1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,600 Speaker 1: It is February first, twenty twenty six. 2 00:00:02,839 --> 00:00:03,200 Speaker 3: It is. 3 00:00:03,439 --> 00:00:06,519 Speaker 2: And if you have a calendar nearby, or maybe you're 4 00:00:06,599 --> 00:00:08,839 driving and you can see the dashboard, I want you 5 00:00:08,919 --> 00:00:13,599 to really look at that date, because historically speaking, we 6 00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:17,199 might be standing on a precipice. We are exactly five 7 00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:21,679 months away from the Large Hadron Collider, the single biggest 8 00:00:21,679 --> 00:00:24,359 machine humanity has ever built, going dark. 9 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:27,519 Speaker 3: It's right long shut down three. It begins in July. 10 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,600 It's been on the schedule for years, and usually that's. 11 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:33,039 Speaker 2: Just a schedule update, you know, it's like saying, hey, 12 00:00:33,280 --> 00:00:35,119 the office is closing for renovations. 13 00:00:35,159 --> 00:00:37,359 Speaker 1: We're going to paint the walls, upgrade the servers. 14 00:00:37,439 --> 00:00:39,920 Speaker 3: Sure it's a massive engineering project, but it's a routine one. 15 00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:44,079 Speaker 2: But this time, this time feels different because something happened 16 00:00:44,119 --> 00:00:47,399 in January, just last month. And honestly, it's the kind 17 00:00:47,399 --> 00:00:49,439 of thing that makes you want to sit down for 18 00:00:49,640 --> 00:00:52,920 a very strong drink and I don't know, just stare 19 00:00:52,960 --> 00:00:53,640 at a wall. 20 00:00:53,439 --> 00:00:56,399 Speaker 3: For a while. It is certainly unsettling. And I don't 21 00:00:56,479 --> 00:00:57,280 use that word lightly. 22 00:00:57,320 --> 00:01:00,799 Speaker 2: When it comes to physics data, unsettling is understatement of 23 00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:03,799 the century. Here welcome everyone to thrilling threads. 24 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:04,760 Speaker 3: Great to be here. 25 00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:06,680 Speaker 2: This is the show where we pull on a loose 26 00:01:06,719 --> 00:01:09,799 thread of information, something that seems small, maybe a little 27 00:01:09,799 --> 00:01:14,079 out of place, and we keep pulling and pulling until 28 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:17,200 it unravels the very fabric of what we think we know. 29 00:01:17,599 --> 00:01:20,079 Speaker 3: And today that fabric might literally be the fabric of 30 00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:20,680 the universe. 31 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:23,760 Speaker 2: We are definitely testing the tensile strength of reality today 32 00:01:23,799 --> 00:01:24,280 for sure. 33 00:01:24,719 --> 00:01:26,000 Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. 34 00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:31,319 Speaker 2: We have a stack of reports, some technical transcripts, historical 35 00:01:31,439 --> 00:01:33,680 data in front of us, and they all seem to 36 00:01:33,719 --> 00:01:37,560 point to one specific event in January twenty twenty six 37 00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:42,640 Stern's Anomaly Detection AI, this super advanced watchdog program. They 38 00:01:42,680 --> 00:01:45,719 have it flagged a pattern. It did, but not a 39 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:48,159 normal pattern. It wasn't a new particle. And the way 40 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:50,079 we usually think about it, like you know, finding a 41 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:51,640 shiny new rock on the beach. No. 42 00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:54,439 Speaker 3: Usually, in high energy physics, you're looking for a bump 43 00:01:54,439 --> 00:01:57,079 in the data, a spike on a graph that signifies 44 00:01:57,159 --> 00:01:59,280 mass or energy at a very specific point. 45 00:01:59,560 --> 00:02:01,840 Speaker 2: That's how we found the Higgs, right, clear signal. 46 00:02:01,959 --> 00:02:04,599 Speaker 3: This was different. This was a behavior, right. 47 00:02:04,480 --> 00:02:07,959 Speaker 2: They call it a collision signature. But here is the 48 00:02:08,039 --> 00:02:10,120 kicker and This is the part that to me, it 49 00:02:10,159 --> 00:02:13,479 sounds like a ghost story told around a campfire. Uh oh, 50 00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:17,840 this signature it changes its behavior based on who is 51 00:02:17,879 --> 00:02:19,599 standing in the room, or, to be. 52 00:02:19,599 --> 00:02:22,680 Speaker 3: Even more precise, it changes based on whether the room 53 00:02:22,759 --> 00:02:24,319 is occupied by humans at all. 54 00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:26,479 Speaker 2: Okay, hold on, I need to be the wet blanket 55 00:02:26,479 --> 00:02:28,000 here immediately. 56 00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:29,560 Speaker 3: Please do. Skepticism is the first tool of. 57 00:02:29,479 --> 00:02:32,960 Speaker 2: Science, because every few years we hear about a ghost 58 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:36,120 in the machine at CERN. Remember twenty eleven, the whole 59 00:02:36,319 --> 00:02:37,800 faster than light neutrino thing. 60 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:40,960 Speaker 3: Oh, I remember the opera experiment. That was a wild 61 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:41,719 couple of months. 62 00:02:41,759 --> 00:02:42,120 Speaker 1: It was. 63 00:02:42,159 --> 00:02:45,639 Speaker 2: The headlines were everywhere Einstein was wrong, time travel might 64 00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:48,000 be possible, and what did it all turn out to be? 65 00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:50,080 Speaker 3: A loose fiber optic cable, A loose. 66 00:02:49,919 --> 00:02:52,840 Speaker 2: Plug, a literal loose plug. So before we all freak 67 00:02:52,919 --> 00:02:56,159 out and decide the universe is conscious or something, why 68 00:02:56,240 --> 00:02:58,120 isn't this just another loose cable? 69 00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:01,159 Speaker 3: That is the most important question ask And believe me, 70 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:04,479 the thousands of physicists at CERN, that's the first question 71 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:07,159 they asked. No, they didn't just jump to ghosts, of 72 00:03:07,199 --> 00:03:11,800 course not. They spent weeks, months checking cables they checked 73 00:03:11,800 --> 00:03:15,560 the voltage stability, they checked the atmospheric pressure in Geneva. 74 00:03:15,639 --> 00:03:17,520 Speaker 2: But what about the software. I mean, if I have 75 00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:19,479 a bug in my code, it could look like a pattern. 76 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:22,199 Speaker 3: Right, they did. But here is the fundamental difference between 77 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:26,319 a code bug or a loose cable and this anomaly. Okay, 78 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:28,400 A loose cable doesn't care if it's three point zero 79 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:31,639 zero pm on a Tuesday or three point zero am 80 00:03:31,719 --> 00:03:34,479 on a Sunday. A software bug doesn't care if the 81 00:03:34,479 --> 00:03:38,080 shift manager is Bob from France or Serah from Germany. 82 00:03:38,199 --> 00:03:39,840 Speaker 2: And this data, this data did. 83 00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:43,120 Speaker 1: Okay, that is much harder to explain away. 84 00:03:43,439 --> 00:03:45,879 Speaker 3: We are looking at a potential breach in the most 85 00:03:45,919 --> 00:03:49,439 fundamental boundary in science, the one between the observer and 86 00:03:49,479 --> 00:03:52,319 the observed. And the terrifying part, the thing that adds 87 00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:56,080 all this urgency is the timeline the shutdown. We only 88 00:03:56,120 --> 00:03:58,080 have five months to figure this out before lights go 89 00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:00,240 out at CERN for four years. 90 00:04:00,479 --> 00:04:02,639 Speaker 2: Okay, let's untack this properly. We need to start with 91 00:04:02,639 --> 00:04:06,039 the context. Where is CERN right now in early twenty 92 00:04:06,120 --> 00:04:08,439 twenty six, Because twenty twenty five wasn't just a normal 93 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:09,400 year for them, was it? 94 00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:13,360 Speaker 3: No, twenty twenty five was a record breaking year. To 95 00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:16,680 understand the anomaly, you have to understand the sheer scale 96 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:19,800 of what they're doing. In twenty twenty five alone, they 97 00:04:19,839 --> 00:04:24,000 delivered one hundred and twenty five inverse femto Barnes of data. 98 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:27,959 Speaker 1: Okay, step right there, inverse femto Barnes. I love that word. 99 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,040 Speaker 2: It sounds like something straight out of Star Trek, but 100 00:04:30,120 --> 00:04:33,160 I guarantee nobody listening, including me, really knows what that 101 00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:34,079 actually means. 