven earth masses of material
1:11:13right so it's not it's not nothing and
1:11:17the it all ultimately comes down
1:11:20to at what point will the observational
1:11:25surveys
1:11:26sample enough of the solar system to uh
1:11:29kind of
1:11:30reveal interesting things
1:11:33there's a great analogy here with
1:11:35neptune and the story of how neptune was
1:11:37discovered
1:11:38neptune was not discovered by looking at
1:11:40the sky
1:11:41right it was discovered by uh it was
1:11:44certain mathematically
1:11:45right so yeah the orbit of
1:11:48uranus when uranus was found um
1:11:52yes this was 1781. uh it's
1:11:55the kind of tracking uh both the
1:11:58tracking
1:11:58of the orbit of uranus as well as the
1:12:01reconstruction
1:12:02of the orbit of uranus immediately
1:12:04revealed
1:12:05that it was not following the orbit that
1:12:08it was supposed to
1:12:09right the the predicted orbit deviated
1:12:11away from where it actually was
1:12:13so uh in the mid eighteen hundreds
1:12:17right um a french mathematician by the
1:12:20name of orban le verrier
1:12:22did a beautifully sophisticated
1:12:24calculation which said
1:12:26if this is due to gravity of a
1:12:30more distant planet then that planet is
1:12:32there
1:12:33okay and then they found it but the
1:12:35point is the
1:12:36understanding of where to look for
1:12:40neptune came entirely out of celestial
1:12:42mechanics
1:12:43the case with planet nine is a little
1:12:46bit different
1:12:46because what we can do i think
1:12:48relatively well is predict the orbit and
1:12:50mass of planet nine we cannot tell you
1:12:52where it is on its orbit
1:12:54the reason is we haven't seen the kuiper
1:12:57belt objects complete
1:12:58in orbit their own orbit
1:13:01even once because it takes four thousand
1:13:03years but
1:13:05you know i plan to live on as an ai
1:13:07being
1:13:08uh and you know i'll i'll be tracking
1:13:11those
1:13:11uh those orbits as solid takes four or
1:13:13five thousand years i mean
1:13:15it doesn't have to be ai it could be
1:13:16longevity there's a lot of really
1:13:17exciting genetic engineering research
1:13:19so you'll just be a brain waiting for
1:13:21the
1:13:23for the your brain waiting for the orbit
1:13:25to complete for the basic kuiper belt
1:13:27objects
1:13:27that's that's right that's like kind of
1:13:30the worst
1:13:31reason to want to live a long time right
1:13:34just like can the brain like smoke a
1:13:35cigarette
1:13:36can you just like light one up while
1:13:39you're waiting or
1:13:40uh
1:13:41[Laughter]
1:13:43but you're making me actually realize
1:13:45that the one way to explore
1:13:49the the galaxy is by just sitting here
1:13:52on earth and waiting
1:13:54so if we can just get really good at
1:13:55waiting it's like a more more or these
1:13:58interstellar objects that
1:14:00fly in you can just wait for them to
1:14:02come to you same with the aliens you can
1:14:03wait for them to come to you
1:14:05if you get really good at waiting um
1:14:08then
1:14:09that's one way to do the exploration
1:14:10because eventually the thing will come
1:14:12to you maybe that's the entire
1:14:13maybe the intelligent alien
1:14:15civilizations
1:14:16get much better at waiting and so they
1:14:19all decide so
1:14:20game theoretically to start waiting and
1:14:21it's just a bunch of like
1:14:23ancient intelligent civilizations of
1:14:25aliens all throughout the universe
1:14:27they're just sitting there waiting for
1:14:28each other
1:14:29look you can't just be good at waiting
1:14:31you got to know how to chill
1:14:32okay like like you can't just like sit
1:14:35around and do nothing you got to be
1:14:36you get you got to know how to chill i
1:14:38honestly think that
1:14:40as we progress if the aliens are
1:14:42anything like us
1:14:43we enjoy loving things we do
1:14:46and it it's uh it's very possible that
1:14:49we just figure out mechanisms
1:14:51here on earth to enjoy our life and we
1:14:54just stay here on our f
1:14:55forever that exploration becomes less
1:14:58and less of an interesting thing to do
1:15:00and so you basically yes wait and chill
1:15:03you get really optimally good at
1:15:04chilling and thereby
1:15:06exploring is not that interesting so you
1:15:09know
1:15:10in terms of 4 000 years would be nothing
1:15:12for scientists we'll be chilling and
1:15:13just
1:15:14all kinds of scientific explorations
1:15:16will become
1:15:17possible because we'll just be here
1:15:22you have a paper out recently because
1:15:24you already mentioned some of these
1:15:25ideas but
1:15:26i'd love it if you could dig into it a
1:15:27little bit yeah of course the injection
1:15:29of inner
1:15:30or cloud objects into the distant kuiper
1:15:32belt by planet nine
1:15:34what is this idea of
1:15:38planet nine injecting objects into the
1:15:40kuiper belt okay let me take a
1:15:42brief step back and when we do
1:15:45calculations of
1:15:46planet nine we do the simulations
1:15:49as far as our simulations are concerned
1:15:52sort of
1:15:52the uh neptune
1:15:56like kind of the trans-neptunian solar
1:15:59system
1:16:00is entirely sourced from the inside
1:16:03namely the kuiper belt gets scattered by
1:16:07neptune and then planet nine does things
1:16:09to it and aligns the orbits and
1:16:11and so on and then we calculate what uh
1:16:14what happens on the lifetime of the
1:16:15solar system yada yada
1:16:18during the pandemic one of the kind of
1:16:20questions we asked
1:16:21ourselves this is indeed something we
1:16:23mike and i uh
1:16:25mike brown whose partner in crime on
1:16:27this and i
1:16:29do regularly is we say how can
1:16:33we a disprove ourselves and b
1:16:36how can we improve our simulations like
1:16:39what's missing
1:16:40one idea that maybe should have been
1:16:43obvious in retrospect is that all of our
1:16:46simulations treated the solar system
1:16:48as some isolated creature right but the
1:16:50solar system did not form in isolation
1:16:53right it formed in this cluster of stars
1:16:55and during that phase
1:16:57of forming together with thousands of
1:16:59other stars
1:17:01we believe the solar system formed this
1:17:04almost spherical population of icy
1:17:06debris
1:17:08that sits maybe at a
1:17:11few thousand times the separation
1:17:14between
1:17:16the earth and the sun maybe even a
1:17:18little bit closer
1:17:20if planet nine's not there that
1:17:22population is completely dormant
1:17:24and these objects just slowly orbit
1:17:27the the sun nothing interesting had
1:17:30happens to them ever but what we
1:17:32realized that if planet nine is there
1:17:35planet nine can actually grab some of
1:17:37those objects and gravitationally
1:17:38re-inject them
1:17:40into the distant solar system so we
1:17:42thought okay let's look into this
1:17:44with numerical experiments do do our
1:17:46simulations
1:17:47does this process work and if it works
1:17:50uh
1:17:51what are its consequences so it turns
1:17:53out indeed not only
1:17:55does planet nine inject these distant
1:18:00inner or cloud objects into the kuiper
1:18:02belt
1:18:03they follow roughly the same pathway as
1:18:06the
1:18:07um as the objects that are being
1:18:09scattered out also there's this
1:18:11kind of river two-way river of material
1:18:14some of it is coming out from you know
1:18:17by neptune scattering some of it is
1:18:19moving in and if you work through the
1:18:22numbers
1:18:23you kind of at the end of the day that
1:18:26it
1:18:26it has an effect on the best fit orbit
1:18:28for planet nine itself
1:18:29so if you realize that the data set that
1:18:32we're observing
1:18:33is not entirely composed of things that
1:18:36came out of the solar system but also
1:18:37things that got
1:18:38re-injected back in then turns out the
1:18:41best fit planet nine slightly more
1:18:42eccentric
1:18:43that's kind of getting into the weeds
1:18:45the the point here is that
1:18:48uh you know the existence of planet nine
1:18:50itself provides this
1:18:52natural bridge that connects an
1:18:54otherwise dormant population of icy
1:18:56debris of the solar system
1:18:58with things that we're starting to
1:18:59directly observe so you can flow back so
1:19:01it's not just the river flowing one way
1:19:02it's
1:19:03maybe a smaller stream go back and
1:19:05backwash
1:19:06you want a backwash you want to
1:19:07incorporate that into the simulations
1:19:09into your
1:19:10understanding of those distant objects
1:19:12when you're trying to make sense of the
1:19:14various observations and so on exactly
1:19:15that's fascinating
1:19:17i gotta ask you some people think that
1:19:20uh many of the observations you're
1:19:23describing
1:19:24could be described by a primordial black
1:19:28hole
1:19:29first what is the primordial black hole
1:19:31and what do you think about this idea
1:19:32yeah
1:19:33so primordial black hole is a black hole
1:19:36which is made
1:19:37not through the usual pathway of making
1:19:39a black hole
1:19:41which is that you have a star which is
1:19:44uh more massive
1:19:45than you know 1.4 or so solar masses and
1:19:49basically when it runs out of
1:19:51fuel uh runs out of its nuclear fusion
1:19:55fuel
1:19:56it can't hold itself up anymore and just
1:19:58the whole thing collapses on itself
1:20:01right you create a um
1:20:04i mean one i guess simple way to think
1:20:07about it is you create an
1:20:08object with zero radius that has mass
1:20:11but zero radius
1:20:12that singularity
1:20:16now that's such black holes exist all
1:20:19over the place in the galaxy there's in
1:20:21fact
1:20:21a really big one at the center of the
1:20:23galaxy that's like yeah
1:20:25that that one's always looking at you
1:20:27when you're not looking
1:20:28okay right and it's it's always talking
1:20:31about you
1:20:31and when you turn off the lights it's it
1:20:33wakes up
1:20:34that's right um but you know so such
1:20:38black holes
1:20:38are all over the place we when they
1:20:40merge we get to see
1:20:42you know incredible gravitational waves
1:20:43that they emit etc etc
1:20:45one kind of plausible scenario however
1:20:47is that
1:20:48when the universe was forming basically
1:20:50during the big bang
1:20:52you created a whole spectrum of black
1:20:55holes
1:20:57some with masses of five earth masses
1:20:59some with masses of
1:21:0110 earth masses like the entire you know
1:21:03mass spectrum size
1:21:05the amount some the mass of asteroids
1:21:08now on the smaller end over the lifetime
1:21:12of the universe
1:21:13the small ones kind of evaporate and
1:21:15they're not there anymore at least this
1:21:17is what we
1:21:18what the calculations tell us but five
1:21:21earth masses is big enough to
1:21:23not have evaporated so one idea is that
1:21:27planet nine is not a planet and instead
1:21:30it is a five
1:21:32earth mass black hole and that's why
1:21:35it's hard to find now
1:21:39can we right away from our calculations
1:21:42say
1:21:43that's definitely true or that's not
1:21:44true absolutely not we can't in fact our
1:21:46calculations
1:21:48tell you nothing other than the orbit
1:21:52and the mass and that means the
1:21:55black hole i mean it could be a five
1:21:57earth mass you know
