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

the following is a conversation with. constantine bategan. planetary astrophysicist at caltech. interested in. among other things the search for the. distant the mysterious. planet nine in the outer regions of our. solar system quick mention of our. sponsors. squarespace literati on it and. and i check them out in the description. to support this podcast. as a side note let me say that our. little sun is orbited by. not just a few planets in the planetary.

region but trillions of. objects in the kuiper belt and the oort. cloud that extends over three. light years out this to me is amazing. since proxima centauri. the closest star to our sun is only 4.2. light years away. and all of it is mostly covered in. darkness. when i get a chance to go out swimming. in the ocean far from the shore. i'm sometimes overcome by the terrifying. and the exciting feeling of not knowing. what's there. in the deep darkness that's how i feel.

about the edge of our solar system. one day i hope humans will travel there. or at the very least. ai systems that carry the flame of human. consciousness. this is the lex friedman podcast and. here's my conversation. with constantine bategan. what is planet nine planet nine. is an object that we believe. lives in the solar system beyond the. orbit of neptune it orbits the sun. with a period of about 10 000 years.

and uh is about five earth masses. so that's a hypothesized object there's. some evidence. uh for this kind of object there's a. bunch of different explanations. can you give like an overview of the. planets in our solar system how many are. there. what do we know and not know about them. at a high level. all right that sounds like a good plan. so look the solar system. basically is comprised of two parts the.

inner and the outer solar system. the inner solar system has the planets. mercury venus. earth and mars now mercury is about. 40 percent of the orbital separation. of where the earth is is closer to the. sun venus. about 70 percent uh then mars is about. 160 further away from the sun than is. the earth. these planets that we uh one of them.

we occupy right are pretty small okay. they're. too leading order sort of heavily. overgrown asteroids. if you will um and this is. this becomes evident when you move out. further. in the solar system and encounter. jupiter which is 316. earth masses right 10 times the size. you know and saturn is another huge one. 90 earth masses at about 10 times. uh the separation from the sun this is.

the earth and then you have uranus and. neptune. at 20 and 30 respectively for a long. time. that is where the kind of massive. part of the solar system ended. but what we've learned in the last 30. years. is that beyond neptune there's this. expansive field of icy debris a second. icy asteroid belt in the solar system a. lot of people have. heard of the asteroid belt which lives.

be between. mars and jupiter right like that's a. pretty common thing that people like to. imagine and draw on lunch boxes and. stuff but beyond neptune. there's a much more massive much more. radially. expansive field of debris pluto by the. way. it belongs to that second. you know icy asteroid belt which we call. the kuiper belt it's just a big. object within that population of bodies. oh pluto.

the planet pluto the the dwarf planet. the former planet. you know why is pluto not a planet. anymore. i mean it's tiny were you used to size. matters when it comes to planets. 100 100 it's a actually a fascinating. story. when pluto was discovered in 1930. the the reason it was discovered in the. first place because astronomers at the. time were looking for a seven earth mass. planet. somewhere beyond neptune it was. hypothesized that such an object exists.

when they found something they. interpreted that. as a seven earth mass planet and. immediately revised its mass downward. because they couldn't resolve the object. with the telescope so it looked like a. just a point mass you know. star rather than a physical disk they. said well maybe it's not seven maybe. it's one. right and then so over the next um you. know i guess 40 years. pluto's mass kept getting revised down. downwards downwards downwards until.

uh it was realized that's like 500 times. less massive than the earth i mean like. pluto's. surface area is almost perfectly equal. to the surface area of russia actually. and you know russia is big but it's not. a planet. well i mean actually we can we can touch. more on that that's that's another. discussion. uh so in some sense earlier in the. century pluto represented. kind of our ignorance about the edges of. the solar system.

and perhaps planet nine is the thing. that represents our ignorance. about now the modern set of ignorances. about the edges of our solar system. that's a good way to put it by the way. just. imagining this belt of astero of debris. at the edge of our solar system is. incredible. can you talk about it a little bit what. is the kuiper belt and. what it what is the oort cloud yeah. okay so look the simple way to think. about it is that if you imagine.

you know neptune's orbit like a circle. right. kind of uh maybe a factor of one and a. half 1.3. uh times bigger uh on a radius of. 1.3 times bigger you've got a whole. collection of icy objects most of these. objects. are sort of the size of austin you know. maybe maybe a little bit smaller if you. then. zoom out right and.

explore the orbits of the most long. period kuiper belt object these are the. things that have the. biggest orbits and take the longest time. to go around the sun. then what you find is that beyond a. critical. orbit size beyond a critical orbit. period which is about 4 000 years. you start to see weird structure like. all the orbits. sort of point into one direction and. all the orbits are kind of tilted in the.

same. way by about 20 degrees with respect to. sun this is particularly pronounced. in orbits that are not heavily affected. by neptune. so there you start to see this weird. dichotomy where there are. objects which are stable which are which. neptune. does not mess with gravitationally and. unstable objects the unstable objects. are basically all over the place. because they're being you know kicked. around by neptune the stable. orbits show this remarkable pattern of.

clustering. we back i guess five years ago. interpreted this pattern of clustering. as a gravitational one-way sign the. existence of. a planet in a distant planet right. something that is shepherding and. confining. these orbits together of course. right you have to have some skepticism. when you're. when you're talking about these things. you have to ask the question of okay how. statistically significant.

is this clustering and there are many. authors that. have indeed called that into question we. have done. our own analyses and basically just like. with all statistics where. you know there's kind of like you know. multiple ways. to uh do the exercise. you can either ask the question if i. have a telescope. that has you know surveyed this part of. the sky. what are the chances that i would. discover this clustering.

that basically tells you that you have. zero confidence. right like that's not that does not give. you. a confident answer one way or another. another way to do the statistics which. is what we. prefer to do is to take to say we have a. whole. night sky of discoveries in the kuiper. belt. right and if we have some object over. there. which has right tension and declination. which is a way to say it's. there on the sky and it has some.

brightness. that means somebody looked over there. and discovered an object. of was able to discover an object of. that brightness or. brighter through that analysis you can. construct a whole map. on the sky of kind of where all of the. surveys that have ever been done. have collectively looked so if you do. the exercise this way. the false alarm probability of. the clustering on which the planet nine. hypothesis is built is about 0.4. wow okay so there's a million questions.

here one when you say bright objects. why are they bright are we talking about. actual objects within the kuiper belt or. the stuff we see through the kupper belt. this is the actual stuff we see in the. kuiper belt the way. you go about discovering kuiper belt. objects pretty easy. i mean it's easy in theory right hard in. practice. yeah all you do is you take snapshots of. the sky. right choose that direction say and take. you know. the high exposure snapshot then you wait. a night.

and you do it again and then you wait. another night and you do it again. objects that are just random stars in. the galaxy don't move. on the sky whereas objects in the solar. system will slowly move. this is no different than if you're. driving down the freeway. it looks like you know trees are going. by you faster than the clouds right this. is parallax. that's it it's just they're reflecting. light off. of the sun and it's going back and. hitting this there's a little bit of a. glimmer. from the different objects that you can.

see based on the reflection from the sun. so like. there's actual light yeah it's not. darkness that's right these are just. big icicles basically that are just. reflecting sunlight back at you. it's then easy to understand why it's so. hard to discover them because. light has to travel to you know. something like 40 times the distance. um between the earth and the sun and. then get reflected back was it like an. hour. travel or yeah that's right that's. something like that because the.

the earth to the sun is eight minutes i. believe um. and so something you know yeah yeah in. that. in that order magnitude so that's. interesting so you have to. like account for all of that and then. there's this huge amount of. data pixels that are coming from the. pictures. and you have to uh integrate all that. together. to paint a sort of like a high estimate. of the different objects. can you track them can you be like. that's bob like can you like. yes exactly in fact uh one of them is.

is named joe biden i mean i'm not like. this is not even a joke. right is there a trump one or no no no. no. i don't know i haven't checked for for. for that but. uh like the way it works is if you. discover one. you right away get a license plate for. it okay. so like the first four numbers is the. first. year that this object has appeared on. you know. in the data set if you will and then um.

there's like this code that follows it. which basically tells you where in the. sky it is. right so one of the really interesting. kuiper belt objects which is very much. part of the planet 9 story is called. vp113. because joe biden was vice president at. the time. you know got nicknamed biden. vp113 said yeah you got nickname button. beautiful. what's the fingerprint for any.

particular. object like how do you know it's the. same one okay just kind of like. yeah from night to night you take a. picture how do you know it's the same. object. yeah so the way you know is it appears. in almost exactly the same part of the. sky except for the move but it moves but. this is why actually you need at least. three nights. because oftentimes asteroids. which are much closer to the earth like. will um. appear to move only.

slightly but then on the third night. will move away so that third knight. is really there to detect acceleration. now. the the thing that i didn't really. realize until. you know i started observing together. with my partner in crime and all this. mike brown. is just the fact that for the first year. when you make these detections. the only thing you really know is. confidence is where it is on the night. sky. and how far away it is okay that's it.

you don't know anything about the orbit. because over three days the object just. moves so little right the that whole. motion on the sky is entirely coming. from. motion of the earth right so the earth. is kind of the car. the object is the tree and you see it. moving so then. to get some confident information about. what its orbit looks like you have to. come back. a year later um and then measure it. again. interesting to do three nights then come. back a year later and do another three.

nights. so you get the velocity the acceleration. from the three nights and then you have. the. maybe the additional the additional. formation. because an orbit is basically described. by six parameters. so you at least need six independent. points but in reality you need. many more observations to to really. pin down the orbit well and from that. you're able to construct for that one. particular object in orbit and then. there's. of course like how many objects are. there. there's like four-ish thousand now.

but like the. in the future that could be like. millions. oh sure oh sure so in fact these things. are hard to predict but there's a. new observatory called the vera rubin. observatory which is coming online. maybe next year i mean with covet these. things are. a little bit more uncertain but they've. actually been making great progress. uh with construction and so that. uh telescope is gonna sort of scan the.

night sky. uh every day automatically and it's just. it's such an efficient survey that it. might uh increase the census. of the distant kuiper belt the things. that i'm interested in. by a factor of 100 i mean that would be. that would be really cool. and yeah that's a that's an incredible. uh. maybe i mean they might just find planet. nine. i mean that's like almost like literally. pictures like visually. i mean sure yeah like the first.

detection you make all you know is where. it is in the sky and how far away it is. if something is you know 500 times away. from the sun. as far away from the sun as is the earth. you know that's planet nine that's when. the story concludes. and then you can study it right now you. can study yeah by the way. i'm going to use that as like i don't. know a pickup line or a dating strategy. like see the person for three days and. then don't see them at all and then see. them again in. in a year to determine the orbit and. over time.

you figure out if sort of uh. from a cosmic perspective this this. whole thing. i have no dating advice to give i was. good i was going to use this as a. metaphor to uh to somehow. uh map it on to the human condition okay. you mentioned the kuiper belt what's the. oor cloud. if you look at the neptune orbit as uh. one then the kuiper bell is like 1.3 out. there. and then we get farther and farther into. the darkness what. so okay you've got the kind of main.

kuiper belt was about. say 1.3 1.5. um then you have something called the. scattered disc. which is kind of an extension of the. kuiper belt it's a bunch of these. long very elliptical orbits that hug. the orbit of neptune but come out very. far so. that the scattered disc. with the current senses like the some of. the. longest orbits we know of.

um have a. semi-major axis so half the orbit length. roughly speaking of about a thousand. thousand times the distance between the. earth and the sun. wow now if you keep moving out okay. eventually once you're sort of you know. ten thousand to a hundred thousand. roughly that's where the oort cloud is. now the oort cloud is a distinct. population of. icy bodies and it's distinct from the. kuiper belt it's in fact it's so.

expansive. that it ends roughly halfway between. us and the next star um it's it's edge. is just. dictated by to what extent does the. solar gravity reach. solar gravity reaches that far yeah so. it has to. wow yeah so in fact. imagining this is a little bit. overwhelming so there's like a giant. like vast.

icy rock thingy it's like a sphere. it's like you know it's like it's an. almost spherical structure. that engulfs that encircles the sun. and all the long period comets come. from the oort cloud they come the way. that they appear. i mean for already i don't know hundreds. of years. we've been detecting occasionally like a. comet will come in. and it comes seemingly comes out of. nowhere. the reason these long period comets.

appear. that very on very very long time scales. right. these oort cloud objects that are. sitting you know 30. 000 times as far away from the sun as is. the earth. actually interact with the gravity of. the galaxy the tide. effectively the tide that the galaxy. exerts upon them and their orbits slowly. change and they elongate. to the point where once they their. closest approach to the sun starts to. reach.

a critical distance where ice starts to. sublimate. then we discover them as comets because. then the ice comes off of them. they look beautiful on the night sky etc. but they're all coming from. you know really really far away so is. there. are any of them coming our way from. collisions like how many collisions are. there. or is there a bunch of space for them to. move around yeah there's zero it's. completely collisionless. out there the physical radii of objects. are so small compared to the distance.