102 00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:37,639 Speaker 3: Laughs. Yeah, that is completely fair. It's a terrible piece 103 00:04:37,639 --> 00:04:40,040 of jargon. We physicists love them, so break it down 104 00:04:40,199 --> 00:04:43,079 in the simplest terms. An inverse femtobarn is a measure 105 00:04:43,079 --> 00:04:45,680 of how many particle collision events you've managed to generate 106 00:04:45,720 --> 00:04:47,360 and record as a density metric. 107 00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:49,240 Speaker 2: So it's not just how long the machine was on, 108 00:04:49,319 --> 00:04:51,120 but how much stuff happened exactly. 109 00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:53,399 Speaker 3: And to get one hundred and twenty five of them, 110 00:04:53,759 --> 00:04:59,079 you are talking about roughly fifty quadrillion individual collision events. 111 00:04:59,279 --> 00:05:02,839 Speaker 2: Fifty we drillion. That's a fifteen wait, a five with 112 00:05:02,920 --> 00:05:03,839 fifteen zeros. 113 00:05:03,879 --> 00:05:05,839 Speaker 3: It's a number of my brain refuses to process. 114 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:06,399 Speaker 1: Find too. 115 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:09,439 Speaker 3: It's more data than any physics experiment in human history 116 00:05:09,439 --> 00:05:12,639 has ever generated. It is a mountain of information so vast, 117 00:05:12,839 --> 00:05:16,120 so colossal, that human beings physically cannot look at it all. 118 00:05:16,439 --> 00:05:17,439 Speaker 1: That's a good way to put it. 119 00:05:17,519 --> 00:05:19,279 Speaker 3: If you tried to print out the data from just 120 00:05:19,439 --> 00:05:22,680 one second of the LHC running at full power, it 121 00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:26,240 would fill a library. It's impossible for humans to analyze. 122 00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:29,160 Speaker 2: Which is precisely why they built the watchdog, the AI exactly. 123 00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:33,639 Speaker 3: In twenty twenty four, CERN deployed a new anomaly detection system. 124 00:05:33,920 --> 00:05:36,680 It's a specific kind of AI, an auto encoder. 125 00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:39,279 Speaker 2: And let's clarify this too, because when people hear AI, 126 00:05:39,360 --> 00:05:42,079 they think chat GPT. Right. It's not sitting there writing 127 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:45,480 poetry about quarks or hallucinating new recipes, not at all. 128 00:05:45,519 --> 00:05:47,720 Speaker 3: It's much more focused. Think of an auto encoder like 129 00:05:48,439 --> 00:05:53,480 a very very obsessive quality control inspector in a factory. 130 00:05:53,560 --> 00:05:55,240 Speaker 2: Okay, like that analogy, Let's say this. 131 00:05:55,199 --> 00:05:59,199 Speaker 3: Factory only makes perfectly round, perfectly red balls. You show 132 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:02,160 the AI fifty dty million of these perfect red balls. Yeah, 133 00:06:02,240 --> 00:06:04,439 you train it on them. You teach it the exact size, 134 00:06:04,439 --> 00:06:09,079 the exact shade of red, the precise bounce, the weight, everything. 135 00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:11,160 Speaker 1: So it learns the definition of normal precisely. 136 00:06:11,800 --> 00:06:14,839 Speaker 3: It learns normal so perfectly that it can dream about 137 00:06:14,879 --> 00:06:17,120 red balls. Then you put it on the conveyor belt 138 00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:19,279 and you get it. One instruction. Don't tell me when 139 00:06:19,319 --> 00:06:21,600 you see a red ball. I know all about those. 140 00:06:22,279 --> 00:06:24,360 Only shout if you see something different, like a blue 141 00:06:24,399 --> 00:06:27,160 square or a red ball that's slightly dented, or a 142 00:06:27,199 --> 00:06:31,839 red ball that floats. It's designed to find the unknown, unknowns, 143 00:06:32,399 --> 00:06:35,759 the patterns that human physicists would miss because humans, we 144 00:06:35,839 --> 00:06:38,319 have biases. We look for what we expect to find. 145 00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:40,399 Speaker 2: We look for the Higgs boson because the math says 146 00:06:40,439 --> 00:06:41,079 it should. 147 00:06:40,839 --> 00:06:45,199 Speaker 3: Be there exactly. The AI just looks for difference, for weirdness. 148 00:06:45,319 --> 00:06:49,319 Speaker 2: So late twenty twenty five, early twenty twenty six rolls around, 149 00:06:49,480 --> 00:06:53,000 the machine is humming, the protons are smashing, and this 150 00:06:53,079 --> 00:06:55,839 AI starts pinging, it starts shouting, it. 151 00:06:55,800 --> 00:07:00,240 Speaker 3: Starts flagging a specific statistical distribution of anomalies. You need 152 00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:02,480 to be very precise here with the language. In physics, 153 00:07:02,519 --> 00:07:03,279 we talk about. 154 00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:05,360 Speaker 2: Sigma sigma, right, we hear that thrown around a lot 155 00:07:05,399 --> 00:07:08,879 five sigma event. But let's really visualize it, Okay. 156 00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:11,199 Speaker 3: Imagine you have a coin, a perfectly fair coin. You 157 00:07:11,240 --> 00:07:12,439 flip it, it comes up. 158 00:07:12,319 --> 00:07:14,160 Speaker 2: Heads, Okay, fifty to fifty, no big deal. 159 00:07:14,360 --> 00:07:18,040 Speaker 3: You flip it again, heads again, heads. It's a little weird, 160 00:07:18,040 --> 00:07:20,720 but it happens. Right. To get to what we'd call 161 00:07:20,759 --> 00:07:23,680 a three sigma event, you'd need to flip heads about 162 00:07:23,759 --> 00:07:25,040 nine or ten times in a row. 163 00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:27,560 Speaker 1: At that point, I'm starting to suspect the coin is weighted. 164 00:07:27,839 --> 00:07:28,519 Speaker 2: I'm looking at it. 165 00:07:28,560 --> 00:07:32,000 Speaker 3: Funny, right, you're raising an eyebro. Now, the auto encoder 166 00:07:32,040 --> 00:07:35,240 found a two point nine sigma anomaly at an energy 167 00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:38,839 level of four point eight terra electron volts or TV. 168 00:07:39,839 --> 00:07:42,240 Speaker 2: So just under ten heads in a row. Is that 169 00:07:42,319 --> 00:07:44,240 a big deal in the world of particle physics. 170 00:07:44,279 --> 00:07:47,680 Speaker 3: It's a hint. It's interesting. In particle physics, five sigma 171 00:07:47,720 --> 00:07:49,879 is the gold standard for a discovery. That's when you 172 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:52,000 call the Nobel Committee and pop the champagne. 173 00:07:52,079 --> 00:07:54,000 Speaker 2: And five sigma is what in coin flips. 174 00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:57,480 Speaker 3: Five sigma is flipping heads twenty one times in a row. 175 00:07:57,600 --> 00:07:59,759 Oh wow, Okay, at that point you don't suspect the 176 00:07:59,759 --> 00:08:02,120 coin is rigged. You know the coin is rigged. There's 177 00:08:02,120 --> 00:08:06,000 no weather explanation. So two point nine sigma is it's 178 00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:07,959 just a hint. It's enough to make you look closer. 179 00:08:08,240 --> 00:08:11,360 But usually these things vanish when you collect more data. 180 00:08:11,439 --> 00:08:12,480 They regress to the mean. 181 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:14,839 Speaker 1: But this one didn't vaning No, and. 182 00:08:14,839 --> 00:08:18,560 Speaker 3: This is where the story shifts from standard physics procedure 183 00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:24,040 to beat mystery. Researchers started analyzing when these two point 184 00:08:24,160 --> 00:08:26,680 nine sigma hints occurred, and they weren't random. 185 00:08:26,839 --> 00:08:29,759 Speaker 2: They were clustering, clustering in time, so like a bunch 186 00:08:29,759 --> 00:08:32,039 of them would appear on a Tuesday afternoon and then 187 00:08:32,120 --> 00:08:32,799 nothing for a. 188 00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:36,360 Speaker 3: Week, exactly like that. So naturally the physicists go into 189 00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:39,120 troubleshooting mode. This is what they do best. They check 190 00:08:39,159 --> 00:08:39,960 the usual. 191 00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:41,039 Speaker 2: Suspects, the loose cables. 192 00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:44,279 Speaker 3: The loose cables, of course, but also was the temperature 193 00:08:44,279 --> 00:08:47,720 fluctuating in the main tunnel even by a thousandth of 194 00:08:47,759 --> 00:08:48,759 a degree. 195 00:08:48,440 --> 00:08:51,120 Speaker 2: Because that could affect the superconducting magnet? 196 00:08:51,200 --> 00:08:54,200 Speaker 3: Of course? Was there a drift in the equipment calibration? 197 00:08:54,600 --> 00:08:56,840 Did one of the thousands of power supplies have a 198 00:08:56,879 --> 00:09:00,759 slight variance where cosmic rays interferings. 199 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:03,120 Speaker 2: Pick grays are always the scapegoat. Oh star exploded a 200 00:09:03,120 --> 00:09:05,480 million light years away and it ruined my experiment. 201 00:09:05,679 --> 00:09:09,240 Speaker 3: They are they're a real factor. But none of those variables, 202 00:09:09,279 --> 00:09:13,080 not one matched the pattern of the clusters. The anomalies 203 00:09:13,080 --> 00:09:16,039 were appearing at specific times and disappearing at others, with 204 00:09:16,120 --> 00:09:18,960 a rhythm that didn't match anything physical in the machine. 