I asked Prof. Brian Cox 100 Questions

0:00 It would be stupid now if we got wiped out by a comet.

0:03 Cuz actually we know how to not get wiped

0:06 out by a comet and we can't be bothered.

0:08 Do conspiracy theorists they anger you?

0:10 I mean the idea that the earth can be flat is is such nonsense.

0:13 Of course it's nonsense.

0:14 I don't understand.

0:15 I'm trying to be zen.

0:17 Yeah.

0:17 [laughter]

0:18 But I'm also from Oldham and I can't help it.

0:21 Do you think aliens exist or are we alone in the universe?

0:24 I'm sure we're not alone in the universe.

0:25 have mates that like ring you up and go,

0:27 "Brian, you won't believe [music] what I've just found out."

0:29 Well, no cuz they haven't found anything.

0:32 [laughter]

0:32 So no one ever rang me up and said, "You won't believe it." Is there any facts

0:35 about space that you have that genuinely scares you?

0:38 I'm nervous to ask this.

0:39 All of it.

0:40 There's nothing that's relaxing about the universe.

0:43 [laughter]

0:43 Is it an ambition of yours to go to space at any point in your lifetime?

0:46 I wouldn't mind slinging around the moon, seeing the earth right and back again.

0:50 No way would I go to Mars.

0:52 What what are the things that you think

0:53 are most likely to [music] wipe humanity out?

0:55 Humanity, without a doubt.

0:57 But you said don't terrify you.

1:00 [laughter] Hello and welcome to 100 Questions with me, Tom Simons.

1:08 If you can, please double check that you subscribed since it

1:10 really helps out the channel and it really means a lot.

1:13 Now, today's guest is someone who's

1:15 dedicated his life to explaining the universe.

1:20 He's a physicist, professor, broadcaster,

1:23 and the man who convinced millions of people

1:26 that space isn't just equations and explosions,

1:30 but something beautiful and profound.

1:33 And today I've got 100 questions to try and understand

1:36 the universe and the man who's spent his life exploring it.

1:40 Professor Brian Cox, welcome to the show.

1:43 How are you doing?

1:44 Thank you so much.

1:45 Yeah.

1:47 [laughter] Brian, this show is simple, right?

1:48 I have 100 questions I have to try and get through in 60 minutes.

1:52 Every question counts and the moment I run out of questions or time,

1:56 the interview's over.

1:57 Right, I'm going to try and answer them all.

1:59 It's even fried, and I didn't even get close.

2:05 [laughter]

2:04 Now look, if I'm honest with you, I've grown up kind of behind a screen,

2:10 and I wasn't really very into science in school,

2:13 but who's better to get me into it than England's top TV scientist?

2:18 [laughter] Thank you.

2:19 But um no, I've got 100 questions, and this Brian is my final question.

2:23 This is the question I want to ask you the most.

2:26 We're going to save that till the end.

2:27 Okay.

2:28 Should I dive in?

2:28 Yeah.

2:29 Okay.

2:29 All right.

2:30 So look, just first I want to sort

2:32 of get to know how you first connected with it.

2:35 Like do you remember the first time

2:37 something in physics genuinely blew your mind?

2:40 It was astronomy, and um it was knowing that when I found out that the things

2:46 you look at, and my hero Carl Sagan said this as well, by the way.

2:49 I grew up so Yeah, yeah.

2:50 Carl Sagan's television program Cosmos.

2:53 So he the moment you find out that those points

2:55 of light in the sky are worlds, so they're stars.

2:59 And now we know that virtually all of them are planets.

3:02 So every point of light you see in the sky is a solar system.

3:05 Really?

3:06 Pretty much.

3:07 So there will be tr- actually billion many billions of planets,

3:10 probably trillions of planets actually in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

3:13 So it's those things that way where your knowledge

3:15 transforms the things that you see into something deeper.

3:21 Wow.

3:22 Yeah, all right, one question in, I'm thinking,

3:25 I do worry in this interview you might think I'm a bit stupid,

3:28 but I really don't know much about science.

3:31 no stupid questions as you'll you'll see.

3:33 They really aren't.

3:34 you on that.

3:35 Because I I just said before we started actually,

3:36 most of the answers I could answer them all in 100 in in 1

3:40 hour because the answer to all of them fundamentally is we don't know.

3:43 Can we talk about the big basics?

3:45 And I Okay, all right.

3:47 Is the universe infinite?

3:51 Don't know.

3:52 We genuinely don't know.

3:53 No, we really don't know.

3:54 So, so there's a there's a piece of the universe we can see.

3:56 Yes.

3:57 Which has got something like 2 trillion galaxies in it.

4:00 And if you think that each galaxy is roughly the size of the Milky Way,

4:03 which has 400 billion stars in it and takes light 100,000 years to cross.

4:08 That's each galaxy.

4:09 There are something like 2 trillion in the bit of the universe we can see.

4:13 We know the universe expands beyond that point.

4:16 But we don't know how far it expands.

4:18 All we can see, all we can tell is that the universe seems flat.

4:23 And it's a particular idea, this flat universe.

4:27 And the analogy is like if you look at a tiny piece of the earth,

4:30 like about, you know, a kilometer square of the earth.

4:33 Yeah.

4:33 It's flat.

4:34 Yeah.

4:34 It looks flat.

4:35 You have to look on bigger distances to see there's any curve.

4:39 Well, it's that we that's the same with the universe.

4:41 And all we can say is the bit we can see is flat, so it could be infinite.

4:45 We don't know.

4:46 Wow.

4:47 This is going to freak me out.

4:49 [laughter] But that's the thing.

4:50 But it's infinite.

4:50 I mean, I mean, yeah.

4:52 I mean, there's number two trillion galaxies, 2,000 billion galaxies.

4:58 How how old is the universe?