between them. right it's just it is truly a. collisionless. uh environment i don't know there i. think that probably in the age. of the solar system there have literally. been zero collisions in the word cloud. wow when you like draw a picture of the. solar. system everything's really close. together so that everything i guess here. is. spaced far apart do rogue planets. like flying every once in a while and.

join not rogue planets but rogue objects. from. out there oh sure oh sure yeah join the. party. yeah absolutely uh we've seen a couple. of them um. in the last three or f or so years uh. maybe four years now. uh one the first one uh was. the one called it's been. all over the news the second one was. comet borisov. discovered by a guy named borisov.

yeah so the way you know they're coming. from elsewhere is. unlike solar system objects which travel. on elliptical paths. around the sun these guys travel on. hyperbolic paths. so they come in say hello and then. they're gone. and the fact that they exist. is totally like not surprising. right the neptune is con constantly. ejecting. kuiper belt objects into interstellar. space our solar system itself.

is sort of leaking icy debris and. injecting it so. presumably every you know planetary. systems around other stars do exactly. the same thing. let me ask you about the the millions of. objects that are. part of the kuiper belt and the part of. the ore cloud do you think some of them. have. primitive life it kind of makes you sad. if there's like primitive life there and. they're just kind of like lonely out. there in space. like how many of them do you think have. life like bacterial life probably a.

negligible amount. zero you know like zero was like a plus. on top. uh right yeah. um if so you know if you and i. took a little trip to the interstellar. medium i think we would develop cancer. and die uh real fast right that's rough. yeah it's a pretty hostile radiation. environment. you don't actually have to go to the. interstellar medium you just have to. leave the earth's magnetic field too.

and then you're not doing so well. suddenly. so you know this this idea of. you know life kind of traveling between. places it's not. it's not entirely implausible but you. you really have to. twist i think a lot of parameters one of. the problems we have is we don't. actually know how life originates. right so it's kind of a second order. question of survival in the interstellar. medium and how resilient it is because.

we we think you require. water but and that's certainly the case. for the earth but you know we uh. we really don't know for sure that said. i will argue that the question of like. are there aliens out there. is a very boring question because. the answer is of course there are right. i mean like. we know that there are planets around. almost every star um.

of course there of course there are. other life forms life is not some. specific thing that happened on the. earth and that's it. right just that's a statistical. impossibility yeah um. yeah but the the difficult question is. before even. the fact that we don't know how life. originates i don't think we even know. what life. is like definitionally yeah like. formalizing a kind of picture. of in terms of the mechanism we would. use. to to search for life out there or even.

when we're on a planet. to say is this life is this rock that. just moved. from where it was yesterday life or or. maybe not even. rock something else i got to tell you i. want to know what life. is okay and i want you to show me. uh i think there's a song to basically. accompany every single. thing we talk about today and probably. uh half of them are love songs. um and somehow we'll integrate george.

michael into the whole thing okay. so your intuition is there's life. everywhere in our universe. do you think there's intelligent life. out there i think it's entirely. plausible. i mean i it's entirely plausible um. i think i think there's intelligent life. on earth. um and so yeah taking that like say. whatever this thing we got on earth. whether it's dolphins or humans. say that's intelligent definitely. dolphins.

i mean have you seen the dolphins. well they do some cruel stuff to each. other so if cruelty. is uh is the definition of intelligence. that they're pretty good yeah and then. humans are pretty good on that. regard then there's like uh uh pigs. are very intelligent i got actually a. chance to hang out with pigs recently. and they're um aside from the fact. they're trying to. eat me they're very uh. they're very they love food they love.

food but there's an intelligence to. their eyes that was kind of. uh like haunts me because i also. love to eat meat and then to to me the. thing. i later ate and i was very intelligent. and uh almost charismatic with the way. it was expressing its uh. himself herself itself was uh was quite. incredible. so and all that to say is if we have. intelligent life here on earth if we. take dolphins pigs. humans from the perspective of like.

planetary science. how unique is earth okay so earth is not. a com. common outcome of the planet formation. process. um it's probably a. something on the order of maybe a one. percent effect. and by earth i mean it's not just an. earth mass planet. okay i mean the architecture of the. solar system. that allows the earth to exist in in its.

kind of. very temperate um. way one thing to understand. uh and this is this is pretty crucial uh. right it's that the. earth itself formed well after. the gas disk that formed. the giant planets. had already dissipated you see stars. start out. with you know the star and then a disc. of gas and dust that encircles it. okay from this disk of gas and dust.

big planets can emerge and we have. over the last uh you know two three. decades discovered. thousands of extra solar planets as an. orbit of other studs. what we see is that uh many of them. are you know have these expansive. hydrogen helium. atmospheres the fact that the earth. doesn't is deeply connected to the fact. that. earth took about 100 million years to.

form so we missed that. you know train so to speak to get that. hydrogen helium atmosphere. that's why actually we can see the sky. right that's why the. sky is uh well at least in most places. that's why the. the atmosphere is not completely opaque. um. with that you know kind of thinking in. mind i. i would argue that we're getting the. kind of emergent pictures that the earth. is. is not you know everywhere.

right we there's sort of the sci-fi view. of things where we go to some other star. and we just land on random planets and. they're all earth-like that's totally. not true. but the even a low probability. event even if you imagine that earth is. a one in a million. or one in a you know one in 10 million. occurrence there are 10 to the 12 stars. in the galaxy. right so you just you always win by.

by large numbers that's right by supply. they save you well. you've hypothesized that our our solar. system once possessed a. population of short-period planets that. were destroyed by the evil jupiter. uh migrating through the the solar. nebula can you explain. if i was to say what was the kind of the. key outcome of searches for extrasolar. planets. it is that most stars are encircled by. short period planets. that are you know a few earth masses.

right so a few times bigger than the. earth um. and have orbital periods that kind of. range from days to. to weeks now if you go in. and ask the solar system what's in our. region. right in that region it's completely. empty right. it's just it's astonishingly hollow. and thank you from. the sun is not some you know special. star that decided that it was going to.

form. the the solar system so i think you know. the natural thing to assume. is is that the same processes of planet. formation that occurred. everywhere else also occurred in the. solar system. following this logic it's not. implausible to imagine that the solar. system once possessed. a system of intra mercurian. like you know compact system of. of planets so then we asked ourselves.

would. such a system survive to this day and. the answer is no. uh at least our calculations um suggest. it's highly unlikely because of the. formation of jupiter. and jupiter's primordial kind of. wandering through the solar system. would have sent this collisional field. of debris that would have pushed. that system of planets onto the sun so. was jupiter. this primordial wandering what did what. did jupiter look like. like why was it wandering it didn't have. the orbit it has today.

uh we're pretty certain that giant. planets like jupiter when they form they. migrate. the reason they migrate is you know on a. detailed level perhaps. difficult to explain but you know if. just in a qualitative sense. they form in this fluid disk. of gas and dust so it's kind of like if. i. plop down a raft somewhere in the ocean. will it stay in where you plop it down. or will it. kind of get carried around it's not.

really a good analogy because it's not. like jupiter is being. affected by the currents of you know gas. and dust but the way. it migrates is it carves out a hole. in the in the disk and then uh through. by interacting with the disk. gravitationally right it can change its. orbit the fact that the solar system has. both jupiter and saturn. here complicates things a lot right. because it's you have to. solve the problem of the evolution of.

the gas disk the evolution of jupiter's. orbit in the gas disk plus. evolution of saturn's and their mutual. interaction. the common outcome of solving. that problem though is pretty easy to. explain. jupiter forms its orbit shrinks and then. once saturn forms. its orbit catches up basically to the. orbit of jupiter and then both come out. so there's this inward outward pattern. of jupiter's. early motion that happens sort of within. the firm within the last million years.

of the lifetime of the solar system's. primordial disk. so do while this is happening. if our calculations are correct which i. think they are. you can destroy these in this inner. system of. you know few earth mass planets. and then in the aftermath of all this. violence. you form the terrestrial planets where. would they come from in that case so.

so jupiter clears out the space and then. there's a a few terrestrial planets that. come in and those coming from. the from the disk somewhere like one of. the larger. yeah what actually happens in these. calculations is you leave behind. a rather mass depleted like. remnant remnant disk only a couple earth. masses. so then from that. remnant population annulus of material.

over 100 or about 100 million years by. just collisions. you grow the earth and the moon and. everything else you said amulous. annulus and yours annulus yeah that's a. beautiful word what does that mean. well it's like it's like a disc that's. kind of thin it's like a. yeah it's something that is you know a. disc that's so thin it's almost. flirting with being a ring like. i was gonna say this reminds me lord of. the rings so like this the word just. feels like it belongs in a toll canal. okay uh.

so that that's incredible and so that in. your senses you said like one percent. that's a rare. the way jupiter and saturn danced and. cleared out and you know cleared out the. the the short period debris and then. changed the gravitational landscape. that's a pretty rare thing too. it's rare and moreover like you don't. have to go to our calculations you can. just. ask the night sky how many stars. have jupiter and saturn analogs the.

answer is. jupiter and saturn analogs are found. around only 10. of sun-mic stars so they are they. themselves like you kind of have to. score an a minus or better. on the test to you know on the planet. formation test to become. a solar system analog even in that basic. sense. and moreover um you know low lower mass. stars. which are uh very numerous in the galaxy. so-called m dwarfs think like zero. percent. of them well maybe like a negligible.

fraction of them have giant planets. giant planets are a rare. you know outcome of planet formation one. of the. really big problems that remain. unanswered is why we don't actually. understand. why they're so rare how hard is it to. simulate. all of the things that we've been. talking about each of the things we've. been talking about. and maybe one day all of the things. we've been talking about and beyond. meaning like from the initial.

primordial solar system you know a bunch. of disks with. i don't know billions trillions of. objects in them. like simulate that such that you. eventually get a jupiter. and a saturn then eventually you get the. jupiter and the saturn they clear out a. disc change the gravitational landscape. then earth pops up. like that whole thing and then be able. to do that. for every other system. in the uh every other star in the galaxy.

and then. be able to do that for other galaxies as. well. um yeah so look maybe start from the. smallest simulation. like what is actually being done today i. mean even the smallest simulation is. probably super super difficult. even just like one object in the kuiper. belt is probably super difficult to. simulate. i mean i think it's super easy i mean. like it's. it's just not that hard um but um. you know let's let's ask the most kind. of. basic problem okay so the problem of.

having a star. and something in orbit of it that you. don't need a simulation for like. you can just write that down on a piece. of paper this gravity. would like yeah i guess i guess it's. important to try to. uh you know one way to simulate objects. in our solar system is to build the. universe from scratch okay. we'll get to building the universe from. scratch in a sec um but let me just kind. of go through the hierarchy of. what you know what we do two objects two. objects.

analytically solvable like we can figure. it out. very easily if you just you don't i. don't think you yeah you don't need to. know calculus. uh it helps to know calculus but you. don't necessarily need to know calculus. um three objects that are. gravitationally. interacting the solution is chaotic. doesn't matter. how many simulations you do you the. answer loses meaning after. um after some time i feel like that is a. metaphor for dating as well but go on.

now look yes yeah so so. the fact that you go from analytically. solvable. to unpredictable you know when you are. when your simulation goes from two up. bodies to three bodies. should immediately tell you that the. exercise. of trying to engineer a calculation. where you form this whole. entire solar system from scratch and. hope to have some predictive answer. is is a futile one right we will never.

uh succeed at such a simulation just to. clarify you mean like explicitly having. a clear equation that generalizes. the the whole process enough to be able. to make a prediction what do you mean. actually like literally simulating the. objects as a hopeless pursuit. once it increases beyond three the. simulating them is not a hopeless. pursuit but the. outcome becomes a statistical one. and what's actually quite interesting is. i think we have. all the equations uh figured out.

right like you know in order to really. understand this. the formation of the the solar system it. suffices to know. gravity and magneto hydrodynamics i mean. like. the combination of uh maxwell's. equations and. you know navier-stokes equations for the. fluids you need to know quantum. mechanics to understand. opacities and and so on but we have. those equations in hand it's not that we. don't.

have that understanding it's that. putting it all together. is a very very difficult and b if you. were to run. the same evolution twice. changing you know the initial conditions. by. some infinitesimal amounts i'm you know. minor change in your calculation to. start with you would get the or you'd. get a different answer. this is one this is part of the reason. why planetary systems are so diverse you. don't.

have like a you know very predictive. path. for you start with a disk of this mass. and. it's around this star therefore you're. going to form the solar system. right you start with this and therefore. you will conform this huge. outcome a huge set of outcomes and some. percentage of it. will resemble the solar system you. mentioned quantum mechanics and. we're talking about cosmic scale. objects you've talked about that the. evolution of astrophysical disks can be.

modeled with. uh schroedinger's equation i sure did. why it's like how does quantum mechanics. uh become relevant at when you. consider the evolution of objects in the. solar system yeah. well let me take a take a step back and. just say like i remember. being you know utterly confused. by quantum mechanics when i first. learned it and. the schrodinger equation which is kind. of the parent equation.

