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Speaker 1: I want you to do something for me right now.

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Just take a second and look around the room you're in.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, just pick a totally ordinary object.

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Speaker 1: Right exactly, Like maybe it's the coffee cup sitting on

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your desk, or maybe a pen, or honestly, just hold

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up your own hand and look at it looks pretty solid, it.

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Speaker 2: Feels safe, it feels normal, exactly.

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Speaker 1: It obeys all the rules of the physical world you've

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known since you were a toddler. Well, what if I

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told you that simple, mundane object you're looking at right

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now contains the exact same dormant explosive power as a

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twenty one kiloton nuclear weapon.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it is a deeply unsettling thought when you

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actually let the physical reality of it synk in. We

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walk through the world completely oblivious to this sheer apocalyptic

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energy bound up in the most boring objects around us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's not stop there. Tonight, when you step

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outside and look up at the night sky, you're going

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to see this beautiful, sprawling map of stars and galaxies.

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And it feels like this fixed, reliable ceiling to our world.

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I mean, we've navigated by it for millennia. But here's

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the kicker that sky. It is a massive, universized optical illusion.

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It is actively lying to your eyes, constantly distorting the

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truth of where things actually are.

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Speaker 2: Because we build our entire understanding of reality on the

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assumption that what we see is was actually there. We

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assume space as flat, time as universal, and matter is solid.

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But the universe is what's far more deceptive and far

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more fluid than our primate brains ever evolved to comprehend.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling threads. I am so glad you're here

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with us now. Our mission today is not to throw

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dusty old equations at you, or you know, make you

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memorize physics formula.

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Speaker 2: Now, definitely not. We're not doing a textbook read along, right.

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Speaker 1: Our mission is to completely shatter your perception of daily reality.

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We're going to explore the terrifying, the deeply unsettling, and

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frankly the onspiring truths that were revealed by Albert Einstein's

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theories of relativity, alongside a century of staggering astronomical days

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that well basically proved them right.

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Speaker 2: And we are pulling from a really fascinating stack of

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historical and modern data to do this. We're looking closely

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at the original frameworks from Einstein's nineteen oh five Special

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Relativity and nineteen sixteen general relativity papers, alongside some modern

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physics analysis.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and some incredible space missions too.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. We also have the almost unbelievably precise findings from

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NASA's Gravity pro b mission, and we're diving deep into

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the seismic data from the Lego observatories, which literally heard

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the universe ringing.

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Speaker 1: When I first started digging into this material, I had

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the exact same reaction I think a lot of people.

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Do you hear the name Einstein and you immediately think

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of abstract math, You think of stuff that only matters

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to astronomers peering through massive telescopes on mountaintops, or people

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in lab coats smashing sub atomic particles together in underground colliders.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels incredibly distant from our actual lived experience.

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Speaker 1: Right, totally disconnected from your morning commute or checking your

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email or making that cup of coffee. But what we're

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going to unpack today is that relativity isn't just you

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know out there in the deep cosmos. Relativity is the fragile,

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highly localized, incredibly warped bubble that dictates the physical geometry

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of your entire existence, Every single second of your life

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is actively governed by these bizarre rules.

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Speaker 2: I promise you, by the time we wrap up this conversation,

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you will never look at the ground beneath your feet,

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the clock ticking on your wall, or the GPS guiding

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your phone the same way ever again.

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Speaker 1: So let's jump right into the deep end. I want

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to talk about how we perceive the space around us,

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because we all walk around assuming space is this rigid,

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fixed stage like an empty theater. Right, A ruler is

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a foot long, a mile is a mile. If you

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park your car in the driveway, it takes up a

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very specific, unchanging amount of space.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's the new Tonian view of the universe, which

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works perfectly fine for building bridges or throwing you a baseball.

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We assume space is an empty box and things just

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move around inside the box.

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Speaker 1: But when I was reading up on Einstein's nineteen oh

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five Special Theory of Relativity, I came across the concept

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of length contraction, and it essentially proves that physical distance,

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like the actual size of objects and the space between them,

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is nothing more than a localized illusion.

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Speaker 2: What's really fascinating here is the absolute rigidity of the

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underlying mechanism. Length contraction isn't just a quirk. It is

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a forced mathematical necessity. It dictates that as an object

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accelerates and gets closer to the speed of light, it

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physically compresses in the direction of its motion.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I have to stop you there, because I want

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to make sure I'm visualizing this correctly, and I want

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you listening to picture this too. I found this incredible

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analogy in the sources that help me wrap my head

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around it, the train analogy. Yes, imagine you're standing on

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a train platform and a highly advanced futuristic train speeds

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past you at ninety percent the speed of light. Now

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my brain immediately thinks, okay, it's going super fast, so

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it just looks like a blur. It's a normal train,

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just moving quickly. But the math absolutely rejects that, doesn't.

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Speaker 2: It utterly rejects it. You wouldn't just see a blurred,

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normal sized train. If you had a camera capable of

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capturing it in a microsecond, you would see a train

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that is physically squashed. It would be compressed down to

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less than half of its original length. The metal, the glass,

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the seats, the passengers, everything is literally occupying less physical

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space in the direction it's traveling.

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Speaker 1: Wait, I need to push back on this, because this

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is where my brain starts flashing warning signs. If the

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train is physically compressed to less than half its size,

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wouldn't the sheer mechanical force of that crush everything inside?

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I mean, if you shrink the space my body occupies,

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wouldn't my bones break?

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Speaker 2: You would think, so? Yeah, right?

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't the atoms in my body before so close together

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that they trigger some kind of catastrophic nuclear fusion. How

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does the train or the person inside survive that?

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Speaker 2: That is a brilliant question, and it strikes right at

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the heart of why relativity is so counterintuitive. Bones don't

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break and your atoms don't fuse because the matter itself

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isn't being crushed by external pressure. The actual physical metric

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of space.

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Speaker 1: Has changed, the metric itself.

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Speaker 2: Yes, think of space like a grid drawn on a

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piece of elastic fabric. The atoms in your body are

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sitting on the intersections of that grid. As you approach

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the speed of light, the entire fabric of space itself compresses.

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The distance between the atoms shrinks, but the atoms themselves

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don't feel squashed, because the local laws of physics, the

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electromagnetic force is keeping your atoms apart, have scaled down

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perfectly with the space.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, So to the local universe inside the train,

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nothing has changed. The ruler you use to measure the

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distance between your atoms has shrunk by the exact same

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proportion as the distance itself.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, and this is because of the foundational rule of

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the universe. The speed of light is constant for all observers,

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no matter how fast they are moving. If you are

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standing on the platform and I am on the train,

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moving at ninety percent the speed of light, and we

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both measure a beam of light shooting past us, we

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both have to measure it moving at exactly one hundred

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and eighty and eighty two.

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Speaker 1: Miles per second, which makes no intuitive sense. I mean,

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if I'm driving down the highway at sixty miles an

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hour and a car passes me going seventy to me,

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that car is only moving ten miles an hour. Velocities

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are supposed to.

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Speaker 2: Subtract, right, but light refuses to do that. The universe

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will not allow you to catch up to a light beam.

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So if we both have to measure light moving at

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the exact same speed, despite the fact that I am

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chasing it at ninety percent the speed of light. Something

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else has to break to make the math work out, and.

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Speaker 1: The universe decides that space and time are what break.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. The universe bends, flexes, and compresses physical distance to

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ensure the speed of light remains absolute. The space you

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occupy is entirely subjective.

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Speaker 1: That is completely mind bending, because if I'm the passenger

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on that train, like you said, I don't feel compressed.

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My coudy cup looks completely normal. My arms and legs

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are fine. But here is the terrifying subjective reality. When

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I look out the window of that speeding train, what

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do I see?

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Speaker 2: This is where reference frames completely upend our sense of reality.

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From your perspective inside the train, your arrest, the train

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isn't moving, The universe is rushing past you. So when

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you look out the window, you don't see a squashed train,

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you see a squashed universe. Wow. Yeah, the train platform,

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the planet Earth beneath it, the Solar System, the distant stars,

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everything flying past your window is physically compressed in the

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direction of travel.

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Speaker 1: I am compressing the Earth just by driving.

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Speaker 2: Past it really fast in your frame of reference. Yes,

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the physical dimensions of reality are entirely flexible. They warp

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depending on absolutely nothing more than how fast you're moving

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relative to something else.