4:59 13.8 billion years.

5:00 We do know that.

5:01 Okay.

5:02 Ah.

5:02 But the the the the proper answer is probably it should have been we don't know.

5:07 We know that the universe was hot and dense, which we call the Big Bang.

5:11 13.8 billion years ago.

5:13 So, we measured that.

5:14 Whether that's the origin of the universe is an open question.

5:18 I can cuz I remember it from school, but can a bit and from the TV show,

5:22 but can you explain to me the Big Bang theory in the simplest terms?

5:26 Yeah, so so actually it was predict not quite predicted,

5:30 but it's it's Einstein's theory of gravity called general relativity 1915.

5:35 Yeah.

5:35 Not long after that, the theory was applied to a universe,

5:39 so you can kind of model a universe with it.

5:42 And there was a suggestion that it could be the the case that there's

5:45 a point in the past when everything's on top of each other really.

5:48 So you see you can wind back time and it looks like this thing

5:51 and it can be called a singularity in the theory or whatever it is.

5:54 But so it looks like there might be a beginning.

5:56 And that was actually primarily a physicist called George Lemaître,

6:00 who's a a priest as well as a physicist and a mathematician in the 1920s.

6:05 And he famously said to Einstein,

6:07 "Your theory suggests there was a day

6:09 without yesterday." Which is a beautiful thing.

6:12 And Einstein actually very famously said back to him,

6:14 "Your mathematics is excellent, but your physics is not." Yeah.

6:18 Because Einstein didn't like this idea initially of a beginning.

6:21 What does it mean to have a beginning to everything?

6:24 And the answer is we don't know.

6:25 But but his theory suggests it.

6:28 But Einstein's theory is not complete.

6:31 So we know that it's not the final word Yeah.

6:34 on space and time and how all that works.

6:36 So we But the measurement is that if we look back in time,

6:40 which we can do by looking from ancient light

6:43 that's been traveling across the universe for a long time,

6:45 we see light from a time 13.8 billion years ago when the universe was

6:51 very hot and very dense and just filled with hydrogen and helium gas, right?

6:56 Basically.

6:57 No stars, no planets, no galaxies.

6:59 So we know the universe was very different

7:02 and it's the sort of universe you would imagine,

7:04 you would predict if it had an origin at a Big Bang.

7:08 But the I'm so hedging it a bit cuz we don't know what time

7:12 So we don't actually know what time is.

7:15 Right.

7:16 [laughter] So because we don't know what time is and so

7:18 therefore we don't really know what space and time are, space-time together.

7:22 We suspect there's something deeper, by the way, from which they emerge.

7:27 But so so because of that, our theories don't work

7:31 when you when you go to these really high energies,

7:34 really high temperatures, very close to the origin of the universe.

7:37 If indeed there is an origin, then we we stop knowing.

7:40 So so basically we know everything was very hot, very dense, very different.

7:44 We have a very good measurement to that.

7:46 Whether that was a beginning to everything, we don't know.

7:50 So, I'm just going to Is Could time travel happen?

7:54 Is that Is that possible?

7:56 So, [laughter]

7:57 we don't know.

7:58 We're Into the future, yes.

8:00 So, but but really not even It's a trivial

8:03 statement that we go into the future, right?

8:05 But, you can go into the future at different rates.

8:09 Okay.

8:09 relative to future to other people.

8:11 Cuz there's a thing where if an astronaut goes up,

8:13 they technically age slower than people on That's true.

8:16 Yeah, okay.

8:17 That was in Interstellar, wasn't it?

8:18 Yeah, and that that's absolutely nailed down.

8:20 And that's not only just physics that that So,

8:23 that happens in the satellite navigation system, for example.

8:27 So, the clocks on the sat on the satellites

8:29 run at different rates to clocks on the ground.

8:32 Wow.

8:32 And it's quite a big difference, and you have to correct for it.

8:35 And I think the drift it's the the drift So,

8:38 it's 30 It's something like 30,000 I think it's 35,000 nanoseconds per day.

8:44 So, that's 35,000 A nanosecond is a like a thousand millions of a second.

8:49 It doesn't sound very much.

8:50 But, light travels about that far in 1 nanosecond, about 30 cm or something.

8:56 So, if you think about if you get tens of thousands of nanoseconds drift,

9:02 you get tens of thousands of sort of centimeters or more, right?

9:07 It's about 35,000 ft in old measurements, I think, per day that you drift.

9:12 So, so it really matters that So, that's a measurement.

9:15 It's not It's engineering.

9:17 It's not physics.

9:19 So, time travel Yeah.

9:21 So, [laughter] so you can go relative to someone else,

9:24 in principle, you can get slower as far into their future as you want.

9:29 So, you could like you said, you could get in a rocket,

9:31 fly close to speed of light, fly around for a bit,

9:33 come back to the Earth 10,000 years in the future,

9:35 or 20,000 years in the future, 100,000 years in the future, in principle.

9:39 Okay.

9:39 If you can fly close to speed of light.

9:41 So, you don't have to do anything else.

9:42 You have to We So, you can go close to speed of light.

9:46 And if you did, so it's a We don't have to do it, but if you did,

9:50 then you could get back into as far as you want into the Earth's future.

9:54 Yeah.

9:54 But, then you think about past, which is the kind of the cool thing, right?

9:59 Can you go back to the past?

10:00 Probably not.

10:01 Okay.

10:02 We're pretty sure that you can't.

10:03 Yeah.

10:04 But, uh there are in Einstein's theory wormholes,

10:07 which everyone's heard of in science fiction.

10:10 If you can build wormholes that are stable and you can travel through them,

10:14 then you could go into the past.

10:16 Uh but, we don't think you can,

10:19 but it's not been proved beyond all doubt that you can't.

10:22 Wow.