of of that whole field you know seems to. come out of nowhere. right the way that the way that i was. sort of explaining it i remember asking. you know my professor is like but where. does it come from is that like well just. just like don't worry about it and just. like calculate the. hydrogen you know energy levels right so. it's like i could do all the problems i. just did not have any intuition for. for where this parent you know super. important equation came from. now down the line i was remember i was.

preparing for my own. lecture and i was trying to understand. how waves. travel in self-gravitating discs so. you know again there's a very broad. theory that's already developed but i. was looking for some simpler. way to explain it really for the. purposes of teaching class. and so i i thought okay what if i just. imagine a disc as an infinite uh. number of concentric circles right that.

interact with. the with each other gravitationally. that's a problem in some sense that um. i can solve using methods from like the. late 1700s right so i can write down. hamiltonian well i can write down the. energy function basically of their. their interactions and what i. found is that when you take the. continuum limit when you. go from discrete circles that are.

talking to each other gravitationally to. a. continuum disk suddenly. this gravitational interaction among. them. right the the governing equation becomes. the schrodinger equation. and i had to think about that for a. little bit did you just unify. quantum mechanics and gravity no this is. not the same thing as like. you know fusing relativity and quantum. mechanics. but it did uh it did get me thinking a. little bit. so the fact that waves in astrophysical.

disks. behave just like wave functions of. of particles kind of like an interesting. analogy because for me it's easier to. imagine waves traveling through you know. astrophysical disks or really just. sheets of paper and. the reason this is that analogy exists. is because there's actually nothing. quantum about the schrodinger equation. the schrodinger equation. is just a wave equation.

and all of the interpretation that comes. from it. is quantum but the equation itself. is not a quantum being so you can use it. to model. waves it's way it's not turtles it's. waves all the way down. you can pick which level you pick the. wave at and so it could be at the solar. system level that you can use right. and also it actually provides a pretty. neat calculational tool. because um it's it's difficult so we. just talked about simulations but it's.

difficult to simulate. the behavior of astrophysical disks on. time scales. that are in between a few orbits. and their entire evolution so it's. over a time scale of a few orbits you. have you do a hydrodynamic you know. simulation. right you do that basically that's. something that you can do. on a modern computer on a time scale of. say a week. when it comes to their evolution over. their entire lifetime you don't hope to.

resolve the orbits you just kind of. hope to understand how the system. behaves in between. right you to get access to that as it. turns out it's pretty. um it's pretty cute you can use uh you. can use the schrodinger equation to get. the answer. rapidly so it's a calculational tool. that's fascinating by the way the. astrophysical disks how what are they. how broad is this definition okay so. astrophysical disks span. a huge uh huge amount of ranges.

they start maybe at the smallest scale. they start with actually kuiper belt. objects some kuiper belt objects have. rings. so that's maybe the smallest example of. an astrophysical disc. we've got this little potato shaped. asteroid. you know which is you know sort of the. size of la or something and around it. is are some rings of icy matter that. object is a small astrophysical disk. then you have. saturn the rings of saturn you have the.

next set of scale you have the solar. system itself when it was forming you. have. this then you have black hole discs. you have galaxies discs are super common. in the universe. and the reason is that stuff rotates. right i mean gravity works yeah so uh. and those rings could be the material. that uh composes those rings could be. it could be gas it could be solid it. could be anything that's right so. the disc that made from which the.

planets emerged was predominantly. hydrogen helium gas on the other hand. the rings of saturn. are made up of you know icicles ice. little like. ice cubes this big about a centimeter. across. that sounds refreshing so that's. incredible hydrogen helium gas. so in the beginning it was just hydrogen. and helium. around the sun how does that lead to the. first formations of solid. objects in terms of simulation okay.

here's the story um so you're like have. you ever been to the desert. yes i've been to the death valley and. actually it was uh terrifying just as. total tangent i'm distracting you but i. was uh. driving through it and i was really. surprised because it was at first. hot and then as it was getting into the. evening there's this huge thunderstorm. like. it was raining and it got freezing cold. like what the hell is. it was the apocalypse yeah i had to like. just sit there.

listening to bruce springsteen i. remember and just thinking i'm probably. going to die. and i was okay with it because bruce. springsteen was on the radio look. when you've got the boss you know you're. ready you're ready to meet the ball. yeah so look i mean it's a good line. so i'm sorry that's true um. yeah by the way like to continue on this. tangent i. i absolutely love the southwest for this. reason just um you know i know during. the pandemic i. drove from la to new mexico a bunch of.

times. the madness the weather yeah the the the. chaos of. weather the fact that you know it'll be. blazing hot one minute and then it's. just like. we'll decide to have a little. thunderstorm maybe you'll decide. to go back momentarily to like a. thousand degrees and then go back to the. thunderstorm. it's amazing it's it's that by the way. is chaos theory in action yeah. right um but let's get back to talking. about the desert yeah. so in the desert um tumbleweeds.

have a tendency to roll because the wind. rolls them. and if you're careful you'll. occasionally see this family of temple. weeds where like there's like a big one. and then there's a bunch of little ones. that that kind of hide in its. wake right and are all rolling together. and still almost looks like. you know a family of ducks crossing a. street or something. um or for example you know. if you watch tour de france right you've. got a whole bunch of cyclists and. they're like cycling. you know within 10 centimeters of each.

other they're not. bffs right yeah but they're not yeah. trying to be. trying to write together they are. writing together to minimize the. collective. uh you know air resistance if you will. that uh. that they experience turns out solids in. the protoplanetary disk do. just this there's an instability. wherein solid particles right things. that are. a centimeter across will start to hide.

behind one another and form these clouds. why because cumulatively that minimizes. the solid. component of the disk aerodynamic. interaction with the gas. now these clouds because they're kind of. a favorable. energetic condition for the dust to live. in. they grow grow grow grow grow until they. become so massive that they collapse. under their own weight. that's how the first building blocks of. planets form that's how the.

big asteroids got there that's. incredible yeah so that. is that simulatable or is it not useful. to simulate no no that's simulatable. um and people do these types of. calculations. it's it's really cool that's actually. that's. one of the many fields of planet. formation theory that is really really. active. right now people are trying to. understand all kinds of aspects of that. process because of course. i've explained it you know like as if. there's one. thing that happens turns out it's a.

it's a beautifully rich dynamic but the. but qualitatively formation of the first. building blocks. actually follows the same sequence as. formation of stars. right stars are just clouds of gas. hydrogen helium gas that sit in space. and slowly cool and at some point they. you know contract to a point where their. gravity overtakes the thermal. you know pressure support if you will.

and they collapse under their own weight. and you get a little baby solar system. that's amazing so do you think one day. it will be possible to. simulate the full history. that took our solar system to what it is. today. yes and it will be useless okay. so you don't think your story many of. the ideas that you have about jupiter. clear in the space. like retelling that story in high. resolution is not that important. i actually think it's important but at. every stage.

you have to you have to simul you have. to. design your experiments your your. numerical computer experiments so that. they test some specific aspect of that. evolution. um i am not a proponent of doing. huge simulations because um. even if we forget the information theory. aspect of not being able to simulate in. full detail. the universe because if you do then.

you you have made an actual universe. it's not. the simulation right by simulation is in. some sense a compression. of information so therefore you must. lose detail. but that point aside if we are. able to simulate. the entire history of the solar system. in excruciating detail. i mean it'll be cool but it's not going. to be. any different from observing it.

right because theoretical understanding. which is what. ultimately i'm interested in um. comes from taking complex things and. reducing them down to something. that you know some mechanism that you. can actually quantify. um that's the that's the fun part of. astrophysics. just kind of simulating things in. extreme detail. is we'll cool we'll make cool. visualizations but that doesn't get to. doesn't doesn't get you to any better.

understanding than you had. before you did the simulation if you ask. very specific questions then you'll be. able to uh. create like very highly compressed. nice beautiful theories about how things. evolved and then you can use those to. then generalize to other solar systems. to other stars and other galaxies and. say something generalizable about the. entire universe. how difficult would it be to simulate. our solar system such that we would not.

know the difference. meaning if we are living in a simulation. is there a nice think of it as a video. game. sure is there a nice compressible way of. doing that or. just kind of like you intuited with a. three body situation. is just a giant mess that you cannot. create a video game. that uh will seem realistic without. actually. building it so i'm you know i'm. speculating but. one of the yeah i know i know like.

you have a deep understanding of this. but like for me. i'm just gonna like speculate that for. um at least in the types of simulations. that we can do. today inevitably you run into the. problem of resolution. right you're doesn't matter what you're. doing it is discrete. now um the way you would go. about asking you know if what we're. observing is that a simulation or. uh or is that you know some real.

continuous. thing uh is you you zoom in right you. zoom in and try and find. the you know the grid scale if you will. um yeah i mean. it's a it's a really interesting it's a. really interesting question. and because the. solar system itself and really you know. the double pendulum is chaotic. right pendulum sitting on another.

pendulum. moves unpredictably once you let them go. um. you really don't need to like inject any. randomness into a simulation for it to. to give you stochastic and unpredictable. answers. weather is a great example of this. weather has a happen of time. of you know typical weather systems have. a happen of time of a few days. and there's a fundamental reason why the. force. forecast always sucks you know two weeks.

in advance. it's not that we don't know the. equations that govern. the atmosphere we know them well their. solutions are meaningless though after a. few days. the zooming in thing is very interesting. i. i think about this a lot whether. there'll be a time. soon where we would want to stay in. video game worlds. whether it's virtual reality or just. playing video games i mean i think that. time. like came in like the 90s and it's been.

that time well it's not just it's not. just games i mean. it's accelerated i just recently saw. that. wow and fortnite were played 140 billion. hours. and those are just video games yeah and. that's like increasing very very quickly. especially with the people. coming up now and being born now and. become you know becoming teenagers. and so on let's have a thought. experiment where it's just you and a. video game character inside a room. where you remove the simulation they. need to simulate sort of.

a lot of objects if it's just you and. that character. how far do you need to simulate in terms. of zooming in. for it to be very real to you as real as. reality. so like first of all you kind of. mentioned zooming in which is. fascinating because. we have these tools of science that. allow us to zoom in. quote unquote in all kinds of ways. uh in the world around us but our. cognitive abilities like our perception. system as humans.

is very limited in terms of situations. so we might be very easily fooled. some of the video games like on the ps4. yeah like look pretty real to me yeah. right uh i think. you would really have to interrogate i. mean i think even with what we have. today. like uh i don't know ace combat seven. that's a great example. right like i mean the way that the. clouds are rendered. uh it's i mean it. looks just like when you're flying you.

know on a real airplane the. the kind of transparency i think that. the. you know our perception is limited. enough already. to not be able to tell some of the uh. you know some of the differences there's. a game called uh. skyrim it's an elder scrolls role. playing game. and i just uh i played it for quite a. bit. and i think i played very different than. others like. there'll be long searches of time where.

i would just walk around and look at. nature. in the game it's incredible oh sure it's. just like the graphics is like. wow i want to stay there it was better i. went hiking recently. it was like as good as hiking so look i. know what you mean. not to go on a huge video game you know. tangent but like. the the third like witcher game was. astonishingly beautiful right especially. like playing on. on a good hardware machine it's like. this is pretty.

this is pretty legit that said um. you know i i don't resonate with the i. want to stay. here you know like one of the things. that i love to do. is to go to my like boxing gym. and and box with a guy right like that's. there's. there's nothing quite like that physical. you know. experience like that's fascinating that. might be. simply an artifact of the year you were. born maybe because if you're born today.

it almost seems like stupid to go to a. gym yeah. like you're going to a gym to box with a. guy why not box with mike tyson when you. yourself was like in his prime when you. yourself are also an incredible boxer. in the video game world for me there. there's a multitude of reasons why i. don't want to box with mike tyson. right like no no no no you enjoy teeth. and i want to have an ear no but your. your skills. in this meat space in this physical. realm is very limited.

and takes a lot of work and you're. you're uh you're a musician. uh your incredible scientist you only. have so much time in the in the day. but in the video game world you can. expand your capabilities in all kinds of. dimensions. that you can never have possibly have. time in the physical world. and so that it doesn't make sense like. to. to be existing to be working your ass. off in the physical world. when you can just be super successful uh. uh in the video game world but i still.

you enjoy sucking and stuff. yeah i i really struggling to get better. i sure do. i mean i think like these days with. music music. is a great example right we just started. you know. practicing live uh with my band again. you know after. not playing for a year and uh you know. it's just it was terrible. right which is just kind of a lot of the. nuance. you know a lot of the detail is just. that detail that takes you know. years of collective practice to develop.

uh. it's just lost but it was just an. incredible amount of fun. way more fun than all the like studio. you know sitting around and playing uh. that i did you know throughout the. entire year. so i think there's something there's. something intangible. or maybe maybe tangible about being uh. being in person. i i sure hope you're wrong and that. you know we that's not something that. will get lost because i think there's.

like such a large part of the human. condition. is to hang out if we were doing this. interview on zoom right. i mean i'd already be i'd already be. bored out of my mind. [Laughter]. exactly i mean there's something to that. i mean i'm almost playing devil's. advocate but at the same time. you know i'm sure people talk about the. same way at the beginning of the 20th. century about horses. where they're they are much more. efficient.