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Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for us sitting here

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right now? It means there is no true objective shape

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to anything in the universe. The room you are sitting in,

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the space your body is taking up right now, it's

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just a temporary dimensional suggestion. It only exists in this exact,

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comfortable shape because you have to be standing relatively still

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with the Earth.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.

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Speaker 1: If an alien spaceship zoomed past Earth at near light

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speed in their reality, you and the room you are

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in would look like a squashed pancake, and they wouldn't

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be wrong. Both realities are mathematically true.

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Speaker 2: It shatters the idea of the empty fixed stage, and

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that's just what sheer velocity does to space. But things

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get even more claustrophobic when we introduce gravity, because space

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isn't just a frictionless vacuum where things happen. General relativity

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paints a picture of space time as a physical, interactive medium.

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It's a thick fabric.

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Speaker 1: And this brings me to a concept called frame dragging.

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The historical papers and the modern physics analyzes outline this,

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and there's a brilliant way to visualize it that completely

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changed how I think about the ground beneath my feet.

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Imagine dropping a perfectly round, spinning sphere into a massive

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vat of incredibly thick, viscous honey.

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Speaker 2: The honey analogy perfectly captures the fluid dynamics of space time.

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Speaker 1: Right, So as that sphere spins, the friction grabs the

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thick honey and drags it along, creating this swirling, localized

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whirlpool right around the equator of the sphere. The honey

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closest to the sphere spins the fastest, and it sort

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of tapers off the further away. You get what Einstein

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positive is that this is exactly what the Earth is

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doing to reality. Right this very second Earth is not

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just rotating cleanly in an empty void. It is violently

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twisting the fabric of space and time. It is dragging

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reality along with it as it spins.

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Speaker 2: And for decades this was just a mathematical quirk. It

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was something Einstein predicted, but the effect around a planet

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like Earth would be so infinitesimally small that physicists assumed

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we could never ever build a machine sensitive enough to

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detect it. But then we get to NASA's Gravity pro

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B mission in two thousand and four.

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Speaker 1: I went so deep down the rabbit hole reading about

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gravi pro B. The engineering required for this mission sounds

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like science fiction. They had to build these gyroscopes to

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measure the twisting of space, and to do that they

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needed to create perfect spheres.

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Speaker 2: The quartz spheres they created for Gravity pro B are

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officially recognized as the most perfectly spherical objects ever manufactured

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by human.

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Speaker 1: Beings, which is just wild to think about.

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Speaker 2: To give you an idea of the scale, they're about

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the size of a ping pong ball. If you scaled

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one of these quard spheres up to the size of

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the entire Earth, the tallest mountain or deepest ocean trench

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would be less than eight feet tall.

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Speaker 1: The precision is just staggering. I mean eight feet tall

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on an Earth sized scale.

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Speaker 2: It had to be that perfect because any imperfection, any

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microscopic imbalance, would cause the mechanical wabble that would completely

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drown out the tiny relativistic signal they were looking for.

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They coated them in niobium, suspended them in a vacuum

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using electrical fields so nothing physically touched them, and cooled

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them to near absolute zero using liquid helium.

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Speaker 1: So you have these utterly flawless, freezing cold spheres floating

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freely in space, orbiting the Earth. They pointed the spin

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axis of these gyroscopes at a distant guide star I

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am Agassi and basically said, Okay, if Newton is right

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and space is just an empty box, these gyroscopes will

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stay perfectly aligned with that star forever because nothing is

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pushing them.

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Speaker 2: They left them in orbit for over a year, tracking

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them with mind boggling precision. With the data finally came

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back and was fully analyzed years later. It confirmed Einstein's

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map absolutely perfectly.

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Speaker 1: The gyroscopes had drifted. They drifted, Yeah, it was an

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incredibly microscopic We were talking about fractions of an arcsecond,

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which is roughly the width of a human hair viewed

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from ten miles away.

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Speaker 2: But they drifted, and they hadn't been pushed by solar wind.

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They weren't pulled by the Earth's magnetic field, and there

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were no internal mechanical flaws pushing them off course.

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Speaker 1: They were physically pulled off course because the actual literal

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space they were occupying was rotating. The space itself was

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being dragged by the Earth's rotation, and it turned the

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gyroscopes with it. I just want you to let that

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sink in for a second. You listening to this right now,

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you are not standing on a solid rock that is

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just cleanly sailing through an empty, frictionless void. You are

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trapped at the bottom of a four dimensional whirlpool. You

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are caught in the current of a twisted fluid reality.

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You can't see it with your eyes, you can't feel

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it with your hands, but it is actively dictating the

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physical geometry of your existence.

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Speaker 2: It completely reframes how we think about our place in

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the cosmos. We are swimming in a thick, warped medium.

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And what is brilliant about that realization is that it

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leads directly to our next major shift in perspective. Because

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if space is this thick, twisted fluid, what happens when

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things violently crash inside that fluid?

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Speaker 1: Exactly if we are sitting in this cosmic honey and

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it can be dragged, what happens if you slap the honey?

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Speaker 2: It sends out a ripple, which brings us to gravitational waves.

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For all of.

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Speaker 1: Human history, we have perceived the ground beneath our feet

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as solid, unmoving. If the ground moves, we call it

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an earthquake, and we view it as a localized geological anomaly,

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tectonic plate slipping, that sort of thing. But Einstein's nineteen

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sixteen prediction positive that because space time is a physical medium,

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it can carry physical shockwaves.

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Speaker 2: He theorized that when the most massive violent objects in

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the universe accelerator collide, like black holes or neutron stars,

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they displaced the fabric of space so violently that they

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send out ripples. Think of a heavy stone dropped into

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a calm pond. Gravitational waves travel outward in all directions

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at the speed of light, stretching and squeezing space itself as.

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Speaker 1: They go, but for a century nobody could prove it

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because the universe is so vast. By the time those

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ripples reached Earth, they would be unimaginably faint. If the

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twisting of space by Earth rotation was the width of

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a human hair from ten miles away, a gravitational wave

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would be stretching space by less than the width of

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a single proton.

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Speaker 2: The physics community genuinely debated whether we would ever have

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the technological capacity to measure something that small, But in

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twenty fifteen, the advanced Lego observatories completely changed the game.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the sheer absurdity of the Lego machines

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because these are l shaped vacuum tubes over two miles long,

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built in Washington State and Louisiana. They shoot high powered

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lasers down these tubes, bounce them off perfectly polished mirrors,

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and wait for the lasers to fall out of sink.

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Speaker 2: And that's the key, falling out.

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Speaker 1: Of sink, right, because if a gravitational wave rolls through

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the Earth, it will physically stretch one of the two

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mile arms and compress the other, causing the lasers to

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arrive back at the detector at slightly different times.

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Speaker 2: And to make sure it's actually a gravitational wave and

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not a truck driving by or a microscopic seismic tremor,

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they have to isolate these mirrors using active dampening systems

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that push back against ambient nois millions of times a second.

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Speaker 1: And in September twenty fifteen, it actually happened they detected

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a signal. They literally heard the universe ring.

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Speaker 2: The event they detected is known as g W one

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five zero nine to one two, and the scale of

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this event is almost impossible for a human brain to process.

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Two black holes, one roughly thirty six times the mass

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of our Sun, the other twenty nine times the mass

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of our Sun. They were locked in a binary orbit,

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spiraling closer and closer together at half the speed of light.

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Speaker 1: This is happening roughly one point three billion light years

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away from Earth.

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Speaker 2: Yes, they spiraled into each other and merged into a

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single massive black hole, and in the final fraction of

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a second of their collision, they released three entire solar

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masses of pure.

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Speaker 1: Energy, three suns worth of mass, completely converted into the

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energy of a spacetime ripple in a tenth of a second.

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That's just I can't even picture that.

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Speaker 2: It was more energy released in that moment than the

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combined light of all the shining stars in the observable universe,

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every star you can see, every star in every galaxy

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we have ever mapped. The luinous output of all of

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them combined was dwarfed by this single invisible collision.

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Speaker 1: And that energy rippled outward. It traveled through the cosmic

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fluid for over a billion years. It traversed the cold,

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dark voids of the universe, just to wash over our

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tiny planet in twenty fifteen. But this is the part

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that really gets under my skin. This is the personal impact.