205 00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:22,240 Speaker 2: Until someone had a crazy idea. 206 00:09:21,759 --> 00:09:24,799 Speaker 3: Until someone, probably as a joke at first, had the 207 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:28,600 bright idea to overlay the anomaly chart with the staffing schedule. 208 00:09:28,679 --> 00:09:31,279 Speaker 2: The staffing schedule, you mean, like the HR roster who's 209 00:09:31,279 --> 00:09:32,080 on shift. 210 00:09:31,840 --> 00:09:35,000 Speaker 3: The shift roster for the main control room, and it matched. 211 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:38,679 It matched, the pattern matched human presence. The anomaly rade 212 00:09:38,679 --> 00:09:41,279 shifted based on which teams were in the control room, 213 00:09:41,759 --> 00:09:45,159 and it changed almost like clockwork during the shift swaps. 214 00:09:45,279 --> 00:09:46,919 Speaker 1: Okay, pause, we have to pause here. 215 00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:49,879 Speaker 2: This is the part where if I'm a physicist at CERN, 216 00:09:50,080 --> 00:09:51,480 I laugh, right. 217 00:09:51,559 --> 00:09:52,879 Speaker 1: I mean, this is the joke of the week. 218 00:09:53,000 --> 00:09:56,480 Speaker 2: It has to be, because particles don't care who is 219 00:09:56,559 --> 00:09:59,559 working the Tuesday shift. A proton doesn't know that Bob 220 00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:02,279 is on due instead of Alice. A proton is one 221 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:05,720 hundred meters underground, encased in tons of steel and magnets, 222 00:10:05,879 --> 00:10:08,240 flying at ninety nine point nine nine nine percent the 223 00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:08,799 speed of light. 224 00:10:08,960 --> 00:10:13,000 Speaker 3: Precisely, it sounds absolutely ridiculous, and the immediate reaction at 225 00:10:13,080 --> 00:10:15,879 CERN was, as you'd expect, extreme skepticism. 226 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:18,080 Speaker 2: So they tried to debunk it with everything they had. 227 00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:20,000 Speaker 3: They brought up something called the look elsewhere. 228 00:10:19,639 --> 00:10:21,480 Speaker 1: Effect, which is what exactly. 229 00:10:21,559 --> 00:10:24,519 Speaker 3: It's a statistical principle. It basically says that if you 230 00:10:24,519 --> 00:10:27,080 look at a big enough data set, and remember we 231 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:32,480 have fifty quadrillion collision events, you will inevitably find correlations 232 00:10:32,519 --> 00:10:36,639 that look meaningful but are actually pure random coincidence. 233 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:39,080 Speaker 2: Right, if you look at enough clouds in the sky, 234 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:42,120 eventually you'll see one that looks exactly like Elvis. 235 00:10:42,200 --> 00:10:43,679 Speaker 3: It doesn't mean Elvis is in the sky. 236 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:46,080 Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Elvis is floating up there exactly. 237 00:10:46,279 --> 00:10:48,759 Speaker 3: So they thought this was just a statistical elfis. They 238 00:10:48,759 --> 00:10:51,559 assumed it had to be maybe the A team brings 239 00:10:51,600 --> 00:10:54,000 their phones closer to the monitors than the B team, 240 00:10:54,200 --> 00:10:57,039 creating some tiny electromagnetic interference, or. 241 00:10:56,879 --> 00:11:00,279 Speaker 2: Maybe someone on the C team taps their foot and 242 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:03,720 it causes micro vibrations in the floor that propagate down 243 00:11:03,759 --> 00:11:04,559 to the detector. 244 00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:08,840 Speaker 3: They checked all of that electromagnetic interference, thermal variance from 245 00:11:08,840 --> 00:11:12,480 body heat, vibrations from footsteps, from doors opening, and closing. 246 00:11:12,679 --> 00:11:15,279 They put sensors everywhere. Nothing explained it. 247 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:17,279 Speaker 2: And this is where we get to the turning point, 248 00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:21,600 the big one, the inversion. Because up until now this 249 00:11:21,639 --> 00:11:24,720 could just be a really really weird equipment bug that 250 00:11:24,799 --> 00:11:26,039 nobody understands yet. 251 00:11:26,159 --> 00:11:28,639 Speaker 3: It could. It's improbable but possible. 252 00:11:28,919 --> 00:11:32,879 Speaker 2: But what happened next that for me is the smoking gun. 253 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:37,360 Speaker 3: It is the detail that moves this from coincidence to phenomenon. 254 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:41,480 To test the human noise theory, the idea that people 255 00:11:41,480 --> 00:11:44,200 were just physically interfering with the sensitive equipment in some 256 00:11:44,240 --> 00:11:48,679 subtle way, CERN ran a series of fully automated data 257 00:11:48,720 --> 00:11:49,879 collection runs. 258 00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:52,360 Speaker 1: So nobody in the room, just the machine, the computers 259 00:11:52,519 --> 00:11:53,519 running itself. 260 00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:57,240 Speaker 3: Empty control room, lights off toor locked. Now, to understand 261 00:11:57,279 --> 00:12:00,200 why the result of this test is so profoundly weird, 262 00:12:00,399 --> 00:12:03,240 you have to understand how noise works in an experiment. Okay, 263 00:12:03,480 --> 00:12:05,639 if I'm in the control room and I'm tapping my foot, 264 00:12:05,679 --> 00:12:08,720 as you said, that creates a vibration frequency. Let's say 265 00:12:08,759 --> 00:12:12,240 it's fifty hertz. The detector picks up that fifty hertz signal. 266 00:12:12,320 --> 00:12:14,480 Speaker 2: Right, it's extra data you don't want exactly. 267 00:12:14,879 --> 00:12:16,679 Speaker 3: Now, if I leave the room, what should happen to 268 00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:17,279 that fifty. 269 00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:19,600 Speaker 2: Herd signals to drop to zero, it should be gone. 270 00:12:19,480 --> 00:12:22,519 Speaker 3: It should disappear. That is how noise works. It is additive. 271 00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:25,679 You are there, the noise is there. You leave, the 272 00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:30,039 noise is gone. Simple subtraction. But in this automated run, 273 00:12:31,159 --> 00:12:34,240 the signal this anomalous pattern at four point eight TV, 274 00:12:34,840 --> 00:12:37,159 it didn't drop to zero. It didn't just disappear. 275 00:12:37,279 --> 00:12:37,919 Speaker 1: What did it do? 276 00:12:38,200 --> 00:12:40,559 Speaker 3: The pattern inverted inverted? 277 00:12:40,600 --> 00:12:41,360 Speaker 2: What does that mean? 278 00:12:41,480 --> 00:12:45,360 Speaker 3: The statistical distribution shifted in the exact opposite direction. It 279 00:12:45,519 --> 00:12:47,480 swung to negative sigma. 280 00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:49,840 Speaker 2: Negative sigma. How can you have negative coin flips? 281 00:12:49,879 --> 00:12:53,240 Speaker 3: That's a great question. Means the data became less random 282 00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:57,799 than pure chance implies. It became structured in the opposite way. 283 00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:01,960 It's the difference between a noisy room going silent versus 284 00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:05,200 a noisy room suddenly playing a perfect symphony, but in reverse. 285 00:13:05,480 --> 00:13:06,080 Speaker 1: Whoa. 286 00:13:06,120 --> 00:13:08,799 Speaker 3: The absence of the observer didn't just remove the interference, 287 00:13:08,879 --> 00:13:12,960 It fundamentally reorganized the probability distribution of the particles themselves. 288 00:13:13,000 --> 00:13:17,240 Speaker 2: Okay, that makes my stomach drop, because noise doesn't organize itself. 289 00:13:16,919 --> 00:13:17,720 Speaker 1: When you walk away. 290 00:13:17,879 --> 00:13:18,679 Speaker 3: It doesn't a. 291 00:13:18,559 --> 00:13:22,039 Speaker 2: Loose cable doesn't start fixing itself and then overcorrecting when 292 00:13:22,080 --> 00:13:25,639 you live the room. An artifact doesn't reverse precisely. 293 00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:30,240 Speaker 3: It's as if the particles, or more accurately, the probability 294 00:13:30,279 --> 00:13:35,000 waves governing them, somehow knew they were unobserved, an artifact 295 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:37,840 or in error. It just ceases to exist when you 296 00:13:37,879 --> 00:13:42,519 remove the cause. This behavior implies a dependency, a relationship. 297 00:13:42,720 --> 00:13:45,039 Speaker 1: It implies the system is aware of the observer. 298 00:13:45,399 --> 00:13:49,039 Speaker 3: That is the terrifying, exhilarating implication. And you can just 299 00:13:49,159 --> 00:13:51,720 imagine the atmosphere in the labs when this data came in. 300 00:13:51,960 --> 00:13:55,120 Speaker 1: I can imagine a lot of very very smart people sweating, 301 00:13:55,240 --> 00:13:57,200 just looking at the graphs and thinking, did we just 302 00:13:57,279 --> 00:13:58,120 break physics? 303 00:13:58,279 --> 00:14:01,399 Speaker 3: Silence? That's the atmosphere we're here caring about from our sources. Yeah, 304 00:14:01,679 --> 00:14:03,559 utter silence. Nobody wants to talk about. 305 00:14:03,399 --> 00:14:05,159 Speaker 2: This officially because it's too crazy. 