they're much uh easier to maintain than. cars. it doesn't make sense to have you know. all the ways that cars break down and. there's not enough infrastructure in. terms of roads for cars. it doesn't make any sense like horses. and like nature you could do the nature. like where. you know you should be living more. natural life those are real you don't. want machines in your life they're going. to pollute your mind. and the minds of young people but then. eventually just cars took over so. in that same way it just seems uh going. back to horses. just you know well you can be you can.

play uh. uh uh what is it red dead. red dead redemption redemption and uh. you can ride horses in the video game. more. so let me return us back to planet nine. uh-huh always a good place to come back. to so now that we did a big. historical overview of our solar system. what is planet nine. okay planet nine is a hypothetical. object that orbits the solar system. right at. an orbital period of about 10 000 years.

and an orbit which is slightly tilted. with respect to the plane of the solar. system. slightly eccentric and the object itself. we think is five times more massive than. the earth we have never seen planet nine. in a telescope but we have gravitational. evidence for it. and so this is where all the stuff we've. been talking about this clustering ideas. maybe you can speak to the approximate. location that we.

suspect and also the question i wanted. to ask is uh. what are we supposed to be imagining. here because he said there's certain. objects in the kuiper belt that. are kind of have a direction to them. that they're all. like like flocking in some kind of way. so that's the sense that there's some. kind of gravitational object. not changing their orbit but kind of. confining them. right yeah finding like grouping their. orbits together. see what would happen if planet nine. were not there is these orbits that.

roughly share. a common orientation they would just. disperse right they would just become as. a mutually symmetric. point everywhere planet nine's gravity. makes it such that these objects stay. in a state that's that's basically. anti-aligned with respect to the orb. of planet nine um and. and sort of hang out there and kind of. oscillate on time scale of about a. billion years. that's one of the lines of evidence for.

the existence of planet nine there are. others that's the one that's easiest to. maybe visualize just because it's fun to. think about orbits that all point. into the same direction but i should. you know emphasize that for example the. existence of. objects again kuiper belt objects that. are heavily out of the plane. of the solar system things that are. tilted by say 90 degrees that's not. we don't expect that as an outcome. of planet formation indeed planet.

formation. simulations have never produced such. objects. without some extrinsic gravitational. force. planet nine on the other hand generates. them very readily so that. provides kind of an alternative you know. population of small bodies in the solar. system that also get produced by planet. 9 through an. independent kind of gravitational effect. so they're kind of. there's basically five different things. that the uh that planet nine does.

individually that are like kind of. maybe a one sigma effect where you would. say yeah okay if that's all it was. maybe it's not no reason to jump up and. down but because. it's it's mult it's a multitude of these. puzzles. that all are explained by one hypothesis. that's that's really the the magnetism. the attraction of the planet nine model. so can you just clarify so. most orbit most planets in the solar.

system orbit. and approximately the same so it's flat. yeah it's like. one degree they the difference between. them is. about one degree so but nevertheless if. we looked at our solar. system it would look and i could see. every single object it would look like a. sphere. the inner part where the planets are. would look. like you know flat right the the kuiper. belt. and the asteroid belt have a larger.

um it gets fatter and fatter yeah that's. kind of like becomes a sphere. that's right and if you look at the very. outside it's polluted by this. you know quasi-spheroidal thing. nobody's of course ever seen the oort. cloud. right we've only seen comments that come. from the oort cloud so. the oort cloud which is this right. population of distant debris. its existence is also inferred you could. say. alternatively there is you know there's.

a big. cosmic creature that occasionally you. know sitting at 20 000 au and. occasionally throws an icy. rock towards the sound like that. spaghetti monster i think it's called. okay. i mean so it's a mystery in many ways. but you can kind of infer a bunch of. things about it. it's by the way both terrifying and. exciting that there's this. vast darkness all around us that's full. of objects that are just. throwing just there yeah it's actually. kind of astonishing right. that we have only.

explored a small fraction of the solar. system. right that that really kind of baffles. me because. uh remember as a student you know. studying physics. you know you do the problem where you. put the earth around the sun you solve. that and. like it's one line of math and you say. okay well that. surely was figured out by newton so like. all the interesting stuff. is not in the solar system but that um. it's just plainly not true there are.

there are mysteries in the solar system. that. are remarkable that we are only now. starting to just kind of scratch the. surface of. and some of those objects probably have. some information about the history of. our solar system. absolutely absolutely like a great. example is. uh you know small meteorites right small. meteorites. are melted right they have they're. differentiated meaning some of the. uh iron sinks you say. how can that be because they're so small.

that they wouldn't have melted just from. the heat of their accretion. turns out the fact that the solar nebula. the. the disk that made the planets was. polluted by. aluminum 26 is in itself a remarkable. thing it means. the solar system did not form an. isolation it formed. in a giant cloud of thousands of other. stars that were also forming. some of which were undergoing you know. going through supernova explosions some. of. and releasing these unstable isotopes.

that of which we now see kind of the. traces of. it's so cool do you think it's possible. that life from. other solar systems was injected and. that that was. what was uh the origin of life on earth. yeah defense permea idea um. that's seen as a low probability event. by people who studied the original life. but that's because. uh then they would be out of a job well. i don't think they'd be out of the job.

because you just then say you have to. figure out how life started. and there but then you have to go there. we can study. life on earth much easier we could study. in the lab. much easier because we could replicate. conditions that are. from an early earth much easier. from a chemistry perspective from a. biology perspective. you can intuit a bunch of stuff you can. look at different parts of earth and. just. to an extent i mean the early earth was. completely. unlike the current earth right there was. no oxygen so.

uh one of my colleagues at caltech uh. joe kirchnick is. certain right something like. 100 certainty that life started on mars. and came to earth uh in on martian media. rights. um this is not a problem. that i like to kind of. think about too much like the origin of. life it's a fascinating problem. but you know it's not physics and i just.

like. i just don't don't love it it's the same. reason you don't love. i thought you're a musician so music is. not physics either so why are you. showing 100. physics. [Laughter]. okay no no look uh in all seriousness. though i. uh there are a few things that i really. really enjoy. i genuinely enjoy physics i genuinely. enjoy music. i genuinely you know enjoy martial arts. and. i genuinely enjoy uh my family i should.

have said that all in a reverse order or. something. but i like to focus on these things and. not worry too much. about about everything else you know. what i mean yes just because there is a. like you said earlier there's a time. constraint you can't. do it all there's many mysteries all. around us. so um and they're all beautiful in in. different ways. to me that thing i love is artificial. intelligence that uh. perhaps i love it because eventually i'm. trying to suck up to our future.

overlords. the the question of you said there's a. lot of kind of. little pieces of evidence for this thing. that's planet nine. if we were to try to collect more. evidence. or be certain like a paper that says. like you drop it clear we're done. what what is that required does that. require us sending probes out. or do you think we can do it from. telescopes here on earth what are the. different ideas for conclusive evidence.

for planet nine. the moment planet nine gets imaged from. a telescope on earth it's done i mean. it's just there. can you clarify because you mentioned. that before from an. image would you be able to tell yes so. from. an image the moment you see. something something that is reflecting. sunlight. back at you and you know that it's. hundreds of times as far away from. the sun as as the earth you're done.

so you're thinking so basically if you. have a really far away thing that's big. yeah you know five times the size of. earth that means. uh that that's fine that is planet could. there be multiple objects like that i. guess. in principle yeah i mean there's no. there's no law of physics that uh that. doesn't allow you to have multiple. there's also no evidence at present for. there being multiple i wonder if. it's possible this is like just like. we're finding exoplanets. whether given the size of the or cloud.

there's basically. it's rare and rare but they're sprinkled. planet nine. ten eleven twelve like these yeah. some got thirteen after that yeah i can. just keep counting. so like just something about the dynamic. system. like it becomes lower and lower. probability event but they gather up. like they they become would they become. larger and larger maybe. something like that and i wonder i. wonder if like discovering planet nine.

will just like be almost like a. springboard it's like well what's. what's beyond that it's entirely. plausible the oort cloud itself. probably holds about five earth masses. or seven earth masses of material. right so it's not it's not nothing and. the it all ultimately comes down. to at what point will the observational. surveys. sample enough of the solar system to uh. kind of.

reveal interesting things. there's a great analogy here with. neptune and the story of how neptune was. discovered. neptune was not discovered by looking at. the sky. right it was discovered by uh it was. certain mathematically. right so yeah the orbit of. uranus when uranus was found um. yes this was 1781. uh it's. the kind of tracking uh both the. tracking. of the orbit of uranus as well as the.

reconstruction. of the orbit of uranus immediately. revealed. that it was not following the orbit that. it was supposed to. right the the predicted orbit deviated. away from where it actually was. so uh in the mid eighteen hundreds. right um a french mathematician by the. name of orban le verrier. did a beautifully sophisticated. calculation which said. if this is due to gravity of a.

more distant planet then that planet is. there. okay and then they found it but the. point is the. understanding of where to look for. neptune came entirely out of celestial. mechanics. the case with planet nine is a little. bit different. because what we can do i think. relatively well is predict the orbit and. mass of planet nine we cannot tell you. where it is on its orbit. the reason is we haven't seen the kuiper. belt objects complete. in orbit their own orbit.

even once because it takes four thousand. years but. you know i plan to live on as an ai. being. uh and you know i'll i'll be tracking. those. uh those orbits as solid takes four or. five thousand years i mean. it doesn't have to be ai it could be. longevity there's a lot of really. exciting genetic engineering research. so you'll just be a brain waiting for. the. for the your brain waiting for the orbit. to complete for the basic kuiper belt. objects. that's that's right that's like kind of.

the worst. reason to want to live a long time right. just like can the brain like smoke a. cigarette. can you just like light one up while. you're waiting or. uh. [Laughter]. but you're making me actually realize. that the one way to explore. the the galaxy is by just sitting here. on earth and waiting. so if we can just get really good at. waiting it's like a more more or these. interstellar objects that.

fly in you can just wait for them to. come to you same with the aliens you can. wait for them to come to you. if you get really good at waiting um. then. that's one way to do the exploration. because eventually the thing will come. to you maybe that's the entire. maybe the intelligent alien. civilizations. get much better at waiting and so they. all decide so. game theoretically to start waiting and. it's just a bunch of like. ancient intelligent civilizations of. aliens all throughout the universe. they're just sitting there waiting for. each other. look you can't just be good at waiting.

you got to know how to chill. okay like like you can't just like sit. around and do nothing you got to be. you get you got to know how to chill i. honestly think that. as we progress if the aliens are. anything like us. we enjoy loving things we do. and it it's uh it's very possible that. we just figure out mechanisms. here on earth to enjoy our life and we. just stay here on our f. forever that exploration becomes less. and less of an interesting thing to do.

and so you basically yes wait and chill. you get really optimally good at. chilling and thereby. exploring is not that interesting so you. know. in terms of 4 000 years would be nothing. for scientists we'll be chilling and. just. all kinds of scientific explorations. will become. possible because we'll just be here. you have a paper out recently because. you already mentioned some of these. ideas but. i'd love it if you could dig into it a. little bit yeah of course the injection. of inner.

or cloud objects into the distant kuiper. belt by planet nine. what is this idea of. planet nine injecting objects into the. kuiper belt okay let me take a. brief step back and when we do. calculations of. planet nine we do the simulations. as far as our simulations are concerned. sort of. the uh neptune. like kind of the trans-neptunian solar. system.

is entirely sourced from the inside. namely the kuiper belt gets scattered by. neptune and then planet nine does things. to it and aligns the orbits and. and so on and then we calculate what uh. what happens on the lifetime of the. solar system yada yada. during the pandemic one of the kind of. questions we asked. ourselves this is indeed something we. mike and i uh. mike brown whose partner in crime on. this and i. do regularly is we say how can.

we a disprove ourselves and b. how can we improve our simulations like. what's missing. one idea that maybe should have been. obvious in retrospect is that all of our. simulations treated the solar system. as some isolated creature right but the. solar system did not form in isolation. right it formed in this cluster of stars. and during that phase. of forming together with thousands of. other stars.

we believe the solar system formed this. almost spherical population of icy. debris. that sits maybe at a. few thousand times the separation. between. the earth and the sun maybe even a. little bit closer. if planet nine's not there that. population is completely dormant. and these objects just slowly orbit. the the sun nothing interesting had.

happens to them ever but what we. realized that if planet nine is there. planet nine can actually grab some of. those objects and gravitationally. re-inject them. into the distant solar system so we. thought okay let's look into this. with numerical experiments do do our. simulations. does this process work and if it works. uh. what are its consequences so it turns. out indeed not only. does planet nine inject these distant.

inner or cloud objects into the kuiper. belt. they follow roughly the same pathway as. the. um as the objects that are being. scattered out also there's this. kind of river two-way river of material. some of it is coming out from you know. by neptune scattering some of it is. moving in and if you work through the. numbers. you kind of at the end of the day that. it. it has an effect on the best fit orbit. for planet nine itself. so if you realize that the data set that.

we're observing. is not entirely composed of things that. came out of the solar system but also. things that got. re-injected back in then turns out the. best fit planet nine slightly more. eccentric. that's kind of getting into the weeds. the the point here is that. uh you know the existence of planet nine. itself provides this. natural bridge that connects an. otherwise dormant population of icy. debris of the solar system. with things that we're starting to. directly observe so you can flow back so.

it's not just the river flowing one way. it's. maybe a smaller stream go back and. backwash. you want a backwash you want to. incorporate that into the simulations. into your. understanding of those distant objects. when you're trying to make sense of the. various observations and so on exactly. that's fascinating. i gotta ask you some people think that. uh many of the observations you're. describing. could be described by a primordial black. hole. first what is the primordial black hole.

and what do you think about this idea. yeah. so primordial black hole is a black hole. which is made. not through the usual pathway of making. a black hole. which is that you have a star which is. uh more massive. than you know 1.4 or so solar masses and. basically when it runs out of. fuel uh runs out of its nuclear fusion. fuel. it can't hold itself up anymore and just. the whole thing collapses on itself.

right you create a um. i mean one i guess simple way to think. about it is you create an. object with zero radius that has mass. but zero radius. that singularity. now that's such black holes exist all. over the place in the galaxy there's in. fact. a really big one at the center of the. galaxy that's like yeah. that that one's always looking at you. when you're not looking. okay right and it's it's always talking.

about you. and when you turn off the lights it's it. wakes up. that's right um but you know so such. black holes. are all over the place we when they. merge we get to see. you know incredible gravitational waves. that they emit etc etc. one kind of plausible scenario however. is that. when the universe was forming basically. during the big bang. you created a whole spectrum of black. holes. some with masses of five earth masses. some with masses of.