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What does that mean for you and me? It means

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that as that wave passed through the Earth, your physical atoms,

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the room you are sitting in, the planet you live on,

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they were physically stretched in one direction and squeezed in

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the other.

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Speaker 2: Now, obviously it happens on an incredibly subatomic scale, because

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the wave traveled for a billion years, it had dissipated

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down to a fraction of the width of a proton

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by the time.

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Speaker 1: It hit us, But it physically happened. You were stretched

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and squeezed by a billion year old ghost of a

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dead collision. It is so unsettling to realize that we

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are constantly vibrating, because if Ligo can hear them, it

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means the universe is full of these events, invisible shock

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waves from exploding supernovas, merging black holes, colliding neutron stars

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that are continuously washing over us right now. The ground

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beneath you is never ever truly still. The universe rings

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like a bell, and we are vibrating right along with

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the frequency.

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Speaker 2: And this fluidity of space doesn't just mess with our

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sense of physical stillness, it completely compromises our sense of sight.

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If space can be stretched and twisted, it means the

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paths through space are not straight lines, which brings us

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to the phenomena of gravitational lensing.

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Speaker 1: This is the ultimate betrayal by the cosmos. Humanity has

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always relied on the stars to map out where we are,

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from ancient sailors navigating by constellations to modern astrophysicists building

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multi billion dollar telescopes like James Webb. We look into

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the deep corners of the cosmos, We plot the locations

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of galaxies, and we trust our eyes. We assume light

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travels in a straight line from the star to our telescope.

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Speaker 2: But if space is a warped fluid, then light cannot

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travel in a straight line. Light has to follow the

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contours of space time. Because massive objects like galaxy clusters

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have such immense gravity, they warp the fabrico space so

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severely that they create deep valleys. In reality, when light

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from a distant galaxy passes by one of these massive clusters,

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it is forced to follow the curve of that warped

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space bending around the massive object.

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Speaker 1: Think of it like a cosmic magnifying glass, but a

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really cheap, poorly made one. I want you to picture

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looking through the bottom of a thick glass soda bottle.

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Everything on the other side is distorted, smeared, bent out

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of shape. That is exactly what massive galaxy clusters are

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doing to the light of the universe.

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Speaker 2: The visual evidence of this is staggering and undeniable. When

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we look at a distant quasar or galaxy located directly

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behind one of these massive foreground clusters, the light has

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been heavily bent and stretched. Sometimes we see a single

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galaxy smeared into a massive glowing arc across the sky,

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wrapping around the foreground cluster. It's called an Einstein ring.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes it's even weirder. Sometimes the light from a

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single source takes multiple different paths around the massive object

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to reach us. So when we point our telescopes at it,

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we see four or five identical copies of the exact

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same galaxy just scattered across the sky and across patterns

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the exact same galaxy showing up in four different places.

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Speaker 2: What is profound about this is the implication for our

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map of the universe. It means the universe is actively

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hiding its true layout from us. The night sky you

403
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look up at is is quite literally a fun house mirror.

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Speaker 1: That is exactly a funhouse mirror. When you look up,

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you are not seeing things where they actually are. We

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are essentially staring through cracked glass, attempting to piece together

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the true geography of a universe that has been bouncing, bending,

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and warping light for billions of years before it finally

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hits our retinas.

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Speaker 2: We simply cannot trust what we see. The cosmos is

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heavily actively distorted, so.

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Speaker 1: Naturally, the human response to this is, well, if we

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can't trust what we see from here, for telesoops are

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just looking through warped glass, let's just build a spaceship

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and fly out there figure it out in person.

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Speaker 2: Which brings us to our next major realization, and this

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one is a bit of a heartbreaker, the cosmic quarantine.

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Speaker 1: Yes, this is where we confront the absolute limits of

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our existence. We have to talk about the cosmic speed limit,

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famously represented by the letter C in Einstein's equations, I

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grew up on science fiction. I think most of us did.

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We were raised on Star Wars, Star Trek, Interstellar. We

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were raised on the promise of warp drives, hyperspace, and

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the sprawling galactic civilizations spanning thousands of star systems. We

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inherently assume that if humanity just survives long enough and

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our technology keeps progressing, eventually we will conquer the stars.

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It's just a matter of time and engineering. We went

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from the Right Brothers to the Moon in sixty six years.

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Surely we can figure out Alpha Centauri.

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Speaker 2: It is a beautiful dream, but Einstein's equations contain a

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brutal absolute prohibition. The speed of light in a vacuum

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C is approximately one hundred and eighty six thousand, two

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hundred and eighty two miles per second.

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Speaker 1: Which again sounds incredibly fast. You could circle the Earth

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seven and a half times in one second at that speed.

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Speaker 2: It is incredibly fast from a terrestrial perspective. But the

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critical rule is that C is not just the speed

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at which photons of light travel. It is the absolute

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maximum speed for any information, any physical matter, or any

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causal influence to propagate through the fabric of the universe.

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Speaker 1: I want to stop an unpack. Why we can't just

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build a bigger engine to push past it? Because usually

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in our daily lives, if you want to go faster

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in a car, you just put it a bigger engine,

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burn more fuel, generate more thrust. Why doesn't that work

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in space? Why does the universe throw up a brick wall.

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Speaker 2: It comes down to the mathematical constraint of mass and

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energy under special relativity. As an object with mass, like

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a spaceship or a human body, accelerates, you have to

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pump kinetic energy into it. But relativity dictates that as

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velocity increases, the object's relativistic momentum increases asymptotically. To push

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an object with any mass at all to the actual

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speed of light, the math shows it would require infinite energy.

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Speaker 1: Infinite energy, not just a lot of energy, not just

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all the energy in the sun, more energy than exists

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in the entire universe.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. It is mathematically and physically impossible. Yeah, this isn't

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a technological hurdle. It's not a sound barrier that we

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can eventually break if we just invent a sleeker aerodynamic shape.

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It's not something we can engineer our way around in

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a thousand years. It is built into the fundamental source

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code of reality. Mass cannot reach the speed of light.

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Speaker 1: And this is where the philosophical reac of this hits

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me so hard, because when you look at the sheer

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scale of space, it means we are prisoners. We are

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under a permanent cosmic quarantine.

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Speaker 2: The scale of the universe weaponizes that speed limit against us.

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Speaker 1: Let's put this out. Let's pretend we somehow invent a

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miraculous propulsion system. We harness antimatter, we bend the rules

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as much as theoretically possible, and we build a ship

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that can go ninety nine point nine percent the speed

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of light. We are practically kissing the speed limit. We

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are still hopelessly trapped because the universe is just too

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unfathomably big. The absolute nearest star system to us, Proxima centaury,

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is over four light years away. At our absolute maximum speed,

476
00:23:39,880 --> 00:23:43,319
it still takes four years of empty, freezing darkness just

477
00:23:43,359 --> 00:23:44,640
to reach our next door neighbor.

478
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:46,960
Speaker 2: And that is just our immediate neighborhood. If you want

479
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,359
to visit the center of our own Milky Way galaxy,

480
00:23:49,599 --> 00:23:52,359
it is twenty six thousand light years away. Even traveling

481
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:54,440
at ninety nine point nine percent the speed of light,

482
00:23:54,559 --> 00:23:57,079
humanity would rise and fall several times over before you

483
00:23:57,079 --> 00:23:58,079
even got halfway there.

484
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:00,720
Speaker 1: And if we look beyond our own gallonlexy, it gets

485
00:24:00,759 --> 00:24:04,039
even more desolate because we aren't just fighting distance, We

486
00:24:04,119 --> 00:24:06,920
are fighting the expansion of the universe itself.

487
00:24:07,079 --> 00:24:10,279
Speaker 2: Yes, driven by what we currently call dark energy. The

488
00:24:10,319 --> 00:24:14,440
space between galaxies is expanding, and the further away a

489
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:17,599
galaxy is from us, the more expanding space there is

490
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:21,279
between us and them, which means the distant galaxies are

491
00:24:21,279 --> 00:24:23,640
receding from us faster than the speed of light.

492
00:24:24,039 --> 00:24:26,319
Speaker 1: Wait, how can they be receding faster than light if

493
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:27,680
light is the absolute.

494
00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:30,759
Speaker 2: Speed limit, Because the galaxies themselves aren't moving through space

495
00:24:30,799 --> 00:24:33,920
faster than light, the space between the galaxies is stretching.