306 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:08,720 Speaker 3: Internally, they started calling it the observer correlation anomaly, but 307 00:14:08,759 --> 00:14:11,000 it's whispered. It's not in the newsletters, it's not in 308 00:14:11,039 --> 00:14:11,840 the official. 309 00:14:11,480 --> 00:14:15,000 Speaker 2: Brief Because if this is real, I mean, it breaks everything. 310 00:14:15,399 --> 00:14:19,440 Speaker 3: It breaks the fundamental assumption of objective science since the 311 00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:23,080 time of Galileo. The core belief. The bedrock is that 312 00:14:23,240 --> 00:14:27,080 nature exists independently of us. The planet orbits the Sun, 313 00:14:27,120 --> 00:14:29,600 whether we look at it or not. Gravity pulls the 314 00:14:29,639 --> 00:14:32,519 apple down, whether Newton is watching or napping under the tree. 315 00:14:32,639 --> 00:14:34,960 Speaker 1: Right, reality is real, whether we're here or not. 316 00:14:35,480 --> 00:14:37,559 Speaker 3: If this anomaly is what it appears to be, it 317 00:14:37,639 --> 00:14:40,639 suggests that at the most fundamental level of high energy physics, 318 00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:42,639 that independence is an illusion. 319 00:14:42,879 --> 00:14:46,799 Speaker 2: That is, that is terrifying and exciting, but mostly terrifying. 320 00:14:46,799 --> 00:14:48,159 Speaker 1: From a scientific standpoint. 321 00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:50,840 Speaker 3: It's professional suicide. If you announce it and you're wrong, 322 00:14:51,279 --> 00:14:52,679 you become the next cold fusion. 323 00:14:52,840 --> 00:14:56,039 Speaker 2: And that explains the public stance right, the total radio 324 00:14:56,159 --> 00:15:00,000 silence because I looked, we both looked. CERN has said nothing, 325 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,120 saying no press releases, no preprints on our equips, no 326 00:15:03,279 --> 00:15:06,399 viral tweets, just run three is preceding as. 327 00:15:06,240 --> 00:15:09,039 Speaker 3: Planned, complete and total silence. And you have to understand 328 00:15:09,039 --> 00:15:12,000 the politics here. CERN isn't just a clubhouse for physicists. 329 00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:16,600 It's a massive international organization funded by twenty three member states. 330 00:15:16,799 --> 00:15:20,360 Speaker 2: We're talking billions of euros, thousands of careers on the line. 331 00:15:20,519 --> 00:15:23,840 Speaker 3: You can't just walk out to a press conference and say, hey, guys, 332 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:27,399 so it turns out magic might be real without having absolute, 333 00:15:27,639 --> 00:15:28,720 ironclad proof. 334 00:15:28,840 --> 00:15:30,960 Speaker 2: You need that five sigma. You need more than that, 335 00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:32,679 probably you need ten sigma for this. 336 00:15:32,919 --> 00:15:35,320 Speaker 3: You need a result so robust that no one could 337 00:15:35,360 --> 00:15:39,080 possibly question it. Remember the Higgs Boson discovery, of. 338 00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:43,200 Speaker 2: Course, twenty twelve, Nobel Prize in twenty thirteen, a huge deal, 339 00:15:43,360 --> 00:15:44,120 a huge deal. 340 00:15:44,679 --> 00:15:47,320 Speaker 3: But the Higgs was safe. It was predicted by the 341 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:52,080 standard model fifty years earlier. It completed the puzzle. Finding 342 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:55,360 the Higgs was like finding the last missing corner piece 343 00:15:55,399 --> 00:15:58,000 of a jigsaw puzzle you've been working on your whole life. 344 00:15:58,120 --> 00:16:00,000 Speaker 2: Everyone clapped, This isn't a corner. 345 00:16:00,559 --> 00:16:03,519 Speaker 3: No, this discovery, if it's real, it is like finding 346 00:16:03,559 --> 00:16:06,120 a piece from a completely different puzzle box, one with 347 00:16:06,159 --> 00:16:08,840 a picture of a dragon on it. It doesn't complete the model. 348 00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:11,440 It flips the table and sets the puzzle on fire. 349 00:16:11,799 --> 00:16:16,240 Speaker 2: So they are keeping quiet, but are they really? Because 350 00:16:16,240 --> 00:16:19,679 our sources point to something you called soft disclosure, which 351 00:16:19,679 --> 00:16:22,080 sounds like a conspiracy theory term. But it's actually about 352 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:23,840 how they publish scientific papers. 353 00:16:23,600 --> 00:16:26,440 Speaker 3: Right right, It's about reading between the lines of what 354 00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:29,440 they are publishing. They might not be shouting about consciousness, 355 00:16:29,879 --> 00:16:33,759 but they are publishing papers about weird energy signatures. 356 00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:34,679 Speaker 2: Okay, tell me more. 357 00:16:34,879 --> 00:16:37,159 Speaker 3: We have to look at a paper from late twenty 358 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:40,759 twenty four, the CMS collaboration that's one of the two 359 00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:44,759 big general purpose experiments of the LHC. They released a 360 00:16:44,799 --> 00:16:49,919 paper about something called soft unclustered energy patterns suease. 361 00:16:50,080 --> 00:16:52,679 Speaker 2: The acronym is sue SUE signals. 362 00:16:52,759 --> 00:16:56,600 Speaker 3: Yes, it sounds harmless. It sounds boring, oh, which is 363 00:16:56,600 --> 00:16:57,279 probably the point. 364 00:16:57,399 --> 00:16:58,000 Speaker 2: So what are they? 365 00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:02,200 Speaker 3: They're subtle energy signatures, don't form clear particle tracks like 366 00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:05,480 an electron or muon wood. They like whispers in the 367 00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:08,079 detector instead of shouts a little bit of energy here, 368 00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:09,839 a little bit over there, not really adding up to 369 00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:11,079 anything we recognize. 370 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:14,160 Speaker 1: And what's the official theory for these SUE signals. 371 00:17:14,279 --> 00:17:17,680 Speaker 3: The paper links them to a theoretical framework called hidden 372 00:17:17,799 --> 00:17:18,599 valley physics. 373 00:17:18,759 --> 00:17:21,000 Speaker 2: Hidden Valley. Now we're getting back to cool names again. 374 00:17:21,039 --> 00:17:21,480 I like that. 375 00:17:21,519 --> 00:17:21,880 Speaker 1: What is that? 376 00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:23,720 Speaker 2: Can you explain this to me? Like I'm five years old? 377 00:17:23,920 --> 00:17:27,160 Speaker 3: I can try. Imagine you are a drawing of a 378 00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:29,839 stick figure and you live on a flat two D 379 00:17:29,920 --> 00:17:32,599 sheet of paper. Your whole universe is that sheet. You 380 00:17:32,599 --> 00:17:34,559 can move left, right, forward, back. That's it. 381 00:17:34,720 --> 00:17:36,440 Speaker 1: I'm a flat lander, got it right. 382 00:17:36,759 --> 00:17:40,440 Speaker 3: Now, imagine that just one millimeter above you sheet of paper, 383 00:17:40,799 --> 00:17:43,079 there's a whole other sheet of paper with its own 384 00:17:43,079 --> 00:17:46,079 stick figures and its own rules, a hidden valley, a 385 00:17:46,119 --> 00:17:49,720 parallel universe, basically a parallel sector. Now in our universe, 386 00:17:49,759 --> 00:17:53,519 the standard model forces like electromagnetism, which is what light is. 387 00:17:54,279 --> 00:17:56,480 They are stuck to our sheet of paper. They can't 388 00:17:56,559 --> 00:17:59,559 junk that one millimeter gap. That's why we can't see 389 00:17:59,640 --> 00:18:03,400 this hit valley with light or radar or telescopes. 390 00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:06,279 Speaker 2: So it's dark to us. This sounds like dark matter. 391 00:18:06,440 --> 00:18:08,720 Speaker 3: It's a candidate for what dark matter could be. Right, 392 00:18:08,799 --> 00:18:11,440 These hidden valley particles are ghostly to us simply because 393 00:18:11,440 --> 00:18:14,200 they don't reflect light. But they have mass, they have 394 00:18:14,400 --> 00:18:18,079 energy and gravity. Gravity might be able to leak across 395 00:18:18,119 --> 00:18:19,000 that gap, so. 396 00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:21,799 Speaker 2: We can feel them, but we can't see them exactly. 397 00:18:22,279 --> 00:18:25,200 Speaker 3: And the theory goes that if you smash cotons together 398 00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:28,160 hard enough at the LHC with enough energy, you might 399 00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:30,359 be able to knock one of our particles into that valley, 400 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:32,319 or knock one of their particles out of it and 401 00:18:32,440 --> 00:18:33,440 into our detectors. 402 00:18:33,599 --> 00:18:36,359 Speaker 2: And that's what these SUE signals might be the debris 403 00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:37,279 from that interaction. 404 00:18:37,440 --> 00:18:41,400 Speaker 3: That's the conventional theory. Yes, and here is the crucial connection. 405 00:18:42,079 --> 00:18:45,839 The very same AI systems and analysis techniques they developed 406 00:18:46,079 --> 00:18:50,079 to search for these faint, weird SUE signals are the 407 00:18:50,079 --> 00:18:53,119 ones that started flagging the correlations with human presence. 