ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN:
Does the cosmos have a reason?
I hear diverse views--
can't find convergence.
So I dial down the question:
Can the cosmos have a reason?
Not much progress either.
Still the divergent views.
Still no answer.
Maybe the ambition
is too large.
Human knowledge too limited.
Maybe focus on what we do know
about the cosmos.
All the strange
and wonderful things.
The intimidating vastness.
The menacing violence.
Then ask about implications.
Because implications
of the cosmos
seems less demanding
than a reason for the cosmos.
What are the implications
of cosmology?
I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn,
and Closer to Truth
is my journey to find out.
I begin with the person
responsible
for radically expanding
our understanding
of how our universe began,
which meant that the universe
must be vastly larger
than we'd ever imagined.
I go to Iceland, to a conference
of cosmologists,
to meet the originator
of cosmic inflation theory,
Alan Guth.
Alan, in this place
where we can see deep time,
at least in a human sense,
you've helped humanity
understand
what probably happened at
the beginning of the universe.
When you think about cosmology,
from a standpoint of humanity,
what are the implications?
ALAN GUTH: One of the things
one, of course,
learns from cosmology
is how very small
our whole civilization is.
We live on a planet
that's part of a galaxy
with about a hundred billion
stars in the galaxy.
The galaxy's about one
in a hundred billion galaxies
in the visible part
of the universe.
And if this theory's called
inflation is right,
the whole visible universe
is perhaps a tiny speck
in a vastly larger system.
What that means, I think,
is certainly not that
we're unimportant,
but that it means we have to
make our own importance,
that man is important because
we're important to ourselves
and because we give life
a meaning.
And I think part of that meaning
is our quest for knowledge
about the universe
that we live in.
And there, I think, one could
say very optimistic things
coming out of cosmology.
It's really amazing, I think,
how far we've come in being able
to understand the things that we
see around us in the universe.
ROBERT: You know, I think this
is such a critical point,
because on the one hand
we see ourselves
an even smaller part
of the vastness of reality
with inflation and
the multiple pocket universes,
maybe an infinite number.
But on the other hand,
we understand it!
And we understand it
after what?
We've had, you know,
400 years of science
and a few thousand years
of recorded history,
a drop in the ocean of time.
We understand it, and you are
able to talk very intelligently
about what happened in the 10 to
the minus 37th or 35th second
in the universe.
And this is what
humanity is doing.
To me, that's incredible.
ALAN: Yeah, no, I agree,
it is incredible,
although we should also be
completely honest about this.
There are some things
we understand fantastically--
surprisingly,
I should say, well.
And they work.
It's absolutely fantastic,
I think.
But at the same time
our model of the universe is,
in many ways,
more confused than ever.
About 70% of the universe,
we think,
is this stuff
called dark energy,
and we don't really know
what that is.
Another 25% is what
we call dark matter.
We don't know what
that is either.
ROBERT: But we know that
there is such a thing
or there's something to be
explained there...
ALAN: Yes.
ROBERT: ...which is so far
beyond our common intuition.
ALAN: Yeah, yeah.
ROBERT: To me, that by itself
is remarkable.
ALAN: Yeah, I agree.
I think it's remarkable
on both sides.
It's remarkable how much
we understand.
It's also remarkable
how much there is
that we don't understand.
ROBERT: And it's, to me, it's
remarkable that we understand
how much there is
not to understand.
I mean, it sounds like a joke,
but it's not!
ALAN: Yeah.
I hope you're right
that we know what it is
that we don't understand.
There's a good chance you are.
[chuckles]
ROBERT: The cosmos is very large
and we are very small.
Alan's insight sounds obvious,
but it is precisely here
that we must start.
Cosmology is now
an observational science,
amplifying appreciation
of the universe's magnitude
and majesty.
What Alan took to explain
the beginning of the universe,
cosmic inflation,
Andrei Linde developed
into eternal chaotic inflation,
which generates multiple
universes without end,
perhaps into infinity.
If Alan's cosmos was gigantic,
Andrei's is unimaginably
larger still--
a vast vision of reality
that stupefies me.
Andrei, when you take
a step back
and look at the last 30 years
of cosmology and
human understanding,
what are the things that
are most important?
ANDREI LINDE:
Well, it's a tough question,
because there are several
different things that happened
during the last 30 years which
have completely fascinated me.
One of them, for example,
this discovery of energy vacuum,
that our universe
is accelerating.
ROBERT: The expansion is
accelerating.
ANDREI: Yes. And that was
completely unexpected.
Another thing is that
experimentally
I really never really believed
that they will come close
to experimental verification
of inflation
from the point of view
of these perturbations
generated during inflation.
ROBERT: So those years
you were working on theory
through the early '80s,
you really had no hope
that you could really...
ANDREI: Well, we always
have some hope.
It's not very modest,
but it's just how it is.