496
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,000
Space itself is not bound by the cosmic speed limit.

497
00:24:37,279 --> 00:24:39,039
It can expand as fast as it wants.

498
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:41,960
Speaker 1: This just fills me with this profound sense of melancholy

499
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,680
because it means the vast, overwhelming majority of the cosmos

500
00:24:46,039 --> 00:24:49,920
has already permanently slipped beyond our cosmic horizon. They are

501
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,440
being carried away on the expanding tide of space time

502
00:24:52,759 --> 00:24:55,440
faster than a light beam could ever possibly pursue them.

503
00:24:55,559 --> 00:24:58,759
Speaker 2: We are currently isolated. We are locked inside this localized

504
00:24:58,799 --> 00:25:02,279
bubble of physics. Thing outside our local group of galaxies

505
00:25:02,359 --> 00:25:04,359
is fundamentally untouchable forever.

506
00:25:04,599 --> 00:25:06,519
Speaker 1: We are destined to just sit here on our little

507
00:25:06,599 --> 00:25:08,920
rock and watch the rest of the cosmos slowly fade

508
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:11,720
into the dark. We can look through our cracked funhouse

509
00:25:11,759 --> 00:25:14,319
mirror of gravitational lenses all we want, but we can

510
00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,599
never ever reach out and touch it. The universe through

511
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:19,599
a party, and we are locked in the basement.

512
00:25:19,799 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 2: It forces a profound shift in perspective. We have to

513
00:25:23,279 --> 00:25:26,000
focus on our local neighborhood. We have to reckon with

514
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:27,400
the physics of the here and now.

515
00:25:27,759 --> 00:25:31,039
Speaker 1: But the irony is this isolated bubble we're trapped in.

516
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,279
It doesn't just dictate where we can go, it dictates

517
00:25:34,279 --> 00:25:37,200
when we are. Because as we pull on the next thread,

518
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:41,000
we realize that relativity dictates our speed and gravity. Are

519
00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:44,559
currently messing with something even more personal than space. Segmenting

520
00:25:44,559 --> 00:25:48,599
off the distance is one thing, but relativity fractures time itself.

521
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:51,599
Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most difficult concept for the human

522
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:55,039
brain to intuitively accept, because of all the things we

523
00:25:55,079 --> 00:25:59,319
experience the steady, relentless march of time feels the most universal.

524
00:26:00,039 --> 00:26:01,680
We could debate the size of a room or the

525
00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:05,359
shape of a shadow, but time feels absolute absolutely.

526
00:26:05,599 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: A minute is a minute, a second is a second.

527
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:10,079
You and I are having this conversation right now. We

528
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,720
synchronize our watches, we set our morning alarms, we celebrate

529
00:26:13,759 --> 00:26:16,400
New Year's Eve as a global event. We share this

530
00:26:16,519 --> 00:26:20,519
deeply ingrained, collective understanding of the present moment. We all

531
00:26:20,559 --> 00:26:23,400
believe we exist in a shared now, but.

532
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:28,039
Speaker 2: The math of general relativity utterly dismantles this assumption. Now

533
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,799
does not exist globally. Time is not a constant, universal

534
00:26:31,839 --> 00:26:35,680
background metronome ticking away for everyone. Equally, time is a

535
00:26:35,799 --> 00:26:40,279
highly localized, deeply personal, and entirely malleable fluid.

536
00:26:40,559 --> 00:26:43,799
Speaker 1: We have to talk about gravitational time dilation. The fundamental

537
00:26:43,839 --> 00:26:46,680
rule is the stronger the gravitational field you are in,

538
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:50,000
the slower time passes for you relative to someone in

539
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:51,400
a weaker gravitational field.

540
00:26:51,519 --> 00:26:54,759
Speaker 2: Yes. This comes from Einstein's equivalence principle, which basically shows

541
00:26:54,799 --> 00:26:58,640
that acceleration and gravity are mathematically indistinguishable in terms of

542
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,319
how they warp spacetime. If you stand near a massive object,

543
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:05,119
your local space time is heavily warped, and because the

544
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:08,079
speed of light must remain constant across this warped geometry,

545
00:27:08,279 --> 00:27:10,559
your local clock has to slow down relative to an

546
00:27:10,559 --> 00:27:12,359
observer further away from the mass.

547
00:27:12,599 --> 00:27:14,559
Speaker 1: And this isn't just happening out in deep space in

548
00:27:14,599 --> 00:27:17,480
your black holes or neutron stars. This is happening to

549
00:27:17,519 --> 00:27:19,960
you right now, sitting in your chair, walking down the street,

550
00:27:20,039 --> 00:27:22,720
or driving your car. The center of our planet, the

551
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,480
Earth's core, has immense mass. The closer you are to it,

552
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:29,039
the stronger the gravitational pull.

553
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:32,759
Speaker 2: Which leads to a brilliantly absurd biological reality.

554
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:34,839
Speaker 1: I love this part of the physics because it is

555
00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:37,640
so wild when you really think about it. Because your

556
00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:39,920
feet are physically closer to the center of the Earth

557
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:44,759
than your head is, gravity is microscopically stronger at your feet. Therefore,

558
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:48,160
time is literally moving slower for your feet. Your head

559
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:51,839
is aging faster than your toes. You are biologically fracturing

560
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:53,440
in time just by standing up.

561
00:27:53,599 --> 00:27:56,039
Speaker 2: It is a mathematical fact. If you live on the

562
00:27:56,039 --> 00:27:58,799
top floor of a skyscraper, say a penthouse in New York,

563
00:27:59,319 --> 00:28:01,720
you are experience and seeing slightly weaker gravity than the

564
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,319
person living down to the basement apartment. Therefore, the penthouse

565
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:09,319
dweller is aging slightly faster over a lifetime. It might

566
00:28:09,319 --> 00:28:12,039
amount to fractions of a microsecond, but the effect is real.

567
00:28:12,319 --> 00:28:15,839
Speaker 1: Obviously, these differences are infinitesimal for human bodies. We need

568
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:19,960
insanely precise atomic clocks to measure it. But the philosophical

569
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:22,799
horror of this is absolute. It means there is no

570
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:27,519
universal clock. Every single object, every single person, every atom

571
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:31,799
is experiencing its own unique, private flow of time, depending

572
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,960
entirely on its proximity to mass. You are in your

573
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:36,759
own isolated temporal bubble.

574
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,079
Speaker 2: And if you want to take it to the absolute extreme,

575
00:28:39,799 --> 00:28:42,960
look at a photon of light itself. To a photon

576
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:47,160
traveling from a distant star, time essentially stops. The time

577
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,079
dilation at the speed of light is infinite.

578
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: Wait, really, think about that. The photon emitted from a

579
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,640
star in the Andromeda Galaxy travels through the freezing void

580
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:57,240
for two point five million years before it hits the

581
00:28:57,319 --> 00:28:58,680
lens of a telescope on Earth.

582
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 2: Yes, from our perspective to two point five million years past,

583
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:04,640
But to the photon the moment it was emitted, and

584
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:06,839
the moment it hits your eye with the exact same

585
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:09,680
instant to a particle of light, the entire history and

586
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,079
future of the universe happens simultaneously. There's no shared present.

587
00:29:13,319 --> 00:29:15,720
You are drifting out of sync with everything else in existence.

588
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: Okay. I can hear people listen to this and saying,

589
00:29:18,119 --> 00:29:20,480
all right, this is all very abstract philosophy. It's a

590
00:29:20,519 --> 00:29:22,519
neat party trick to say my feet are younger than

591
00:29:22,519 --> 00:29:25,279
my head, or that light doesn't experience time, but it

592
00:29:25,279 --> 00:29:27,519
doesn't actually affect my life. I still have to pay

593
00:29:27,519 --> 00:29:30,839
my taxes on April fifteenth. But here is where it

594
00:29:30,839 --> 00:29:36,279
gets terrifyingly practical. Your phone's GPS is currently fighting a literal,

595
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:38,839
active war against Einstein's math.

596
00:29:38,799 --> 00:29:41,759
Speaker 2: GPS drift ye. This is the perfect example of where

597
00:29:41,799 --> 00:29:46,400
relativity stops being theoretical chalkboard physics and becomes the crucial

598
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:49,440
structural pillar of modern human civilization.