10:22 Do you mind me jumping Um Brian,

10:25 to uh ask about aliens just while we're here, cuz this is But, you know

10:29 It's a good question.

10:30 Thank you.

10:30 Do you Do you think aliens exist, or are we alone in the universe?

10:33 I'm sure we're not alone in the universe.

10:35 I mean, I just said there are two two trillion

10:37 galaxies in the bit of the universe we can see.

10:39 It's because we know that life can exist, obviously, cuz it exists here.

10:44 So, I I cannot believe that out there in the trillions of planets and trillions

10:51 of stars and galaxies that there's

10:53 a that there there's nowhere else like this, right?

10:55 However, I think a better question is probably like,

10:58 but in the Milky Way galaxy,

11:00 so let let's think about something that we

11:02 could actually possibly go to somewhere we could go,

11:05 something we could meet, right?

11:07 There So, in our galaxy, 400 billion suns.

11:10 We've got a chance at some point

11:12 in the future of encountering those stars and planets, right?

11:16 Or So, uh what about our galaxy?

11:19 So, at the mo All we can say is we've listened and looked for civilizations,

11:23 and it's a very good thing to do,

11:24 and we do it, and it's scientific, and it's called SETI,

11:27 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and we And we haven't heard anything.

11:30 We haven't seen anything.

11:32 We're still looking, haven't heard.

11:34 So, at at at the moment we haven't detected anything.

11:36 We are looking for microbes on Mars, for example.

11:41 And we're there's some circumstantial evidence that they existed.

11:46 Yeah.

11:46 So, we're not sure, but every measurement that we

11:49 make points to the fact they could have.

11:52 That So, the conditions were right.

11:53 There's some evidence from a year or two ago that maybe that So,

11:58 it's kind of controversial.

11:59 We're not sure.

12:00 Yeah.

12:00 But um it looks like there might be.

12:02 Does all this evidence have to be made public?

12:05 Yeah.

12:05 So, it's just So, like phone you up and go, "Brian, we've got some good news."

12:09 I have friends who work at the radio

12:10 telescope Jodrell Bank in Manchester, for example.

12:13 Yeah.

12:13 And there's no If they detect a signal,

12:15 they they'd be on your show saying, "Yeah, we detected a signal." Wow.

12:19 Do you have mates that like ring you up and go,

12:21 "Brian, you won't believe what I've just found out today."

12:22 Well, no, cuz they haven't found anything.

12:24 Oh.

12:25 [laughter] So, no one ever rang me up and said,

12:26 "You won't believe it." But the the thing is So, it's a mystery, actually.

12:30 It's one of the It's called sometimes called the Fermi paradox,

12:34 after great physicist Enrico Fermi.

12:36 Okay, yeah.

12:36 And with the paradox is they should

12:38 we should see evidence of other civilizations.

12:41 If you get If you were to guess,

12:43 you would say there's a hundreds of billions of We think there's something

12:47 like 10 to 20 billion potentially Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

12:51 10 to 20 billion.

12:53 And and you know, the galaxy's been around for the age of the universe,

12:56 10 billion years plus.

12:57 Yeah.

12:57 So, it seems there should be civilizations far in advance of us.

13:01 Yeah.

13:01 And yet, the paradox is we haven't seen any evidence of them.

13:05 I know people who watching this going, "Yeah,

13:06 there's this flying saucer into the desert

13:08 in Roswell or whatever." But there isn't.

13:10 So, as far as I know, anyway.

13:11 [laughter] There isn't, right?

13:13 So, So, the observation we have,

13:16 at least from our scientific program of looking,

13:19 which is entirely sensible, we haven't seen any evidence of anything.

13:23 Which is a paradox, cuz it's just there's so much

13:25 space there and so much time, and so many places.

13:29 You would just guess there would be.

13:30 Yeah.

13:31 One fact about space that you have that genuinely scares you.

13:34 I'm nervous to ask this.

13:35 All of it.

13:36 No, all of it.

13:37 I mean, we just said some, right?

13:38 Black holes, according to Einstein, contain the end of time.

13:42 There are 2 trillion galaxies out there in the observable universe.

13:45 I mean, even the the one So,

13:46 the Andromeda galaxy, which is our nearest neighboring large galaxy,

13:50 Yeah.

13:50 Which you can see with certainly with a pair of binoculars.

13:54 So, you go out into Anyone who's listening to this, if if the sky is dark,

13:57 you get away from the city,

13:59 pair of binoculars, you'll find it with with a an app on the phone,

14:02 and you'll see it, and you'll see it.

14:03 Yeah.

14:03 I mean, the light from that, it's over

14:05 two It's 2 million light-years away, that thing.

14:09 So, the light from that that you see

14:11 with your binoculars began its journey over 2 million years ago.

14:15 So, it's it's just So, the distances are terrifying.

14:20 Yeah.

14:21 of the thing is terrifying.

14:22 So, all of it.

14:23 There's no There's nothing that's relaxing about the universe.

14:27 [laughter] And is it difficult to work in?

14:28 Like, does it keep you up at night when you think about these things,

14:31 or is it energizing?

14:32 No, it's energizing.

14:32 It's great.

14:33 Because the the key to science So, in in the in the live shows I'm doing now,

14:38 I start with this moment It's almost a moment around 1600.

14:43 So, it's not long ago, 400 years ago.

14:44 Yeah.

14:45 When people like Kepler, Galileo, following Copernicus,

14:48 those people, really built modern science.

14:52 So, they figured out this way of thinking about the world.

14:55 And the most important thing of all is that you look at nature,

14:59 and it can be anything.

15:00 It can be a blade of grass or a star.

15:01 Yeah.

15:02 And you don't understand it, and and you ask questions about it,

15:06 and you accept, not only accept,

15:08 but enjoy the fact that you don't understand it.

15:11 Yeah.