1:21:58cup it could be a five earth mass
1:22:01hedgehog or a black hole or
1:22:03really anything that's five earth masses
1:22:05will do because the gravity of a black
1:22:07hole
1:22:08is no different than the gravity of a
1:22:10planet right if the sun became a black
1:22:12hole tomorrow
1:22:14it would be dark but or the earth would
1:22:16keep orbiting it
1:22:18and like this notion that oh black holes
1:22:20suck everything in
1:22:21it's it's not that's like a sci-fi
1:22:24notion right it's just mass
1:22:25what would be the difference between a
1:22:26black hole and a planet
1:22:29in terms of observationally uh
1:22:32observationally the difference would be
1:22:34that you will never find the black hole
1:22:36right the truth is they're kind of um
1:22:38i'm actually
1:22:39not you know i never looked into this
1:22:42very carefully
1:22:43but there are some constraints that you
1:22:46can
1:22:47get just statistically say okay if the
1:22:50sun
1:22:51has a binary companion which is a five
1:22:53earth mass black hole
1:22:55then that means such black holes would
1:22:58be extremely
1:22:59common and you know you can sort of look
1:23:01for lensing events and then you say okay
1:23:03maybe that's not so likely
1:23:05but you know that said i want to
1:23:07emphasize that
1:23:08there's a limit to what our calculations
1:23:11uh
1:23:11can tell you that's the orbit and the
1:23:13mass so
1:23:15i think there's a bunch like ed whitton
1:23:17i think
1:23:18wishes it's a black hole because i think
1:23:21the one exciting things about black
1:23:22holes
1:23:23in our solar system is that we can go
1:23:25there
1:23:26and we can maybe study the singularity
1:23:28somehow because that allows us to
1:23:30understand some fundamental things about
1:23:32physics
1:23:33if um it's a planet so planet nine
1:23:36we may not you know and we go there we
1:23:38may not discover
1:23:39anything profoundly new
1:23:43the interesting thing perhaps you can
1:23:44correct me about planet nine
1:23:46is like the big picture of it the whole
1:23:48big story of the kuiper belt and all
1:23:50those kinds of things
1:23:52it's not that planet nine would be
1:23:54somehow fundamentally different
1:23:56from um from i don't know neptune
1:24:00in terms of um in terms of the kind of
1:24:02things we can learn from it so i think
1:24:04that
1:24:04there's kind of a hope that it's a black
1:24:06hole because it's an entirely new kind
1:24:08of object maybe you can
1:24:09uh correct me yeah i mean of course here
1:24:13my own
1:24:14biases creep in because i'm interested
1:24:16you know
1:24:17in planets around other stars and
1:24:20i would say i would disagree that you
1:24:23know we wouldn't find
1:24:24things that would be truly you know
1:24:27fundamentally new new because as it
1:24:30turns out
1:24:31the the galaxy is really good at making
1:24:35five or three earth mass objects right
1:24:38the most common type of planet that we
1:24:42see that we you know discover orbiting
1:24:44around other stars
1:24:45there's a few earth masses in the solar
1:24:48system there's no analog for that
1:24:49right we go from one earth mass object
1:24:51which is this one
1:24:52and to skipping to neptune and uranus
1:24:55which themselves are actually relatively
1:24:57poorly understood
1:24:59especially uranus from the interior
1:25:01structure point of view
1:25:03if planet nine is a planet going there
1:25:06will give us the closest window and to
1:25:08understanding what
1:25:10other planets look like and um
1:25:14i will you know i'll say this that you
1:25:16know planets
1:25:17kind of in terms of their complexity on
1:25:19some logarithmic scale
1:25:21fall somewhere between a star and an
1:25:24insect
1:25:25right an insect is way more complicated
1:25:28than a star
1:25:29right just there's all kinds of physical
1:25:32processes and really
1:25:34biochemical processes that occur inside
1:25:37of an insect
1:25:38that just make a star look like
1:25:41you know somebody is like playing with
1:25:43the spring or something yeah
1:25:45right so the i i think
1:25:48you know it would be you know arguably
1:25:51you know more interesting to go to um
1:25:55you know to go to planet nine if it's a
1:25:57planet because black holes are simple
1:25:59they're just kind of
1:26:00they're basically macroscopic like
1:26:03particles yeah right and so just like
1:26:06you mentioned in terms of complexity so
1:26:08it's possible that planet nine
1:26:10as opposed to being like homogeneous is
1:26:12like super
1:26:13like heterogeneous is a bunch of cool
1:26:15stuff going on absolutely
1:26:16that could give us an intuition i never
1:26:18thought about that that it's
1:26:20basically earth number two in terms of
1:26:22size
1:26:24and gives us starts giving us intuition
1:26:26that could be generalizable to
1:26:28earth-like planets elsewhere in the
1:26:30galaxy yeah pluto
1:26:32is also in the sense like you know pluto
1:26:35is a tiny tiny thing right just like
1:26:38you would imagine there's just a tiny
1:26:39ball of ice like who cares but the new
1:26:41horizons
1:26:42images of pluto reveal so much
1:26:45remarkable structure
1:26:46right they reveal glaciers flowing and
1:26:49these are glaciers
1:26:50not made out of water ice but you know
1:26:52co ice
1:26:53it turns out at those temperatures
1:26:56right of like 40 or so kelvin water ice
1:27:00looks like metal right it doesn't flow
1:27:02at all but then
1:27:03ice made up of carbon monoxide
1:27:06starts to flow i mean there's just like
1:27:08all kinds of really cool
1:27:10uh phenomena that you otherwise just
1:27:13wouldn't really even imagine that occur
1:27:17so yeah i mean there's a reason why i
1:27:19like planets
1:27:21well let me ask you i find uh
1:27:25as i read the idea that edwin was
1:27:28thinking about this kind of stuff
1:27:29fascinating so he he's a mathematical
1:27:31physicist
1:27:33who's uh very interested in string
1:27:35theory won the fields
1:27:37metal for his work in mathematics
1:27:41so i read that he proposed a fleet of
1:27:43probes
1:27:44accelerated by radiation pressure that
1:27:47could discover a planet nine primordial
1:27:49black holes location
1:27:52uh what do you think about this idea of
1:27:53sending a bunch of probes out there
1:27:56yeah look the way the the idea is a cool
1:27:59one
1:28:00right you go and you say
1:28:03you know launch them basically
1:28:05isotropically you track where they go
1:28:07and uh if i understand the idea
1:28:10correctly you basically measure the
1:28:13deflection and then you say okay there
1:28:15must be
1:28:16something there since the the
1:28:19probe trajectories are being altered oh
1:28:21so the measurement
1:28:22the basic sensory mechanism is the it's
1:28:25not like you have sensors on the probes
1:28:27it's more like you're
1:28:29because you're very precisely able to
1:28:30capture to measure the trajectory of the
1:28:33probes you can then
1:28:34infer the gravitational fields and i
1:28:35think i think that's the basic idea
1:28:38um you know back a few years ago we
1:28:42had conversations like these with um
1:28:45you know engineers from jpl they
1:28:48more or less convinced me that this is
1:28:51much more difficult than it seems
1:28:53because
1:28:54you don't at that level of precision
1:28:57right
1:28:58things like solar flares matter right
1:29:00solar flares
1:29:01right are completely chaotic you can't
1:29:04predict which
1:29:05where a solar flare will happen that
1:29:07will drive radiation
1:29:08pressure gradients you don't know where
1:29:11every single asteroid is so like
1:29:13actually doing that problem
1:29:17i think it's possible but it's it's not
1:29:19a trivial matter
1:29:20right well i wonder not just about
1:29:24planet nine i wonder if that's kind of
1:29:26the future
1:29:27of doing science in our solar system
1:29:30is to just launch a huge number of
1:29:32probes so like a
1:29:34whole order of magnitude many orders of
1:29:36magnitude larger
1:29:38numbers of probes and then starting for
1:29:40a bunch of different stuff
1:29:42not just gravity but everything else so
1:29:44in this regard
1:29:45i actually think there is a huge
1:29:47revolution that's
1:29:49to some extent already started right the
1:29:52standard kind of like
1:29:53time scale for a nasa mission is that
1:29:55you like
1:29:56propose it and it launches i don't know
1:29:59like
1:29:59150 years after you propose i'm over
1:30:02exaggerating but
1:30:03yeah you know it's just like some huge
1:30:05development cycle
1:30:07yeah and it gets delayed 55 times
1:30:11like that is not going away
1:30:14yeah right the the really cutting edge
1:30:17things
1:30:18you have to do it this way because you
1:30:19don't know what you're building so to
1:30:21speak
1:30:22but the cubesat kind of world
1:30:25is starting to um you know provide an
1:30:29avenue for like
1:30:31you know launching something that costs
1:30:32you know a few million dollars
1:30:34and has a turnaround time scale of like
1:30:37a couple years you can imagine doing
1:30:39you know phd theses where you design the
1:30:42mission
1:30:43the mission goes to where you're going
1:30:44and you do the science
1:30:46all within a time span of five six years
1:30:49that is has not been fully executed on
1:30:53yet but i absolutely think that's on the
1:30:55horizon and we're not talking
1:30:57a decade i think we're talking like this
1:30:59decade
1:31:00yeah and the company is accelerating all
1:31:02this uh
1:31:03with uh blue origin and and uh spacex
1:31:07there's a bunch of more cubesat oriented
1:31:09companies that are pushing this forward
1:31:11uh well let me ask you let me ask you on
1:31:14that topic what do you think about
1:31:16either one elon musk with spacex
1:31:20uh going to mars i think he wants spacex
1:31:22to be the first
1:31:23to put a first human on mars and then uh
1:31:28jeff bezos got to give him props
1:31:32wants to be the first to fly his own
1:31:33rocket
1:31:35out into space so you know wasn't there
1:31:38a guy who like
1:31:39built his rocket out of garbage yeah
1:31:42this was like a couple
1:31:44years ago and somewhere in the desert he
1:31:46launched himself
1:31:47i'm not tracking this closely but i
1:31:49think i am
1:31:50familiar with folks who built their own
1:31:52rocket to try to prove the earth is flat
1:31:54yes that's the guy i'm talking about
1:31:55yeah he was also like he also jumped
1:31:57some limousine yeah
1:31:59for truly revolutionary minds
1:32:03uh greater men than either you or i
1:32:07but yeah so look it's been
1:32:10astonishing to watch how really over the
1:32:13last like
1:32:14decade the commercial sector
1:32:17took over this uh you know
1:32:20this industry that traditionally has
1:32:23really been like
1:32:23a you know a government thing to do um
1:32:27motivated primarily by the the
1:32:29competition between nations like the
1:32:31cold war
1:32:32sure and now it's motivated more
1:32:35more and more by the natural forces of
1:32:38capitalism yes
1:32:39that's right so um okay here
1:32:42i have i have many ideas about i think
1:32:44on the one hand right
1:32:45like what spacex has been able to do for
1:32:47example phenomenal
1:32:49um if that brings down