599
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:52,200
Speaker 1: Let's break the exact math down because the raw numbers

600
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:55,240
make it so clear. The Global Positioning system relies on

601
00:29:55,279 --> 00:29:58,559
a constellation of dozens of satellites. They are orbiting about

602
00:29:58,559 --> 00:30:00,880
twelve thousand, five hundred miles above the Earth, and they

603
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,440
are zooming around the planet at roughly eighty seven hundred

604
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:04,039
miles per hour.

605
00:30:04,319 --> 00:30:07,279
Speaker 2: So we have two conflicting relativistic forces at play here,

606
00:30:07,559 --> 00:30:11,200
pulling the satellite's clocks in opposite directions. First, we have

607
00:30:11,279 --> 00:30:14,839
special relativity, which deals with velocity. Because these satellites are

608
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:18,519
moving incredibly fast eighty seven hundred miles an hour, they're

609
00:30:18,559 --> 00:30:22,319
onboard atomic clocks experience time dilation, they should tick slower

610
00:30:22,319 --> 00:30:24,720
than the clocks resting on the ground. The math says

611
00:30:24,759 --> 00:30:27,680
their speed causes them to lose about seven microseconds a day.

612
00:30:27,799 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 1: Okay, so speed makes them run seven microseconds slow every day.

613
00:30:31,319 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 2: But then then we have general relativity, which deals with gravity.

614
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,119
Because these satellites are twelve thy five hundred miles away

615
00:30:37,119 --> 00:30:39,559
from the Earth's surface, they are much further out of

616
00:30:39,599 --> 00:30:43,480
Earth's gravity. Well, they experience significantly weaker gravity than we

617
00:30:43,519 --> 00:30:46,839
do on the surface. Weaker gravity means time ticks faster.

618
00:30:47,119 --> 00:30:49,599
This effect speeds up their clocks by about forty five

619
00:30:49,599 --> 00:30:50,519
microseconds a day.

620
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:53,319
Speaker 1: So speed slows them down by seven microseconds, but the

621
00:30:53,359 --> 00:30:56,559
weaker gravity speeds them up by forty five microseconds. You

622
00:30:56,599 --> 00:30:58,640
subtract the seven from the forty five and the net

623
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,240
result is that the atomic clocks on the GPS satellites

624
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,119
are moving thirty eight microseconds a day, faster than the

625
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:05,160
clocks on Earth.

626
00:31:05,079 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 2: And thirty eight microseconds sounds completely insignificant to a human being.

627
00:31:09,519 --> 00:31:11,920
It's thirty eight millions of a second. You blink your

628
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,599
eye and hundreds of thousands of microseconds past.

629
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: It sounds like nothing. Who cares about thirty eight millions

630
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:18,559
of a second let it drift.

631
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 2: You should care, because the GPS system figures out where

632
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,200
you are by timing how long it takes a radio

633
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,160
signal to reach your phone from the satellite, and radio

634
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,400
signals travel at the speed of light one hundred and

635
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,960
eighty six thousand miles per second exactly.

636
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:34,559
Speaker 1: Light covers a vast amount of ground in a microsecond.

637
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,119
At that speed, a thirty eight microsecond time drift equals

638
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:41,440
a seven mile location error every single day.

639
00:31:41,799 --> 00:31:44,279
Speaker 2: If we did not program the software in those satellites

640
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:47,519
to deliberately run their clocks slow prior to launch to

641
00:31:47,759 --> 00:31:51,599
artificially correct Feinstein's math before the signal ever reaches your phone,

642
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,319
our entire global system would fail cumulatively.

643
00:31:54,519 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 1: Let's vividly paint this picture. Imagine some rogue software engineer

644
00:31:58,559 --> 00:32:02,200
just flips the switch and turns off that artificial relativistic correction.

645
00:32:03,039 --> 00:32:07,279
Within forty eight hours, global navigation becomes utterly useless. You

646
00:32:07,319 --> 00:32:09,880
open Google Maps to find a coffee shop, and your

647
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:12,680
blue dot is floating fourteen miles away in the middle

648
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:14,960
of a lake. But it's not just you getting lost

649
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,799
on a road trip. The stakes are apocalyptic. Commercial airliners

650
00:32:18,799 --> 00:32:22,400
descending into fog banks are suddenly flying blind, missing runways,

651
00:32:22,559 --> 00:32:27,000
entirely shipping and logistics the massive automated trucks and trains

652
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,640
delivering food to grocery stores completely grind to a halt.

653
00:32:30,759 --> 00:32:34,279
Speaker 2: And it goes far deeper than just geographical navigation. The

654
00:32:34,319 --> 00:32:38,079
global power grids rely on the hyper precise GPS microsecond

655
00:32:38,079 --> 00:32:41,839
timing for synchronization. The alternating current across a continent has

656
00:32:41,839 --> 00:32:45,799
to match up perfectly. Without that relativistic timing correction, the

657
00:32:45,839 --> 00:32:49,839
grid synchronization falls apart, and massive rolling blackouts cascade across

658
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:51,319
the globe.

659
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:54,039
Speaker 1: And the global banking system. This is the terrifying part.

660
00:32:54,599 --> 00:32:58,400
Millions of high frequency stock trades, international wire transfers, and

661
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:02,880
credit card transactions are time stamped using these exact satellite

662
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:07,440
signals to prevent fraud and ensure chronological order. If the

663
00:33:07,559 --> 00:33:10,480
timing drifts by a few miles worth of light speed data,

664
00:33:10,519 --> 00:33:15,240
the entire global financial system loses its synchronization. It collapses

665
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,640
into total economic ruin. We are talking about the end

666
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:21,720
of modern technological society in a matter of days.

667
00:33:21,839 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 2: It is a profound realization. Our technological reality, our safety,

668
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,480
our food supply, our economy. It all relies on actively

669
00:33:28,519 --> 00:33:31,359
compensating for the fact that time is worked. We're using

670
00:33:31,359 --> 00:33:32,759
relativity to keep the lights on.

671
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: So if time is this fluid and we can measure

672
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:37,680
it so precisely that we literally have to program our

673
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:40,279
satellites to deal with it, can we exploit it? If

674
00:33:40,279 --> 00:33:42,480
speed slows down time, can we build a machine to

675
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,440
take advantage of that? The answers yes, But the universe

676
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:47,400
demands a terrifying emotional toll.

677
00:33:47,559 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 2: We're talking about time travel.

678
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,559
Speaker 1: Which is another staple of our sci fi diet. Usually

679
00:33:52,599 --> 00:33:56,119
in movies, time travel involves stepping into a sleek machine,

680
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,799
spinning some dials and going back to the past to

681
00:33:58,839 --> 00:34:01,119
fix a mistake, or jumping to the future to see

682
00:34:01,119 --> 00:34:03,319
flying cars and then coming home in time for dinner.

683
00:34:03,839 --> 00:34:07,799
But special relativity guarantees that time travel is absolutely one

684
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:10,920
hundred percent real. It's just strictly a one way street.

685
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 2: This brings us to the famous twin paradox, which beautifully

686
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:18,840
illustrates the extreme inescapable consequences of time dilation.

687
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:22,480
Speaker 1: Let's walk through this because it highlights the isolation of relativity.

688
00:34:23,039 --> 00:34:26,039
You have two identical twins. They are the exact same age,

689
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:29,000
born minutes apart. One twin stays right here on Earth,

690
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:31,519
works a normal job, lives a normal life. The other

691
00:34:31,559 --> 00:34:34,880
twin gets into a highly advanced spacecraft capable of traveling

692
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:37,000
at let's say, ninety nine percent the speed of light.

693
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:40,679
The traveling twin blasts off, heads to a star system

694
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:42,639
that is five light years away, and then turns the

695
00:34:42,639 --> 00:34:44,000
ship around and comes right back.

696
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,559
Speaker 2: Because of the extreme speed, the traveling twin is going

697
00:34:47,599 --> 00:34:51,480
to experience massive time dilation relative to Earth. To the

698
00:34:51,559 --> 00:34:54,159
quinn inside the ship, perversing the space doesn't take five

699
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:57,159
years each way. Due to the length contraction we talked

700
00:34:57,159 --> 00:35:00,480
about earlier, the physical distance to the star shrink for them.

701
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,559
The entire journey flying to the star, turning around, coming

702
00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:07,480
back might feel like it took roughly fourteen months. A

703
00:35:07,559 --> 00:35:08,440
subjective time.