15:11 And thinking you know everything is the end of knowledge.

15:15 It's It's the end of progress.

15:17 So, the beginning of progress, in a technological,

15:20 scientific sense, was was, arguably, around that time, right?

15:25 1600, you really start to see people figuring things out.

15:29 It's a couple of hundred years later, you've got the Industrial Revolution.

15:32 So, it it was a tremendous change, but that's it.

15:35 So, it's delight in not knowing what science is.

15:40 Wow.

15:40 That's really Yeah, it's really warm that, isn't it?

15:43 It's quite really quite exciting.

15:44 I say cuz it cuz then so you're not terrified of the unknown,

15:46 you're actually excited cuz that's how you learn.

15:49 So, do do these, you know,

15:51 cuz I know I have quite a fear of the unknown and and lots

15:54 of people I know around things like death and the size of the universe?

15:57 Does this not sort of freak you out?

16:00 Well, we'll find out about the death one.

16:02 Yeah.

16:02 So, [laughter] it's all right.

16:03 We're going to So, that's at least we know we're going to figure that one out.

16:07 Each of us is going to Yeah.

16:09 So, size of the universe, don't know.

16:12 Yeah.

16:14 [laughter] Is that Is that I don't know if that's positive or negative, really.

16:18 Yeah.

16:18 It sounds almost like a threat.

16:20 Yeah.

16:21 I'll I'll tell you.

16:24 [laughter] Yeah.

16:24 So, a lot of this is talking about theories,

16:25 but I'd like to talk about as well what other people

16:28 are thinking that the future's going to be with um science,

16:31 you know, um Elon Musk like wants to take us to Mars.

16:34 Firstly, how hard will that be for us to achieve?

16:37 Really hard.

16:38 Um it's So, it we're seeing now it's quite hard to go back to the moon, right?

16:44 I mean, it was it was one of the it was

16:46 one of one of I think the great achievements in human history.

16:49 We got to the moon in the late '60s.

16:52 It Apollo was astonishing.

16:54 Um it was but it was huge.

16:57 I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of engineers,

16:59 quite a large percentage of US GDP, really hard to do, and it was wonderful.

17:06 So, now we're going back with Artemis, but it that's proving difficult.

17:10 Yeah.

17:11 We'll get there in the next few years, right?

17:13 We'll we'll land on the moon again.

17:15 But, it's so different.

17:16 It's a couple of days to fly to the moon.

17:19 Right.

17:19 It's months to fly to Mars.

17:21 It's the best part of the year.

17:22 Oh man.

17:22 So so you're away for uh more than a year, right?

17:26 As a as an astronaut.

17:27 We don't really know how to do that.

17:29 We've had astronauts on the space station.

17:31 Yeah.

17:31 But that's minutes away from the Earth.

17:33 So we saw, you know, that there was a uh on the last mission there

17:37 was a medical incident and we and they came back.

17:40 Yeah.

17:40 So you you're not far.

17:41 You you're you're left It's less than flying from London to New York, right?

17:45 You in principle you come out of the space station.

17:47 It's only 100 100 miles or so up.

17:49 Yeah.

17:49 Right?

17:49 Less.

17:51 [laughter]

17:50 But Mars, you are once you're gone, you're gone.

17:54 So once you fly off,

17:55 you all that you can do is go around Mars and come back again.

17:58 And it's months and months and months and months and months.

18:00 So we don't really know how to do that.

18:02 Mhm.

18:03 So you know, we So I think it's really difficult.

18:06 Is it an ambition of yours to go to space at any point in your lifetime?

18:09 I'd love to see Earthrise.

18:11 You know, the famous Apollo 8 picture.

18:14 Yeah.

18:14 Which was taken on my first Christmas Eve, actually.

18:16 Christmas Eve 1968.

18:18 And I met Jim Lovell, who was the commander of that mission.

18:22 And uh it was one of the great moments of my life,

18:24 actually, talking to him cuz he's a hero of mine.

18:26 And he was on Apollo 13, as well.

18:28 Yeah, yeah.

18:28 A remarkable astronaut.

18:30 But yeah, I'd love to see that.

18:32 So I wouldn't mind slinging around the moon,

18:34 seeing the Earthrise, and coming back again.

18:36 No way would I go to Mars until they built some hotels and things.

18:41 Yeah.

18:41 Restaurants and whatever.

18:43 [laughter]

18:42 I I'm not going Do you think that is that is

18:46 in the next sort of century a realistic thing of uh you know, hotels 100 years.

18:51 I mean, certainly in space.

18:53 And I would think on the moon, that we know how to do that.

18:56 It's relatively easy, given what we know now.

18:59 So I would think I'm sure that anyone's listening to this who's you know,

19:04 uh I don't know if in their teens, maybe,

19:07 they're going to get the chance to go into space if they want.

19:09 Wow.

19:10 And it might be quite an expensive holiday,

19:12 but it's going to be like going on safari, right?

19:14 One of those things you Yeah.

19:15 You could save up probably you could probably do it, I think.

19:19 I'm sure actually.

19:21 Even the moon maybe.

19:22 Even the moon maybe you could do that.

19:24 I'll be a bit silly, but who would have the rights to the moon to build that?

19:27 That's a really good question.

19:28 Yeah.

19:29 We're actually working on it.

19:30 Yeah, so that it's a deep the United Nations are looking at it now

19:36 actually in terms of how do you if you have a base on the moon,

19:39 you're mining or something?

19:41 And what how much is it sovereign territory?

19:42 How much do you own around the land on?

19:45 Mineral rights?

19:46 It's like is it like the ocean that you know,

19:48 the international waters and all that kind of stuff.

19:50 So that is a great question and that people

19:52 are working on that for asteroids as well.

19:54 So I'd like to ask this as well.