408 00:18:53,279 --> 00:18:56,640 Speaker 2: Uh huh. So they might be using the official, respectable 409 00:18:56,799 --> 00:18:59,960 search for hidden valley particles as a kind of cover story. 410 00:19:00,279 --> 00:19:02,000 Speaker 3: Cover is a strong word. I would say it's a 411 00:19:02,039 --> 00:19:06,079 safe scientific container. If you are a physicist investigating bizarre 412 00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:09,279 anomalies that seem to react to human consciousness, you don't 413 00:19:09,279 --> 00:19:12,000 write a grand proposal called the Consciousness. 414 00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:13,079 Speaker 1: Project, You'd be laughed out of the room. 415 00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:15,960 Speaker 3: You never work again. But you can write a proposal 416 00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:20,079 called an investigation of anomalous soft unclustered energy signals in 417 00:19:20,119 --> 00:19:23,319 the invalley sector. It allows you to do the controversial 418 00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:25,400 science under a respectable banner. 419 00:19:25,680 --> 00:19:28,720 Speaker 2: It's clever. It keeps the funding flowing while you stare. 420 00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:29,319 Speaker 1: Into the abyss. 421 00:19:29,359 --> 00:19:29,960 Speaker 3: Precisely. 422 00:19:30,359 --> 00:19:33,519 Speaker 2: Okay, so CERN is being very very careful. But as 423 00:19:33,599 --> 00:19:35,519 you said, this isn't the first time science has bumped 424 00:19:35,519 --> 00:19:37,200 into this particular ghost, is it. 425 00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:39,279 Speaker 3: No? Not at all. And this is where we have 426 00:19:39,319 --> 00:19:42,119 to zoom out from Geneva. CERN is acting like this 427 00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:46,519 is a completely new, isolated incident, but science has been 428 00:19:46,559 --> 00:19:51,039 tripping over this specific ghost for at least forty years. 429 00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:52,920 Speaker 1: We just keep sweeping it under the rug. 430 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,799 Speaker 3: We do. Usually when it happens, the lab gets defunded 431 00:19:55,880 --> 00:19:58,880 or ridiculed into oblivion. But now that it's happening at 432 00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:03,519 the world's biggest, most expensive, most precise machine, we can't 433 00:20:03,519 --> 00:20:06,319 ignore it anymore. So where do we look first to 434 00:20:06,400 --> 00:20:08,759 understand what's happening at CERN today? We actually have to 435 00:20:08,759 --> 00:20:11,759 go back to a basement, a basement in Princeton, New Jersey, 436 00:20:11,799 --> 00:20:12,960 in nineteen seventy. 437 00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:15,680 Speaker 2: Nine, A basement, not a billion dollar tunnel, a. 438 00:20:15,759 --> 00:20:19,799 Speaker 3: Very humble basement which housed the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, 439 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:22,519 or Pair for short. And what they found there is 440 00:20:22,559 --> 00:20:25,319 basically the beta version of what the LHC's seeing now 441 00:20:25,440 --> 00:20:26,839 on a much grander scale. 442 00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:29,519 Speaker 2: I writ about PEER in the notes for today, and 443 00:20:29,559 --> 00:20:31,440 I had to double check it wasn't a sci fi novel. 444 00:20:31,559 --> 00:20:34,920 Speaker 1: This was Princeton University Ivy League. 445 00:20:35,039 --> 00:20:38,480 Speaker 3: Yes, the dean of the Engineering department, Robert John, This 446 00:20:38,599 --> 00:20:40,279 was not some guy with tinfoil on his head in 447 00:20:40,279 --> 00:20:44,279 his garage. This was a serious Ivy League research program. 448 00:20:43,799 --> 00:20:46,640 Speaker 2: And they ran for how long, nearly three decades. 449 00:20:46,839 --> 00:20:48,880 Speaker 3: They finally closed their doors in two thousand and seven. 450 00:20:49,480 --> 00:20:54,440 And their central question was elegantly simple. Do human intentions 451 00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:57,000 affect quantum random number generators? 452 00:20:57,640 --> 00:21:02,559 Speaker 2: So a machine that generates pure on predictable randomness. 453 00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:05,400 Speaker 3: True randomness, not the pseudorandomness your computer uses, which is 454 00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:08,480 just a very complex mathematical formula. We're talking about using 455 00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:12,640 electronic noise or the quantum tunneling of electrons. Process is that, 456 00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:16,960 according to the laws of physics, should be completely fundamentally. 457 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:18,720 Speaker 2: Unpredictable, the ultimate coin flipper, exactly. 458 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:20,759 Speaker 3: And they would put ordinary people in front of these 459 00:21:20,799 --> 00:21:23,160 machines and say, okay, for the next fifteen minutes, try 460 00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:25,079 to make the numbers go higher, or try to make 461 00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:28,000 them go lower, just with their minds, no toutching, And 462 00:21:28,119 --> 00:21:32,240 over millions upon millions of trials across dozens of participants 463 00:21:32,279 --> 00:21:36,480 over twenty plus years, they found a shift. A shift, 464 00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:41,240 a tiny but consistent and repeatable deviation from pure randomness 465 00:21:41,400 --> 00:21:44,519 in the direction of the person's intention. It was statistically 466 00:21:44,559 --> 00:21:47,000 significant to the tune of seven sigma. 467 00:21:46,839 --> 00:21:49,920 Speaker 2: Seven Wait, seven sigma rewind you said five sigma is 468 00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:52,599 a discovery. Five sigma is twenty one heads in a row? 469 00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:54,000 What on earth is seven sigma? 470 00:21:54,079 --> 00:21:57,720 Speaker 3: Seven sigma is? It's like flipping heads roughly twenty six 471 00:21:57,759 --> 00:21:59,799 times in a row. The odds against it being a 472 00:21:59,880 --> 00:22:02,920 rare and chance fluctuation are billions to one. 473 00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:05,200 Speaker 2: That's a grand slam. That's not a hint. That's a 474 00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:08,839 mathematical certainty. Why isn't this in every physics textbook? 475 00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,400 Speaker 3: Because scientific acceptance is about more than just the math. 476 00:22:12,559 --> 00:22:16,359 It's about fitting into the existing paradigm. Peer was heavily 477 00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:20,559 heavily criticized. People attack their methodology, their data selection, their 478 00:22:20,599 --> 00:22:21,680 statistical analysis. 479 00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:23,000 Speaker 1: They tried to find the loose cable. 480 00:22:23,079 --> 00:22:25,920 Speaker 3: They did, and the scientific community at large was basically 481 00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:29,319 allergic to the results. It didn't fit the materialist worldview, 482 00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:31,720 so it had to be wrong. It was rejected and 483 00:22:31,720 --> 00:22:33,759 the lab eventually lost its funding and closed. 484 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:35,279 Speaker 1: But the data remained. 485 00:22:35,359 --> 00:22:39,519 Speaker 3: The data remains, and here is the absolutely critical connection 486 00:22:39,559 --> 00:22:43,599 to what's happening today at CERN. Cerns detectors their baselines, 487 00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:47,559 they're triggers. They rely on the same fundamental physics for 488 00:22:47,759 --> 00:22:51,079 their randomness quantum tunneling. Quantum tunneling. So if the Peer 489 00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:54,559 lab found a tiny but real seven sigma effect at 490 00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,000 room temperature with a desktop machine. 491 00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,960 Speaker 2: Then CERN is the high energy, super cool, billion dollar 492 00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:01,240 version of the Pair lab. 493 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:05,200 Speaker 3: Exactly if human consciousness can nudge a tiny random number 494 00:23:05,279 --> 00:23:08,480 generator in a Princeton basement, what happens when you have 495 00:23:08,519 --> 00:23:11,519 the most sensitive machine ever built running at thirteen point 496 00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:15,880 six terra electron volts, literally smashing the fabric of reality 497 00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:16,519 at part. 498 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:18,440 Speaker 1: You're suggesting the effects scales with energy. 499 00:23:18,559 --> 00:23:22,039 Speaker 3: That's the hypothesis. Perhaps CERN isn't discovering something new so 500 00:23:22,079 --> 00:23:24,559 much as it's built a giant amplifier for an effect 501 00:23:24,599 --> 00:23:26,519 that's been whispering at us for decades. 