10 earth masses like the entire you know. mass spectrum size. the amount some the mass of asteroids. now on the smaller end over the lifetime. of the universe. the small ones kind of evaporate and. they're not there anymore at least this. is what we. what the calculations tell us but five. earth masses is big enough to. not have evaporated so one idea is that. planet nine is not a planet and instead.

it is a five. earth mass black hole and that's why. it's hard to find now. can we right away from our calculations. say. that's definitely true or that's not. true absolutely not we can't in fact our. calculations. tell you nothing other than the orbit. and the mass and that means the. black hole i mean it could be a five. earth mass you know. cup it could be a five earth mass.

hedgehog or a black hole or. really anything that's five earth masses. will do because the gravity of a black. hole. is no different than the gravity of a. planet right if the sun became a black. hole tomorrow. it would be dark but or the earth would. keep orbiting it. and like this notion that oh black holes. suck everything in. it's it's not that's like a sci-fi. notion right it's just mass. what would be the difference between a. black hole and a planet. in terms of observationally uh.

observationally the difference would be. that you will never find the black hole. right the truth is they're kind of um. i'm actually. not you know i never looked into this. very carefully. but there are some constraints that you. can. get just statistically say okay if the. sun. has a binary companion which is a five. earth mass black hole. then that means such black holes would. be extremely. common and you know you can sort of look.

for lensing events and then you say okay. maybe that's not so likely. but you know that said i want to. emphasize that. there's a limit to what our calculations. uh. can tell you that's the orbit and the. mass so. i think there's a bunch like ed whitton. i think. wishes it's a black hole because i think. the one exciting things about black. holes. in our solar system is that we can go. there. and we can maybe study the singularity. somehow because that allows us to.

understand some fundamental things about. physics. if um it's a planet so planet nine. we may not you know and we go there we. may not discover. anything profoundly new. the interesting thing perhaps you can. correct me about planet nine. is like the big picture of it the whole. big story of the kuiper belt and all. those kinds of things. it's not that planet nine would be. somehow fundamentally different. from um from i don't know neptune.

in terms of um in terms of the kind of. things we can learn from it so i think. that. there's kind of a hope that it's a black. hole because it's an entirely new kind. of object maybe you can. uh correct me yeah i mean of course here. my own. biases creep in because i'm interested. you know. in planets around other stars and. i would say i would disagree that you. know we wouldn't find. things that would be truly you know. fundamentally new new because as it.

turns out. the the galaxy is really good at making. five or three earth mass objects right. the most common type of planet that we. see that we you know discover orbiting. around other stars. there's a few earth masses in the solar. system there's no analog for that. right we go from one earth mass object. which is this one. and to skipping to neptune and uranus. which themselves are actually relatively. poorly understood. especially uranus from the interior.

structure point of view. if planet nine is a planet going there. will give us the closest window and to. understanding what. other planets look like and um. i will you know i'll say this that you. know planets. kind of in terms of their complexity on. some logarithmic scale. fall somewhere between a star and an. insect. right an insect is way more complicated. than a star. right just there's all kinds of physical.

processes and really. biochemical processes that occur inside. of an insect. that just make a star look like. you know somebody is like playing with. the spring or something yeah. right so the i i think. you know it would be you know arguably. you know more interesting to go to um. you know to go to planet nine if it's a. planet because black holes are simple. they're just kind of.

they're basically macroscopic like. particles yeah right and so just like. you mentioned in terms of complexity so. it's possible that planet nine. as opposed to being like homogeneous is. like super. like heterogeneous is a bunch of cool. stuff going on absolutely. that could give us an intuition i never. thought about that that it's. basically earth number two in terms of. size. and gives us starts giving us intuition. that could be generalizable to. earth-like planets elsewhere in the.

galaxy yeah pluto. is also in the sense like you know pluto. is a tiny tiny thing right just like. you would imagine there's just a tiny. ball of ice like who cares but the new. horizons. images of pluto reveal so much. remarkable structure. right they reveal glaciers flowing and. these are glaciers. not made out of water ice but you know. co ice. it turns out at those temperatures. right of like 40 or so kelvin water ice.

looks like metal right it doesn't flow. at all but then. ice made up of carbon monoxide. starts to flow i mean there's just like. all kinds of really cool. uh phenomena that you otherwise just. wouldn't really even imagine that occur. so yeah i mean there's a reason why i. like planets. well let me ask you i find uh. as i read the idea that edwin was. thinking about this kind of stuff. fascinating so he he's a mathematical.

physicist. who's uh very interested in string. theory won the fields. metal for his work in mathematics. so i read that he proposed a fleet of. probes. accelerated by radiation pressure that. could discover a planet nine primordial. black holes location. uh what do you think about this idea of. sending a bunch of probes out there. yeah look the way the the idea is a cool. one.

right you go and you say. you know launch them basically. isotropically you track where they go. and uh if i understand the idea. correctly you basically measure the. deflection and then you say okay there. must be. something there since the the. probe trajectories are being altered oh. so the measurement. the basic sensory mechanism is the it's. not like you have sensors on the probes. it's more like you're. because you're very precisely able to.

capture to measure the trajectory of the. probes you can then. infer the gravitational fields and i. think i think that's the basic idea. um you know back a few years ago we. had conversations like these with um. you know engineers from jpl they. more or less convinced me that this is. much more difficult than it seems. because. you don't at that level of precision. right. things like solar flares matter right.

solar flares. right are completely chaotic you can't. predict which. where a solar flare will happen that. will drive radiation. pressure gradients you don't know where. every single asteroid is so like. actually doing that problem. i think it's possible but it's it's not. a trivial matter. right well i wonder not just about. planet nine i wonder if that's kind of. the future. of doing science in our solar system.

is to just launch a huge number of. probes so like a. whole order of magnitude many orders of. magnitude larger. numbers of probes and then starting for. a bunch of different stuff. not just gravity but everything else so. in this regard. i actually think there is a huge. revolution that's. to some extent already started right the. standard kind of like. time scale for a nasa mission is that. you like. propose it and it launches i don't know. like. 150 years after you propose i'm over.

exaggerating but. yeah you know it's just like some huge. development cycle. yeah and it gets delayed 55 times. like that is not going away. yeah right the the really cutting edge. things. you have to do it this way because you. don't know what you're building so to. speak. but the cubesat kind of world. is starting to um you know provide an. avenue for like.

you know launching something that costs. you know a few million dollars. and has a turnaround time scale of like. a couple years you can imagine doing. you know phd theses where you design the. mission. the mission goes to where you're going. and you do the science. all within a time span of five six years. that is has not been fully executed on. yet but i absolutely think that's on the. horizon and we're not talking. a decade i think we're talking like this. decade.

yeah and the company is accelerating all. this uh. with uh blue origin and and uh spacex. there's a bunch of more cubesat oriented. companies that are pushing this forward. uh well let me ask you let me ask you on. that topic what do you think about. either one elon musk with spacex. uh going to mars i think he wants spacex. to be the first. to put a first human on mars and then uh. jeff bezos got to give him props.

wants to be the first to fly his own. rocket. out into space so you know wasn't there. a guy who like. built his rocket out of garbage yeah. this was like a couple. years ago and somewhere in the desert he. launched himself. i'm not tracking this closely but i. think i am. familiar with folks who built their own. rocket to try to prove the earth is flat. yes that's the guy i'm talking about. yeah he was also like he also jumped. some limousine yeah. for truly revolutionary minds.

uh greater men than either you or i. but yeah so look it's been. astonishing to watch how really over the. last like. decade the commercial sector. took over this uh you know. this industry that traditionally has. really been like. a you know a government thing to do um. motivated primarily by the the. competition between nations like the.

cold war. sure and now it's motivated more. more and more by the natural forces of. capitalism yes. that's right so um okay here. i have i have many ideas about i think. on the one hand right. like what spacex has been able to do for. example phenomenal. um if that brings down. the price of spacex within that. turnaround time scale for space. exploration which i think it inevitably. will um that's a huge you know that's a.

huge boost. to the to the human condition the same. time. right if we're talking astronomy right. there they're also. it comes at a huge cost right and the. starling satellites is a great example. of that cost right at one point uh. in fact i was just camping and the. mojave was a. with a friend of mine and they saw you. know. this uh the string of satellites just. kind of like. you know appear and then disappear uh.

into nowhere so that. is beginning to interfere with you know. earth-based observations so. i think it's there's tremendous. potential there. it's also important to be responsible. about how it's executed. now with mars and the whole idea of you. know exploring mars. right i don't have like strong opinions. on whether a manned mission. is is required or not required. um but i do think you know.

we need to focus the thing to keep in. mind is that. i i generally kind of. uh i'm not signed on if it will to the. idea that mars is some kind of a safe. haven that we can. uh you know escape to right. mars sucks right like living on mars if. you. if you want to live on mars like you can. have that experience. by going to the mojave desert and. camping and it's just like.

it's it's just not a great well it's. interesting but there's something. captivating about that kind of mission. of. us striving out into space and by making. mars in some ways habitable. for at least like months at a time. i think would lead to engineering. breakthroughs that would make life. like in many ways much better on earth. like it would we'll come up with. ideas we totally don't expect yet both. on the robotics side. on the food engineering side on the.

you know maybe like we'll switch from. what like there'll be huge breakthroughs. in insect farming as. as exciting as i find that idea to be. that in you know our in the ways we. consume protein maybe. uh it'll revolutionize we do factory. farming which is. full of cruelty and you know and torture. of animals will. revolutionize that completely because of. our like we don't. we shouldn't need to go to mars to. revolutionize life here on earth. but at the same time i shouldn't need a.

deadline to get done. but i do need it and then the same way i. think we need. mars there's something about the human. spirit that loves that. longing for i i agree with that thesis. the going to the moon. right and the that whole. endeavor has you know. has captivated the imagination of so. many and it has uh. it has led to incredible kind of. incredible ideas really and and probably. in non-linear ways.

right not like okay we went to the moon. therefore. some person here has thought of this and. yes in in that similar sense. i think you know space exploration is. there's something there's some real. magnetism about it. and it's on a genetic level right like. we have this. need to keep exploring right when we're. done. uh with a certain frontier we move on to. the next frontier all that i'm saying. is that i'm not moving to mars to live.

there permanently. uh ever you know and i think that you. know i'm glad you paid. you you noted the kind of degradation of. the earth. right i think that is a true kind of. the leading order challenge of our great. engineering that's. a bunch of a bunch of engineering. problems i'm most interested in this. space because as i've read extensively. it's apparently very difficult to have. sex in space. and so i just want that problem to be. solved because i think. once we solve the sex and space problem.

we'll revolutionize sex here on earth. thereby increasing the fun on earth and. um. the consequences of that can only be. good i mean you can. you've got a clear plan right and and it. sounds like uh yeah i'm submitting. proposals to nasa as we said that's. right. i keep getting rejected i don't know why. okay. uh you need better diagrams better. better pictures. i should have thought of that you a. while ago mentioned that. you know there's certain aspects in the.

history of the solar system and earth. that resulted that it could have. resulted in an. opaque atmosphere but it didn't. we couldn't see the stars um. and uh somebody mentioned to me a little. bit ago. it's almost like a philosophical. question for you do you think. humans like human society would develop. as it did or at all if we couldn't see. the stars. it would be drastically different.