19:56 What would you say to to people who you know,

19:59 say that we shouldn't be funding space travel and should

20:01 instead be using this money to fix Earth's current problems?

20:04 There's a remarkable statistic from which was in the UK

20:10 currently 18% of our GDP is based on space-based infrastructure.

20:18 So so already nearly a fifth of our economy is reliant on space.

20:24 Really?

20:25 And that can be a lot of it's a global positioning you know,

20:27 satellite navigation, timing from space.

20:30 We get all our timing from space.

20:32 Earth observation, navigation, the way that ships navigate, all that stuff.

20:35 you mean by timing, sorry?

20:36 So so the time so the global time clock I think so.

20:40 Financial transactions and all that stuff is coming from the GPS system.

20:43 So we've already completely industrialized space.

20:46 It is part of our economy.

20:48 There's no such thing as a space economy and the ground economy,

20:50 they're just the economy.

20:52 And it's growing the bit in space.

20:54 I think it's something like 8 or 9% a year.

20:56 It's one of the fastest growing areas of the global economy.

20:59 So it's already that it's like saying well,

21:02 I want to take that bit of the economy and not do it.

21:05 It's space is we're completely integrated and reliant on it.

21:11 And it's growing fast.

21:12 And so you'll hear some talk which is not crazy by any

21:17 means of putting data centers in space and things like that.

21:20 We There are technical problems with it.

21:22 But you go into space,

21:24 you've got unlimited energy unlimited solar power essentially.

21:28 That energy does not You're not impacting the Earth,

21:31 its climate and resources when you access that energy cuz it's in space.

21:35 Yeah.

21:35 So you start to think what are the things that we do?

21:38 AI incredibly energy intensive.

21:41 Could we start to move some of that processing off to somewhere where it

21:46 doesn't damage the planet or put stress on the planet's resources and so on.

21:49 That's great.

21:50 Well, um Brian, we've got 65 questions left and about 22 minutes.

21:54 So I think I'm going to jump to the quick fire if that's okay with you.

21:57 Um okay.

21:58 What is one or two words or answer on these you guys.

22:00 All right.

22:01 Favorite planet?

22:03 Uh Neptune.

22:05 Really?

22:06 Because it's the edge of the solar system and I've always been fascinated

22:10 by It's only one spacecraft ever to get there which was Voyager 2 in 1989.

22:15 We've got these few pictures of it and it's just this mysterious fascinating

22:18 world and it's got a moon called Triton which is definitely my favorite moon.

22:23 And at the end of the life shows Because it's the frontier.

22:26 Because it's the edge of the solar system and we had there's

22:29 a beautiful image from Voyager 2 from August 1989 of Neptune and Triton.

22:35 These two crescents.

22:36 Yeah.

22:36 It's my favorite picture from the history of space exploration.

22:39 So I would If I could go anywhere,

22:41 although it's freezing cold and it would be horrendous,

22:44 I would I would go and stand on Triton and look back at the solar system.

22:48 Oh, wow.

22:51 That's what I'd do.

22:52 Um who would your favorite scientist be?

22:55 Oh, there's so many.

22:56 At the moment it's Johannes Kepler.

22:58 Would you say you're a morning thinker or night thinker?

23:01 Uh used to be nights and I've changed to mornings.

23:05 Oh, really?

23:05 I would say.

23:06 Introvert or extrovert?

23:08 Oh, I think I think introvert, honestly.

23:12 Yeah.

23:12 I think.

23:13 Yeah.

23:14 Favorite film?

23:16 Uh, mine's Up.

23:18 Is it Up?

23:19 Yeah, I love Up.

23:20 Uh, Alien.

23:22 Yeah.

23:22 Oh, that's a shout.

23:23 Yeah, cuz I watched it when I was 11.

23:25 Oh, that's genius.

23:27 out.

23:27 1979 at a school film club.

23:30 So, I was 11 at this school.

23:32 And at Friday night and they put Alien on.

23:35 That sounds amazing.

23:36 Yeah.

23:36 [laughter] It's amazing.

23:37 Yes, I I Oh my gosh.

23:39 Yeah.

23:39 I love [clears throat] Alien.

23:40 Favorite book?

23:42 Favorite book.

23:44 Of all the books, I used to love science fiction books.

23:46 Yeah.

23:46 So, I used to certainly growing up I used to read science fiction.

23:48 I love Arthur C.

23:49 Clarke's Childhood's End.

23:51 I think it's brilliant.

23:52 I love Asimov's Foundation.

23:54 They're they're great books.

23:55 Yeah.

23:55 Um, what do you do to uh, sort of relax and wind down?

23:59 Uh, I like to go to sleep.

24:05 Yeah, you [laughter] just out like that?

24:07 Yeah, that's why I sleep.

24:08 Good answering it.

24:10 What do you do to relax and wind down?

24:11 Go to sleep.

24:13 Um, [laughter] uh, city or the

24:15 not the deep insight into my character that you're expecting?

24:18 What, can you just go to sleep like that?

24:21 No.

24:21 [laughter] I drink some wine first.

24:24 Yeah.

24:24 Wine, honestly.

24:25 Um, city or countryside?

24:27 Uh, that's a great question.

24:30 Um, you need uh, you need both, don't you?

24:32 Yeah.

24:33 You need both.

24:33 Yeah, that's the you know what I mean?

24:34 It's not one or the other, is it?

24:36 All right.

24:36 Okay, let me let me get back to these slightly deeper questions.

24:39 Um, I'm hoping this answer's not going to freak me and everyone out.

24:42 How long do you think Earth actually has left?

24:47 Um, I mean, as a thing, as a as just a planet, then um,

24:53 pretty much we don't we it might even escape the death

24:56 of the sun in a sense that as the sun expands,

25:00 we're not quite sure whether it will completely engulf the Earth

25:03 or whether the Earth will just kind of escape and just miss it.