1:32:53the price of spacex within that
1:32:55turnaround time scale for space
1:32:57exploration which i think it inevitably
1:32:59will um that's a huge you know that's a
1:33:03huge boost
1:33:04to the to the human condition the same
1:33:06time
1:33:07right if we're talking astronomy right
1:33:09there they're also
1:33:11it comes at a huge cost right and the
1:33:13starling satellites is a great example
1:33:15of that cost right at one point uh
1:33:18in fact i was just camping and the
1:33:21mojave was a
1:33:22with a friend of mine and they saw you
1:33:24know
1:33:25this uh the string of satellites just
1:33:27kind of like
1:33:28you know appear and then disappear uh
1:33:31into nowhere so that
1:33:33is beginning to interfere with you know
1:33:35earth-based observations so
1:33:37i think it's there's tremendous
1:33:39potential there
1:33:40it's also important to be responsible
1:33:42about how it's executed
1:33:44now with mars and the whole idea of you
1:33:48know exploring mars
1:33:50right i don't have like strong opinions
1:33:52on whether a manned mission
1:33:54is is required or not required
1:33:58um but i do think you know
1:34:02we need to focus the thing to keep in
1:34:04mind is that
1:34:05i i generally kind of
1:34:08uh i'm not signed on if it will to the
1:34:10idea that mars is some kind of a safe
1:34:12haven that we can
1:34:14uh you know escape to right
1:34:17mars sucks right like living on mars if
1:34:20you
1:34:21if you want to live on mars like you can
1:34:24have that experience
1:34:25by going to the mojave desert and
1:34:27camping and it's just like
1:34:30it's it's just not a great well it's
1:34:32interesting but there's something
1:34:33captivating about that kind of mission
1:34:35of
1:34:35us striving out into space and by making
1:34:39mars in some ways habitable
1:34:43for at least like months at a time
1:34:46i think would lead to engineering
1:34:47breakthroughs that would make life
1:34:49like in many ways much better on earth
1:34:52like it would we'll come up with
1:34:53ideas we totally don't expect yet both
1:34:56on the robotics side
1:34:57on the food engineering side on the
1:35:01you know maybe like we'll switch from
1:35:04what like there'll be huge breakthroughs
1:35:06in insect farming as
1:35:08as exciting as i find that idea to be
1:35:11that in you know our in the ways we
1:35:13consume protein maybe
1:35:15uh it'll revolutionize we do factory
1:35:17farming which is
1:35:18full of cruelty and you know and torture
1:35:21of animals will
1:35:22revolutionize that completely because of
1:35:24our like we don't
1:35:25we shouldn't need to go to mars to
1:35:27revolutionize life here on earth
1:35:29but at the same time i shouldn't need a
1:35:31deadline to get done
1:35:33but i do need it and then the same way i
1:35:35think we need
1:35:36mars there's something about the human
1:35:38spirit that loves that
1:35:40longing for i i agree with that thesis
1:35:42the going to the moon
1:35:44right and the that whole
1:35:47endeavor has you know
1:35:51has captivated the imagination of so
1:35:53many and it has uh
1:35:55it has led to incredible kind of
1:35:57incredible ideas really and and probably
1:35:59in non-linear ways
1:36:01right not like okay we went to the moon
1:36:03therefore
1:36:04some person here has thought of this and
1:36:06yes in in that similar sense
1:36:08i think you know space exploration is
1:36:11there's something there's some real
1:36:13magnetism about it
1:36:15and it's on a genetic level right like
1:36:17we have this
1:36:18need to keep exploring right when we're
1:36:21done
1:36:22uh with a certain frontier we move on to
1:36:25the next frontier all that i'm saying
1:36:27is that i'm not moving to mars to live
1:36:30there permanently
1:36:31uh ever you know and i think that you
1:36:33know i'm glad you paid
1:36:35you you noted the kind of degradation of
1:36:38the earth
1:36:39right i think that is a true kind of
1:36:42the leading order challenge of our great
1:36:44engineering that's
1:36:46a bunch of a bunch of engineering
1:36:47problems i'm most interested in this
1:36:49space because as i've read extensively
1:36:52it's apparently very difficult to have
1:36:54sex in space
1:36:55and so i just want that problem to be
1:36:57solved because i think
1:36:58once we solve the sex and space problem
1:37:00we'll revolutionize sex here on earth
1:37:03thereby increasing the fun on earth and
1:37:06um
1:37:06the consequences of that can only be
1:37:08good i mean you can
1:37:10you've got a clear plan right and and it
1:37:13sounds like uh yeah i'm submitting
1:37:14proposals to nasa as we said that's
1:37:16right
1:37:18i keep getting rejected i don't know why
1:37:20okay
1:37:21uh you need better diagrams better
1:37:24better pictures
1:37:25i should have thought of that you a
1:37:26while ago mentioned that
1:37:28you know there's certain aspects in the
1:37:30history of the solar system and earth
1:37:32that resulted that it could have
1:37:34resulted in an
1:37:35opaque atmosphere but it didn't
1:37:38we couldn't see the stars um
1:37:42and uh somebody mentioned to me a little
1:37:45bit ago
1:37:46it's almost like a philosophical
1:37:47question for you do you think
1:37:51humans like human society would develop
1:37:55as it did or at all if we couldn't see
1:37:58the stars
1:37:59it would be drastically different
1:38:02just dr if it ever did develop so i
1:38:05think some of the early developments
1:38:08right of like fire and you know fire
1:38:11you know first of all that atmosphere
1:38:13would be so hot because you know if you
1:38:15have an opaque
1:38:16atmosphere the temperature at the bottom
1:38:20is is huge um so we would
1:38:23be very different beings to start with
1:38:25we'd have it could be cloudy in certain
1:38:27kinds of ways that you could still get
1:38:29okay think about like uh like a
1:38:31greenhouse right a greenhouse
1:38:33is cloudy effectively uh but it's it's
1:38:36super hot
1:38:37um yeah it's hard to avoid having an
1:38:40atmosphere if you have an
1:38:41opaque atmosphere it's hard to right
1:38:44venus is a great example
1:38:45right venus is i don't remember exactly
1:38:48how many degrees
1:38:49and but it's hundreds in celsius right
1:38:52it's not a hundred it's hundreds
1:38:54uh even though it's only a little bit
1:38:56closer to the sun that temperature
1:38:58is entirely coming from the fact that
1:39:00the atmosphere is thick so it's just a
1:39:02sauna of sorts
1:39:03yeah yeah you go there you know you feel
1:39:06refreshed after you come back
1:39:07you know but if you stay there i mean so
1:39:10okay take that as an assumption
1:39:12this is a philosophical question not a
1:39:14biological one so you have a life that
1:39:16develops under these
1:39:17extremely hot conditions yeah so let's
1:39:19see so much of
1:39:21the early evolution of mankind
1:39:24uh was driven by exploration yeah right
1:39:28and the kind of interest and stars
1:39:32originated in part as a tool
1:39:35to guide that exploration right i mean
1:39:38that in itself i think would be a huge
1:39:42uh you know a huge differential in the
1:39:44way that we
1:39:45you know our our our evolution on this
1:39:48planet
1:39:48yes i mean stars is that's brilliant so
1:39:51even in that aspect but even in further
1:39:54aspects
1:39:55uh astronomy just shows up in basically
1:39:59every single development in the history
1:40:01of science up until the 20th century
1:40:04it shows up so i wonder without that if
1:40:06we had we would have
1:40:08if we would even get like calculus yeah
1:40:10look that's a great
1:40:12i mean that's a great point newton in
1:40:15part developed calculus
1:40:17because he was interested in
1:40:19understanding
1:40:20explaining kepler's laws right in
1:40:22general
1:40:23that whole mechanistic understanding of
1:40:26the night sky
1:40:27right replacing a religious
1:40:29understanding where you interpret
1:40:30you know this is you know this whatever
1:40:33fire god
1:40:34writing his you know uh little chariot
1:40:37across the sky
1:40:38as opposed to you know this is some
1:40:41mechanistic set of laws
1:40:42that transformed humanity and arguably
1:40:46put us
1:40:47on the on the course that we're on today
1:40:49right
1:40:50the entirety of the last 400 years and
1:40:53the development of
1:40:54kind of our technological world that we
1:40:57live in today
1:40:59was sparked by by that right
1:41:02abandoning an effectively you know a
1:41:05non-secular
1:41:06view of the natural world and and kind
1:41:09of thing okay
1:41:11this can be understood and if it can be
1:41:14understood it can be utilized we can
1:41:16create our own
1:41:17uh variants of this absolutely we would
1:41:20be a very very different species
1:41:22without astronomy this i think extends
1:41:26beyond just astronomy right there there
1:41:29are questions
1:41:30like why do we need to spend money on
1:41:33x right where x can be anything like
1:41:37paleontology like right uh the mating
1:41:40patterns of uh penguins yeah that's like
1:41:44essential that's right um i think
1:41:47you know there's a tremendous uh
1:41:50underappreciation for the usefulness
1:41:52of useless knowledge right i mean
1:41:56uh that's brilliant i didn't come up
1:41:58with this this was this is a little book
1:42:00by the guy who started the institute for
1:42:02advanced studies
1:42:04but um you know it's
1:42:07it's so true so much of the electronics
1:42:10that are on this table
1:42:11right work on maxwell's equations
1:42:13maxwell weren't
1:42:15wasn't sitting around in the 1800s
1:42:17saying you know i hope one day
1:42:19you know uh we'll make you know a couple
1:42:22mics so
1:42:23you know a couple uh you know a couple
1:42:26guys can
1:42:28have this conversation right that that
1:42:31wasn't at no
1:42:32at no point was that the motivation and
1:42:34yet
1:42:35you know it gave us the world that we
1:42:38have today and the answer is if you
1:42:40a purely pragmatic person if you don't
1:42:44care at all about kind of the human
1:42:45condition none of this
1:42:47the answer is uh you can tax it
1:42:50right like the useless things
1:42:54have been have created way more capital
1:42:58than useful things and the sad thing i
1:43:01mean
1:43:02first of all it's really important to
1:43:03think about and it's
1:43:05brilliant in the in the following
1:43:08context
1:43:09like neil degrasse tyson has this book
1:43:11about the role
1:43:12of military-based funding in the
1:43:15development of science
1:43:17and then so much of technological
1:43:20breakthroughs in the 20th century
1:43:23had to do with humans working on
1:43:26different military things
1:43:28and then the outcome of that had nothing
1:43:30to do with military it had some military
1:43:32application but
1:43:33their impact was much much bigger than
1:43:35the military the splitting of the atom
1:43:38is is a kind of a canonical example of
1:43:41this we all know the tragedy that
1:43:43you know arises from splitting of the
1:43:45atom and and yet you know
1:43:47so much i mean the atom itself
1:43:51does not care for what purpose it is
1:43:53being split
1:43:54so so i wonder if if we you take took
1:43:57the same amount of funding as we used