502 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,119 Speaker 2: And it wasn't just Princeton, was it. There's the Global 503 00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,839 Consciousness Project too, Yes, that. 504 00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:33,680 Speaker 3: Grew out of the pure research. It's been running since 505 00:23:33,759 --> 00:23:36,599 nineteen ninety eight, a separate project. They have a network 506 00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:40,960 of about seventy of these true random number generators scattered 507 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:41,599 all over the world. 508 00:23:41,599 --> 00:23:43,680 Speaker 2: They call them eggs eggs I like it. 509 00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:47,119 Speaker 3: The premise of the GCP is to ask, do these 510 00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,319 random numbers all over the planet become less random during 511 00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:53,039 global events of mass coherent attention. 512 00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:54,279 Speaker 1: Like what kind of events? 513 00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:56,720 Speaker 3: Nine to eleven is the most famous and dramatic example, 514 00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,519 but also things like Princess Diana's funeral, the World Cup finals, 515 00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:04,319 the global meditation events, New Year's Eve every year as 516 00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:06,759 midnight sweeps across the globe. 517 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,920 Speaker 2: Moments when billions of people are all thinking or feeling 518 00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:11,279 the same thing at the same time. 519 00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:15,200 Speaker 3: Correct and according to their decades of data, Yeah, correlated 520 00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:19,039 deviations occur. The random numbers separated by thousands of miles 521 00:24:19,279 --> 00:24:22,359 start to march in step just a little when humanity 522 00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:24,079 focuses its collective attention. 523 00:24:24,279 --> 00:24:26,079 Speaker 2: That gives me shills. I mean, it's like the planet 524 00:24:26,079 --> 00:24:27,799 has a nervous system we're just now detecting. 525 00:24:28,039 --> 00:24:31,519 Speaker 3: It suggests a link a field perhaps, and again the 526 00:24:31,519 --> 00:24:36,599 skeptic scream, selection bias or hacking. But if you take 527 00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:40,240 the peer data and the Global Consciousness Project data and 528 00:24:40,319 --> 00:24:44,960 now this new high energy anomaly from CERN, the dots 529 00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:47,960 are starting to form a very straight, very provocative line. 530 00:24:48,039 --> 00:24:50,680 Speaker 2: And that line points directly to the idea that our 531 00:24:50,799 --> 00:24:54,799 minds are consciousness are doing something tangible to the physical world, 532 00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:57,480 which leads us to the heavy hitting physics. We have 533 00:24:57,519 --> 00:25:00,680 to talk about the why, how is this even possible? 534 00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:04,000 My brain is made of meat and electricity? How does 535 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,319 that change a proton and a tunnel in Switzerland? 536 00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:07,960 Speaker 3: You have to go back to the classics. We have 537 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:09,279 to start with the double slit. 538 00:25:09,079 --> 00:25:11,799 Speaker 2: Experiment, the gateway drug to quantum weirdness. 539 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:15,000 Speaker 3: Absolutely is so a quick recap for anyone who hasn't 540 00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,599 been in a physics class lately. Ye, you fire particles, 541 00:25:17,599 --> 00:25:21,000 say electrons, at a barrier that has two vertical slits 542 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:22,839 in it. Okay, if you don't look to see which 543 00:25:22,839 --> 00:25:25,279 slit the electron goes through, it behaves like a wave. 544 00:25:25,599 --> 00:25:27,960 It seems to go through both slits at once, interferes 545 00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,519 with itself and creates a striped interference pattern on the 546 00:25:31,559 --> 00:25:32,920 detector screen behind. 547 00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:34,599 Speaker 1: It, the classic wave pattern. 548 00:25:34,839 --> 00:25:37,480 Speaker 3: If you put a little detector by the slits to 549 00:25:37,559 --> 00:25:40,559 measure which one the electron goes through, the act of 550 00:25:40,599 --> 00:25:44,039 observing it makes it behave like a bullet a solid particle. 551 00:25:44,079 --> 00:25:47,240 It goes to only one slit and the interference pattern vanishes. 552 00:25:47,279 --> 00:25:49,240 You just get two solid bars on the screen. 553 00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:53,000 Speaker 2: Right, observation collapses the wave function. This is quantum one oh, one, 554 00:25:53,079 --> 00:25:55,039 it's weird, but we've known it for a century. 555 00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,920 Speaker 3: We have, But usually physicists try to sanitize it. They say, 556 00:25:59,039 --> 00:26:03,400 observation just means interaction with a measuring device. It doesn't 557 00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:07,079 imply a human brain or consciousness. But then you have 558 00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:09,079 people like John Archibold Wheeler. 559 00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:12,599 Speaker 2: Wheeler, the participatory universe guy, one of the last great 560 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:14,119 giants of physics. 561 00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,799 Speaker 3: A Titan, he worked on the Manhattan Project. He coined 562 00:26:16,799 --> 00:26:19,920 the term black hole, and in nineteen seventy eight he 563 00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:24,359 proposed a thought experiment that is, well, just fundamentally brain melting. 564 00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:25,839 Speaker 1: Let's melt some brains. I'm ready. 565 00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:28,559 Speaker 3: He took the double slit experiment and added a twist. 566 00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,640 He asked, what if you decide whether or not to 567 00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,839 observe the particle after it has already passed through the slits? 568 00:26:34,839 --> 00:26:36,920 Speaker 1: Wait? After, how can you do that? 569 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:39,279 Speaker 3: You set up the experiment so the particle passes the 570 00:26:39,279 --> 00:26:41,839 barrier and it's already on its way to the final 571 00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,599 detector screen. It has theoretically already decided to be a 572 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,519 wave or a particle. Then nanoseconds later, before it hits 573 00:26:49,519 --> 00:26:52,400 the screen, you make the choice to either put a 574 00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:53,880 detector in its path or not. 575 00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:54,920 Speaker 2: But it's too late. 576 00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:57,039 Speaker 1: The action has already happened. It's in the past. 577 00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:02,960 Speaker 3: Common sense says yes, Quantum mechanics says not quite. Wheeler 578 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:05,599 predicted that the choice you make in the present would 579 00:27:05,599 --> 00:27:07,799 determine how the particle behaved in the past. 580 00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:10,200 Speaker 2: That's retroactive causality. You're changing the past. 581 00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,680 Speaker 3: You're retroactively defining the past. And the crazy thing is 582 00:27:13,839 --> 00:27:16,839 they tested this. In two thousand and seven. A French 583 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,640 team led by Elaine Aspect actually ran the delayed choice. 584 00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:22,480 Speaker 2: Experiment and Don't Leave Me Hanging, and it. 585 00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,240 Speaker 3: Worked just as Wheeler predicted. The decision made after the 586 00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:29,359 photon had passed the slits determined whether it had gone 587 00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:31,519 through one slit or both slits back in time. 588 00:27:31,759 --> 00:27:33,920 Speaker 1: So we really can change the past. 589 00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,319 Speaker 3: On a quantum level, it seems we can define it. 590 00:27:38,559 --> 00:27:42,599 Wheeler's conclusion from this was profound. He said, we are 591 00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:46,440 not passive witnesses to the universe. We are co creators. 592 00:27:46,799 --> 00:27:50,559 He called it a participatory universe. He believed that by 593 00:27:50,559 --> 00:27:53,079 the act of observing the universe, we are building it. 594 00:27:53,599 --> 00:27:56,640 We are turning quantum possibility into concrete reality. 