25:06 It might just miss us.

25:08 So, it might carry on Oh, great.

25:09 as a little ball of rock.

25:11 But, I think it becomes uninhabitable in not so long actually,

25:15 about a billion years or so, a bit bit less.

25:17 Really?

25:18 Yeah.

25:19 Does that make you feel a bit morbid or Um I guess we could shift, couldn't we?

25:24 Well, we've got a while.

25:26 Yeah.

25:27 Yeah.

25:27 So, in terms of yeah, a living world with this biosphere that's complex, maybe

25:35 maybe up to a billion years, I think, something like that.

25:37 Depends on how the sun evolves and changes.

25:40 think it would be possible for us to do

25:41 a sort of like I guess sort of like they're doing

25:43 in Interstellar where they get lots of people on and send

25:45 them light years away in a sort of sleeper thing?

25:48 Uh yeah.

25:49 Well, it will be then.

25:50 Yeah.

25:50 If we if we don't mess it up now.

25:52 Yeah, okay.

25:53 really important.

25:54 Yeah.

25:55 It is possible that we're the only

25:56 civilization currently present in the Milky Way galaxy.

25:59 Don't know, but it's possible.

26:01 I think it's a good working hypothesis because if that's

26:04 true then we are the only possibility currently for life

26:10 it's complex life and therefore consciousness and intelligence and meaning

26:14 to exist in the galaxy of 400 billion suns.

26:18 Yeah.

26:18 So, if we mess this up then we might be responsible

26:21 for destroying meaning in the galaxy of 400 billion suns potentially forever.

26:26 So, that's Is that a downer?

26:29 That you said don't terrify you.

26:32 [laughter] But, yeah, but so I but I think that's actually joking aside,

26:35 [laughter] I think it's actually a serious point.

26:38 I think we should we should behave as if

26:41 there are no other civilizations in the Milky

26:43 Way galaxy and therefore it is our responsibility

26:46 to make sure that intelligent life persists.

26:49 Wow, yeah.

26:49 And what is the thing What what are the things

26:51 that you think are most likely to wipe humanity out?

26:56 Humanity.

26:56 Human stupidity, without a doubt.

26:58 Really?

26:59 Not like, you know, the dinosaurs had the big Well,

27:02 we but but it would be stupid now if we got wiped out by a comet.

27:08 Because actually we know how to not get wiped

27:10 out by a comet and we can't be bothered.

27:12 Yeah.

27:12 So at the moment we haven't invested enough.

27:14 We we are looking actually, so we do have an early warning system.

27:17 Okay.

27:18 And it works.

27:19 Um so we we are So we'll see it coming.

27:21 But we've not quite put the money and the effort

27:25 into What you do What you do now?

27:28 What you do when you see it coming?

27:29 Yeah.

27:29 Um if it's an asteroid,

27:31 then there are some asteroids we track them all, the big ones.

27:34 And some of them you can see that they might become

27:36 a problem in like 20 years or 30 years or 40 years.

27:39 Then we'd do it.

27:40 Then we'd Then we'd move it.

27:42 Did you watch that Don't Look Up?

27:43 Yeah.

27:44 So that's Well, that's it.

27:45 That's right.

27:45 It's that.

27:46 So my worry is that we are So [laughter] So um I don't know.

27:53 We focus on the wrong things.

27:55 Yeah.

27:55 And and one of the things we can do something about is impacts from space.

27:59 And we do a bit.

28:00 We've We've Actually, we have hit asteroids, so we've done it.

28:03 So we know how to do it.

28:04 Yeah.

28:05 scale.

28:06 But we're not prepared for one at the moment.

28:08 Okay.

28:08 So we see a comet coming

28:09 in from the outer solar system that's coming towards Earth.

28:12 I We haven't got time.

28:14 And that's just because we didn't get our together.

28:18 get it together.

28:18 Yeah.

28:19 Basically.

28:19 Yeah.

28:20 But that's just one of the thing.

28:21 I mean, there are things that can happen to us.

28:23 But the most likely thing by a mile

28:25 is that we just destroy our civilization ourselves.

28:28 Yeah.

28:28 And how do you feel about AI, kind of related to that?

28:32 Does it fill you with fear or hope or both?

28:34 Both.

28:35 Um I think it's one of those things again,

28:37 it's like To me it's like it will be a revolution.

28:40 It'll be like the Industrial Revolution,

28:42 which we know that that causes problems when

28:45 you have new technologies that are really powerful,

28:47 they change the way that people live.

28:49 We've done it several times, and every time it's been really badly managed,

28:54 and it's come out well in the end,

28:55 but it's caused huge trouble because that's what happens.

28:58 You You displace jobs, you create new jobs.

29:01 So, I think it the problem will be we don't learn

29:04 from the past and say there's a new powerful thing coming.

29:07 Yeah.

29:08 It could be as powerful as the atom bomb.

29:10 It could be as destructive as the atom bomb,

29:12 or it could be as wonderful as the invention of the computer.

29:16 Yeah.

29:16 Right?

29:17 It could transform everybody's lives.

29:19 We have the power to choose which,

29:21 but we might not have the wisdom to choose which.

29:23 Mhm.

29:24 Yeah.

29:24 That's what I was saying.

29:25 And And speaking of the computer, do Do you think um, you know,

29:28 like related to that, social media is helping

29:31 or hurting how the public understands the universe?

29:34 I honestly think it's hurting it now,

29:36 and I know that there There's people who study it.

29:38 So, I I With the caveat that there are experts in the area,

29:42 and there's There's the people who work

29:43 on this, but my view in the just personally

29:46 in the past few years is it's getting

29:48 harder and harder to sift through the nonsense.

29:52 Yeah.

29:53 noise.