1:43:58for war
1:43:59and poured it into like totally
1:44:02seemingly
1:44:03useless things like the mating patterns
1:44:05of penguins
1:44:06we would get the internet anyway i i
1:44:08think so i think so
1:44:10and uh you know perhaps more of the
1:44:12internet
1:44:13would have uh would have penguins you
1:44:16know
1:44:17so we're both joking but in some sense
1:44:19like
1:44:20i wonder it's not the the penguins
1:44:22because penguins is more about
1:44:24sort of biology but all useless kind of
1:44:27tinkering and all kinds of
1:44:29uh in all kinds of avenues
1:44:32and also because military applications
1:44:35are often
1:44:36um burdened by the secrecy required
1:44:40so it's often like so much uh
1:44:43the openness is lacking and if we
1:44:46learned anything from the last few
1:44:47decades is that
1:44:48when there's openness and science that
1:44:51accelerates the development of science
1:44:53that's right that's true
1:44:55the openness of science truly
1:44:58you know it benefits everybody the
1:45:01notion that
1:45:02if you know i share my science with you
1:45:04then you're gonna catch up and like
1:45:06know the same thing that is a
1:45:09short-sighted viewpoint because if you
1:45:11catch up
1:45:12and you open you know
1:45:15you you discover something that puts me
1:45:17in a position to do
1:45:19the next step right it's just so i
1:45:22absolutely agree
1:45:23with um with all this i mean uh
1:45:27the kind of question of like military
1:45:29funding versus non-military funding is
1:45:31is obviously a complicated one but at
1:45:34the end of the day i think we have to
1:45:37get
1:45:37over the notion as a society
1:45:41that we are going to you know pay for
1:45:44this
1:45:45and then we will get that right that's
1:45:48true
1:45:48if you're buying like i don't know
1:45:51toilet paper or something right it's
1:45:53just not true in the intellectual
1:45:55pursuit that's not how it works
1:45:57and sometimes it'll fail right like
1:46:00sometimes like
1:46:01a huge fraction of what i do right i
1:46:04come up with an idea
1:46:05i think oh it's great and then i work it
1:46:06out it's totally not great right it
1:46:08fails immediately
1:46:10failure is not a sign that the initial
1:46:13pursuit
1:46:13was worthless right failure is just part
1:46:16of this kind of this whole exploration
1:46:17thing and
1:46:18we should fund more and more of this
1:46:20exploration the variety of the
1:46:21exploration
1:46:22i think it was linus pauling or somebody
1:46:25from you know that generation of
1:46:26scientists and
1:46:28you know a good way to have good ideas
1:46:31is to have a lot of ideas right so
1:46:34that's i think that's true um if you are
1:46:38conservative in your thinking if you
1:46:39worry about proposing something that's
1:46:42going to fail and oh what if you know
1:46:44like i there's no science police that's
1:46:48going to come and arrest you for
1:46:49proposing the wrong thing and you know
1:46:52it's also just like why would you why
1:46:55would you do science if you're
1:46:57afraid of you know taking that step it'd
1:47:01be so much better
1:47:02to propose things that are that are
1:47:05plausible that are interesting
1:47:06and then for a fraction of them to be
1:47:08wrong than to just kind of
1:47:10you know make incremental progress all
1:47:11your life right
1:47:13speaking of wild ideas let me ask you
1:47:16about
1:47:16the thing we mentioned previously which
1:47:18is this interstellar object a muamoa
1:47:22could it be space junk from a distant
1:47:25alien civilization
1:47:27you can't immediately discount that
1:47:30by saying absolutely it cannot
1:47:33anything can be a space junk i mean from
1:47:35that point of view can any of the kuiper
1:47:37belt objects we see
1:47:38okay you know be space beijing anything
1:47:41on the night sky
1:47:42can in principle be space junk and
1:47:44kuiper belt would catch interstellar
1:47:46objects potentially and like
1:47:48force them into an orbit if they're like
1:47:50small enough uh not the kuiper belt
1:47:52itself but you can imagine like jupiter
1:47:54family comets
1:47:55being captured uh you know so so you can
1:47:58actually capture things
1:48:00it's even easier to do this very early
1:48:03in the solar system
1:48:04like early in the solar system's life
1:48:05while it's still in a cluster of stars
1:48:08um it's unavoidable that you
1:48:11capture debris whether it be natural
1:48:14debris or
1:48:15unnatural debris or just debris of some
1:48:17kind from
1:48:18other stars that it's like a daycare
1:48:21center
1:48:22right like everybody passes their
1:48:23infections on to other kids yeah
1:48:26um you know or more and more there's
1:48:28been a lot of discussion
1:48:29about and there's been a lot of interest
1:48:31in this over like is it is it
1:48:33aliens or is it not but let's like if
1:48:35you just kind of look at the facts
1:48:37like what we know about it is it's kind
1:48:39of like a weird shape
1:48:41and it also accelerated yeah right like
1:48:44that's the two those are those are the
1:48:47two interesting
1:48:48uh things about it there are
1:48:52um there are puzzles about it and
1:48:56perhaps the most uh daring resolution
1:49:00to this puzzle is that it's not you know
1:49:03aliens or it's not like a rock it's
1:49:06actually a piece of hydrogen ice
1:49:08so this is a friend of mine you know
1:49:11daryl seligman greg laughlin came up
1:49:13with this uh
1:49:15idea where that in
1:49:18giant molecular clouds that are just
1:49:20clouds of hydrogen helium gas that
1:49:22live in live throughout the galaxy
1:49:26at their cores you can condense ice
1:49:29to become these hydrogen you know
1:49:32icebergs if you will and then
1:49:34uh that explains many of the aspects of
1:49:38uh in fact i think that explains all of
1:49:41the
1:49:42mystery how it becomes elongated because
1:49:46basically the hydrogen ice sublimates
1:49:48and kind of like a bar of soap
1:49:50that you know slowly kind of elongates
1:49:53as you
1:49:53uh as you strip away the the surface
1:49:57layers
1:49:58uh how it was able to accelerate because
1:50:01of a jet that is produced from
1:50:02you know the hydrogen coming off of it
1:50:04but you can't see it because it's
1:50:05hydrogen gas like all of this stuff
1:50:07uh kind of falls together nicely
1:50:12i'm i'm intrigued by that idea truly
1:50:14because
1:50:15it's like if that's true that's a new
1:50:18type of astrophysical
1:50:20object and it would be produced by
1:50:23what's the monster that produced
1:50:25initially that kind of object
1:50:27so this is giant molecular molecular
1:50:28clouds they're everywhere
1:50:30i mean they are the fact that they exist
1:50:33is not are they rogue clouds or are they
1:50:36part of like an
1:50:36oort cloud no no they're not so clouds
1:50:39yeah they're just floating about
1:50:40yeah so if you go like a lot of people
1:50:42imagine the galaxy
1:50:44as being a you know a bunch of stars
1:50:48right and they're just orbiting right
1:50:50but the truth is if you fly between
1:50:52stars you run into clouds uh they don't
1:50:55have any large
1:50:56object that creates orbits they're just
1:50:58floating about just floating
1:50:59but why are they floating together oh
1:51:01they just flowed together for time and
1:51:03not
1:51:03well so these are the these eventually
1:51:06become the nurseries of stars
1:51:08so as they as they cool they contract
1:51:11and uh you know then collapse into stars
1:51:14or into
1:51:15groups of stars but some of them they
1:51:17the starless
1:51:20molecular clouds according to the
1:51:23calculations that daryl and greg
1:51:25did can uh can create these like
1:51:28icicles of hydrogen ice i wonder why
1:51:31they would be flying so fast because
1:51:34they seem to be
1:51:34moving pretty fast
1:51:38that's just because of the acceleration
1:51:39due to uh due to the sun
1:51:41if you stop i mean it's like
1:51:44take something really far away let it go
1:51:46and the sun is here
1:51:48by the time it comes close to the sun
1:51:50right it's moving pretty fast
1:51:52so that's an attractive explanation i
1:51:55think
1:51:56not so much because uh it's cool but it
1:51:58makes a clear prediction
1:52:00right of when their rubin
1:52:03observatory comes online next year or so
1:52:06we will discover many many more of these
1:52:09objects
1:52:10right and they have um so i like i like
1:52:14theories that are falsifiable right not
1:52:17not just testable but falsifiable it's
1:52:19good to have a falsifiable theory where
1:52:21you can say that's not true
1:52:23uh aliens is one that's
1:52:26fundamentally difficult to say no that's
1:52:29not aliens
1:52:30the interesting thing to me if you look
1:52:32at one alien civilization
1:52:35and then we look at the things it
1:52:36produces in terms of if we were to try
1:52:38to detect
1:52:39the alien civilization the
1:52:43there's like uh say there's 10 billion
1:52:46aliens there would probably be
1:52:52trillions of dumb drone type things
1:52:56produced by the aliens and then be many
1:52:59many many
1:53:00more orders of magnitude of junk
1:53:04so like if you were to look for an alien
1:53:06civilization in my mind
1:53:07you would be looking for the junk that's
1:53:09the more efficient thing to look for
1:53:12so i'm not saying has any
1:53:15characteristics of space junk but
1:53:16it kind of opened my eyes like to the
1:53:19idea that
1:53:20we shouldn't necessarily be looking to
1:53:22the queen
1:53:23of the ant colony we should be looking
1:53:26at i don't know
1:53:27i don't know like the traces of alien
1:53:30life that
1:53:31doesn't look intelligent in any way may
1:53:33not even look like
1:53:34life it could be just garbage we should
1:53:36be looking for
1:53:37garbage just generically
1:53:41garbage that's producible by uh
1:53:44unnatural
1:53:45uh forces i mean for me at least that
1:53:48was kind of interesting because
1:53:49if you have a successful alien
1:53:51civilization
1:53:52that we will be producing many more
1:53:54orders and magnitude of junk and that'll
1:53:56be
1:53:56easier potentially to detect well so you
1:53:59have to produce the junk but you have to
1:54:00also lunch
1:54:01launch it so this is the this is where i
1:54:04mean
1:54:04let's let's imagine disposal yeah but
1:54:07let's imagine we are a successful
1:54:10civilization that
1:54:11you know has made it to space we clearly
1:54:13have right um
1:54:15and yes we're in the infancy of that
1:54:17pursuit but
1:54:18you know we've launched i don't know how
1:54:20many satellites
1:54:22um probably if you count
1:54:25gps satellites it must be at least
1:54:28thousands
1:54:28it's it's certainly thousands i don't
1:54:30know if it's over ten thousand yeah but
1:54:31it's done that
1:54:32but it's on that like a large order of
1:54:33magnitude how many of the things
1:54:36that we've launched will ever leave the
1:54:38solar system i think two
1:54:41two well maybe the voyager the voyager
1:54:43one voyager two i don't know if the
1:54:45pioneer
1:54:46so maybe three like oh there's also a
1:54:49tesla roadster out there
1:54:51uh that that one it will never leave the
1:54:53solar system it'll just
