Science Corner Special! David Friedberg, Cleo Abram, Alex Filippenko, and Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

There's a lot of very lucrative fear-mongering going on. That's why I want to bring a more optimistic point of view into the conversation to help people imagine what could go right. That's why I went independent.

Hi. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You were here all day yesterday. Yeah. Having a great time. This is my first All-In Summit. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah. Huge if True seems to me to be a bit of a microcosm of this big shift that we're in with media generally right now. I was at a media company and making what we call explainer journalism. So taking complicated issues and making them understandable both to me and to millions of people. And I went independent to start this show because there was something that I felt like I was missing when I looked out into my media diet. I really wanted to find a show that was optimistic that helped me see where were the people that are working on hard problems, making them better every day in a way that I could understand and I could participate in.

So, I left the media company where I was, started this show, and had the opportunity because of what YouTube offers to reach a global audience very quickly and find out, oh my god, I'm not alone. Oh my god, there are millions of people that also want this kind of show. And YouTube made that bet that if you allow anyone to create their best creative work, the widest audience will watch. And so YouTube has become in the last 18 months, I think, the most watched streaming platform on televisions. So, we're in the middle of this big moment of change in media and how media gets made. And I don't think most people know that it's really happening. They know that YouTube shows can get big, but they don't really understand this shift that we're in.

And by the way, the shift is also very exciting for streamers because they're looking at this and they're saying, you know, a Netflix of the world, I used to make a Netflix show as well, can look at this incredible new wealth of creativity and IP and say, 'Oh my god, who do we want to work with to give, you know, upfront capital to make something that's even bigger?'

Well, most YouTubers have ad-funded businesses. And so what that requires is you go out on your own as we did with Huge if True. We went independent. We started this show. The show grows and then you are able to get sponsors who in turn fund better and better work and it continues to scale. The traditional model of paying upfront for a show that then the streamer owns offers something very different and I think we're in an interesting flexible moment of change right now where a Netflix might say, 'Wow, we see a really exciting show on YouTube. We want to allow that creator to make something that is a version of that IP that is bigger and we'll invest in that upfront.'

And so what I think we're seeing is for the same creator and the same kind of IP, you can have a really wonderful relationship between the kind of show that you can make when you can reach global audiences immediately and grow and see how far you can take it with an advertising model. And then at the same time, you might be able to take that gem of an idea and say, 'What would I do if I had upfront capital?' So, I think there's a really interesting way in which these things all work together. And some of the headlines make it seem as though this is, you know, an antagonistic moment in media. I think it's really great for everybody. I think it's a really, really exciting moment. I'm also the optimist, so of course I'm going to say that.

Yeah, it goes both ways.

Well, the best thing by far about making this show is realizing that there are millions of people out there that also want that same kind of work. I mean, you see it with Science Corner in so many ways, those are very similar in tone. And I think from my perspective when I started this show, I really was looking for a part of my media diet that I wasn't getting anywhere else. And that's what makes making something yourself on YouTube so special. You're creating something asking are there millions of people out there like me? And the answer turns out to be yes.

With respect to optimistic science and tech content specifically, the reason why I make it in the first place, we spend months on these episodes. We travel all around the world. We invest a huge amount in the animations and the technical explainers so that you can understand without any background at all quantum computing and the impacts, supersonic planes and how we're trying to bring them back. I was in a zero-gravity plane the other day trying to explain the cutting edge of gravity research and theoretical physics. These are things that millions of people can understand if you explain them in the right kinds of ways. And that's what we try and do every day. And the reason why we do that is because we genuinely believe that when people see those better futures, they'll help build them. That's what I want to do. I'm not an engineer. I'm not a scientist. I look out at the world and I think, 'Wow, there are so many people working on hard problems. I want to know how I can participate.' And so my hope is that's what we're doing every day.

Wow. Wow. This is so fantastic to see you all here. Good morning, David. Thank you for inviting me to Science Corner. It's such a pleasure.

Most of you probably don't know that in fact David was a student of mine at UC Berkeley 28 years ago and became an astrophysics major. In fact, you know, so I feel like I had some influence on him. I'll take some credit. You know, as Joe Tsai said yesterday, teachers want their students to become more successful, to become better than they are. And I always knew that David would be very successful in his career, but I didn't know that he'd be quite this successful. So, good job, David.