704
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,079
Speaker 1: So for the traveling astronaut, a little over a year

705
00:35:11,119 --> 00:35:13,760
has passed. They ate fourteen months of meals, they slept

706
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,320
fourteen months of nights, their hair grew a little bit.

707
00:35:16,639 --> 00:35:18,960
They aged exactly one year and two months.

708
00:35:19,079 --> 00:35:21,840
Speaker 2: But when that ship lands back on Earth, the traveler

709
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:23,760
is going to open the hatch and step out into

710
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,960
a deeply unrecognizable world. Because for the twin who stayed behind,

711
00:35:28,199 --> 00:35:30,920
watching the ship travel at sublight speeds to a star

712
00:35:31,159 --> 00:35:34,400
five light years away and back, over a decade has passed.

713
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,559
Speaker 1: The astronaut steps out, looks at their identical twin and

714
00:35:37,599 --> 00:35:41,440
sees a stranger, someone who is ten years older, wrinkling skin,

715
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:46,079
graying hair, a whole decade of life lived, children born, careers, advanced,

716
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:49,000
while the astronaut hasn't even had to replace their toothbrush.

717
00:35:49,199 --> 00:35:52,400
Speaker 2: I often hear people ask why this isn't symmetrical. If

718
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,519
velocity is relative, couldn't the twin on the ship say

719
00:35:55,519 --> 00:35:57,320
the Earth moved away from them, so the Earth twin

720
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:01,239
should be younger. The key that breaks the symmetry it's acceleration.

721
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,559
The traveling twin had to fire engines to speed up,

722
00:36:04,679 --> 00:36:07,599
slow down, turn around, and speed up again. They changed

723
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:12,800
reference frames. That acceleration forces them into the time dilated reality.

724
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:14,679
When they returned to the original frame.

725
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:18,360
Speaker 1: It is mathematically guaranteed. Let's explore the existential horror of

726
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:20,480
taking this to the extreme. Say you don't just go

727
00:36:20,559 --> 00:36:23,639
to a nearby star. Say you're an explorer. You build

728
00:36:23,639 --> 00:36:25,599
a fast enough ship and you decide to fly around

729
00:36:25,599 --> 00:36:28,599
the entire galaxy. You accelerate to ninety nine point ninety

730
00:36:28,639 --> 00:36:31,199
ninety nine nine percent the spit of light. You cruise

731
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,320
around the Milky Way. Check out nebulae snapping photos of

732
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,599
black hole to you inside the comfortable bubble of your ship.

733
00:36:37,679 --> 00:36:41,119
Maybe five subjective years pass. You read some books, learn

734
00:36:41,119 --> 00:36:44,559
a new language, exercise five years of normal human life.

735
00:36:44,639 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 2: But the Earth you left behind, the Earth.

736
00:36:46,599 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: You left behind is gone when you return. Thousands or

737
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:53,039
maybe millions of years would have passed on Earth. Everyone

738
00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:56,480
you ever knew, your family, your friends, your entire civilization

739
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:01,119
turned to absolute dust. The continents themself. Elves might have shifted,

740
00:37:01,639 --> 00:37:04,599
human beings might have evolved into something else entirely, or

741
00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:05,360
gone extinct.

742
00:37:06,079 --> 00:37:08,639
Speaker 2: There is a great way of summarizing the cruel nature

743
00:37:08,639 --> 00:37:13,159
of this physics. You can outrun time, but you cannot

744
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:13,760
undo it.

745
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,199
Speaker 1: You become a ghost. You become completely unstuck from your

746
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:20,679
own era, stranded in an alien future with absolutely zero

747
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:23,760
way to ever go back. You have successfully time traveled

748
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:25,760
to the future. You have witnessed the depths of time,

749
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:28,760
but you bought a one way ticket. It is incredibly

750
00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:32,000
isolating to think about. To explore the stars means permanently

751
00:37:32,039 --> 00:37:34,039
sacrificing everyone you love on Earth.

752
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 2: It forces you to realize that we are deeply bound

753
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:40,519
to our current present. We share this incredibly fragile sliver

754
00:37:40,599 --> 00:37:43,000
of existence with the people alive right now, and to

755
00:37:43,079 --> 00:37:45,760
leave it behind using the sheer brute force of velocity

756
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:47,280
means losing it permanently.

757
00:37:47,559 --> 00:37:51,519
Speaker 1: Okay, so far on thrilling threads, we have established that

758
00:37:51,559 --> 00:37:54,320
the physical dimensions of space are an illusion depending on

759
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:57,079
your speed. We've established that the sky is a warped

760
00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:01,119
lying funhouse mirror. We know we are permanently quarantined in

761
00:38:01,159 --> 00:38:03,440
our local neighborhood by the speed of light. We know

762
00:38:03,559 --> 00:38:07,360
time is a personal, fracturing fluid that is constantly threatening

763
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:10,360
to ruin our GPS and crash the global economy. And

764
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,280
we know that if we try to outrun time. We

765
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:15,159
end up as lonely ghosts in the future. So what

766
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:19,039
is left? What about the actual physical matter we are

767
00:38:19,039 --> 00:38:20,159
made of? What is stuff?

768
00:38:20,639 --> 00:38:23,599
Speaker 2: This brings us to our final exploration. We have to

769
00:38:23,639 --> 00:38:26,159
look at the intersection of energy and mass and the

770
00:38:26,199 --> 00:38:28,480
dormant apocalypse is hiding in plain sight.

771
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:30,440
Speaker 1: Let's circle all the way back to the opening of

772
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,480
the show. I asked you to look at a coffee

773
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,000
cup or paperclip, and I claimed it was a nuclear bomb.

774
00:38:35,639 --> 00:38:38,480
We are going to talk about e mc squared. It

775
00:38:38,599 --> 00:38:41,760
is the most famous equation in human history. You see

776
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:43,519
it on T shirts, you see it on coffee mugs.

777
00:38:43,519 --> 00:38:46,280
It's a pop culture punchline for genius. It looks so

778
00:38:46,519 --> 00:38:49,079
elegant and simple, three letters in number, but when you

779
00:38:49,199 --> 00:38:51,480
unpack the mechanism of it, it is actually the most

780
00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:53,719
unnerving realization in all of physics.

781
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 2: Before Einstein published that equation in nineteen oh five, humanity

782
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,719
had a very neat comfortable, categorized view of the world.

783
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:04,840
We fundamentally believe that energy and matter were two completely separate,

784
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:09,519
distinct things. Matter was physical stuff would metal dirt your

785
00:39:09,519 --> 00:39:13,199
own flesh. It had mass. Energy was an action or

786
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:14,599
property movement, Heat.

787
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: Light right solid stuff versus non solid action exactly.

788
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:22,800
Speaker 2: But Einstein mathematically proved that this distinction is a complete illusion.

789
00:39:23,519 --> 00:39:26,039
Mass and energy are not two different things. They are

790
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:29,320
fundamentally the exact same thing, just locked in different states.

791
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:33,559
Mass is simply deeply impossibly concentrated energy. It is energy

792
00:39:33,559 --> 00:39:35,039
congealed into a solid form.

793
00:39:35,119 --> 00:39:37,559
Speaker 1: And the terrifying part of the equation is the C squared.

794
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:39,880
We've already established that the speed of light C is

795
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,320
one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, but

796
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:45,360
the equation demands we multiply that number by itself one

797
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:47,360
hundred and eighty six thousand times one hundred and eighty

798
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,559
six thousand. It becomes an astronomical, almost incomprehensible number nearly

799
00:39:51,599 --> 00:39:52,519
thirty five billion.

800
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:55,599
Speaker 2: The equation means that energy equals mass multiplied by that

801
00:39:55,639 --> 00:39:59,760
astronomical number, which implies that an incredibly tiny, microscopic amount

802
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,079
of mass contains an unfathomable amount of dormant energy.

803
00:40:03,159 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: This is where I want you to get visceral for

804
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,000
a moment. Look around the room again, Look at the walls,

805
00:40:08,119 --> 00:40:10,480
Look at your own hands resting on your lap. The

806
00:40:10,519 --> 00:40:13,400
physical world is not safe, and it is not solid.

807
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:16,760
If you could find a way to perfectly convert just

808
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:20,800
one single gram of matter the weight of a single

809
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,360
flimsy metal paper clip, into pure energy, it would release

810
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,800
an explosion equivalent to twenty one kilotons of TNT.