1:54:54i think that one will eventually collide
1:54:56with mars that can be
1:54:58spacex's first mars destination
1:55:01um but look so there's an energetic cost
1:55:05to interstellar travel uh which is
1:55:08really hard to overcome
1:55:09and when when we think about you know
1:55:11generically
1:55:12what do we look for in an alien
1:55:14civilization oftentimes we tend to
1:55:16imagine that the
1:55:17thing you look for is the thing that
1:55:19we're doing right now
1:55:21yeah right so i think that um you know
1:55:24if i if i look at the future right i
1:55:26mean for a while like
1:55:28okay if aliens are are out there they
1:55:30must be broadcasting and radio
1:55:32right that radio um
1:55:35you know the amount that we broadcast in
1:55:37radio has
1:55:38diminished tremendously in the last 50
1:55:41years
1:55:42but we're doing a lot more computation
1:55:46right what are the signs of computation
1:55:49like that's a good
1:55:50that's an interesting question to ask
1:55:51right
1:55:53where i don't know i think something on
1:55:55the order of a few percent
1:55:56of the entire electrical grid last year
1:56:00went
1:56:00to mining bitcoin right uh you know well
1:56:04yeah the there could be a lot of in the
1:56:07future different consequences of the
1:56:09computation which
1:56:10i mean by unbiased but it could be
1:56:12robotics it could be artificial
1:56:14intelligence so we may be looking for
1:56:18intelligent looking objects like that's
1:56:21what i meant by probes like things that
1:56:23move
1:56:23in kind of artificial ways but the
1:56:25emergence of ai is not an if
1:56:28right it's it's happening
1:56:31right in front of our eyes and the
1:56:33energetic costs associated
1:56:35with that are becoming you know a
1:56:38tangible problem
1:56:39so i think you know if you imagine kind
1:56:42of extrapolating that into the future
1:56:44right what are the you know
1:56:48what becomes the bottleneck right the
1:56:50bottleneck might be
1:56:53powering you know powering the broadly
1:56:56speaking not
1:56:56one air but powering that entire ai
1:56:59ecosystem
1:57:00right so i don't know i think
1:57:03you know space junk isn't is kind of
1:57:07uh it's an interesting idea but it's
1:57:09heavily influenced by like sci-fi of
1:57:111950s where
1:57:12by 2020 we're all like flying to the
1:57:15moon
1:57:16um and so we produce a lot of space junk
1:57:19i'm not
1:57:21sure if that's the pathway that alien
1:57:23civilizations take
1:57:25i've also never seen an alien
1:57:27civilization that's that's
1:57:28true but if your theory of chill
1:57:33turns out to be true and then we don't
1:57:35you know we don't necessarily
1:57:36explore we seize the exploration phase
1:57:39of uh
1:57:40like alien civilizations quickly sees
1:57:42the exploration phase of their
1:57:45um of their efforts then uh
1:57:48then perhaps they'll just be chilling in
1:57:50a particular space
1:57:52expanding slowly but then using up a lot
1:57:55of resources and then have to have a lot
1:57:56of garbage disposal that
1:57:58sends stuff out and the other you know
1:58:01the other idea was that it could be a
1:58:03relay
1:58:04that uh you almost have like these gps
1:58:08like markers these
1:58:09sent throughout which i think is kind of
1:58:11interesting it's uh similar to this
1:58:13probe idea
1:58:14of sending a large number of probes out
1:58:19to measure gravitational um
1:58:23to to to measure basically yeah the the
1:58:26gravitational field
1:58:27essentially i mean a lot of people at
1:58:29cal tech and mit are
1:58:31trying to measure gravitational fields
1:58:32and there's there's a lot of ideas of
1:58:35sending
1:58:36uh stuff out there that
1:58:40accurately measures those gravitational
1:58:41fields uh to
1:58:43have a greater understanding of the
1:58:45early universe
1:58:46but then you might realize that
1:58:48communication through gravitation
1:58:50through gravity is actually much more
1:58:52effective than than radio waves for
1:58:54example
1:58:55something like that and then you send
1:58:56out
1:58:58i mean okay if you're an alien
1:58:59civilization that's able to
1:59:02have gigantic masses like basically
1:59:06we're getting there as a as a
1:59:08civilization no we're not not even close
1:59:10well i mean yeah okay
1:59:14i i mean like be able to sort of uh play
1:59:16with black holes that kind of thing so
1:59:18we're talking about a whole nother diff
1:59:20order of magnitude and masses then it
1:59:23may be very effective to send signals
1:59:25via gravitational waves
1:59:26i actually my sense is that all of these
1:59:29things are
1:59:30genuinely difficult to predict you know
1:59:33and i don't mean like to to kind of shy
1:59:35away i just i really mean if you think
1:59:37if you take um imagination of what the
1:59:41future
1:59:42looked like from you know 500 years ago
1:59:46right it's just it is so hard to
1:59:48conceive
1:59:49of the impossible right so um
1:59:52[Music]
1:59:53it's it's almost like um you know it's
1:59:56almost limiting to try and imagine
1:59:58things that are an order of magnitude uh
2:00:01you know or two orders of magnitude
2:00:02ahead in terms of progress
2:00:04just because you know you mentioned cars
2:00:07before
2:00:08you know if you were to ask people what
2:00:10they wanted
2:00:11in 1870 is faster buggies
2:00:14right so um so i think the whole like
2:00:18kind of
2:00:19you know alien conversation inevitably
2:00:22gets gets limited by by our entire
2:00:26kind of collective um astrophysical lack
2:00:29of imagination
2:00:31so to push back a little bit i find that
2:00:35it's really interesting to talk about
2:00:38these wild ideas about the future
2:00:39whether it's aliens whether it's ai
2:00:41with brilliant people like yourself
2:00:44who are focused on very particular tools
2:00:47of science we have today
2:00:48to solve very particular like rigorous
2:00:50scientific questions
2:00:52and it's almost like putting on this
2:00:54wild dreamy hat like
2:00:55some percent of the time and say like
2:00:57what are like what would alien
2:00:59civilizations look like what would alien
2:01:01trash look like well what would our own
2:01:04civilization that sends out
2:01:06trillions of ai systems out there like
2:01:09hal 9000
2:01:10but 10 000 out there what would that
2:01:12look like and you're right
2:01:14any one prediction is probably going to
2:01:16be horrendously wrong
2:01:18but there's something about creating
2:01:19these kind of wild predictions
2:01:21that kind of opens up there's a huge
2:01:24magnetism to it
2:01:26right and some of some of it um
2:01:29you know i mean some of the jules verne
2:01:33novels did a phenomenal job predicting
2:01:36the future
2:01:36right uh that that actually was a great
2:01:39example of what you're talking about
2:01:40like allowing your imagination to
2:01:43run free i mean i just hope
2:01:46i just hope there there's dragons that's
2:01:49like
2:01:50i love dragons yeah dragons are the best
2:01:54but see the cool thing about science
2:01:56fiction and these kinds of conversations
2:01:58it doesn't just predict the future i
2:02:00think some of these things
2:02:02will create the future pla planting the
2:02:06idea
2:02:07this will help the humans are amazing
2:02:09like fake it till you make it
2:02:12humans are really good at uh taking an
2:02:15idea that seems impossible at the time
2:02:18and for one any one individual human
2:02:20that idea
2:02:21is like a it's like planting a seed yes
2:02:24that eventually materializes itself
2:02:26it's weird it's weird science fiction
2:02:28can
2:02:29create science drive some of it it
2:02:31drives the science i agree with you
2:02:33and uh and i think in this regard
2:02:37you know i i'm like a sucker for for
2:02:40sci-fi
2:02:41um it's it's all i listen to like now
2:02:45when i when i run
2:02:46and um and some of it is completely
2:02:49implausible
2:02:49right and it's like i don't care it's
2:02:52it's so
2:02:53it's uh it's both entertaining
2:02:57and uh you know it's just like it's
2:03:00imagination
2:03:01you know about the black clouds book i
2:03:03think this by fred hoyle
2:03:05this is like this has great connections
2:03:07with sort of a lot of the advancements
2:03:09that are happening in nlp
2:03:11um right now right with
2:03:14you know transformer models and so on
2:03:15but uh you know it's this black cloud
2:03:17shows up
2:03:18in in the solar system and then you know
2:03:21people try to
2:03:22send radio and then it learns to talk
2:03:24back at you
2:03:25wow you know so anyway we don't have to
2:03:27talk at all about it but it's just
2:03:29it's something worth checking out with
2:03:31that on the alien front with the black
2:03:33claw to me and
2:03:34exactly and the llp front and also just
2:03:37explainability of ai
2:03:38it's fascinating just a very question
2:03:41stephen wolfram looked at this with the
2:03:42movie arrival
2:03:44it's like what would be the common
2:03:45language that we would discover
2:03:47the the reason that's really interesting
2:03:48to me is we have aliens
2:03:50here on earth japanese japanese is the
2:03:53obvious answer
2:03:54japanese yeah that would be the common
2:03:57maybe it would be music actually
2:03:59that's more likely it wouldn't be a
2:04:01language it would be art
2:04:02that they would communicate but you know
2:04:04i i do believe that we have
2:04:07i'm with stephen wolfram on this a
2:04:08little bit that to me
2:04:11computation like programs we write that
2:04:14you know that they're kind of
2:04:16intelligent creatures
2:04:17and i feel like we haven't found the
2:04:19common language to talk with them
2:04:21like our little creations that are
2:04:24artificial
2:04:26are not born with the whatever that
2:04:28innate thing that
2:04:29produces language with us and like
2:04:32coming up with mechanisms for
2:04:34communicating with them
2:04:35uh is um is an effort that feels
2:04:40like it will produce some incredible
2:04:41discoveries you can even think of
2:04:43if you think that math is discovered
2:04:46mathematics in itself
2:04:47is a kind of um oh yeah it's an innate
2:04:50construction
2:04:51of of the world we live in um i think we
2:04:54are
2:04:56you know a part of the way there because
2:05:00pre-1950 right
2:05:03computers who were human beings that
2:05:06would carry out arithmetic
2:05:08right and i think it was ulam um
2:05:11who worked in los alamos at the at the
2:05:15time like towards the end
2:05:16of the second world war wrote something
2:05:19about
2:05:20how you know in the future right
2:05:22computers will not
2:05:23be just arithmetic tool but will be
2:05:27truly an interactive
2:05:29you know thing with which you could
2:05:32do experiments right at the time the
2:05:34notion of doing an experiment
2:05:36not like in the lab with some beakers
2:05:39but uh
2:05:40an experiment on a computer designing an
2:05:42experiment
2:05:43a numerical experiment was
2:05:47a new one that's like you know 70
2:05:50of what i do is i design com you know i
2:05:53write
2:05:53code terrible code to be uh clear like
2:05:57but you know i write code that creates
2:06:00an experiment which is a which is a
2:06:03simulation