You know, I'd also like to officially acknowledge California's 175th birthday today, California Admission Day. So, yep, we were told that yesterday and I looked it up and it's true. So, you know, California is beginning its 176th orbit around the sun. May it be revolutionary, so to speak. Right. Get it? Get it? Okay.

Well, it's my pleasure to be speaking today about the James Webb Space Telescope as just one example of an amazing mission where humans are pursuing science and exploring the universe. It's an amazing device and it's already brought us so many interesting results. Now, it was launched on Christmas Day 2021 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket and it's a wonderful example of how international collaboration and cooperation in this case between the US, Europe, and Canada, can lead to incredible achievements in very complex projects.

There are many comparisons with NASA and ESA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has been serving us well for over three decades. The primary one is that the Webb has a much bigger mirror. And a mirror can be thought of as a gigantic eyeball, a collecting area that brings together faint starlight from distant parts of the universe. And so the bigger the collecting area, the fainter the object you can see. And Webb has six times the collecting area of Hubble. So it's a more powerful telescope.

Fundamentally, the Webb was designed to explore our origins. Where did we come from? How are we evolving? What's going to happen far, far in the future? How do galaxies like the Milky Way galaxy form? And how do they evolve with time? Now, we know now that many galaxies merge together like the group that you're seeing here in a beautiful Webb image. By the way, to the lower right of the word 'time' there, there's a star with a bunch of spikes. Ignore the spikes. They're not beautiful. They're ugly, okay? They're just a consequence of the interaction of light with the telescope. So, ignore the spikes. But here are a bunch of merging galaxies.

Now, the first image NASA released publicly a little over three years ago was of a tiny part of the sky. Imagine a grain of sand held at arm's length. Imagine how small that looks. Yet in that tiny patch of the sky, there are thousands of galaxies. These fuzzy things you see out there, you can count them if you're interested. Over the whole sky, we can see about a trillion galaxies, a million million galaxies. And some of them we see forming just a few hundred million years after the explosive birth of the universe, the so-called Big Bang. And one of the interesting aspects of this image is that galaxies started forming and evolving earlier than expected. And so we're working on that interesting puzzle right now.

How do stars like our sun form? Well, they form in stellar nurseries. Giant clouds of gas and dust. Fine little particles that collect up as a result of gravity, and the central densest regions collapse and form these stars. But they're hidden from view when looked at with most telescopes because we can't peer through the dust. The Webb, looking at infrared wavelengths, heat wavelengths, is able to peer inside and see newly formed stars and stars that are still forming. We can also look at discs of gas and dust around newly forming stars. This is essentially the mechanism by which our solar system formed about 4 and a half billion years ago. Debris around the newly formed sun that collected gradually to form bigger and bigger objects, planets.

All right. How about the death of stars? This is a snapshot, a preview of the sun's future in about 7 billion years when the outer atmosphere will start getting gently ejected off, leaving a hot dying star in the middle that makes the gases glow. The star, the fainter of the two that you see there, looks faint because there's dust, fine little particles that have formed in the ejected gases. These particles consist of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium that were cooked up in the nuclear furnace of the star during its life. These dust particles can later form new stars, planets, and ultimately life.

And to get most of the heavy elements, you need the explosions, the cataclysmic disruptions of certain varieties of stars at the end of their lives. Our sun won't explode in this titanic way, but some do. And here's one that we started studying about 40 years ago. Analysis of the Webb data shows the kinds of elements of which we are made. The calcium in our bones, the phosphorus in our DNA, the oxygen that we breathe, the carbon in our cells, the iron in our red blood cells. These elements were created through nuclear reactions in stars billions of years ago. And humans understand that is that cosmic or what? As Carl Sagan used to say, we are made of star stuff.

We can move closer to home and image planets in our own solar system like Neptune here with its moons and rings. And those bright spots on Neptune are a storm which has been developing. And so you can monitor planetary storms and come to a better understanding of climate on Earth.

We can move to other stars and search for planets orbiting them. So-called exoplanets. It turns out that nearly every star you see in the sky has a collection of planets around it. They're just really hard to see. To see it, the Webb telescope had to place a disc in front of the star where that little five-pointed thing is in the circle, revealing the exoplanet orbiting it. And the hope is that through studies of the atmospheres of these exoplanets, we will find places where life could have arisen and maybe even did arise independently of life on Earth. And we don't have such evidence yet. But once we do have compelling evidence for life elsewhere, it'll be one of the most monumental discoveries in all of humanity.