595 00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:57,559 Speaker 1: We are building it. 596 00:27:57,839 --> 00:28:01,440 Speaker 2: That sounds beautiful and also like a terrorifying amount of responsibility. 597 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,119 Speaker 3: He even took it to its most extreme conclusion. He 598 00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:06,960 suggested that our participation might reach all the way back 599 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,440 through time, that us conscious beings looking at the stars 600 00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,319 and measuring the cosmos today might be what caused the 601 00:28:13,319 --> 00:28:15,880 Big Bang to resolve out of a quantum fog and 602 00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:18,680 into this specific universe billions of years ago. 603 00:28:18,799 --> 00:28:21,160 Speaker 1: Okay, that's too big, My brain just blue screened. I 604 00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:21,799 need to reboot. 605 00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,519 Speaker 3: It's massive, really, but it connects directly to what's happening. 606 00:28:24,559 --> 00:28:27,000 It's CERN because what is CERN doing. It's creating energy 607 00:28:27,039 --> 00:28:29,960 conditions that haven't existed since the fractions of a second 608 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:30,680 after the Big Bang. 609 00:28:30,799 --> 00:28:33,480 Speaker 2: Right, the energy is the thirteen point six TV. It's 610 00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:34,720 a time machine in a way. 611 00:28:35,039 --> 00:28:38,839 Speaker 3: It is the bare fabric of reality. If Wheeler is 612 00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,839 right and observation is the act of creation, then CERN 613 00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,079 is the front line of creation. It is the most sensitive, 614 00:28:46,119 --> 00:28:51,000 most powerful interface between consciousness and reality that humanity has 615 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:51,559 ever built. 616 00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:53,920 Speaker 2: So if there's ever a place where these ghosts of 617 00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:56,160 consciousness would show up in the machine, it would be 618 00:28:56,200 --> 00:28:57,200 there exactly. 619 00:28:57,440 --> 00:28:58,920 Speaker 3: It's where the veil is thinnest. 620 00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:01,960 Speaker 2: But there's one peace to this puzzle, we have to 621 00:29:02,039 --> 00:29:04,240 talk about Sir Roger Penrose. 622 00:29:03,799 --> 00:29:07,720 Speaker 3: The Nobel laureate collaborator with Stephen Hawking on black holes, 623 00:29:08,279 --> 00:29:10,319 an absolute giant. 624 00:29:10,039 --> 00:29:13,079 Speaker 2: And he has a very specific and once very controversial 625 00:29:13,119 --> 00:29:17,680 theory about what consciousness actually is, right orchestrated objective reduction, 626 00:29:18,519 --> 00:29:20,680 which is a mouthful orchard arg for sure. 627 00:29:20,799 --> 00:29:23,799 Speaker 3: Yes, Penrose has long argued that consciousness isn't just an 628 00:29:23,799 --> 00:29:27,319 emergent property of complex computation, like a software running on 629 00:29:27,359 --> 00:29:28,240 the hardware. 630 00:29:27,839 --> 00:29:29,720 Speaker 2: Of the brain, So the brain is not a computer, 631 00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:31,119 not just a classical computer. 632 00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:34,680 Speaker 3: He believes that consciousness, our subjective experience, arises from actual 633 00:29:34,799 --> 00:29:38,920 quantum processes occurring inside tiny structures in our brain cells 634 00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:40,680 called microtubules. 635 00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,400 Speaker 2: I remember reading about this years ago, and everyone in 636 00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:46,240 neuroscience said he was wrong. They had this killer argument, 637 00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:48,880 the brain is too warm, wet, and noisy. 638 00:29:49,039 --> 00:29:52,720 Speaker 3: Correct. That was the big criticism for decades. Quantum states 639 00:29:53,119 --> 00:29:57,759 like superposition are incredibly fragile. They need near absolute zero 640 00:29:57,799 --> 00:30:01,799 temperatures and total isolation to survive. The idea was that 641 00:30:01,839 --> 00:30:05,960 in a warm, messy, thirty seven degrees celsius brain, any 642 00:30:06,039 --> 00:30:09,599 quantum state should collapse instantly. It's called decoherence. They said 643 00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:10,640 Penrose was dreaming. 644 00:30:11,079 --> 00:30:12,519 Speaker 1: Science advances, doesn't it. 645 00:30:12,519 --> 00:30:14,559 Speaker 3: It does, And in twenty twenty four there was a 646 00:30:14,599 --> 00:30:17,759 major update that kind of vindicated him. Researchers at Princeton 647 00:30:17,839 --> 00:30:22,319 and in Japan reported observing quantum coherence lingering quantum effects 648 00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:27,400 in warm biological tissues, specifically inside these microtubules. 649 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:28,720 Speaker 2: Wait for real, For real. 650 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,480 Speaker 3: They found that these structures can actually shield the quantum 651 00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:34,799 states from the noisy environment of the cell. They validated 652 00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:37,880 the biological possibility of Penrose's theory. It's no longer just 653 00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:39,039 a wild hypothesis. 654 00:30:39,079 --> 00:30:41,160 Speaker 2: So the brain might actually be a quantum computer. 655 00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:43,559 Speaker 3: It's looking more and more likely. And here is the 656 00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:49,799 direct link. Discern Penrose believes that the quantum superposition, the 657 00:30:49,839 --> 00:30:52,680 state of being in two places at once, doesn't collapse 658 00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:56,759 because of an observer. He thinks it collapses on its own, objectively, 659 00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:57,960 due to gravity. 660 00:30:58,039 --> 00:30:59,920 Speaker 1: Gravity. How does gravity get involved. 661 00:31:00,039 --> 00:31:03,160 Speaker 3: It's a complex, but basically, a particle in two places 662 00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:07,880 at once creates two tiny separate space time curvatures. Penrose 663 00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,359 thinks this separation is unstable, and when it reaches a 664 00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:14,480 certain threshold, it collapses into one state, and that collapse 665 00:31:14,519 --> 00:31:17,799 he proposes is a moment of proto consciousness. 666 00:31:17,119 --> 00:31:19,400 Speaker 2: A single conscious thought, a single. 667 00:31:19,119 --> 00:31:21,400 Speaker 3: Frame of the movie of consciousness. Now think about what 668 00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:25,279 CERN does. It creates the most extreme quantum and gravitational 669 00:31:25,319 --> 00:31:27,519 conditions possible in a man made environment. 670 00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,279 Speaker 2: It mimics the density of the early universe, where gravity 671 00:31:30,319 --> 00:31:32,160 and quantum mechanics were one and the same. 672 00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:35,680 Speaker 3: If Penrose is right and consciousness is fundamentally linked to 673 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:39,759 the gravitational collapse of quantum states, then CERN is basically 674 00:31:39,839 --> 00:31:43,119 grabbing and shaking the very box that consciousness comes in. 675 00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,359 Speaker 2: So to recap we have the AI finding the anomaly. 676 00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,519 We have the inversion experiment suggesting it reacts to human presence. 677 00:31:51,039 --> 00:31:54,119 We have the historical precedent with Peer and the Global 678 00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:57,240 Consciousness Project. We have Wheeler's theory saying we are co 679 00:31:57,319 --> 00:32:00,599 creating reality. And we have Penrose's theories saying the brain 680 00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,960 is a quantum device that interacts with reality via gravity. 681 00:32:04,039 --> 00:32:07,680 Speaker 3: It's a compelling and frankly, a very unsettling. 682 00:32:07,039 --> 00:32:09,440 Speaker 2: Stack of evidence it is, but we have to be 683 00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:10,119 grounded here. 684 00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:12,160 Speaker 1: We have five months. The clock is ticking. 685 00:32:12,319 --> 00:32:15,200 Speaker 3: July twenty twenty six, Long Shot Down three. 686 00:32:15,039 --> 00:32:17,680 Speaker 2: Begins the machine turns off, and it stays off until 687 00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,240 twenty thirty, four years of silence. 688 00:32:20,359 --> 00:32:23,119 Speaker 3: That is the pressure cooker. Whatever they hope to discover, 689 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,160 whatever data they can possibly gather on this bizarre anomaly, 690 00:32:26,559 --> 00:32:28,640 they have to get it now, because when the machine 691 00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,039 turns back on in twenty thirty, it will be upgraded. 