2:06:04so in that sense i think we're beginning
2:06:06to interact with the computer in in a
2:06:08way that you're
2:06:09saying not as just a you know fancy
2:06:12calculator not as just a
2:06:14you know call-in request type of
2:06:18thing but but you know something that
2:06:19can generate uh
2:06:21generate insights that are otherwise
2:06:24completely unattainable right they're
2:06:26unattainable by doing
2:06:27analytical mathematics yeah and there's
2:06:30uh
2:06:30like with the alpha fold two we're now
2:06:33trying
2:06:33we're now starting to crack open biology
2:06:36so being able to
2:06:37simulate at first trivial biological
2:06:39systems and hopefully down the line
2:06:41complex biological systems
2:06:42right my hope is to be able to simulate
2:06:45psychology
2:06:46psychological like sociological systems
2:06:48like humans
2:06:49i've you know um a large part of my work
2:06:52at
2:06:53mit was on autonomous vehicles
2:06:56and the fascinating thing to me was
2:06:57about pedestrians
2:07:00human pedestrians interacting with
2:07:01autonomous vehicles and simulating those
2:07:03systems without murdering humans
2:07:05would be very useful but nevertheless is
2:07:07exceptionally difficult
2:07:08yeah i would say so when is my mustang
2:07:10going to drive itself
2:07:11right i'm not even joking it looks like
2:07:15yeah yeah i it turns out it's much
2:07:18difficult
2:07:19it's much more difficult than we
2:07:20imagined yeah and and i suppose that's
2:07:22the kind of
2:07:24the progress of science is
2:07:28just like you know going to mars
2:07:31it's probably going to turn out to be
2:07:33way more difficult to imagine
2:07:35sending out probes to investigate planet
2:07:37nine at the edge of our solar system
2:07:39might turn out to be way more difficult
2:07:40than we imagined but we do it anyway
2:07:42yeah and we figure it out in the end
2:07:44it's actually more of a great i mean
2:07:45going
2:07:46sending humans to mars is way more
2:07:49complicated than huma sending humans to
2:07:50the moon
2:07:51you'd think just like naively yeah both
2:07:54are in space
2:07:55who cares like if you go there why don't
2:07:57you go there
2:07:58um you know just
2:08:01life support is uh is an extremely
2:08:04expensive thing yeah there's a bunch of
2:08:06extra challenges but i disagree with you
2:08:07i would be one of the early people to go
2:08:09i used to think not
2:08:10yeah i used to think i'd be one of the
2:08:12first maybe million to go once you have
2:08:14a little bit of a society
2:08:15i think i'm i'm upgrading myself to the
2:08:17first like ten thousand yeah that's
2:08:19right
2:08:19from the front of the cabin not
2:08:22completely front
2:08:23but like it would be interesting to die
2:08:25i'm okay
2:08:26with uh death sucks
2:08:29but i kind of like the idea of dying on
2:08:33mars
2:08:34of all the places to die i gotta say in
2:08:36this regard like
2:08:38i don't wanna die on mars i don't no no
2:08:40i would much rather
2:08:42die on earth uh i mean death
2:08:46is is fundamentally boring right like
2:08:48death is a very boring experience
2:08:50but i mean i've never died before so i
2:08:52don't know from first-hand experience as
2:08:54far as you know yeah
2:08:55it could be a reincarnation all those
2:08:56kinds of things so you mean uh
2:08:59where would you die uh if you had to
2:09:02choose oh man
2:09:05um okay so and you know i would
2:09:08definitely
2:09:08you know there's a question of who i'd
2:09:10want to die with
2:09:12you know i'd prefer not to die alone uh
2:09:15but like
2:09:15you know surrounded by family would be
2:09:18uh would be preferable where i think
2:09:22northern new mexico and i'm not even
2:09:24joking like this is not
2:09:26a random place it's just like would that
2:09:28be your favorite place on earth
2:09:31not necessarily like favorite place on
2:09:33earth to
2:09:35to to reside you know indefinitely but
2:09:38it is
2:09:39it is one of the most beautiful places
2:09:40i've i've ever been to
2:09:42uh so you know there's something i don't
2:09:46know there's something attractive about
2:09:48about going you know returning to nature
2:09:50in a beautiful
2:09:52uh place let me ask you about another
2:09:56aspect of your life
2:09:57that is full of beauty music okay you're
2:10:00a musician
2:10:02uh the absurd question i have to ask
2:10:05what is the greatest song of all time oh
2:10:07objectively speaking
2:10:09the greatest song of all time i suppose
2:10:11that could change
2:10:12moment to moment day to day but if you
2:10:14were forced to answer for this
2:10:16particular moment in your life that's
2:10:18something that pops to mind
2:10:20this could be both philosophically this
2:10:22could be technically as a musician like
2:10:23what you enjoy
2:10:24maybe lyrics like for me it's lyrics is
2:10:27very important so absolutely i would
2:10:29probably be my choice would be lyrics
2:10:32based
2:10:32i don't want to answer in terms of just
2:10:34technical uh you know
2:10:36technical prowess i think technical
2:10:38prowess is
2:10:40impressive right it's just like it's
2:10:42impressive what can be done
2:10:44i wouldn't place that into the category
2:10:46of the greatest music ever written
2:10:49some the classical music uh
2:10:52that's that's written is undeniably
2:10:54beautiful but i don't want to
2:10:56consider that category of music
2:10:59either uh just because you know so if i
2:11:02if i have to
2:11:03limit uh the scope of this
2:11:06philosophical discussion uh to
2:11:10you know the kind of music that i listen
2:11:11to you know probably what's my age again
2:11:14by blink 182. it's just you know it's a
2:11:17solid one
2:11:18it's got you know
2:11:21said nobody ever that's a good song
2:11:24i don't know if you're joking no i i i
2:11:27am joking it's a good one but it's it
2:11:28was
2:11:29yeah i mean
2:11:35what's my age you get yeah yeah no i
2:11:38mean
2:11:38it would probably you know
2:11:41songwriting-wise i think the beatles
2:11:43came
2:11:44pretty close to the influential to you i
2:11:46was like the beatles
2:11:47yeah love the beatles i love the beatles
2:11:50uh let it be yesterday yeah
2:11:54like straw i think strawberry feels
2:11:55forever is is one
2:11:57you know what what one of my favorite
2:11:58beetle songs is it's uh
2:12:01you know in my life right that's not
2:12:03it's it's hard to imagine
2:12:05how whatever 24 year old
2:12:08wrote that it is one of the most uh
2:12:11introspective
2:12:12pieces of music ever you know i'm a huge
2:12:15pink floyd fan
2:12:17and so i think you know if you were to
2:12:20you can sort of look at the entire dark
2:12:22side of the moon album
2:12:23and as you know getting pretty close up
2:12:27there to the pinnacle of what you know
2:12:29can be
2:12:29created so you know time's a great song
2:12:33yeah it's a great song just the entirety
2:12:35of
2:12:36just the instruments the lyrics the the
2:12:39the feeling
2:12:40created by a song like pink floyd
2:12:44can create feelings the entire
2:12:47experience i mean you have that with the
2:12:48wall
2:12:49of just uh transporting you into another
2:12:52place
2:12:53songs don't not many songs could do that
2:12:56as as
2:12:57well not many artists can do that as
2:12:59well as pink floyd did
2:13:00there are a lot of bands that you can
2:13:02kind of say oh yeah
2:13:04like if you take blink 182 right if you
2:13:07have
2:13:07no idea like if you are listening to
2:13:10sort of that type of pop punk for the
2:13:13first time
2:13:14it's difficult to differentiate between
2:13:15blink 182 and like some 41
2:13:18and the thousand of other like
2:13:21lesser known bands that all sounded the
2:13:23whole they all had that sparkling
2:13:25production
2:13:26uh feel they all kind of sounded the
2:13:28same
2:13:30right when with pink floyd
2:13:33it's hard to find another band that
2:13:35you're like well is this one
2:13:37pink floor like you know yeah when
2:13:40you're listening to that
2:13:41what you're listening to that the
2:13:43uniqueness that that's fascinating
2:13:45you know in the calculation of the
2:13:47greatest
2:13:48song in the greatest band of all time
2:13:51you could probably
2:13:52you probably actually quantify this like
2:13:54scientifically is like
2:13:56how unique uh if you play different
2:13:59songs how well are people
2:14:00able to recognize whether it's this band
2:14:02or not and that you know that's
2:14:05probably a huge component to greatness
2:14:07like if the world would miss it if it
2:14:09was gone
2:14:10yes yes so but there's also the human
2:14:14story things like i would say output
2:14:16johnny cash's cover of hurt as one of
2:14:19the greatest songs of all time
2:14:21and that has less to do with the song
2:14:24but your interaction with the
2:14:26interaction with it but also the human
2:14:27the full story of the human
2:14:29so like it's not just if i just heard
2:14:31the song it'd be like okay
2:14:33that but if it it's the full story of it
2:14:36also the video component for that
2:14:38particular song
2:14:40so like that you can't discount the full
2:14:42experience of it
2:14:43absolutely you know i have no confusion
2:14:45about not
2:14:47about being you know anywhere uh
2:14:51you know in in that league but i just
2:14:54like i
2:14:54sometimes think about you know music
2:14:56that is being
2:14:58uh produced today feels
2:15:02oftentimes feels like like kind of
2:15:04clothes like clothes that you buy
2:15:06at like h m and you wear three times
2:15:10before they rip and you throw away so
2:15:12like so much of it is
2:15:15it's not bad it's just kind of
2:15:16forgettable right
2:15:18like the fact that we're talking about
2:15:20pink floyd
2:15:21in 2021 is in itself an interesting
2:15:25uh question why are we talking about
2:15:27pink floyd and it's there's something
2:15:28unforgettable about them and
2:15:30unforgettable about the the art that
2:15:33they created
2:15:34that could be the markets that like so
2:15:36spotify has created this kind of
2:15:37market where the the
2:15:41incentives for creating music that last
2:15:43is much lower because there's so much
2:15:45more music right you just want something
2:15:47that shines bright for a short amount of
2:15:49time
2:15:50makes a lot of money and moves on and i
2:15:52mean the same thing you see with the
2:15:53news and all those kinds of things we're
2:15:54just living in a
2:15:56shorter and shorter shorter like uh time
2:15:59scale in terms of our attention spans
2:16:01and that um nevertheless when we look at
2:16:05the long arc of history of music perhaps
2:16:06there will be some songs from today
2:16:09that will last as much as pink floyd
2:16:11we're just unable to see it
2:16:13yeah just the collected works of
2:16:14nickelback
2:16:16exactly you know you never know you
2:16:18never know justin bieber
2:16:19it could have yeah he could be a
2:16:21contender i've recently started
2:16:22listening to justin bieber just
2:16:23understand what people are talking about
2:16:24and
2:16:25you know i'll just keep my comments to
2:16:26myself on that one it's too good to
2:16:28explain
2:16:29in the words we're not
2:16:32the greatness that is the biebs uh you
