#2023 - Brian Keating

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Thank you very much for coming, man. And thank you for bringing all this cool stuff. What is this old-timey telescope? Is that one of the ones the sailors used to use?

Brian Keating (0:20)

That's my spyglass, yeah, this is exactly my spyglass. This thing is actually one of the most important inventions ever made, and it really is the reason I'm probably sitting here with you.

It's the actual tool, not this one, but the telescope was really the machine that changed the world the most. And what's so cool about it, it acted like a lever that moved the Earth from being the center of the universe back in Galileo's time.

Joe Rogan (0:50)

What year did they invent it?

Brian Keating (0:51)

The telescope was invented around the early 1600s, and there's a popular misconception that Galileo invented it, but he didn't. And he actually perfected it. So he took it from zero to one, basically. He took this spy glass, which was really never, it's amazing. People were using eyeglasses for many years, and nobody ever thought to go take one lens, take another lens, and go like this. No one had ever done that. There was a guy, van Leeuwenhoek, and this guy Hans Lippershey, they had been making glass, and they were experts at making glass in the Netherlands.

But Galileo heard about that, and the original devices that they were making could magnify things two or three times at most. But Galileo realized, hey, I can improve this, and then do what mankind has always dreamt of doing, use it to make money, and use it for military purposes.

Because with a telescope, you could see a ship in the Venetian Lagoon a day or two out before it would come on shore, and you could see it from the ground.

So the distance back then was stealth technology. This took away the stealth. It would be like turning off the B2's ability to have stealth. So he improved it so much, it was just inarguable. This would change the world.

Joe Rogan (2:06)

So when was the eyeglass invented?

Brian Keating (2:09)

Eyeglass was invented, you know, it's kind of cool. The eyeglass was invented in probably the late 1500s, these lenses. Glass used to be total crap. It would be like looking through a piece of ice today.

These lenses are super clear and super clean. You know, modern lenses. This isn't a great telescope, but it's illustrative and we can use it to do things. But what was so interesting to me, it's just like a quirk of history, is when these lenses were invented, before then, you didn't, I don't know what your vision is, but mine's about 2020, it's getting worse with as I get older, obviously. But before then, there were no standards for how good a person's eyesight was until they had, say, the Gutenberg Bible was published. So in the 1400s and 1500s, the first movable fixed type, we had a calibrated standard where you knew how big the type font was. And you could say, well, Joe can only see something at five feet away that Brian can see at 10 feet away or something like that. So then they realized, hey, I can't see what Brian can see, or I can't see what Joe can see. I need some kind of augmentation. And they would put lenses on. So that was in the original direction from directly from the Gutenberg Bible to glasses.

And then what's so funny is the glasses then led to making a telescope.

And then the telescope led to the earth being moved away from being the center of the universe, which the Gutenberg Bible, you know, in some connotations, suggested that we were. So there's a direct line from the Gutenberg Bible to the glasses to the telescope to then, now religion is not so centralized in the age of scientific reason.

Joe Rogan (3:40)

So when they first started using telescopes, what kind of power are we talking about? Like when Galileo improved upon it, you said it was like zero to one. Yeah. Like how many levels of magnification?

Brian Keating (3:51)

So a good telescope that you can get, I always joke, you know, I'm not a doctor, but not a real doctor, but the only prescription Dr. Keating makes is that you should buy your kid a telescope. And actually the reason I said this is the reason I'm probably sitting here with you is because I became a scientist thanks to getting a telescope at about age 12 And you can actually see some, I know you've been to like the Keck Observatories, Monaco, and you've seen the night sky from there, and that is wonderful.