Name: "Mindblower of Mindblowers" with Lawrence Krauss
Uploaded: 2017-03-30T20:55:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video '"Mindblower of Mindblowers" with Lawrence Krauss' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video '"Mindblower of Mindblowers" with Lawrence Krauss' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-03-30. Transcript available.

Hello, freak bitches
What about the ideas that the universe is in a constant state of contraction?
No, it isn't. Nah, nah.
Well, I mean, some people think that.
No, it's not been abandoned. Some physicists still argue that it's there's a
cycle because it looks nice and they are
But I think most of most people I mean there's some people who are arguing for
that
Do you think they're just trying to tie up something neat?
Well, I think they're trying to tie up their ignorance and something that isn't
any more plausible in the picture that it expands forever
And as far as we can tell the most likely possibility is that our universe will
expand forever
But to make you a little bit happier
It's quite possible the best pictures that we have of our of the early universe
is that we actually our universe isn't unique
Isn't alone that there are many universes. We call it a multiverse and that at
any instant in time in kind of a cosmic
Supertime there's always universe being born
So that that multiverse might be might be infinite and eternal
Where are they outside of our universe how's that even possible of course it's
possible I understand?
I'm not questioning it. Okay. No, here's one. Well first of all the simplest
possibility is that they're outside the region we can see
Right for for for example the edges of our visible universe space is expanding
faster away from us than light
Because you know we taught you in school nothing could travel faster than light
you may remember that from right we lied
Okay, well, no you have to parse it more carefully like a lawyer nothing can
travel through space faster than light
But space can do whatever the hell it wants so locally as I told you that radio
host is is at rest
They're not moving and the other end of the galaxy at the other end of the
invisible universe and we're at rest but the space between us is expanding
So that galaxy like a surfer is being carried away from us faster than light
relative to the water the surfer isn't moving
Right, but relative to the shore the surfer is right, right
Okay, so this this galaxy is not moving relative to its local surroundings
But it's moving away from us faster than light and like a surfer in an undertow
They can swim really fast in the water, but if the water is for moving away
from the shore then let me make it back to the shore
Right and so that galaxy the light from that galaxy is traveling through space
at the speed of light
But if the space in between us and the galaxy is moving faster than light then
the poor light can never make it to us
We call that a horizon
Wow, so the space is traveling too far for the light to reach us, so are I too
fast the space is too fast
so this light can't catch up with the expansion of space and it never gets to
us and
That that galaxy disappears from our causal horizon we call it
We'll never be able to see it. We'll never be able to interact with it. We'll
never be okay
And it could be that that there are different regions so far away from us where
space is expanding faster than light
Which which which have a very different history than our own?
So there could be space could be infinite just our simple unit space that we
know of and love could be infinite in extent and
Different regions of that space had different histories and some of those
regions
Everything we can see we know emerged from a single point
Okay, we can tell that we can tell that by measuring the big bang expansion of
everything we see and working backwards and the universe that our
Visible universe was once smaller and smaller and smaller if we go back in time
We can actually follow the laws of physics back to the earliest moments of the
big bang
Until those laws break down and we can make predictions about the universe
should look like all those predictions agree exactly with the observations
We make which tell us that that picture works, but another region if you wish
could have come from a different big bang
But is that another universe or is it a part of the universe that we can't see
here's how we've changed and I mean this is semantics
But non-trivial semantics namely when I was a kid
Universe meant everything everything right, but we say that's a pretty stupid
definition a better definition is an operational one
Universe means that region of space with which at one time we could have
communicated
Or one time in the future even if the future is infinite we might communicate
with
Because that describes the region of space where cause and effect works some
measurable distance
Yes, and so that art we think of a universe is that region which could
Throughout which everything could affect everything else ultimately in an
infinitely long time and
in that picture
Universes can be restricted in size and then other regions which could never
have affected
us and which will never affect us in the future we call other universes
I see and when and now there are many different versions of a multiverse
But that's the simplest version and this picture we call inflation
Which you know I talk I just did two little clips associated with the new book
One was for a publisher and one was for big think one is a the universe in
under two minutes
So you can look up online look for Lawrence Krauss explains the universe in
under two minutes where I talk about this cosmic expansion
And how it might mean there's a multiverse
But the other is I explain the universe in terms of this beer bottle that I
talked about to you earlier
So you can that's a video you can watch that but in this theory of inflation
which actually says our universe could the qualities that we see of our
universe
Can best be explained if some early time in the history of the universe when it
was a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth
of a billionth of a second old it had a huge expansion suddenly and increased
in size by 30 orders of magnitude in size in a billionth of a billionth of a
billionth of a billionth of a second
which is by the way
Particle physics suggests is highly plausible even though okay, and then and
then and then it would produce a universe that looks more or less like we look
what we look like
And and and and it's right now the only explanation of what of how that would
cause the universe to look like what it looks like
But the neat thing about inflation is it's eternal
So inflation that puffing up ended in our universe and then boom a hot big bang
followed it
Okay, so the region universe universe puffed up by a huge amount then all of
that energy
Which was stored in empty space got released like the beer bottle and we got a
hot big bang and the rest is history, but
That's locally but somewhere else between us in there space is still expanding
exponentially and
Faster and faster and faster and only maybe somewhere else today
Boom like an ice crystal forming boom that that region of space is suddenly
left inflation and maybe a guilt a gazillion
Years in the future there'll be another region of space that's expanding away
from us so much faster than light
So we'll never know about it where suddenly that region leaves inflation and
boom another hot big bang happens and it turns out in each of those hot big
bangs
After the inflation ends depending upon how it ends the laws of physics could
be different in that universe and
That's how we tend to think it's quite likely
That there are many many separate regions of space and and in fact it's eternal
So such regions are forming eternally for all time and and and there are hot
big bangs happening in many regions and the properties of each of those regions
Whether they're conducive to forming galaxies and stars and planets and people
may be different
So we could say logically in that picture that the reason the universe looks
like the way it does is because we're here to measure it
Oh my god, we should leave it at that. Okay, we should close with that. That is
the mind blower of mind blowers