Well, you could say this is all very interesting, intellectually titillating, but so what? Why spend national funds on pure research of this type, not applied research that will lead in the short term to new gizmos, pacemakers, and iPhones and things like that? Why should we pursue this kind of research with taxpayer money? It's a legitimate question. Okay, so let me give you three reasons.

The first is that of all known animals, humans are the only ones with the curiosity to ask complex questions, abstract questions, questions about their very origins. And we have the intellectual capability to pursue answers to those questions and the hands with the opposable thumb with which to build machines like telescopes and particle colliders to help us answer those questions. If some subset of humanity were to not do this, we would be selling ourselves short as Homo sapiens. Now, you don't need many of us, but it's good to have some.

The second point is that astronomy is a gateway science. It's like the bug that bites kids and gets them interested in STEM fields. Most won't go on to become astrophysicists. Okay? Again, that's an okay thing. But they'll be more motivated to pursue fields of science and technology which will lead them to careers that are more immediately beneficial to society. Computer science, engineering, medical physics, applied physics, those sorts of things. I see this all the time as a board member of the Chabot Space and Science Center and also at Lick Observatory in the hills east of Silicon Valley where I conduct much of my research and public outreach.

Kids love this stuff. Just like I and some of my friends were inspired in our youth by the American lunar landings. What an amazing accomplishment that was. We are on the moon. Wouldn't it be great to contribute to this grand enterprise and go boldly where no one has gone before? It's just an incredibly inspiring moment and the Hubble and Webb and things like that are providing that moment for kids now.

And then there are the technological spin-offs and unanticipated applications like quantum physics for the laser. Over a century ago, there were two outstanding questions in physics. What is the nature of light? And why are atoms stable? And you could say, well, as long as we know how to make light bulbs and as long as the floor doesn't collapse underneath me, who cares what light really is and why atoms are stable? You don't need to know, do you?

Well, physicists over a century ago like Einstein, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Planck, they cared about the workings of nature simply to satisfy their curiosity. No practical applications immediately in sight. Fast forward a century, you couldn't imagine today's world without an understanding of quantum physics. One example, lasers, a 13.5 billion dollar industry in the US with innumerable applications. Computer chips. Moore's law with three and even two nanometers per pixel. Now we have the equivalent of half a billion transistors on the head of a pin. That is amazing. That's quantum mechanics, folks. Quantum electronics.

And then specifically from something like the Webb, lots of spin-offs. Infrared detectors, similar ones are now used in medical imaging, night vision systems, and environmental monitoring. Cryogenic engineering, you had to cool down the telescope. This led to advances in cooling systems now used in quantum computing, superconducting electronics, medical imaging, and so on. And as just one other example, in many precision optics and materials, segmented gold-coated mirrors and deployment mechanisms for the Webb led to innovations in robotics, metrology, and ultra-high precision manufacturing. So those are just some of the spin-offs from the Webb itself.

So I hope I've convinced you that spending some small amount of money on research of this type is exciting, is important, extends our grand vision as pioneers of the universe exploring our origins. And to give you just a sense of scale, over 10 years, the $10 billion cost of the Webb was one $6 hamburger per US taxpayer per year. That's what you contributed to the Webb. Thank you very much. I hope that you feel it was worth it, okay, to give up this one hamburger. Now, listen. If you're interested in this sort of stuff, I give much longer talks with more details to corporate groups and others. Just contact me if you're interested. Thank you so much for being here.

So, Alex, you are one of the world's greatest scientists and science communicators. So, David and I have prepared a set of rapid-fire questions for you. I'll give rapid-fire answers based on what our audience might have seen in headlines or might be understanding and want to know more about, about not just James Webb but generally.

Yes. I just gave one example of Webb, limited time. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah.

So, one of the places I want to start is searching for life on exoplanets. I think many people might understand that James Webb is doing that but might not fully understand how and what the implications might be. So as a way to understand this, if we were looking at Earth from 100 light years away, what would we see and how would we understand that as life?

Yeah. Yeah. So what you want to find is some sort of chemical disequilibrium. Now that sounds fancy but what do I mean? In the case of the atmosphere of Earth, the simultaneous presence of oxygen and methane is very curious because methane oxidizes. That is, it reacts with oxygen very quickly. And so, you wouldn't expect any methane in the atmosphere unless there were some more or less continuous source of that methane. And although methane can be produced through chemical means having nothing to do with biology, it's also produced by biology. You know, Carl Sagan called it bovine flatulence, right? So it's the decay of biological organisms. And so if we were to find that in another exoplanet atmosphere, that wouldn't be absolutely definitive but it would be sort of a flash point, wow, we better study that planet more because that's one that could have life.