From my perspective, the theory
was so simple and beautiful
that it would be really painful
and unbelievable
that it is wrong.
And that is why I personally
did not quite much care about
experimental verification of it.
On the other hand, with years,
I guess I became maybe
a little bit wiser,
I don't know,
and I start caring.
So I look at what these people
are finding right now.
This is completely amazing.
What else is interesting for me
about this,
well, look at the universe
from this cosmic perspective.
It's almost
14 billion years old.
So this 14 billion years we were
waiting to watch the universe
at this magic scale,
encompassing all of what
we can see right now,
with all our best telescopes.
So this true investigation
of cosmology on this scale,
started, well,
less than a century ago.
We are going to see everything
that it is there to see
about the universe within maybe
the next 30 years, 50 years.
We started doing it maybe 100
or seriously 50,
or precisely 30,
or more precisely 10 years ago.
So all of this is just this
miniscule fraction of time,
time less than a century
from start to the end.
Now, these, compare these
to this 14 billion years.
So the universe waited for
14 billion years to be observed.
And now her desire
is finally fulfilled.
We see her and
all of her beauty.
And the next billion years
we are not going to see
anything more,
because this is just
speed of light
multiplied by
the age of the universe.
ROBERT: Can't get more.
ANDREI: So we are living
in an extremely special time.
My personal attitude to it
is maybe different
from a perspective
of many other cosmologists,
because, well, you know,
physicists,
they study things just for the
benefit of studying the things,
because they are so interesting,
how the world works.
ROBERT: Mm-hmm.
ANDREI: I'm looking at the
universe sometimes
also with this perspective,
but sometimes with
a different perspective.
The universe is our cosmic home.
And if I want to know something
about ourself,
when you go to the home
of your friend,
you look around and you know
something about him
which you did not know before.
When you're looking
at our universe,
maybe it will provide us
some cosmic perspective
which will tell us eventually
something more about us.
The whole universe is supposed
to emerge from nothing,
from this point before which
there was nothing at all.
Maybe our treatment of this
initial singularity
was not correct.
Some people consider
the possibility
that our universe emerged
from something which was before.
So then look at us.
We are emerging from what?
From nothing?
We are born and then
we are dying.
What was with us before?
What is going to happen
with us later?
Maybe by learning something
about death
and the birth of the universe,
maybe we can learn something
about myself and ourselves.
And this I consider
one of the most interesting,
well-speculative consequences
of study of cosmology.
ROBERT: Andrei wonders whether
by investigating the cosmos
we can learn something deep
about ourselves.
Not many scientists
would wonder that.
Some might find
Andrei's wonder heretical.
Andrei does not care.
The worry is that seeing
something deep--
or worse, some kind of meaning--
could distort good science.
The worry is legitimate.
I myself sense the tension.
But on I go, with Andrei
as my role model.
The usual lesson is
how insignificant we are
as a planet,
how much more insignificant
as a person.
But turn that obvious
observation on its head,
and suddenly it's astonishing
how much we know
about the cosmos.
Among the most meaningful is the
cosmic background microwave--
the afterglow of the Big Bang--
the barely warm embers of
the originating plasmic fire.
Nobel laureate George Smoot
calls it
"baby pictures of the universe."
George, after seeing
these spectacular pictures
of the origin, of the baby
pictures of the universe,
how do you reflect on this?
What does it mean to you
to have put your hands
literally on the formation
of the universe?
GEORGE SMOOT: It wasn't until
it was time
to make the public announcement
that the enormity of
it all hit me.
And so the analogy I give is
imagine that you're working in
an emergency room
and you're having to deal
with accident victims
all the time, coming in.
And so you're really efficient
and you deal with them
and you know that you're putting
your hand on the human chest.
And one day you look down
and it's your child.
ROBERT: Ah.
GEORGE: Right. So it feels sort
of that way in retrospect.
Here we are, people in
a tiny speck, you know,
we're located essentially
in a very limited space.
And you look in this tiny place
in a very short time--
humans are only a speck.
The light that started from
Andromeda and got here today,
started before there
were humans, right?
And so just think of...
ROBERT: And that's
our closest galaxy.
GEORGE: Our closest galaxy,
right,
closest big galaxy, right.
And so think of
the implications.
We have this tiny speck
in space and time,
and we're trying to understand
enormity of the whole sweep
of the universe in space
in its entire history.
ROBERT: And we're doing it!
GEORGE: Right.
GEORGE: And we have reason
to be confident
that we're understanding that.
And the picture that we're
putting together and emerging
is really spectacular.
So every human culture
has always had a story
about how the world was created
and what our place in it is,
right.
And here we're having one
that's now global.
And presumably,
if we had met aliens,
they would have a similar story
to tell, right.
We would have a common basis
of this.
