#1233 - Brian Cox

Brian Cox (0:01)

That's very cool.

Joe Rogan (0:03)

Three, two, one. Yeah, a guy named, well, his online Twitter or Instagram handles, TGT Studios, and he makes these. I actually had one made for Elon.

Elon Musk loved it too, so he made one with this very beautiful red wood.

And what are those things made out of, Jamie? Some diodes or something? Nixie tubes. Nixie tubes.

Brian Cox (0:28)

They're valves, right? They're old valve technology.

Joe Rogan (0:31)

Yeah, he has to get them from Russia.

He has them delivered over from Russia, so they might have listening devices implanted in them as well. So, Brian, good to see you, man.

Brian Cox (0:42)

Great to be back.

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Yeah, great to have you back. So tell me about this tour that you're doing.

Brian Cox (0:47)

It's a world tour.

Joe Rogan (0:48)

Try to keep this sucker like a fist from my face.

Brian Cox (0:52)

How's that?

Joe Rogan (0:52)

That perfect.

Brian Cox (0:53)

Yeah, it's a world tour. It starts next week in the UK, and then we go everywhere from the South Island of New Zealand all the way to the Arctic Circle, to Svalbard, which is the furthest north that you can go on a commercial aircraft. In the middle, we're in the States for a month, mainly in May.

And yeah, it's about cosmology and about the questions that cosmology raises. So if you're interested in the science of how did the universe begin, even questions of what may have been there, is the universe eternal? Is there such a thing as before the Big Bang? What is the future of the universe? How does complexity emerge spontaneously in a universe? I mean, we take it for granted that we, there's a Big Bang and it's all hot and there's just this kind of hot glow of stuff.

And out of that spontaneously in 13.8 billion years, you get something like the Earth with the civilization and life on it. So how does that, do we know anything about that? I mean, we do. I'm asking the question rhetorically. We know quite a lot about it.

So it's really about showing the size and scale of the universe, but addressing those questions I think everybody has about what does it mean to be human? This tiny little finite life that we lead in a possibly infinite universe. How do you make sense of that?

Joe Rogan (2:13)

Well, it's incredibly exciting to me that there's a giant audience for this and that what Neil deGrasse Tyson had been doing and what a lot of public touring intellectuals are doing now, they're doing these giant theaters and these people are coming out to see these shows and we're realizing that there's, I mean, I hate to use the term market for this, but there's a demand for this and there's a lot of people who are incredibly fascinated by this and it's spreading information, it's spreading knowledge.

Brian Cox (2:40)

Yeah, I mean, in the UK particularly, I mean, the Wembley Arena, for example, you're talking about 10,000 people, 12,000 people in these shows.

And you're right, they are coming, although they're big shows, spectacular screens and all that, that they're coming for, to think, that they're coming to hear about what we know about the universe and nature. And I think, you know, I think, I'm not surprised people are interested, because these are questions that everybody asks. You know, I mean, just why am I here? You know, everybody's asking that question.

But my point is that there is a framework, there's a framework of knowledge, there are things we know about the universe. So it is true that scientists are not gonna tell you why you're here. They're not gonna tell you what the meaning of life is. But there is actually a, there are things you need to know if you want to start to explore those questions for yourself. You need to know that there are two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. You need to know that the Milky Way galaxy has got 200 billion stars. Most of those stars now we know have planetary systems. We estimate there are something like 20 billion Earth-like planets or potentially Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

So if you're asking questions about what is my place in the universe, you need to know those things, first of all. It's a framework within which you can think.

Joe Rogan (3:58)

When you get to those numbers, when you're talking about trillions and billions and all those zeros, my brain just goes numb. There's this lack of comprehension that I'm well aware of.

Those numbers get thrown about, I go, oh, 200 billion, hmm. Now, it's just.