2:16:35as a musician
2:16:37so you uh you write your own music you
2:16:40uh play guitar
2:16:41you sing um maybe can you
2:16:44give an overview of the role music is
2:16:47played in your life you're
2:16:49one of the you're a world-class
2:16:51scientist
2:16:52and so it's kind of fascinating to see
2:16:55somebody
2:16:58in your position who's also a great
2:17:00musician and
2:17:01and and uh still loves playing music
2:17:04yeah well i wouldn't call myself a great
2:17:06musician
2:17:06like you know one of the best of all
2:17:08time yeah
2:17:11that's right like we were saying offline
2:17:13confidence is like the most essential
2:17:15thing about that's right
2:17:16exactly it's the confidence and kind of
2:17:18like
2:17:19moodiness right yeah um yeah look i mean
2:17:22music plays an absolutely
2:17:26essential role in in everything i do
2:17:29because
2:17:30i lose if i stop playing for
2:17:33one reason or another say i'm traveling
2:17:36i notably
2:17:36lose creativity in every other aspect of
2:17:39my life
2:17:40right there's something i don't
2:17:44view you know playing music as a
2:17:47separate endeavor from doing science or
2:17:49doing doing whatever it's all
2:17:51it's all part of that same creative
2:17:53thing
2:17:54which is distinct from i don't know
2:17:58uh pressing a button or like you know so
2:18:02it's not a break from science it's
2:18:04a part of your science it's absolutely a
2:18:06it's a part of
2:18:07it's it's i would say you know it's a
2:18:10thing that enables
2:18:12the science right the science would you
2:18:14know
2:18:15suck even more than it does already uh
2:18:18without the music
2:18:19and that means like the creating of the
2:18:20the writing of the music or is it just
2:18:22even playing other people's stuff is it
2:18:24is it all of it yeah it's it's
2:18:26definitely both
2:18:28um yeah and also just you know
2:18:31i love i love to play guitar i love to
2:18:35sing you know
2:18:36my wife tolerates my uh
2:18:40my screeching singing you know and uh
2:18:42even kind of likes it
2:18:44so yeah so people should check out your
2:18:46stuff you have a great voice so i i love
2:18:48your stuff
2:18:49um is there something you're you're
2:18:51super busy
2:18:53is there something you could say about
2:18:55practicing
2:18:57uh for musicians for guitar for you're
2:18:59also in a band
2:19:00so like that whole how you can manage
2:19:03that is there some tricks or
2:19:04some hacks to um being a lifelong
2:19:08musician
2:19:08while being like super busy so i would
2:19:11say
2:19:12you know the way that i optimize
2:19:15um my life is i try to i try to do
2:19:19you know the thing that i'm passionate
2:19:20about in a moment
2:19:22um and put that at the top of the
2:19:24priority list there are moments when
2:19:27you know you just you feel inspired to
2:19:29play music and if you're in the middle
2:19:31of something if you can avoid
2:19:32if that can be put on hold just do it
2:19:35right there are times when you
2:19:36get inspired about something scientific
2:19:39um
2:19:40you know i do my best to drop
2:19:43everything go into that you know mode of
2:19:46that isolated mode
2:19:48and and execute upon that so
2:19:51it's a chaotic you know i think i have a
2:19:54pretty chaotic lifestyle
2:19:55where i'm always doing kind of multiple
2:19:58things and jumping between uh
2:20:02between what i'm doing but at the end of
2:20:04the day
2:20:05it's it's not like um
2:20:08you know those those moments of
2:20:10inspiration
2:20:12are actually kind of rare right like
2:20:14most of the time
2:20:16all of us are just doing kind of uh
2:20:19doing the stuff that get that needs to
2:20:21get done if you
2:20:24do the disservice to yourself of saying
2:20:26oh i'm inspired to
2:20:28you know do this calculation figure it
2:20:30figure this out
2:20:31but i've got to answer email or just
2:20:33like do something
2:20:34something silly um you know that is a
2:20:38um that is nothing more than the service
2:20:40and also
2:20:41like i have some social media presence
2:20:44but i i mostly stay off of you know
2:20:48social media
2:20:50to you know just frankly because like i
2:20:53don't kind of
2:20:54i don't enjoy the mental cycles that it
2:20:56uh yeah it robs you of that
2:20:59the yeah yeah those those precious
2:21:01moments
2:21:02that could be filled with inspiration in
2:21:05your in your other pursuits
2:21:07um but there's something to maybe you
2:21:10and i are different this like i i try to
2:21:12play at least 10 minutes of guitar every
2:21:14day
2:21:16like almost on the technical side like
2:21:20keeping that bass uh of
2:21:24of basic competence going and
2:21:27i mean the same way like writers will
2:21:29get in front of a paper no matter what
2:21:31that kind of thing it just feels like
2:21:34that
2:21:35for my life has been essential to to to
2:21:38the daily ritual of it otherwise days
2:21:41turn into weeks weeks or into months and
2:21:43you haven't played guitar for
2:21:44months no no i i i understand for me
2:21:48i think it's it's been like if we have a
2:21:51gig coming up
2:21:52we'll definitely yeah that's right no
2:21:55like we
2:21:55we will uh we will sharpen up uh
2:21:59definitely you know especially co coming
2:22:02up to again it's like
2:22:03you know we're not trying to make money
2:22:06with this this is like just
2:22:07for the uh for that satisfaction of
2:22:11doing something doing something well
2:22:13right um but overall
2:22:17i would say most i play guitar most days
2:22:22most days and you know when i put kids
2:22:25to sleep
2:22:25i i play guitar you know with them and
2:22:28we like
2:22:29just make up random songs about you know
2:22:33about her a cat or something you know
2:22:35like we just
2:22:36do kind of random stuff but you know
2:22:39music is always involved in that process
2:22:41yeah keeping it fun you have russian
2:22:43roots i sure do
2:22:45were you born in russia i was yeah when
2:22:47did you come here
2:22:49so i came to the us in
2:22:53very the very end of 99 but um
2:22:56so i was like almost 14 years old
2:22:59but along the way we spent six years in
2:23:02japan so like we moved
2:23:04from russia to japan in 94
2:23:07and then to the us in 99 so like
2:23:10elementary school
2:23:12all interesting school in japan so
2:23:14elementary school in japan
2:23:16yeah so that's interesting that do you
2:23:19still speak russian
2:23:20sure okay
2:23:23okay maybe i'll uh let me ask you in
2:23:26russian
2:23:30um
2:23:37[Music]
2:23:58is
2:24:26is
2:24:28[Laughter]
2:24:29so for people who don't speak russian
2:24:31constantine was uh
2:24:32talking about basically his first in
2:24:361992 interaction with capitalism
2:24:39which is pepsi and at first he
2:24:41discovered pepsi and then he discovered
2:24:43coke and he was confused how such
2:24:45uh how such theft could occur
2:24:48like an intellectual property theft and
2:24:50remember pepsi
2:24:52arrived to the soviet union first and
2:24:55there's some
2:24:56there's some complicated story which i
2:24:58don't uh
2:24:59quite understand the details of for a
2:25:01while pepsi
2:25:02like commanded submarines or something
2:25:06yeah pepsi had like a fleet of soviet
2:25:08submarines that
2:25:09did they were sponsoring tanks and
2:25:12this fascinating yeah and i and i
2:25:14remember there's certain things that
2:25:15trickled in like mcdonald's i remember
2:25:17that was a big deal
2:25:18oh yeah certainly for the west
2:25:20absolutely so i mean we went to
2:25:22mcdonald's
2:25:23and we stood on i mean this is this is
2:25:26absurd
2:25:27right from kind of looking at it from
2:25:29today's
2:25:31perspective but we stood in line for
2:25:33like six hours to get into this
2:25:34mcdonald's
2:25:35and i remember inside i was just like
2:25:39a billion people and i'm just taking a
2:25:42bite
2:25:42out of that big mac like wow
2:25:46what was it an incredible experience for
2:25:48you so like
2:25:50what is this taste of the west like uh
2:25:52did you enjoy it
2:25:53i enjoyed the fact that i mean this is
2:25:57like
2:25:57i was getting into the weeds but i
2:25:59really enjoyed
2:26:00the fact that the top of the bun had
2:26:02those seeds you know like
2:26:04and i remember how on the commercials
2:26:06like the
2:26:07big mac would kind of bounce i was like
2:26:09the seeds how did they inject the seeds
2:26:11into the bread like
2:26:14amazing right so i think it was uh
2:26:17artistry yeah you enjoyed the artistry
2:26:20of the culinary
2:26:21exactly it was the you know it was the
2:26:23food art that kind of that is the big
2:26:25mac
2:26:25actually i still don't know the answer
2:26:27to that how do they get the sesame seeds
2:26:28on the better to not know the answer
2:26:31you just wander at the mystery of it all
2:26:33yeah i remember it being exceptionally
2:26:34delicious but i
2:26:35i'm with you i don't know you didn't
2:26:39mention how transformative pepsi was but
2:26:41to me basically sugar-based stuff
2:26:44like like pepsi was uh or a coke i don't
2:26:47remember which one we partook in but
2:26:49that was an incredible experience yeah
2:26:51yeah
2:26:51yeah yeah no absolutely and uh
2:26:54you know i think it's um
2:26:58you know it was an important and and
2:27:00formative uh formative period
2:27:04i sometimes i guess rely on that a
2:27:06little bit
2:27:07uh you know in my daily life because uh
2:27:10i remember like the early 90s were real
2:27:14rough you know like my
2:27:16parents were kind of on the on the
2:27:19bottom
2:27:19of the spectrum in terms of uh
2:27:22you know in terms of financial
2:27:25well-being so
2:27:27um kind of like just when i
2:27:31run into trouble not like you know
2:27:34money trouble just any kind of trouble
2:27:36these days it just kind of
2:27:38is not uh particularly meaningful
2:27:41when you compare it to that that
2:27:43turbulent time of the
2:27:44early 90s and the other thing is i think
2:27:47there's there's like an advantage
2:27:49to to being you know an immigrant which
2:27:52is that
2:27:53you get you go through the mental
2:27:55exercise
2:27:56of changing your environment completely
2:27:59early in your life right you go
2:28:02it's by no means you know pleasant in
2:28:04the moment right but like going
2:28:07into japanese elementary school right
2:28:08like i didn't go to a
2:28:11some like private you know
2:28:14thing i just went to a regular like
2:28:16japanese public elementary school and i
2:28:18was the
2:28:19non-japanese person in my class
2:28:22so just like the learning japanese and
2:28:24just kind of
2:28:26so that's a super humbling experience in
2:28:28many ways was when you like made fun of
2:28:30all that kind of stuff oh
2:28:31yeah being the outsider oh absolutely
2:28:34but
2:28:34you know you kind of do you kind of do
2:28:37that
2:28:37and then you kind of then you just
2:28:41kind of are okay with with stuff you
2:28:43know what i mean and so
2:28:44like doing that again in middle school
2:28:46in the us
2:28:47it was arguably easy because i was like
2:28:51yeah well i've already done this before
2:28:53so
2:28:54i think it kind of prepares you mentally
2:28:56a little bit for
2:28:57for switching up for whatever you know