But here is the creation story
for all of humanity,
and it's backed up
by observations
and by simple logic
and simple understanding.
ROBERT: The awe and the majesty
that we see
by looking at
the physical world,
no matter what your theological
or philosophical
or ethnic relationship, we're
all seeing the same universe.
It really is a way of unifying
the entire world
for a similar sense of this awe.
GEORGE: Yeah, I think so.
And you can't help but respond
to these pictures
of these beautiful galaxies
far away
and knowing that there are stars
and worlds there and so forth.
The more you understand
about it,
the greater your sense
is that way.
ROBERT: The two most spectacular
pictures to me
that continually turn my stomach
in their power
are, one, is the Hubble Deep
Field or Ultra Deep Field
where you took a picture of
an ostensibly black part
of the universe,
nothing there.
And when you've developed
after numerous hours
you saw literally
thousands of galaxies
in an extremely small space
that looked like it was empty,
and just breathtaking.
And the second is what you and
your colleagues have done
with the cosmic microwave
background,
because it shows a picture
of the early universe.
Those two pictures, to me,
typify the great understanding
that humanity has
of its environment.
GEORGE: For me,
I have a similar effect.
But one is I look at
the early universe
and see how simple it was,
and I look at
the modern universe
and see how complex it is.
I could see the threads
that link it all together
and how it makes so much sense.
ROBERT: George's enthusiasm
is infectious.
How incredible to take the baby
pictures of the universe!
But these pictures
show the universe
at about 380,000 years old,
when light could
begin to travel.
Can we go back even farther?
Science can describe how
something can erupt from nothing
through the laws
of quantum physics.
Can we go back farther still?
I meet a man who claims he can
take the final step--
a Catholic philosopher of
science, Father Robert Spitzer.
ROBERT SPITZER: The reason that
design arguments
have come back into vogue is
because of universal constants
and what we now have
very precisely determined
to be approximately 20 of them.
And these 20 constants are like
numbers, they're values,
but they fit into the equations
of physics.
These numbers, these values,
are actually controlling
all of the laws of physics,
and right now they can be
fairly precisely known.
So the electromagnetic force,
for example,
has three constants--
the mass of a proton,
the mass of an electron,
and the electromagnetic charge.
Or the gravitational constant,
which everybody kind of learns
about in Physics 101.
Also the strong nuclear force
coupling constant
to the weak force constant.
Well, anyway, there's about 20
of these constants.
And the odd thing is,
is at the Big Bang,
they really could have had
other values.
In fact, they could have had
an exceedingly wide range
of values higher or lower.
And since they could have had
any value at the Big Bang,
the odds seem exceedingly low
that those constants
would have been
precisely the ones necessary
for life-forms.
I mean, for example,
in the gravitational constant,
or weak force constant,
if they were one part in
10 to the 50 higher or lower,
that's a very small fraction,
right,
a decimal point,
49 zeros and a one,
either of those two constants,
the universe would have been
continuously exploding
in its expansion,
or alternatively,
scrunched into a black hole
where you're approaching
almost infinite density.
ROBERT: So there are two
counterarguments to that,
that scientists would give.
The first and perhaps
less powerful argument
says that the way
we're defining life-forms
is maybe carbon-biased.
The way we're doing the analysis
varies only one of those
constants at a time,
but if you vary multiple
at a time in some combinations,
maybe they would counteract
each other.
So there could be
different combinations.
SPITZER: The obvious response is
you would have to also
fine-tune all the other
constants very precisely
in order to get life-forms
to develop from that scenario,
which would be
highly improbable,
exceedingly improbable.
With respect to carbon-based,
actually that's not
really the case,
because carbon-based life
or non-carbon-based life,
continuous explosion of
the universe would be very bad
for anything that's
trying to develop
into a complexified structure.
ROBERT: Alright, let's go
to the more serious argument
against the specialness
of our universe,
and that is, I'm sure you know,
multiple universes.
Multiple universes seem to be
a necessary part
of explaining how
this universe works.
And that once you have
multiple universes,
potentially an infinite number,
then virtually anything
can happen.
And because we're in a universe
that we exist,
we think we're special,
because on all the other
universes that we don't exist,
we're not going to ask
that question.
SPITZER: Yeah, I know.
It's a perfectly good claim.
Let's suppose there is
a multiverse.
We then have two considerations
that are pretty important.
The first consideration is
does that multiverse itself
need a beginning?
And so, if it does
have a beginning,
you'd have to explain,
well, how did it get there
if that beginning actually marks
a definitive point?
And so there are implications
of creation.
The second thing, though, is
there may have to be fine-tuning
in the multiverse itself
as well,
because if they bump
into each other
or their gravitational impact,
you know, within multiverse
effects each other,
it could be devastating
to the possibility
of life-forms forming.
ROBERT: How are you leaning
in terms of the multiverse
is real or not real,
in terms of your predisposition
to believe
that a God created it?