811
00:40:28,159 --> 00:40:31,440
Speaker 2: That is a physically larger explosive yield than the atomic

812
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:34,840
bomb dropped on Nagasaki in nineteen forty five from a

813
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:35,760
single paper clip.

814
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,280
Speaker 1: Everything you can touch, everything you can see, every object

815
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:41,559
you interact with is a tightly wound spring of apocalyptic power.

816
00:40:42,119 --> 00:40:46,480
We are literally walking, breathing collections of explosive cosmic energy.

817
00:40:46,559 --> 00:40:49,559
Speaker 2: The only reason we are not instantly vaporizing everything around us,

818
00:40:49,559 --> 00:40:51,760
the only reason you don't detonate when you stub your toe,

819
00:40:52,039 --> 00:40:54,440
is that the universe has mercifully locked this energy away

820
00:40:54,559 --> 00:40:57,639
using the strong nuclear forces that bind atomic nuclei together.

821
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:01,480
The mechanism holds the energy in a stable equilibrium, But the.

822
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:04,679
Speaker 1: Math is sitting right there. We are dormant bombs, sitting

823
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,840
quietly in a universe that could hypothetically decide to unbind

824
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,320
the lock. When we split the atom, we only unlocked

825
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,480
a tiny fractional percentage of that mass, and it was

826
00:41:15,599 --> 00:41:19,880
enough to level cities it completely recontextualizes the physical world.

827
00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:23,280
Matter is just frozen energy waiting to be released.

828
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:25,079
Speaker 2: And if we want to see what happens when the

829
00:41:25,159 --> 00:41:28,639
universe pushes these rules to their absolute breaking point, when

830
00:41:28,679 --> 00:41:32,079
mass and gravity are taken to the ultimate extreme, we

831
00:41:32,159 --> 00:41:34,679
have to look at the ultimate monsters of relativity. We

832
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:36,159
have to look at where the math goes.

833
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: To die black holes.

834
00:41:37,199 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 2: When Carl Schwarzschild saw Einstein's field equations in nineteen sixteen,

835
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:43,519
and he famously did this while serving on the Russian

836
00:41:43,519 --> 00:41:47,199
Front during World War One, calculating artillery trajectories by day

837
00:41:47,599 --> 00:41:51,199
and revolutionizing astrophysics by night, he found something in the

838
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:52,719
math that deeply disturbed him.

839
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:54,840
Speaker 1: It disturbed everyone. Even Einstein hated it.

840
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,559
Speaker 2: He did. Einstein actively rejected it. He thought it was

841
00:41:58,599 --> 00:42:02,000
a mathematical glitch and anominally on a chalkboard that nature

842
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:04,480
would never actually allow to form. It was too ugly.

843
00:42:05,039 --> 00:42:06,920
But Shortchild found that if you took a certain amount

844
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,280
of mass and compressed it into a small enough radius

845
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:13,000
this four Child radius, the gravity would become so intensely

846
00:42:13,039 --> 00:42:16,440
concentrated that the escape velocity would exceed the speed of light.

847
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,239
Speaker 1: And since we already established the absolute cosmic quarantine. That

848
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:23,360
absolutely nothing, no matter how much infinite energy you pump

849
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,599
into it, can travel faster than light. It means nothing

850
00:42:26,599 --> 00:42:30,639
could ever escape this object, not physical matter, not radiation,

851
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:32,320
not even information.

852
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 2: They are entirely real. We have photographed the shadows of

853
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:38,679
them using the event horizon telescope. We've heard them collide

854
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:41,840
using the Lego observatories we discussed earlier. They are the

855
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,800
ultimate terrifying conclusion of general relativity.

856
00:42:45,039 --> 00:42:47,880
Speaker 1: Let's visualize this horror because it is the most extreme

857
00:42:47,960 --> 00:42:51,920
environment in reality. When a truly massive star, many times

858
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:55,079
larger than our Sun, runs out of nuclear fuel, it

859
00:42:55,119 --> 00:42:57,960
can no longer generate the outward pressure needed to fight

860
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:01,079
its own incredible gravity. In a fraction of a second,

861
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,639
the star collapses inward. The gravity becomes so extreme it

862
00:43:04,679 --> 00:43:07,920
crushes the star's core past the limits of atomic structure.

863
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,519
It crushes past the quantum forces that keep electrons apart.

864
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,119
It compresses all that mass, millions of Earth's worth of mass,

865
00:43:15,119 --> 00:43:19,920
into an infinitely small, infinitely dense point, a singularity.

866
00:43:20,079 --> 00:43:24,199
Speaker 2: In Surrounding that singularity is the event horizon, the spherical boundary,

867
00:43:24,519 --> 00:43:25,519
the point of no return.

868
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,039
Speaker 1: If you cross the event horizon, you don't just die,

869
00:43:28,199 --> 00:43:31,719
you literally leave the observable universe. The descriptions of the

870
00:43:31,719 --> 00:43:34,920
physical process of falling in or gruesome, and physicists casually

871
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:38,719
call its bigetification. Because the gravity gradient is so severe,

872
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:42,079
meaning the gravity changes incredibly fast over a very short distance,

873
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:44,119
the pole on your feet would be millions of times

874
00:43:44,119 --> 00:43:45,559
stronger than the pole on your head.

875
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:48,599
Speaker 3: Tidal forces right, you would be stretched out like a

876
00:43:48,599 --> 00:43:52,800
piece of taffy, pulled into a single, agonizingly thin stream

877
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,880
of subatomic particles before you even got near the center.

878
00:43:56,559 --> 00:43:59,199
Speaker 2: But the true horror of a black hole isn't what

879
00:43:59,199 --> 00:44:01,760
it does to human feces, or even what it does

880
00:44:01,800 --> 00:44:04,000
to solid matter. It is what it does to the

881
00:44:04,119 --> 00:44:05,880
very fabric of reality itself.

882
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,159
Speaker 1: This is the part that breaks my brain. At the singularity,

883
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:14,039
the beautiful, elegant math of relativity breaks down completely. The equations,

884
00:44:14,079 --> 00:44:17,840
return infinities, space and time do not just warp, they shatter.

885
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:20,840
The laws of physics simply cease to exist.

886
00:44:21,079 --> 00:44:23,679
Speaker 2: Inside a black hole, the mathematical mapping of space and

887
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:27,079
time essentially swaps rolls. The light cones tipped completely over.

888
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 1: Let's unpack that mechanism, because that sounds like science. Fiction jargon.

889
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:33,000
What does it actually mean for space and time to

890
00:44:33,039 --> 00:44:33,719
swap roles?

891
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 2: Think about your life right now. In our normal, safe universe,

892
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:41,320
you can move freely through space in any direction you choose.

893
00:44:41,559 --> 00:44:44,320
You can walk left, right, go upstairs, go down. You

894
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,639
have total freedom of movement in space, but you have

895
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:51,760
zero freedom of movement in time. You are dragged relentlessly,

896
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:56,039
unstoppably forward into the future. Second by second. You cannot

897
00:44:56,039 --> 00:44:58,039
move backward in time, and you cannot stop.

898
00:44:58,119 --> 00:45:00,639
Speaker 1: Okay, so I control my space, but I am passenger

899
00:45:00,679 --> 00:45:01,280
in time.

900
00:45:01,199 --> 00:45:04,280
Speaker 2: Exactly inside the event horizon of a black hole that

901
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:08,400
dynamic violently flips. Once you cross that threshold, you are

902
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,639
dragged relentlessly toward the center singularity. You can't move away

903
00:45:12,639 --> 00:45:14,440
from it in space any more than you can move

904
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,239
back to yesterday. In our world, space becomes a one

905
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:21,559
way street pointing inward. But time time becomes the direction

906
00:45:21,639 --> 00:45:22,159
you are falling.

907
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: You are dragged toward the center, not just through a

908
00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:25,559
physical space, but through time.

909
00:45:26,039 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 2: The singularity isn't just a physical place you hit. It

910
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:31,880
becomes an unavoidable moment in your timeline. It becomes your

911
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:33,159
inescapable future.