Yeah. And we're seeing that.

Yeah, we're beginning to see that. We've not seen methane and oxygen in any other planetary atmosphere yet, but certainly there are interesting signs of elements that are reported by the Webb through these kinds of atmospheric studies.

One of the other big discoveries with the Webb was these early massive galaxies.

Yeah. I mentioned the early massive galaxies. Yeah.

The Big Bang theory is on very solid ground. There are many details we don't understand. The basic tenets, however, of the theory are just three-fold. The universe long ago was hot, it was dense, and it was expanding. Nothing in those studies contradicts any of that. As I mentioned, the early formation of galaxies is an interesting puzzle. It means that our understanding of how galaxies formed and evolved is still incomplete. But that's part of the fun of doing science. There's new things.

You know, the cosmic microwave background radiation is the afterglow of the Big Bang. And it turns out it agrees to very high precision with a very single temperature. Meaning that the universe everywhere was the same temperature, then expanded by the same amount and we see the same temperature everywhere. There's no way you can do that with galaxies forming at a range of times and distances. They would each contribute light that would not give this so-called black body thermal spectrum. And there are many other details of the microwave background, the spots and stuff that are not at all addressed.

So, a lot of these theories, you know, as scientists, we can dream up things and we just kind of put them out there to be explored more. But of course, the media likes to highlight the really snazzy sounding things. And so sometimes, often the very speculative ideas get way too much attention. We're exploring them, but they're probably wrong.

No, no. The Big Bang is on very solid ground.

What about the theories coming out? We've been talking a little bit about this on whether or not we are inside a black hole. Are we inside a black hole?

Yeah. So a black hole is a region of space where matter is compressed so much that nothing, not even light, can escape. And it turns out that in a sense our universe, if you look at the total amount of matter, dark matter and dark energy and all that stuff, visible matter in the volume out to which we can see, okay, that has about the right value to make the universe as a whole resemble a black hole. That would mean that our universe is finite. We don't actually know whether it's finite or infinite. We actually only know that it's much bigger than what we can see.

And mathematically there is some correspondence between the equations governing a black hole and those governing the universe. But there are some important differences like a black hole is a physical structure within our four space-time dimensions like right here. Whereas applying that to the whole universe is a qualitatively different idea. But there are some mathematical correspondences that are useful and interesting. I personally doubt that we are a giant black hole. Some people say it's actually a black hole that was given birth from another universe. And for that there's really no evidence.

Well, you know, space can become really big. Okay. And in fact, you know, good student, you asked me the right question. You need some help? Ah, thank you very much, my assistant. Okay, so I've got these galaxies here. They don't expand, by the way. They're held together by gravity in the case of real galaxies, but then the space between them expands. So, let's expand it here. Try not to aim at your eyes or David's eyes. That would be very bad, lawsuits and stuff.

But anyway, from the perspective of our galaxy here, the more distant ones, you know, with each bit of space expanding can and do go away faster than the speed of light. And Einstein wouldn't rap me on the knuckles for that. Einstein simply said that no material object or no information can travel through a pre-existing space faster than light. But space itself expanding, especially if it expands exponentially, which we think it did early on in its existence, it grows faster than the speed of light, and you get a truly humongous universe, maybe even an infinite universe. And yeah, most of it we can't see, but there are other independent volumes out there where we could be having this conversation right now or you could not like what I said and punch me in the face, but then I would respond by punching you in the face.

In other words, all these possibilities could occur in these parallel observable universes beyond the observable part that we can see. And it's freaky, but this is the kind of stuff we get to think about.

Yeah. So what David is referring to is that if you look at the mathematics of a black hole from our perspective, what we call space and time outside reverse their meaning. Time becomes space and space becomes time in terms of directionality. So for example, if you're in a black hole, there's no way you can avoid the so-called singularity where you get squished into nothing because it's in your future no matter what you do.

Now applying that as you wanted to do to the whole universe. I don't think that the correspondence is such that the expansion that we see is the reversal effect of this going toward the singularity because, well, because of some technical issues. Again, if you look at the mathematics there are some interesting correspondences but they shouldn't be taken too literally in most cases.