SPITZER: I'm totally agnostic,
because I think either way,
you're going to have to have
a beginning of the multiverse
anyway.
It's very difficult to get
around fine-tuning
of that multiverse
just for at least some sort
of symmetrical roll
out of the bubble universes.
So I do think there still are
very significant,
probative design features,
even granted the multiverse.
It would be a weaker argument
than the single universe
argument,
but nevertheless, it would still
be a significant argument
in favor of some kind
of intelligent design.
ROBERT: So, laws of physics
or some kind of God?
Is that the ultimate dichotomy
that we must face?
Both roads hit dead ends.
They may go in
opposite directions,
but they seem to end
in the same place.
If this is where I must stop,
then stop I shall.
To pretend to progress
is to fool one's self.
Perhaps there is a different
road out there,
exploring the kind of cosmos
in which we find ourselves.
I've had a hunch--
no, more than a hunch--
that a deep clue to
the implications of cosmology
could be an answer
to humanity's long wonder,
are we alone in the cosmos?
Or are there other
intelligent species?
I meet with leaders
in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence,
Jill Tarter and Doug Vakoch.
Jill, Doug, I have this sense,
and it's ill-defined,
that the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence
can help us understand
the meaning of cosmology
as well as, are there
extraterrestrial beings?
Am I off base or is there
something there?
JILL TARTER:
I think there's something there.
We talk about this concept that
we are made out of stardust,
we are intimately connected
with the cosmos, right.
And so the question is,
are others as well?
And I think that if we were to
find one answer or the other
it would help us to understand
the nature of the laws
that govern this cosmos.
DOUG VAKOCH: I think we often
have this dichotomy
of either there is
physical cosmology
or philosophical cosmology.
I think we should think of
another kind of cosmology,
something you might
call a cognitive cosmology.
So how would a being
who is differently constituted
than we are
conceptualize the universe?
There's the possibility
that if we do make contact
with another civilization,
they can provide
a radically different view
of how this whole cosmos
is constituted.
ROBERT: A very simple question
is, in the search,
is the frequency of
extraterrestrial intelligence.
Is the production of life
completely capricious
and totally accidental,
or is it somehow built
into the laws of physics
where it's almost inevitable
under certain conditions?
I mean, those are
radically extreme conditions.
No one has the answer to that.
JILL: That's right, and one way
of thinking of it
is like a branching ratio
in physics
where there are
multiple outcomes,
and with enough experimentation
and enough data
you can begin to understand
the probability
that you will take one branch
versus another.
And I think that's one of
the things that we're asking
of the universe:
How often does chemistry
lead to biology?
And the process, the details
of how those organics,
those large molecules
we do see in space,
how the amino acids from,
that we find in meteorites.
How, in detail, do those turn
into life on this planet,
or is there no
detailed connection?
ROBERT: I have the sense there's
something more in there,
and that something more
is regarding
the fundamental laws of physics
that we have in our universe.
Do they by their very nature
have something built into them
in a trophic way that kind of
pulls it towards
some biological systems or
some systems of intelligence?
DOUG: I believe that we
and extraterrestrials
have this physical reality
in common.
But it's not at all clear to me
that all scientific models
of that same shared reality
are necessarily the same.
So again, we may be able to get
a much deeper understanding
of the cosmos
by understanding
a different species' way
of conceptualizing that
same shared universe.
ROBERT: That's why I have this,
just this sense
that there's something out there
in what you do
that can really reflect deeply
on the nature of the cosmos
and the laws of physics.
DOUG: And I think it's easier
to anticipate
what that impact would be
if we really do detect
something out there.
If we continue over the course
of hundreds
or thousands of years and search
but don't find anything,
I think from where
we're positioned right now,
we're in a very
difficult position
to contemplate what that means.
So much about cosmology
will change
in the course of those hundreds
or thousands of years
that it's very difficult to make
any sort of predictions
about the implications
of not detecting ET.
ROBERT: What are
the implications of cosmology?
Here are three:
1) The laws of physics
can generate vast complexity
from almost nothing.
Almost nothing, because the laws
of physics are not nothing.
2) Explanations end at either
the laws of physics
or at a non-physical
creative power,
like God or something like God.
3) The existence
or non-existence
of alien intelligence
could enrich the implications
of cosmology.
But I want more.
I'm not satisfied
with shrunken ambitions.
I want to know--really know--
does the cosmos have a reason?
And I find only three
possible answers.
1) Yes, there is a deep reason,
which we may or may not
be able to discern.
2) No, there is no reason.
The universe is just there,
and that's all.
3) The question is not
legitimate,
because while everything
in the universe has a reason,
the universe as a whole
does not.
What do I believe?
Yes, there is a deep reason,
but I have no good reason
that's...
closer to truth.