just dr if it ever did develop so i. think some of the early developments. right of like fire and you know fire. you know first of all that atmosphere. would be so hot because you know if you. have an opaque. atmosphere the temperature at the bottom. is is huge um so we would. be very different beings to start with. we'd have it could be cloudy in certain. kinds of ways that you could still get. okay think about like uh like a.

greenhouse right a greenhouse. is cloudy effectively uh but it's it's. super hot. um yeah it's hard to avoid having an. atmosphere if you have an. opaque atmosphere it's hard to right. venus is a great example. right venus is i don't remember exactly. how many degrees. and but it's hundreds in celsius right. it's not a hundred it's hundreds. uh even though it's only a little bit. closer to the sun that temperature. is entirely coming from the fact that.

the atmosphere is thick so it's just a. sauna of sorts. yeah yeah you go there you know you feel. refreshed after you come back. you know but if you stay there i mean so. okay take that as an assumption. this is a philosophical question not a. biological one so you have a life that. develops under these. extremely hot conditions yeah so let's. see so much of. the early evolution of mankind. uh was driven by exploration yeah right. and the kind of interest and stars.

originated in part as a tool. to guide that exploration right i mean. that in itself i think would be a huge. uh you know a huge differential in the. way that we. you know our our our evolution on this. planet. yes i mean stars is that's brilliant so. even in that aspect but even in further. aspects. uh astronomy just shows up in basically. every single development in the history.

of science up until the 20th century. it shows up so i wonder without that if. we had we would have. if we would even get like calculus yeah. look that's a great. i mean that's a great point newton in. part developed calculus. because he was interested in. understanding. explaining kepler's laws right in. general. that whole mechanistic understanding of. the night sky. right replacing a religious. understanding where you interpret.

you know this is you know this whatever. fire god. writing his you know uh little chariot. across the sky. as opposed to you know this is some. mechanistic set of laws. that transformed humanity and arguably. put us. on the on the course that we're on today. right. the entirety of the last 400 years and. the development of. kind of our technological world that we. live in today. was sparked by by that right.

abandoning an effectively you know a. non-secular. view of the natural world and and kind. of thing okay. this can be understood and if it can be. understood it can be utilized we can. create our own. uh variants of this absolutely we would. be a very very different species. without astronomy this i think extends. beyond just astronomy right there there. are questions.

like why do we need to spend money on. x right where x can be anything like. paleontology like right uh the mating. patterns of uh penguins yeah that's like. essential that's right um i think. you know there's a tremendous uh. underappreciation for the usefulness. of useless knowledge right i mean. uh that's brilliant i didn't come up. with this this was this is a little book.

by the guy who started the institute for. advanced studies. but um you know it's. it's so true so much of the electronics. that are on this table. right work on maxwell's equations. maxwell weren't. wasn't sitting around in the 1800s. saying you know i hope one day. you know uh we'll make you know a couple. mics so. you know a couple uh you know a couple. guys can. have this conversation right that that.

wasn't at no. at no point was that the motivation and. yet. you know it gave us the world that we. have today and the answer is if you. a purely pragmatic person if you don't. care at all about kind of the human. condition none of this. the answer is uh you can tax it. right like the useless things. have been have created way more capital. than useful things and the sad thing i.

mean. first of all it's really important to. think about and it's. brilliant in the in the following. context. like neil degrasse tyson has this book. about the role. of military-based funding in the. development of science. and then so much of technological. breakthroughs in the 20th century. had to do with humans working on. different military things. and then the outcome of that had nothing.

to do with military it had some military. application but. their impact was much much bigger than. the military the splitting of the atom. is is a kind of a canonical example of. this we all know the tragedy that. you know arises from splitting of the. atom and and yet you know. so much i mean the atom itself. does not care for what purpose it is. being split. so so i wonder if if we you take took. the same amount of funding as we used. for war. and poured it into like totally.

seemingly. useless things like the mating patterns. of penguins. we would get the internet anyway i i. think so i think so. and uh you know perhaps more of the. internet. would have uh would have penguins you. know. so we're both joking but in some sense. like. i wonder it's not the the penguins. because penguins is more about. sort of biology but all useless kind of. tinkering and all kinds of. uh in all kinds of avenues.

and also because military applications. are often. um burdened by the secrecy required. so it's often like so much uh. the openness is lacking and if we. learned anything from the last few. decades is that. when there's openness and science that. accelerates the development of science. that's right that's true. the openness of science truly. you know it benefits everybody the.

notion that. if you know i share my science with you. then you're gonna catch up and like. know the same thing that is a. short-sighted viewpoint because if you. catch up. and you open you know. you you discover something that puts me. in a position to do. the next step right it's just so i. absolutely agree. with um with all this i mean uh. the kind of question of like military. funding versus non-military funding is.

is obviously a complicated one but at. the end of the day i think we have to. get. over the notion as a society. that we are going to you know pay for. this. and then we will get that right that's. true. if you're buying like i don't know. toilet paper or something right it's. just not true in the intellectual. pursuit that's not how it works. and sometimes it'll fail right like.

sometimes like. a huge fraction of what i do right i. come up with an idea. i think oh it's great and then i work it. out it's totally not great right it. fails immediately. failure is not a sign that the initial. pursuit. was worthless right failure is just part. of this kind of this whole exploration. thing and. we should fund more and more of this. exploration the variety of the. exploration. i think it was linus pauling or somebody. from you know that generation of. scientists and. you know a good way to have good ideas.

is to have a lot of ideas right so. that's i think that's true um if you are. conservative in your thinking if you. worry about proposing something that's. going to fail and oh what if you know. like i there's no science police that's. going to come and arrest you for. proposing the wrong thing and you know. it's also just like why would you why. would you do science if you're. afraid of you know taking that step it'd.

be so much better. to propose things that are that are. plausible that are interesting. and then for a fraction of them to be. wrong than to just kind of. you know make incremental progress all. your life right. speaking of wild ideas let me ask you. about. the thing we mentioned previously which. is this interstellar object a muamoa. could it be space junk from a distant. alien civilization. you can't immediately discount that.

by saying absolutely it cannot. anything can be a space junk i mean from. that point of view can any of the kuiper. belt objects we see. okay you know be space beijing anything. on the night sky. can in principle be space junk and. kuiper belt would catch interstellar. objects potentially and like. force them into an orbit if they're like. small enough uh not the kuiper belt. itself but you can imagine like jupiter. family comets. being captured uh you know so so you can. actually capture things.

it's even easier to do this very early. in the solar system. like early in the solar system's life. while it's still in a cluster of stars. um it's unavoidable that you. capture debris whether it be natural. debris or. unnatural debris or just debris of some. kind from. other stars that it's like a daycare. center. right like everybody passes their. infections on to other kids yeah. um you know or more and more there's. been a lot of discussion. about and there's been a lot of interest.

in this over like is it is it. aliens or is it not but let's like if. you just kind of look at the facts. like what we know about it is it's kind. of like a weird shape. and it also accelerated yeah right like. that's the two those are those are the. two interesting. uh things about it there are. um there are puzzles about it and. perhaps the most uh daring resolution.

to this puzzle is that it's not you know. aliens or it's not like a rock it's. actually a piece of hydrogen ice. so this is a friend of mine you know. daryl seligman greg laughlin came up. with this uh. idea where that in. giant molecular clouds that are just. clouds of hydrogen helium gas that. live in live throughout the galaxy. at their cores you can condense ice. to become these hydrogen you know.

icebergs if you will and then. uh that explains many of the aspects of. uh in fact i think that explains all of. the. mystery how it becomes elongated because. basically the hydrogen ice sublimates. and kind of like a bar of soap. that you know slowly kind of elongates. as you. uh as you strip away the the surface. layers. uh how it was able to accelerate because.

of a jet that is produced from. you know the hydrogen coming off of it. but you can't see it because it's. hydrogen gas like all of this stuff. uh kind of falls together nicely. i'm i'm intrigued by that idea truly. because. it's like if that's true that's a new. type of astrophysical. object and it would be produced by. what's the monster that produced. initially that kind of object. so this is giant molecular molecular. clouds they're everywhere.

i mean they are the fact that they exist. is not are they rogue clouds or are they. part of like an. oort cloud no no they're not so clouds. yeah they're just floating about. yeah so if you go like a lot of people. imagine the galaxy. as being a you know a bunch of stars. right and they're just orbiting right. but the truth is if you fly between. stars you run into clouds uh they don't. have any large. object that creates orbits they're just. floating about just floating. but why are they floating together oh.

they just flowed together for time and. not. well so these are the these eventually. become the nurseries of stars. so as they as they cool they contract. and uh you know then collapse into stars. or into. groups of stars but some of them they. the starless. molecular clouds according to the. calculations that daryl and greg. did can uh can create these like. icicles of hydrogen ice i wonder why.

they would be flying so fast because. they seem to be. moving pretty fast. that's just because of the acceleration. due to uh due to the sun. if you stop i mean it's like. take something really far away let it go. and the sun is here. by the time it comes close to the sun. right it's moving pretty fast. so that's an attractive explanation i. think. not so much because uh it's cool but it. makes a clear prediction.

right of when their rubin. observatory comes online next year or so. we will discover many many more of these. objects. right and they have um so i like i like. theories that are falsifiable right not. not just testable but falsifiable it's. good to have a falsifiable theory where. you can say that's not true. uh aliens is one that's. fundamentally difficult to say no that's. not aliens.

the interesting thing to me if you look. at one alien civilization. and then we look at the things it. produces in terms of if we were to try. to detect. the alien civilization the. there's like uh say there's 10 billion. aliens there would probably be. trillions of dumb drone type things. produced by the aliens and then be many. many many.

more orders of magnitude of junk. so like if you were to look for an alien. civilization in my mind. you would be looking for the junk that's. the more efficient thing to look for. so i'm not saying has any. characteristics of space junk but. it kind of opened my eyes like to the. idea that. we shouldn't necessarily be looking to. the queen. of the ant colony we should be looking. at i don't know. i don't know like the traces of alien.

life that. doesn't look intelligent in any way may. not even look like. life it could be just garbage we should. be looking for. garbage just generically. garbage that's producible by uh. unnatural. uh forces i mean for me at least that. was kind of interesting because. if you have a successful alien. civilization. that we will be producing many more. orders and magnitude of junk and that'll. be. easier potentially to detect well so you. have to produce the junk but you have to.

also lunch. launch it so this is the this is where i. mean. let's let's imagine disposal yeah but. let's imagine we are a successful. civilization that. you know has made it to space we clearly. have right um. and yes we're in the infancy of that. pursuit but. you know we've launched i don't know how. many satellites. um probably if you count. gps satellites it must be at least. thousands. it's it's certainly thousands i don't.

know if it's over ten thousand yeah but. it's done that. but it's on that like a large order of. magnitude how many of the things. that we've launched will ever leave the. solar system i think two. two well maybe the voyager the voyager. one voyager two i don't know if the. pioneer. so maybe three like oh there's also a. tesla roadster out there. uh that that one it will never leave the. solar system it'll just. i think that one will eventually collide. with mars that can be. spacex's first mars destination.

um but look so there's an energetic cost. to interstellar travel uh which is. really hard to overcome. and when when we think about you know. generically. what do we look for in an alien. civilization oftentimes we tend to. imagine that the. thing you look for is the thing that. we're doing right now. yeah right so i think that um you know. if i if i look at the future right i. mean for a while like. okay if aliens are are out there they.

must be broadcasting and radio. right that radio um. you know the amount that we broadcast in. radio has. diminished tremendously in the last 50. years. but we're doing a lot more computation. right what are the signs of computation. like that's a good. that's an interesting question to ask. right. where i don't know i think something on. the order of a few percent. of the entire electrical grid last year.

went. to mining bitcoin right uh you know well. yeah the there could be a lot of in the. future different consequences of the. computation which. i mean by unbiased but it could be. robotics it could be artificial. intelligence so we may be looking for. intelligent looking objects like that's. what i meant by probes like things that. move. in kind of artificial ways but the. emergence of ai is not an if. right it's it's happening.

right in front of our eyes and the. energetic costs associated. with that are becoming you know a. tangible problem. so i think you know if you imagine kind. of extrapolating that into the future. right what are the you know. what becomes the bottleneck right the. bottleneck might be. powering you know powering the broadly. speaking not. one air but powering that entire ai. ecosystem.

right so i don't know i think. you know space junk isn't is kind of. uh it's an interesting idea but it's. heavily influenced by like sci-fi of. 1950s where. by 2020 we're all like flying to the. moon. um and so we produce a lot of space junk. i'm not. sure if that's the pathway that alien. civilizations take. i've also never seen an alien. civilization that's that's. true but if your theory of chill.

turns out to be true and then we don't. you know we don't necessarily. explore we seize the exploration phase. of uh. like alien civilizations quickly sees. the exploration phase of their. um of their efforts then uh. then perhaps they'll just be chilling in. a particular space. expanding slowly but then using up a lot. of resources and then have to have a lot. of garbage disposal that. sends stuff out and the other you know.

the other idea was that it could be a. relay. that uh you almost have like these gps. like markers these. sent throughout which i think is kind of. interesting it's uh similar to this. probe idea. of sending a large number of probes out. to measure gravitational um. to to to measure basically yeah the the. gravitational field. essentially i mean a lot of people at. cal tech and mit are.