692 00:32:31,079 --> 00:32:33,640 It will be a fundamentally different machine. The conditions might 693 00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:35,920 not be the same, the anomaly might disappear. 694 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,079 Speaker 1: They have a deadline to solve the potential mystery of 695 00:32:38,079 --> 00:32:39,359 the universe. No pressure. 696 00:32:39,359 --> 00:32:42,480 Speaker 3: Guys and we looking for the outside are left with 697 00:32:42,599 --> 00:32:47,480 two stark possibilities, and as an objective observer, as a scientist, 698 00:32:47,839 --> 00:32:49,000 have to weigh them both equally. 699 00:32:49,079 --> 00:32:54,359 Speaker 2: Okay, lay them out for us. Option one, the safe, rational, boring. 700 00:32:54,039 --> 00:32:57,720 Speaker 3: Option Option one is systematic error. We are dealing with 701 00:32:57,759 --> 00:33:01,480 one of the most massive, incredibly complay machines ever built. 702 00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,079 There could be a subtle, complex, unnoticed variable we haven't 703 00:33:05,079 --> 00:33:05,559 found yet. 704 00:33:05,599 --> 00:33:06,920 Speaker 1: The loose cable again, a. 705 00:33:07,079 --> 00:33:10,599 Speaker 3: Very very complicated loose cable. Maybe the specific electrical load 706 00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:13,039 of the lighting in the control room creates a harmonic 707 00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:15,359 resonance in the detectors that only shows up in the 708 00:33:15,359 --> 00:33:18,559 four point eight TV range. Maybe there is a deep 709 00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,960 software bug in the AI's training data itself that just 710 00:33:22,039 --> 00:33:25,279 happens to sync up with the periodicity of the shift. 711 00:33:25,039 --> 00:33:28,599 Speaker 2: Changes the look elsewhere effect. We are patterns seeking animals. 712 00:33:28,599 --> 00:33:30,519 We see faces in the clouds, and this is just 713 00:33:30,559 --> 00:33:31,839 a very complex cloud. 714 00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:35,319 Speaker 3: Exactly. It's the most rational explanation. It's boring, but it 715 00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:38,440 keeps the known laws of physics intact and probably the 716 00:33:38,519 --> 00:33:39,039 most likely. 717 00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:41,920 Speaker 1: Okay, but what is option two? The thrilling thread? 718 00:33:42,319 --> 00:33:44,519 Speaker 3: Option two is the new physics. It says the observer 719 00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,680 correlation anomaly is real. It's not noise. And if it's real, 720 00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:50,519 it means the universe is not a stage that we 721 00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:52,759 just walk around on. It means the universe is a 722 00:33:52,799 --> 00:33:54,640 fabric and we are not just on it, we are 723 00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:55,440 woven into it. 724 00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:58,079 Speaker 2: Consciousness is a fundamental. 725 00:33:57,400 --> 00:34:01,599 Speaker 3: Force, as fundamental is gravity, as fundamental is electromagnetism. It 726 00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:04,039 means that the act of knowing, the act of being 727 00:34:04,079 --> 00:34:09,480 a conscious entity is a fundamental driver of physical reality itself. 728 00:34:09,559 --> 00:34:13,199 Speaker 2: That gives me what I call cosmic vertigo. You know 729 00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:14,960 that feeling when you look up at the stars on 730 00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,639 a clear night and you suddenly feel very very small. 731 00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,000 Speaker 1: This is the opposite of that. This makes me. 732 00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,199 Speaker 2: Feel huge and dangerous, almost like if I look at 733 00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:28,239 the stars, am I actually changing them? Is my observation 734 00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:30,079 helping to hold them in existence? 735 00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,400 Speaker 3: That is the question, isn't it? And even if it 736 00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:36,320 is true, science moves incredibly slowly. We might not get 737 00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:38,559 a big press conference in July where the Director General 738 00:34:38,559 --> 00:34:41,280 Asseran walks out and says, good news everyone, we are 739 00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:42,719 God's laughs. 740 00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:44,800 Speaker 1: Yeah, probably not going to happen. 741 00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:47,000 Speaker 3: We might just see a few quiet papers appear over 742 00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,320 the next few years with titles like Anomalous Environmental correlations 743 00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,840 and high Energy Regimes. We might see a shift in 744 00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:57,119 how experiments are designed, with more focus on automated, unobserved runs. 745 00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:01,199 It will be a slow, quiet revolution, not a sudden explosion. 746 00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:04,079 Speaker 2: But the door has been kicked open. That's the thing. 747 00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:05,360 Speaker 1: The AI kicked the door open. 748 00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:06,800 Speaker 3: Oh, we can't pretend we didn't see what's on the 749 00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:08,239 other side. We can't close it now. 750 00:35:08,599 --> 00:35:12,280 Speaker 2: So here we are February first, twenty twenty six, standing 751 00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,119 at the edge of a cliff. CERN has an AI 752 00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,239 that is staring at a ghost in the machine, and 753 00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:21,079 we have five months of data left to collect. 754 00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:25,039 Speaker 3: And thousands of the world's smartest physicists trying to figure 755 00:35:25,079 --> 00:35:28,039 out if they are debunking a very complex s glitch 756 00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,440 or if they are discovering the soul of the universe. 757 00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:33,920 Speaker 2: I want to leave you, our listener, with a thought. 758 00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,559 You mentioned Roger Pinrose earlier and he said something that 759 00:35:36,559 --> 00:35:37,639 I wrote down because. 760 00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:39,039 Speaker 1: It just haunts me. 761 00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:40,119 Speaker 3: What was the quote? 762 00:35:40,199 --> 00:35:43,679 Speaker 2: He said that consciousness is the phenomenon whereby the universe's 763 00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:45,639 very existence is made known. 764 00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:46,920 Speaker 3: It's beautiful, isn't it? 765 00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:47,280 Speaker 1: It is? 766 00:35:47,639 --> 00:35:50,760 Speaker 2: But if he's right, then are we just passive observers 767 00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:54,800 discovering a pre existing universe or are we active participants 768 00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,440 inventing it, creating it by the very. 769 00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:58,199 Speaker 1: Act of looking at it? 770 00:35:58,239 --> 00:35:59,800 Speaker 3: That is the ultimate question. That's the end of the 771 00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:00,800 And I. 772 00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:02,800 Speaker 1: Want to ask you, listening right now. 773 00:36:02,679 --> 00:36:06,599 Speaker 2: Wherever you are, if this is real, If your attention, 774 00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:10,440 your observation actually changes the physical world around you even 775 00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,400 a tiny bit, does that make you feel more powerful 776 00:36:13,639 --> 00:36:16,480 or does it make you absolutely terrified? What is your 777 00:36:16,639 --> 00:36:18,800 stand on the nature of reality? 778 00:36:19,159 --> 00:36:20,719 Speaker 3: I would genuinely love to read. 779 00:36:20,599 --> 00:36:23,480 Speaker 2: Those comments you too, Take a minute, ponder it, let 780 00:36:23,599 --> 00:36:25,480 us know what you think, because this isn't just about 781 00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:27,800 Adam smashing together in a tunnel under Switzerland. 782 00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:29,440 Speaker 1: This is about you, and in. 783 00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:31,639 Speaker 3: The meantime, keep watching the data. 784 00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,079 Speaker 2: Keep pulling the threads. You never ever know what will unravel. 785 00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:37,880 This has been thrilling threads. We'll see you next time.