912
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,159
Speaker 1: So the singularity is the literal end of time for

913
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,559
whatever falls into it. Space can be torn, Time can

914
00:45:38,599 --> 00:45:41,360
be killed, and somewhere out there in the dark depth

915
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:43,840
of the cosmos, the laws of physics that keep us safe,

916
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,039
the rules that govern the paper clip on our desk,

917
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:47,800
simply cease to function.

918
00:45:48,199 --> 00:45:51,280
Speaker 2: It forces us to confront the fact that our local,

919
00:45:51,719 --> 00:45:56,159
rational universe has boundaries where the rules simply end.

920
00:45:56,639 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 1: I need to take a deep breath. Let's recap the

921
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,960
psychological gauntlet we just ran today on thrilling threads. We

922
00:46:02,039 --> 00:46:04,360
started by looking at a speeding train and realizing the

923
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:06,880
very physical shape and size of the world around us

924
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:10,639
is a localized, subjective illusion forced upon us by the

925
00:46:10,679 --> 00:46:13,800
speed of light. We learned that the universe is literally

926
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:16,880
ringing like a bell, with gravitational waves from dead stars

927
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:20,039
constantly stretching and squeezing our atoms. We looked up at

928
00:46:20,079 --> 00:46:23,000
the night sky and realized gravitational lensing makes it a lying,

929
00:46:23,039 --> 00:46:26,920
distorted funhouse mirror. We accepted that the absolute speed limit

930
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:29,800
of light has permanently quarantined us in a lonely corner

931
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:32,440
of an expanding universe, out of reach from the rest

932
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:32,920
of creation.

933
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,320
Speaker 2: We recognize that time is fracturing around our very bodies,

934
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:38,320
with our feet aging slower than our heads, and our

935
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:42,239
GPS satellites constantly fighting the reality of time travel just

936
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:45,079
to prevent total global economic apocalypse.

937
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,679
Speaker 1: We realize that if we try to conquer the stars,

938
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,199
we buy a one way ticket to a dead future,

939
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:53,480
abandoning everyone we love. And we ended by looking at

940
00:46:53,519 --> 00:46:56,679
a paper clip as a dormant nuclear bomb and staring

941
00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:59,199
into the abyss of a black hole, realizing it is

942
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,039
the graveyard where time dies and the laws of physics

943
00:47:02,039 --> 00:47:02,840
are obliterated.

944
00:47:03,159 --> 00:47:06,039
Speaker 2: It is an immense heavy amount to process, But if

945
00:47:06,079 --> 00:47:08,599
I connect this to the bigger picture, there is a

946
00:47:08,679 --> 00:47:12,239
strangely comforting, deeply grounding takeaway in all of this.

947
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,159
Speaker 1: Comforting really, because I feel profoundly tiny and terrified right now.

948
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:17,440
I need comforting after this.

949
00:47:17,679 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 2: Think about it this way. The universe is unbelievably hostile.

950
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:26,559
It is filled with apocalyptic energies, crushing gravity and isolating distances.

951
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:29,599
Yet here we are. The next time you feel completely

952
00:47:29,599 --> 00:47:32,360
overwhelmed by a deadline at work, or you are stressing

953
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,079
over a meeting, or you are laying in bed replaying

954
00:47:35,119 --> 00:47:37,360
some embarrassing moment in your head from five years ago,

955
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,400
zoom out. Remember that you are a walking, breathing collection

956
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:45,320
of impossible, dormant cosmic energy. You are surfing your own

957
00:47:45,519 --> 00:47:48,599
highly localized temporal bubble. You are trapped in a four

958
00:47:48,639 --> 00:47:51,960
dimensional whirlpool of twisted space time, hurtling through a universe

959
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,079
that defies human logic at every turn. And despite all

960
00:47:55,119 --> 00:47:57,800
of those chaotic mind bending rules, the atoms in your

961
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:00,000
body have managed to assemble themselves into a conscious pace

962
00:48:00,559 --> 00:48:02,760
capable of looking back at the universe and figuring out

963
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:03,360
how it works.

964
00:48:03,599 --> 00:48:06,159
Speaker 1: When you frame it like that, suddenly the daily grind

965
00:48:06,199 --> 00:48:09,000
doesn't seem quite so heavy. The fact that we exist

966
00:48:09,039 --> 00:48:11,639
at all in this razor thin margin of safety where

967
00:48:11,679 --> 00:48:15,320
the physics allows for life is incredible. We are walking

968
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:18,480
miracles of physics, just sitting here having a cup of coffee,

969
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,840
Speaking of which I am definitely going to be side

970
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:23,679
eyeing my coffee cup for the rest of the day,

971
00:48:24,119 --> 00:48:26,840
knowing the explosive potential sitting inside it.

972
00:48:27,159 --> 00:48:29,039
Speaker 2: Just keep it out of a particle accelerator.

973
00:48:29,119 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: Fair point. But before we go, there is one less

974
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,639
thread here that I think completely breaks the paradigm we've

975
00:48:34,679 --> 00:48:39,639
just built. We spent this entire hour talking about the smooth, predictable,

976
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:43,760
albeit warped geometry of Einstein's relativity, but we know it

977
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:47,639
breaks down at the singularity, which implies that relativity, as

978
00:48:47,679 --> 00:48:50,920
grand and perfect as it seems, is not the final answer.

979
00:48:51,159 --> 00:48:55,280
Speaker 2: The great unresolved crisis of modern physics the incompatibility of

980
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:57,239
general relativity and quantum mechanics.

981
00:48:57,559 --> 00:49:02,599
Speaker 1: Right, relativity governs the massive st the smooth fluid of space, time,

982
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:06,039
the speed of light, but the quantum world, the atoms

983
00:49:06,039 --> 00:49:10,000
that make up our bodies operate on chaotic jumping probabilities.

984
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:14,760
They can be entangled across vast distances instantly, seemingly mocking

985
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:18,239
the cosmic speed limit we just talked about. If relativity

986
00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:20,639
is the absolute rule, why does it die inside a

987
00:49:20,639 --> 00:49:23,880
black hole? It leads to this chilling thought. What if

988
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:26,840
the smooth, warped space time we just spent an hour

989
00:49:27,039 --> 00:49:31,239
terrifying ourselves with is itself just an emergent illusion. What

990
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:34,239
if space and time aren't the foundation of reality but

991
00:49:34,360 --> 00:49:37,559
just a localized byproduct of quantum entanglement that we happen

992
00:49:37,599 --> 00:49:40,679
to be trapped inside. What if Einstein was only describing

993
00:49:40,679 --> 00:49:42,880
the surface of the ocean and we haven't even begun

994
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:44,119
to look at the water molecules.

995
00:49:44,199 --> 00:49:47,280
Speaker 2: That is the frontier of quantum gravity, and it suggests

996
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:49,559
that the true nature of reality might be even stranger

997
00:49:49,599 --> 00:49:50,880
than everything we just discussed.

998
00:49:51,119 --> 00:49:53,719
Speaker 1: I love that the idea that everything we just learned

999
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:56,440
might just be the prologue to an even weirder reality.

1000
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:58,239
All right, I want to turn this over to you

1001
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:02,360
listening right now. Out of all these terrifying, mind bending

1002
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:06,880
truths we cover today, which one completely broke your brain?

1003
00:50:07,880 --> 00:50:10,159
Is it the fact that the universe is actively hiding

1004
00:50:10,199 --> 00:50:13,199
behind a fun house mirror of bent light? Is it

1005
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:16,440
the dread of one way time travel to a dead future?

1006
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:19,599
Or does it mess with you more that relativity itself

1007
00:50:19,679 --> 00:50:23,199
might just be a localized delusion masking a deeper, chaotic

1008
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:24,559
quantum reality.

1009
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:27,719
Speaker 2: It is a profound set of mysteries to weigh against

1010
00:50:27,760 --> 00:50:28,119
each other.

1011
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:30,159
Speaker 1: Leave a comment and let us know where you stand

1012
00:50:30,199 --> 00:50:31,760
or what you think the truth is at the bottom

1013
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:33,599
of a black hole, or tell us if you're just

1014
00:50:33,599 --> 00:50:35,559
going to spend the rest of the day staring suspiciously

1015
00:50:35,599 --> 00:50:38,639
at the mundane objects on your desk. Thanks for joining

1016
00:50:38,679 --> 00:50:42,000
us on this deep exploration, Keep questioning reality, keep looking up,

1017
00:50:42,199 --> 00:50:44,800
and until next time, keep pulling on those thrilling threads,