29:53 And And my optimistic take on it is maybe that will

29:57 send it back to a rather more kind of trivial thing,

30:01 which is what it used to be, you know,

30:02 when I When I started out on Twitter and that.

30:04 I know I sound old now,

30:05 but it was kind of just people messing around and talking to each other.

30:09 It was a positive thing.

30:10 Yeah.

30:10 Now, it's very noisy.

30:12 So, you I I know I'm sure everybody agrees, Yeah.

30:15 whatever your political position or whatever, that that you look at it,

30:17 it's hard to figure out what's real and what isn't.

30:19 And with AI, that's getting worse.

30:21 Yeah.

30:21 So, it's hard to It's hard

30:23 to see what's reliable information and what's nonsense.

30:26 Yeah.

30:26 And propaganda or whatever it is.

30:28 So, I I think that might mean that we end up going back.

30:32 My optimistic hope is we go back to seek

30:35 out reliable sources of knowledge and, you know,

30:39 journalism, basically.

30:40 Yeah.

30:41 But I don't know.

30:42 So, but at the moment I mean you know,

30:43 I mean everyone knows if you go on social media depends how you

30:46 use it of course cuz you you

30:47 attract stuff towards yourself because of algorithms.

30:51 So, it but I yeah, I think it's getting noisy.

30:54 Let me put it that way.

30:55 Yeah.

30:56 Yeah.

30:58 noisy Um Someone got Someone the other day called

31:00 [clears throat] it I can't remember what it was.

31:01 It was tsunami of idiocy or something.

31:05 [laughter] It was a great quote.

31:05 I should I retweeted it I think cuz I thought it was so funny.

31:08 It was someone from like the Financial Times

31:10 or something cuz they can't deal with this tsunami.

31:13 Yeah.

31:14 I don't I don't know what word they used but [laughter]

31:16 Speaking of idiocy have you ever met

31:21 a flat-earther in real life and how was that?

31:25 not one that admitted it.

31:26 Oh really?

31:26 Okay.

31:27 Yeah.

31:27 Um [clears throat] I can give you two answers, right?

31:30 There's there's a there's and I think these are both good ways of looking at it.

31:34 One is very it's not charitable but probably right.

31:37 Carl Sagan again.

31:39 Well, you asked about my favorite books earlier.

31:41 If I if there's one book that everyone

31:43 should read is The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

31:47 Okay.

31:47 Cuz science is a candle in the dark and brilliant.

31:50 It was written in the 90s.

31:52 But so he talks about nonsense But he says right

31:56 at the start that he tells a story when he got in a cab in New York and he was

31:59 very famous Sagan and the taxi driver said to him,

32:02 you know, you're the astronomer on TV and and then he said,

32:05 "What do you think about UFOs?" And he's go, "I don't I'm not sure.

32:07 I don't think there's any evidence for that." "What

32:08 do you think about Atlantis?" "I don't

32:10 know any evidence for Atlantis." "What do you

32:11 think about this and that?" But Sagan said,

32:12 "The point is that what you see there is someone who's curious about

32:15 the world and is really interested

32:18 in things and mysteries fascinating to this person.

32:21 They just need point in the right direction cuz there are mysteries.

32:24 We talked about this.

32:24 It's mad.

32:25 Black holes and the end of time and all this stuff.

32:27 It's It's as It's stranger and more fascinating and wonderful than

32:31 the kind of conspiracy stuff about Atlantis or whatever it is, right?

32:35 So, the point is that it's a failure of us.

32:39 It's a failure of education and society and in it's

32:43 just a failure of our civilization to to satisfy people's curiosity.

32:48 So that's where what you said nonsense comes from.

32:51 It comes But the point is that people are curious and that's it.

32:55 So that's the That's the nice way.

32:57 But I think it's right.

32:58 I think that is the right way to think about it.

33:00 But it is of course it's it's infuriating when it really is you know,

33:04 just the conspiracy theorists like can't be angry you.

33:09 Well, no no because I try I'm trying to be like zen.

33:14 Yeah.

33:14 [laughter] If you're zen about it, Sagan's right.

33:17 Yeah.

33:18 But I'm also from Oldham and I can't help it.

33:21 And so you know, yes, it is some of it is I mean the idea

33:27 that the earth can be flat is is such nonsense.

33:29 Of course it's nonsense.

33:30 I don't understand it.

33:31 I don't understand how you can get into that position.

33:33 Yeah.

33:34 But then it's kind of I don't know.

33:37 You saw the documentary recently on it on Netflix a couple of years

33:39 ago where they they seriously tried to make some measurements and check.

33:43 And the measurements were very good and they found out that it's a sphere.

33:47 You know, and it's because that's what happens when you make the measurement.

33:51 Yeah.

33:52 All right.

33:52 Can I ask you when you talk about all this you have

33:54 such a contagious and radiant optimism and energy about all of it?

33:59 How do you maintain that optimism, you know?

34:02 Because because there's I there's a lot more that I don't know than I do.

34:07 Yeah.

34:07 Right?

34:09 [laughter] I'll probably an infinite amount that I don't know.

34:11 And that's the thing is it's about discovery.

34:13 Discovery is interesting and exciting.

34:15 Yeah.

34:16 Carl Sagan again, he said somewhere out

34:18 there there's something wonderful waiting to be known.

34:21 Aw, that's lovely.

34:23 it?

34:23 Yeah.

34:25 And speaking of that, you know, wonder what what would you say is

34:27 the most beautiful scientific fact that you know?

34:30 Um that anything exists at all.

34:36 I would say.

34:37 It's a really good question, isn't it?

34:38 What do you mean?

34:39 Why is there anything?

34:41 [laughter] I don't know.

34:42 Do you know?

34:43 No, I don't know, but it's the most

34:45 wonderful It's a fact that the the universe exists.

34:50 Yeah.