trying to measure gravitational fields. and there's there's a lot of ideas of. sending. uh stuff out there that. accurately measures those gravitational. fields uh to. have a greater understanding of the. early universe. but then you might realize that. communication through gravitation. through gravity is actually much more. effective than than radio waves for. example. something like that and then you send. out. i mean okay if you're an alien. civilization that's able to.

have gigantic masses like basically. we're getting there as a as a. civilization no we're not not even close. well i mean yeah okay. i i mean like be able to sort of uh play. with black holes that kind of thing so. we're talking about a whole nother diff. order of magnitude and masses then it. may be very effective to send signals. via gravitational waves. i actually my sense is that all of these. things are.

genuinely difficult to predict you know. and i don't mean like to to kind of shy. away i just i really mean if you think. if you take um imagination of what the. future. looked like from you know 500 years ago. right it's just it is so hard to. conceive. of the impossible right so um. [Music]. it's it's almost like um you know it's. almost limiting to try and imagine. things that are an order of magnitude uh.

you know or two orders of magnitude. ahead in terms of progress. just because you know you mentioned cars. before. you know if you were to ask people what. they wanted. in 1870 is faster buggies. right so um so i think the whole like. kind of. you know alien conversation inevitably. gets gets limited by by our entire. kind of collective um astrophysical lack. of imagination.

so to push back a little bit i find that. it's really interesting to talk about. these wild ideas about the future. whether it's aliens whether it's ai. with brilliant people like yourself. who are focused on very particular tools. of science we have today. to solve very particular like rigorous. scientific questions. and it's almost like putting on this. wild dreamy hat like. some percent of the time and say like. what are like what would alien. civilizations look like what would alien.

trash look like well what would our own. civilization that sends out. trillions of ai systems out there like. hal 9000. but 10 000 out there what would that. look like and you're right. any one prediction is probably going to. be horrendously wrong. but there's something about creating. these kind of wild predictions. that kind of opens up there's a huge. magnetism to it. right and some of some of it um. you know i mean some of the jules verne.

novels did a phenomenal job predicting. the future. right uh that that actually was a great. example of what you're talking about. like allowing your imagination to. run free i mean i just hope. i just hope there there's dragons that's. like. i love dragons yeah dragons are the best. but see the cool thing about science. fiction and these kinds of conversations. it doesn't just predict the future i.

think some of these things. will create the future pla planting the. idea. this will help the humans are amazing. like fake it till you make it. humans are really good at uh taking an. idea that seems impossible at the time. and for one any one individual human. that idea. is like a it's like planting a seed yes. that eventually materializes itself. it's weird it's weird science fiction. can. create science drive some of it it.

drives the science i agree with you. and uh and i think in this regard. you know i i'm like a sucker for for. sci-fi. um it's it's all i listen to like now. when i when i run. and um and some of it is completely. implausible. right and it's like i don't care it's. it's so. it's uh it's both entertaining. and uh you know it's just like it's.

imagination. you know about the black clouds book i. think this by fred hoyle. this is like this has great connections. with sort of a lot of the advancements. that are happening in nlp. um right now right with. you know transformer models and so on. but uh you know it's this black cloud. shows up. in in the solar system and then you know. people try to. send radio and then it learns to talk. back at you. wow you know so anyway we don't have to. talk at all about it but it's just. it's something worth checking out with.

that on the alien front with the black. claw to me and. exactly and the llp front and also just. explainability of ai. it's fascinating just a very question. stephen wolfram looked at this with the. movie arrival. it's like what would be the common. language that we would discover. the the reason that's really interesting. to me is we have aliens. here on earth japanese japanese is the. obvious answer. japanese yeah that would be the common. maybe it would be music actually. that's more likely it wouldn't be a.

language it would be art. that they would communicate but you know. i i do believe that we have. i'm with stephen wolfram on this a. little bit that to me. computation like programs we write that. you know that they're kind of. intelligent creatures. and i feel like we haven't found the. common language to talk with them. like our little creations that are. artificial. are not born with the whatever that. innate thing that. produces language with us and like.

coming up with mechanisms for. communicating with them. uh is um is an effort that feels. like it will produce some incredible. discoveries you can even think of. if you think that math is discovered. mathematics in itself. is a kind of um oh yeah it's an innate. construction. of of the world we live in um i think we. are. you know a part of the way there because.

pre-1950 right. computers who were human beings that. would carry out arithmetic. right and i think it was ulam um. who worked in los alamos at the at the. time like towards the end. of the second world war wrote something. about. how you know in the future right. computers will not. be just arithmetic tool but will be. truly an interactive. you know thing with which you could.

do experiments right at the time the. notion of doing an experiment. not like in the lab with some beakers. but uh. an experiment on a computer designing an. experiment. a numerical experiment was. a new one that's like you know 70. of what i do is i design com you know i. write. code terrible code to be uh clear like. but you know i write code that creates.

an experiment which is a which is a. simulation. so in that sense i think we're beginning. to interact with the computer in in a. way that you're. saying not as just a you know fancy. calculator not as just a. you know call-in request type of. thing but but you know something that. can generate uh. generate insights that are otherwise. completely unattainable right they're. unattainable by doing. analytical mathematics yeah and there's.

uh. like with the alpha fold two we're now. trying. we're now starting to crack open biology. so being able to. simulate at first trivial biological. systems and hopefully down the line. complex biological systems. right my hope is to be able to simulate. psychology. psychological like sociological systems. like humans. i've you know um a large part of my work. at. mit was on autonomous vehicles. and the fascinating thing to me was. about pedestrians.

human pedestrians interacting with. autonomous vehicles and simulating those. systems without murdering humans. would be very useful but nevertheless is. exceptionally difficult. yeah i would say so when is my mustang. going to drive itself. right i'm not even joking it looks like. yeah yeah i it turns out it's much. difficult. it's much more difficult than we. imagined yeah and and i suppose that's. the kind of. the progress of science is. just like you know going to mars.

it's probably going to turn out to be. way more difficult to imagine. sending out probes to investigate planet. nine at the edge of our solar system. might turn out to be way more difficult. than we imagined but we do it anyway. yeah and we figure it out in the end. it's actually more of a great i mean. going. sending humans to mars is way more. complicated than huma sending humans to. the moon. you'd think just like naively yeah both. are in space. who cares like if you go there why don't. you go there. um you know just.

life support is uh is an extremely. expensive thing yeah there's a bunch of. extra challenges but i disagree with you. i would be one of the early people to go. i used to think not. yeah i used to think i'd be one of the. first maybe million to go once you have. a little bit of a society. i think i'm i'm upgrading myself to the. first like ten thousand yeah that's. right. from the front of the cabin not. completely front. but like it would be interesting to die. i'm okay. with uh death sucks. but i kind of like the idea of dying on.

mars. of all the places to die i gotta say in. this regard like. i don't wanna die on mars i don't no no. i would much rather. die on earth uh i mean death. is is fundamentally boring right like. death is a very boring experience. but i mean i've never died before so i. don't know from first-hand experience as. far as you know yeah. it could be a reincarnation all those. kinds of things so you mean uh. where would you die uh if you had to.

choose oh man. um okay so and you know i would. definitely. you know there's a question of who i'd. want to die with. you know i'd prefer not to die alone uh. but like. you know surrounded by family would be. uh would be preferable where i think. northern new mexico and i'm not even. joking like this is not. a random place it's just like would that. be your favorite place on earth.

not necessarily like favorite place on. earth to. to to reside you know indefinitely but. it is. it is one of the most beautiful places. i've i've ever been to. uh so you know there's something i don't. know there's something attractive about. about going you know returning to nature. in a beautiful. uh place let me ask you about another. aspect of your life. that is full of beauty music okay you're.

a musician. uh the absurd question i have to ask. what is the greatest song of all time oh. objectively speaking. the greatest song of all time i suppose. that could change. moment to moment day to day but if you. were forced to answer for this. particular moment in your life that's. something that pops to mind. this could be both philosophically this. could be technically as a musician like. what you enjoy. maybe lyrics like for me it's lyrics is. very important so absolutely i would. probably be my choice would be lyrics.

based. i don't want to answer in terms of just. technical uh you know. technical prowess i think technical. prowess is. impressive right it's just like it's. impressive what can be done. i wouldn't place that into the category. of the greatest music ever written. some the classical music uh. that's that's written is undeniably. beautiful but i don't want to. consider that category of music. either uh just because you know so if i.

if i have to. limit uh the scope of this. philosophical discussion uh to. you know the kind of music that i listen. to you know probably what's my age again. by blink 182. it's just you know it's a. solid one. it's got you know. said nobody ever that's a good song. i don't know if you're joking no i i i. am joking it's a good one but it's it. was. yeah i mean.

what's my age you get yeah yeah no i. mean. it would probably you know. songwriting-wise i think the beatles. came. pretty close to the influential to you i. was like the beatles. yeah love the beatles i love the beatles. uh let it be yesterday yeah. like straw i think strawberry feels. forever is is one. you know what what one of my favorite. beetle songs is it's uh.

you know in my life right that's not. it's it's hard to imagine. how whatever 24 year old. wrote that it is one of the most uh. introspective. pieces of music ever you know i'm a huge. pink floyd fan. and so i think you know if you were to. you can sort of look at the entire dark. side of the moon album. and as you know getting pretty close up. there to the pinnacle of what you know. can be. created so you know time's a great song.

yeah it's a great song just the entirety. of. just the instruments the lyrics the the. the feeling. created by a song like pink floyd. can create feelings the entire. experience i mean you have that with the. wall. of just uh transporting you into another. place. songs don't not many songs could do that. as as. well not many artists can do that as. well as pink floyd did.

there are a lot of bands that you can. kind of say oh yeah. like if you take blink 182 right if you. have. no idea like if you are listening to. sort of that type of pop punk for the. first time. it's difficult to differentiate between. blink 182 and like some 41. and the thousand of other like. lesser known bands that all sounded the. whole they all had that sparkling. production. uh feel they all kind of sounded the. same.

right when with pink floyd. it's hard to find another band that. you're like well is this one. pink floor like you know yeah when. you're listening to that. what you're listening to that the. uniqueness that that's fascinating. you know in the calculation of the. greatest. song in the greatest band of all time. you could probably. you probably actually quantify this like. scientifically is like. how unique uh if you play different. songs how well are people.

able to recognize whether it's this band. or not and that you know that's. probably a huge component to greatness. like if the world would miss it if it. was gone. yes yes so but there's also the human. story things like i would say output. johnny cash's cover of hurt as one of. the greatest songs of all time. and that has less to do with the song. but your interaction with the. interaction with it but also the human. the full story of the human. so like it's not just if i just heard.

the song it'd be like okay. that but if it it's the full story of it. also the video component for that. particular song. so like that you can't discount the full. experience of it. absolutely you know i have no confusion. about not. about being you know anywhere uh. you know in in that league but i just. like i. sometimes think about you know music. that is being. uh produced today feels.

oftentimes feels like like kind of. clothes like clothes that you buy. at like h m and you wear three times. before they rip and you throw away so. like so much of it is. it's not bad it's just kind of. forgettable right. like the fact that we're talking about. pink floyd. in 2021 is in itself an interesting. uh question why are we talking about. pink floyd and it's there's something. unforgettable about them and.

unforgettable about the the art that. they created. that could be the markets that like so. spotify has created this kind of. market where the the. incentives for creating music that last. is much lower because there's so much. more music right you just want something. that shines bright for a short amount of. time. makes a lot of money and moves on and i. mean the same thing you see with the. news and all those kinds of things we're. just living in a. shorter and shorter shorter like uh time. scale in terms of our attention spans.

and that um nevertheless when we look at. the long arc of history of music perhaps. there will be some songs from today. that will last as much as pink floyd. we're just unable to see it. yeah just the collected works of. nickelback. exactly you know you never know you. never know justin bieber. it could have yeah he could be a. contender i've recently started. listening to justin bieber just. understand what people are talking about. and. you know i'll just keep my comments to. myself on that one it's too good to. explain. in the words we're not.

the greatness that is the biebs uh you. as a musician. so you uh you write your own music you. uh play guitar. you sing um maybe can you. give an overview of the role music is. played in your life you're. one of the you're a world-class. scientist. and so it's kind of fascinating to see. somebody. in your position who's also a great.

musician and. and and uh still loves playing music. yeah well i wouldn't call myself a great. musician. like you know one of the best of all. time yeah. that's right like we were saying offline. confidence is like the most essential. thing about that's right. exactly it's the confidence and kind of. like. moodiness right yeah um yeah look i mean. music plays an absolutely. essential role in in everything i do. because.

i lose if i stop playing for. one reason or another say i'm traveling. i notably. lose creativity in every other aspect of. my life. right there's something i don't. view you know playing music as a. separate endeavor from doing science or. doing doing whatever it's all. it's all part of that same creative. thing. which is distinct from i don't know. uh pressing a button or like you know so.