2:28:59changes that will come up for the rest
2:29:01of
2:29:01your life so i um i wouldn't trade
2:29:05that that experience really for anything
2:29:08it's a huge aspect of who i am and i'm
2:29:11sure
2:29:12you can relate to a lot of this yes is
2:29:15there advice
2:29:16from your life that you can give to
2:29:18young people today
2:29:20high school college you know about their
2:29:23career
2:29:24or maybe about life in general i'm not
2:29:27like
2:29:27a career coach but i like that's right
2:29:30like i'm definitely not a life coach i
2:29:32don't have it all figured out
2:29:33but i think there's a um
2:29:36there's a perpetual cycle of of
2:29:40um you know thinking that
2:29:43there is a um there's kind of like a
2:29:45template for success
2:29:48right maybe there is but i in my
2:29:51experience i haven't seen it right um
2:29:56you know i would say people in high
2:29:58school
2:29:59right so much of their focus
2:30:02is on getting straight a's filling their
2:30:05cv
2:30:06with this and this and this so that it
2:30:08looks impressive
2:30:09right um that that is
2:30:13not i think a good way to optimize your
2:30:16life
2:30:16right do the thing that fills your life
2:30:19with passion
2:30:20do the thing that fills your life with
2:30:22with interest
2:30:24and you know do that perpetually right
2:30:28a straight a student you know
2:30:31is really impressive but also you know
2:30:34somewhat boring right so so i i think
2:30:38you know injection of
2:30:39more of that kind of um
2:30:42interest into into the lives of young
2:30:44people would go a long way
2:30:46in in just both upping their level of
2:30:49happiness
2:30:50and then just kind of ensuring that
2:30:53looking forward they are not suffering
2:30:56from a
2:30:57can you know perpetual condition of oh i
2:30:59have to satisfy these like you know
2:31:01check boxes
2:31:02to to do well right because you can lose
2:31:05yourself in that whole process for the
2:31:06rest of your life
2:31:07but it's nice if it's possible like max
2:31:10tegmark was exceptionally good at this
2:31:12at mit figure out how you can spend a
2:31:14small
2:31:15part of your percent of your efforts
2:31:18that such that your cv looks really
2:31:20impressive
2:31:22yeah absolutely there's no like without
2:31:25a doubt
2:31:26like that's that's a baseline that you
2:31:28need to have
2:31:29um and then so like spend most of your
2:31:33time doing like amazing things you're
2:31:34passionate about
2:31:35but such that it uh uh kind of like
2:31:38planet nine produces
2:31:40objects that uh that feed your cv
2:31:43uh like slowly over time so getting good
2:31:45grades in high school maybe doing
2:31:47extracurricular activities
2:31:48or or in terms of like you know for
2:31:51programmers that's producing code that
2:31:53you can show up on github
2:31:54like leaving traces like um
2:31:58throughout your efforts such that your
2:32:00cv looks impressive to the rest of the
2:32:02world
2:32:02in fact i mean this is somewhat along
2:32:05the lines of what i'm talking about
2:32:07we see like getting like good grades is
2:32:10important but
2:32:10grades are not a tangible like product
2:32:14like you cannot out you know show your
2:32:17a and and have your a live a separate
2:32:19life from you
2:32:21code very much does right um music
2:32:24very much takes on you know provided
2:32:27somebody else listens to it right
2:32:29right provide like takes on a life of
2:32:32its own
2:32:32that's kind of what i mean right doing
2:32:36doing stuff that uh that can then
2:32:40get separated from from you is is
2:32:43exceptionally attractive right it's like
2:32:45a it's like a fun
2:32:47and uh and it's also very impressive to
2:32:49others i think we're moving to a world
2:32:51where grades mean less and less
2:32:53like certifications mean less and less
2:32:55if you look at
2:32:56especially again in the computing fields
2:32:58getting a degree
2:32:59finishing your um currently just getting
2:33:03finishing your degree whether it's
2:33:04bachelor's or master's a phd
2:33:07is less important than the things you've
2:33:08actually put out into the world
2:33:10right right and that's a fascinating
2:33:12kind of that's a that's great that
2:33:13in that sense the meritocracy is in its
2:33:17richest most beautiful form is is
2:33:19starting to win out
2:33:20yeah it's weird because like you know my
2:33:23understanding
2:33:24and i'm not like i don't know the
2:33:26history of science well enough to
2:33:28to speak very confidently about this but
2:33:30you know the
2:33:32advisor of my advisor of my advisor
2:33:36from undergrad uh like didn't have a phd
2:33:39right so i think it was a more common
2:33:41thing back in the day
2:33:43even in uh the academic
2:33:46sector to you know
2:33:50not have you know faraday like faraday
2:33:53didn't know algebra
2:33:54when drew diagrams about you know
2:33:57magnetic fields like
2:33:58his faraday's law was derived entirely
2:34:02from intuition
2:34:03so uh it is interesting to to how
2:34:07the world of academia has evolved into a
2:34:10you got to do this and then get phd then
2:34:13you have to post doc once and twice
2:34:15and maybe thrice and then like you you
2:34:18move on so
2:34:19you know it does i do wonder you know if
2:34:21we're
2:34:23you know if there's a better i think
2:34:25we're heading there
2:34:26but it's a fascinating historical
2:34:28perspective like that we might have just
2:34:30tried this whole thing out uh for a
2:34:32while where we put a lot more emphasis
2:34:34on grades and certificates and
2:34:35um degrees and all those kinds of things
2:34:38i think the difference
2:34:39historically is like we can actually
2:34:42using the internet show off the
2:34:46show off ourselves and our creations
2:34:48better and better and more effectively
2:34:50whether that's code or producing videos
2:34:52or all those kinds of things that's
2:34:54right
2:34:54you can become a certified drone pilot
2:34:59that's true of all the of all the things
2:35:01you want to pick yeah for sure
2:35:03or you could just fly make youtube
2:35:04videos against hundreds of thousands of
2:35:06views with your drone and
2:35:07never getting a certificate um that's
2:35:10probably illegal don't do it
2:35:11what do you think is uh the meaning of
2:35:13this whole thing so
2:35:14you look at planets they they seem to
2:35:18orbit stuff
2:35:19um without without asking the why
2:35:22question and
2:35:23for some reason life emerged on earth
2:35:25such that it led to big brains that
2:35:27can ask the big why question do you
2:35:30think there's an answer to it
2:35:33um i'm not sure what the question is
2:35:36like what meaning of life the meaning of
2:35:38life um
2:35:40it's 42. it's 42. yeah but
2:35:43you know aside from that it's um you
2:35:46know
2:35:47why i think if the question you're
2:35:50asking is like
2:35:51why we do all this right
2:35:55yeah um it's part of the human condition
2:35:59right human beings are fundamentally
2:36:04i feel like non like sort of stochastic
2:36:08and fundamentally interested in in
2:36:14kind of expanding our own understanding
2:36:16of the world
2:36:17around us and creating stuff to enable
2:36:20that understanding
2:36:21so we're like a stochastic
2:36:22fundamentalist so like there's
2:36:24just a bunch of randomness that really
2:36:26doesn't seem like it has a good
2:36:27explanation
2:36:28and yet there's a kind of direction to
2:36:31our being that we just keep wanting to
2:36:33create and to understand
2:36:34that's right i've met people that are
2:36:36you know that claim to be anti-science
2:36:39right um and yet
2:36:42in their anti-science you know
2:36:44discussion
2:36:45like well like if you're so
2:36:48you know scientific then how why don't
2:36:51you explain to me how
2:36:52i don't know this works and like it
2:36:54always there's that fundamental
2:36:57speed of curiosity and interest that is
2:37:00common to
2:37:01to all of us that is absolutely what
2:37:04makes us
2:37:06human right and and i
2:37:09i'm in a privileged position of being
2:37:11able to you know
2:37:13to have that be my my job
2:37:16right i think as uh you know as time
2:37:20evolves forward you know when the kind
2:37:23of
2:37:23economy changes i mean we're already
2:37:26starting to see
2:37:27you know shift towards that type of you
2:37:30know
2:37:31creative uh you know enterprise as being
2:37:34as emerging as taking over a bigger and
2:37:36bigger chunk of the
2:37:38sector it's not yet i think the dominant
2:37:41uh portion of the economy by any account
2:37:45but if we compare
2:37:46this to like you know sometime when
2:37:49the dominant thing you would do would be
2:37:52to
2:37:52you know go to a factory and do the same
2:37:55exact thing
2:37:56right i think you know there's a tide
2:37:59there
2:38:00and things are sort of headed in that
2:38:02direction yeah life's becoming more and
2:38:03more fun i can't wait
2:38:05uh honestly what i can't wait to just
2:38:07chill just just chill
2:38:09terminal point of this chill and wait
2:38:12for those kuiper belt objects to
2:38:13complete one orbit
2:38:14i'm gonna credit you with this idea uh i
2:38:17do hope that
2:38:18we definitively discover uh proof
2:38:22that there is a planet nine out there in
2:38:23the next few years so you can sit back
2:38:25with a cigar a cigarette or vodka or
2:38:28wine and
2:38:29just uh say i told you so that's already
2:38:32happening
2:38:33i'm gonna do that later tonight as i
2:38:36mentioned uh
2:38:37confidence is essential to being a rock
2:38:39star i really appreciate you uh
2:38:42explaining so many fascinating things to
2:38:44me today i really appreciate the work
2:38:46that you do out there
2:38:47and um i really appreciate you talking
2:38:50with me today
2:38:50thank you pleasure thanks for having me
2:38:52on thanks for listening to this
2:38:54conversation with constantine
2:38:56botegan and thank you to squarespace
2:38:59literati
2:39:00onit and and i check them out in the
2:39:03description
2:39:04to support this podcast and now let me
2:39:06leave you with some words from douglas
2:39:08adams
2:39:08in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
2:39:12far out in the uncharted backwaters of
2:39:14the
2:39:15unfashionable end of the western spiral
2:39:18arm
2:39:18of the galaxy lies a small unregarded
2:39:22yellow sun
2:39:23orbiting this at a distance of roughly
2:39:2692 million miles
2:39:28is an utterly insignificant little blue
2:39:30green planet
2:39:31whose ape descendant life forms are so
2:39:34amazingly primitive
2:39:36that they still think digital watches
2:39:38are a pretty neat
2:39:40idea thank you for listening and hope to
2:39:43see you
2:39:43next time
2:39:53you

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Konstantin Batygin: Planet 9 and the Edge of Our Solar System | Lex Fridman Podcast #201 by Lex Fridman, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 25,208 words across 4,484 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to choose a caption track available on the video.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, caption language selection, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.