34:50 And then ultimately, if you're really saying,

34:52 "What's the one fact that astonishes me more

34:55 than anything else?" It's that the universe is here.

34:58 Yeah.

34:59 I don't know why it's here.

35:00 I don't know if it's always been here.

35:02 Yeah.

35:02 But it's interesting to note that something this exists.

35:07 It's magic, isn't Yeah, no, you really got it into my Yeah,

35:10 it's really you take it for granted, don't you?

35:13 But when you zoom all the way out, you go, "Wow." [laughter]

35:16 that, you know, you go back here, you know,

35:17 13.8 billion years, there's just hydrogen and helium.

35:21 Yeah.

35:21 There isn't anything else.

35:23 And it's just a almost completely

35:25 featureless universe filled with hydrogen and helium.

35:28 So, would you say you are optimistic for the future?

35:31 Yeah, yeah, I am, cuz you you have to be.

35:34 I'm I'm really optimistic if we humans can understand

35:41 the precious and unlikely nature of our planet and our existence.

35:46 Mhm.

35:47 And then make progress.

35:50 And and ultimately head outwards to the stars.

35:52 If we If we do that, it's we have an unlimited, wonderful future.

35:57 Yeah.

35:57 at a pivotal moment now where we can we have We have to make that choice.

36:01 Yeah.

36:02 It's our You know, anyone who's listening is you know, again,

36:05 we talk about people that 15, 20, 20, 25 years old.

36:08 It's your It's your future.

36:10 What do we have to do?

36:11 Your future.

36:12 Yeah.

36:12 And so, you choose ultimately.

36:14 So, the way you we organize our societies and the way

36:17 that we interact with other societies around the world

36:20 and so on, that defines whether we go to the stars

36:25 or become a footnote in the history of the universe.

36:29 Geez.

36:30 Wow, right Brian.

36:32 I think it's time for the final question.

36:34 32 No, I got 32 left.

36:36 70 3/4 way better.

36:39 2/3 of them right.

36:40 Okay.

36:41 You ready?

36:42 Yeah.

36:45 It's got a little tea on it as well.

36:47 It's good, right?

36:48 Nice touch.

36:49 that.

36:49 Thank you.

36:50 Right.

36:55 What event in all of history would you most want to have witnessed?

37:02 If you could.

37:04 I would like to The reason I'm hesitating, I know what the answer is.

37:11 I was going to say the origin of life on Earth.

37:14 But maybe it's it's probably not an event.

37:19 [laughter] It's like it didn't just go Yeah.

37:21 But I would like I would love to know what the first living things were like.

37:28 Because that that's led, you know, there's an unbroken chain of life that goes

37:31 from those things which you call LUCA,

37:34 the last universal common ancestor, to everything on the Earth today.

37:38 So, I'd love to just be able to go in a time machine and say

37:42 there it is in that pond What do you think it would have looked like?

37:45 on that that hydrothermal vent.

37:46 I mean, it'll be it probably isn't even single-celled things.

37:49 It's probably sort of chemical reactions in some vent

37:52 somewhere in the deep ocean or something like that.

37:55 But it is one of the great mysteries that's buried you know,

37:58 inaccessible in the past.

38:00 It'd be great to know how the universe came to know itself.

38:04 Yeah.

38:04 talking about.

38:05 Wow.

38:06 Yeah, nice.

38:07 Well, Brian, [music] thank you so much.

38:10 This has been such a fascinating conversation.

38:13 It's nice to be with you, Brian.

38:14 Yeah, I've enjoyed being able to ask you about all this.

38:16 It's been Oh man, leaves me a lot a lot

38:19 to go and to go and think about lying in bed.

38:22 [laughter] It's so excellent and it is still, you know,

38:24 just by these subjects feeling quite heavy, so optimistic.

38:27 So, man, thank you so much.

38:29 Thank you.

38:29 It's been fun.

38:30 real pleasure.

38:31 Thank you, man.

38:32 Thank you very [cheering] much.

38:34 [applause] Hello everyone.

38:36 Thank you for watching 100 questions.

38:38 If you'd like to see the extended cut with all 100 questions, don't worry.

38:42 Launching a Patreon in a few weeks time.

38:44 On YouTube, you'll be able to see all the best discussions from every interview.

38:48 So, make sure that you subscribe because you won't want to miss my next guest.

38:54 Right.

38:55 We're going to do something we don't usually do.

38:56 Let's get the lights on.

39:01 [laughter] That's terrifying.

39:03 What was it that inspired you to start uploading?

39:05 I got really lost in YouTube for a while because it doesn't matter what you do.

39:09 What matters is that you find the thing that works.

39:12 What did work for you?

39:13 Being mean about people.

39:15 What's really unique is you're someone [music]

39:17 that is a musician and a YouTuber.

39:19 YouTuber I find it to be a really interesting term,

39:22 but I maybe upload four a year.

39:23 I'm probably weirdly more of a TikToker now.

39:26 Don't go around saying that.

39:28 [laughter]

39:28 Just to go back to the number one, how was that moment when you found out?

39:32 I didn't go into that album week going,

39:33 "I want a number one." I'd had this one brief moment

39:36 of, "I think it could be number one." And then I immediately went,

39:39 "Nah, ignore that." In [music] the week before

39:41 it everyone kind of turned around and went,

39:44 "We think we could do it." Coffee or tea?

39:46 Coffee.

39:47 Shout out Rods.

39:47 Yeah, shout out Rods.

39:50 Introvert or extrovert?

39:50 I would say ambivert.

39:52 Okay.

39:53 All right.

39:54 [laughter] We'll cut that.

39:55 Best gig so far?

39:56 I would say probably the most recent London show I did.

39:59 It was actually the first time that I've

40:00 been close to having a panic attack on stage.

40:02 Can you tell me a bit more about that?

40:03 What do you mean?