it's not a break from science it's. a part of your science it's absolutely a. it's a part of. it's it's i would say you know it's a. thing that enables. the science right the science would you. know. suck even more than it does already uh. without the music. and that means like the creating of the. the writing of the music or is it just. even playing other people's stuff is it. is it all of it yeah it's it's. definitely both. um yeah and also just you know.

i love i love to play guitar i love to. sing you know. my wife tolerates my uh. my screeching singing you know and uh. even kind of likes it. so yeah so people should check out your. stuff you have a great voice so i i love. your stuff. um is there something you're you're. super busy. is there something you could say about. practicing. uh for musicians for guitar for you're. also in a band.

so like that whole how you can manage. that is there some tricks or. some hacks to um being a lifelong. musician. while being like super busy so i would. say. you know the way that i optimize. um my life is i try to i try to do. you know the thing that i'm passionate. about in a moment. um and put that at the top of the. priority list there are moments when. you know you just you feel inspired to. play music and if you're in the middle.

of something if you can avoid. if that can be put on hold just do it. right there are times when you. get inspired about something scientific. um. you know i do my best to drop. everything go into that you know mode of. that isolated mode. and and execute upon that so. it's a chaotic you know i think i have a. pretty chaotic lifestyle. where i'm always doing kind of multiple. things and jumping between uh.

between what i'm doing but at the end of. the day. it's it's not like um. you know those those moments of. inspiration. are actually kind of rare right like. most of the time. all of us are just doing kind of uh. doing the stuff that get that needs to. get done if you. do the disservice to yourself of saying. oh i'm inspired to. you know do this calculation figure it.

figure this out. but i've got to answer email or just. like do something. something silly um you know that is a. um that is nothing more than the service. and also. like i have some social media presence. but i i mostly stay off of you know. social media. to you know just frankly because like i. don't kind of. i don't enjoy the mental cycles that it. uh yeah it robs you of that. the yeah yeah those those precious.

moments. that could be filled with inspiration in. your in your other pursuits. um but there's something to maybe you. and i are different this like i i try to. play at least 10 minutes of guitar every. day. like almost on the technical side like. keeping that bass uh of. of basic competence going and. i mean the same way like writers will. get in front of a paper no matter what.

that kind of thing it just feels like. that. for my life has been essential to to to. the daily ritual of it otherwise days. turn into weeks weeks or into months and. you haven't played guitar for. months no no i i i understand for me. i think it's it's been like if we have a. gig coming up. we'll definitely yeah that's right no. like we. we will uh we will sharpen up uh. definitely you know especially co coming.

up to again it's like. you know we're not trying to make money. with this this is like just. for the uh for that satisfaction of. doing something doing something well. right um but overall. i would say most i play guitar most days. most days and you know when i put kids. to sleep. i i play guitar you know with them and. we like. just make up random songs about you know.

about her a cat or something you know. like we just. do kind of random stuff but you know. music is always involved in that process. yeah keeping it fun you have russian. roots i sure do. were you born in russia i was yeah when. did you come here. so i came to the us in. very the very end of 99 but um. so i was like almost 14 years old. but along the way we spent six years in.

japan so like we moved. from russia to japan in 94. and then to the us in 99 so like. elementary school. all interesting school in japan so. elementary school in japan. yeah so that's interesting that do you. still speak russian. sure okay. okay maybe i'll uh let me ask you in. russian.

um. [Music]. is.

is. [Laughter]. so for people who don't speak russian.

constantine was uh. talking about basically his first in. 1992 interaction with capitalism. which is pepsi and at first he. discovered pepsi and then he discovered. coke and he was confused how such. uh how such theft could occur. like an intellectual property theft and. remember pepsi. arrived to the soviet union first and. there's some. there's some complicated story which i. don't uh. quite understand the details of for a.

while pepsi. like commanded submarines or something. yeah pepsi had like a fleet of soviet. submarines that. did they were sponsoring tanks and. this fascinating yeah and i and i. remember there's certain things that. trickled in like mcdonald's i remember. that was a big deal. oh yeah certainly for the west. absolutely so i mean we went to. mcdonald's. and we stood on i mean this is this is. absurd. right from kind of looking at it from. today's.

perspective but we stood in line for. like six hours to get into this. mcdonald's. and i remember inside i was just like. a billion people and i'm just taking a. bite. out of that big mac like wow. what was it an incredible experience for. you so like. what is this taste of the west like uh. did you enjoy it. i enjoyed the fact that i mean this is. like. i was getting into the weeds but i. really enjoyed.

the fact that the top of the bun had. those seeds you know like. and i remember how on the commercials. like the. big mac would kind of bounce i was like. the seeds how did they inject the seeds. into the bread like. amazing right so i think it was uh. artistry yeah you enjoyed the artistry. of the culinary. exactly it was the you know it was the. food art that kind of that is the big. mac. actually i still don't know the answer. to that how do they get the sesame seeds. on the better to not know the answer.

you just wander at the mystery of it all. yeah i remember it being exceptionally. delicious but i. i'm with you i don't know you didn't. mention how transformative pepsi was but. to me basically sugar-based stuff. like like pepsi was uh or a coke i don't. remember which one we partook in but. that was an incredible experience yeah. yeah. yeah yeah no absolutely and uh. you know i think it's um. you know it was an important and and.

formative uh formative period. i sometimes i guess rely on that a. little bit. uh you know in my daily life because uh. i remember like the early 90s were real. rough you know like my. parents were kind of on the on the. bottom. of the spectrum in terms of uh. you know in terms of financial. well-being so. um kind of like just when i.

run into trouble not like you know. money trouble just any kind of trouble. these days it just kind of. is not uh particularly meaningful. when you compare it to that that. turbulent time of the. early 90s and the other thing is i think. there's there's like an advantage. to to being you know an immigrant which. is that. you get you go through the mental. exercise. of changing your environment completely. early in your life right you go.

it's by no means you know pleasant in. the moment right but like going. into japanese elementary school right. like i didn't go to a. some like private you know. thing i just went to a regular like. japanese public elementary school and i. was the. non-japanese person in my class. so just like the learning japanese and. just kind of. so that's a super humbling experience in. many ways was when you like made fun of.

all that kind of stuff oh. yeah being the outsider oh absolutely. but. you know you kind of do you kind of do. that. and then you kind of then you just. kind of are okay with with stuff you. know what i mean and so. like doing that again in middle school. in the us. it was arguably easy because i was like. yeah well i've already done this before. so. i think it kind of prepares you mentally. a little bit for. for switching up for whatever you know. changes that will come up for the rest.

of. your life so i um i wouldn't trade. that that experience really for anything. it's a huge aspect of who i am and i'm. sure. you can relate to a lot of this yes is. there advice. from your life that you can give to. young people today. high school college you know about their. career. or maybe about life in general i'm not. like. a career coach but i like that's right.

like i'm definitely not a life coach i. don't have it all figured out. but i think there's a um. there's a perpetual cycle of of. um you know thinking that. there is a um there's kind of like a. template for success. right maybe there is but i in my. experience i haven't seen it right um. you know i would say people in high. school. right so much of their focus.

is on getting straight a's filling their. cv. with this and this and this so that it. looks impressive. right um that that is. not i think a good way to optimize your. life. right do the thing that fills your life. with passion. do the thing that fills your life with. with interest. and you know do that perpetually right. a straight a student you know.

is really impressive but also you know. somewhat boring right so so i i think. you know injection of. more of that kind of um. interest into into the lives of young. people would go a long way. in in just both upping their level of. happiness. and then just kind of ensuring that. looking forward they are not suffering. from a. can you know perpetual condition of oh i. have to satisfy these like you know.

check boxes. to to do well right because you can lose. yourself in that whole process for the. rest of your life. but it's nice if it's possible like max. tegmark was exceptionally good at this. at mit figure out how you can spend a. small. part of your percent of your efforts. that such that your cv looks really. impressive. yeah absolutely there's no like without. a doubt. like that's that's a baseline that you. need to have. um and then so like spend most of your.

time doing like amazing things you're. passionate about. but such that it uh uh kind of like. planet nine produces. objects that uh that feed your cv. uh like slowly over time so getting good. grades in high school maybe doing. extracurricular activities. or or in terms of like you know for. programmers that's producing code that. you can show up on github. like leaving traces like um. throughout your efforts such that your.

cv looks impressive to the rest of the. world. in fact i mean this is somewhat along. the lines of what i'm talking about. we see like getting like good grades is. important but. grades are not a tangible like product. like you cannot out you know show your. a and and have your a live a separate. life from you. code very much does right um music. very much takes on you know provided. somebody else listens to it right. right provide like takes on a life of.

its own. that's kind of what i mean right doing. doing stuff that uh that can then. get separated from from you is is. exceptionally attractive right it's like. a it's like a fun. and uh and it's also very impressive to. others i think we're moving to a world. where grades mean less and less. like certifications mean less and less. if you look at. especially again in the computing fields. getting a degree. finishing your um currently just getting.

finishing your degree whether it's. bachelor's or master's a phd. is less important than the things you've. actually put out into the world. right right and that's a fascinating. kind of that's a that's great that. in that sense the meritocracy is in its. richest most beautiful form is is. starting to win out. yeah it's weird because like you know my. understanding. and i'm not like i don't know the. history of science well enough to. to speak very confidently about this but.

you know the. advisor of my advisor of my advisor. from undergrad uh like didn't have a phd. right so i think it was a more common. thing back in the day. even in uh the academic. sector to you know. not have you know faraday like faraday. didn't know algebra. when drew diagrams about you know. magnetic fields like. his faraday's law was derived entirely.

from intuition. so uh it is interesting to to how. the world of academia has evolved into a. you got to do this and then get phd then. you have to post doc once and twice. and maybe thrice and then like you you. move on so. you know it does i do wonder you know if. we're. you know if there's a better i think. we're heading there. but it's a fascinating historical. perspective like that we might have just.

tried this whole thing out uh for a. while where we put a lot more emphasis. on grades and certificates and. um degrees and all those kinds of things. i think the difference. historically is like we can actually. using the internet show off the. show off ourselves and our creations. better and better and more effectively. whether that's code or producing videos. or all those kinds of things that's. right. you can become a certified drone pilot. that's true of all the of all the things.

you want to pick yeah for sure. or you could just fly make youtube. videos against hundreds of thousands of. views with your drone and. never getting a certificate um that's. probably illegal don't do it. what do you think is uh the meaning of. this whole thing so. you look at planets they they seem to. orbit stuff. um without without asking the why. question and. for some reason life emerged on earth. such that it led to big brains that. can ask the big why question do you.

think there's an answer to it. um i'm not sure what the question is. like what meaning of life the meaning of. life um. it's 42. it's 42. yeah but. you know aside from that it's um you. know. why i think if the question you're. asking is like. why we do all this right. yeah um it's part of the human condition. right human beings are fundamentally.

i feel like non like sort of stochastic. and fundamentally interested in in. kind of expanding our own understanding. of the world. around us and creating stuff to enable. that understanding. so we're like a stochastic. fundamentalist so like there's. just a bunch of randomness that really. doesn't seem like it has a good. explanation. and yet there's a kind of direction to.

our being that we just keep wanting to. create and to understand. that's right i've met people that are. you know that claim to be anti-science. right um and yet. in their anti-science you know. discussion. like well like if you're so. you know scientific then how why don't. you explain to me how. i don't know this works and like it. always there's that fundamental. speed of curiosity and interest that is.

common to. to all of us that is absolutely what. makes us. human right and and i. i'm in a privileged position of being. able to you know. to have that be my my job. right i think as uh you know as time. evolves forward you know when the kind. of. economy changes i mean we're already. starting to see. you know shift towards that type of you.

know. creative uh you know enterprise as being. as emerging as taking over a bigger and. bigger chunk of the. sector it's not yet i think the dominant. uh portion of the economy by any account. but if we compare. this to like you know sometime when. the dominant thing you would do would be. to. you know go to a factory and do the same. exact thing. right i think you know there's a tide. there.

and things are sort of headed in that. direction yeah life's becoming more and. more fun i can't wait. uh honestly what i can't wait to just. chill just just chill. terminal point of this chill and wait. for those kuiper belt objects to. complete one orbit. i'm gonna credit you with this idea uh i. do hope that. we definitively discover uh proof. that there is a planet nine out there in. the next few years so you can sit back. with a cigar a cigarette or vodka or. wine and. just uh say i told you so that's already.

happening. i'm gonna do that later tonight as i. mentioned uh. confidence is essential to being a rock. star i really appreciate you uh. explaining so many fascinating things to. me today i really appreciate the work. that you do out there. and um i really appreciate you talking. with me today. thank you pleasure thanks for having me. on thanks for listening to this. conversation with constantine. botegan and thank you to squarespace. literati.

onit and and i check them out in the. description. to support this podcast and now let me. leave you with some words from douglas. adams. in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. far out in the uncharted backwaters of. the. unfashionable end of the western spiral. arm. of the galaxy lies a small unregarded. yellow sun. orbiting this at a distance of roughly. 92 million miles. is an utterly insignificant little blue.

green planet. whose ape descendant life forms are so. amazingly primitive. that they still think digital watches. are a pretty neat. idea thank you for listening and hope to. see you. next time. you.