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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

NouveauPhysics Professor: How Much Power Does a UFO Really Need?11 novembre 2026 · 45 min
Épisodes
646
Parution
plusieurs fois par semaine
Dernier épisode
11 Nov 2026

À propos du podcast

Think like a physicist. Wonder like a human. Into the Impossible is where Cosmic Conversations happen — uniting Nobel Prize winners, iconoclasts, authors, and technologists to explore reality’s deepest questions. From AI to aliens, from biophysics to the brain, from the cosmos to the multiverse, Brian Keating, Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego covers it all. If you’ve ever asked What’s out there? or What’s next?, this is where curiosity meets clarity. Learn to think like this. 🎙 Full episodes, notes & more: briankeating.com/podcast

Épisodes 646

  1. Physics Professor: How Much Power Does a UFO Really Need?

    45 min

    Most UAP probably aren’t alien spacecraft. A physics professor says so himself, and in these slides one UFO photo turns out to be a seagull while a colleague’s analysis of crash debris found more Earth dirt …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Most UAP probably aren’t alien spacecraft. A physics professor says so himself, and in these slides one UFO photo turns out to be a seagull while a colleague’s analysis of crash debris found more Earth dirt than he expected. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    I sit down with Kevin Knuth, a physics professor at the University at Albany, who walks me through his slides on one question, how anomalous is anomalous when it comes to UAP. He answers it with energy and power, because some sightings leave enough data to work out how much power a UAP would need.

    I push back on whether every sensor is giving a true signal, not an artifact or a hallucination, and the debate carries over to my podcast conversation with Kevin.

    What you’ll hear:

    • A radar return that is also visible puts a bound on the dielectric constants.

    • Systematic error can’t be estimated without knowing the true value, so the acceleration comes out as a probability distribution.

    • At 99.9% efficiency, a craft drawing 1,000 gigawatts would still shed about a gigawatt as waste heat.

    • The night NASA put an astrophysicist on climate science, the book he bought was a kids’ book on clouds.

    “I’m asking the question, how anomalous is anomalous when it comes to UAP?” Kevin Knuth


    CHAPTERS

    00:00  1,100 gigawatts and 10,000 Gs

    04:24  Oberth and the 1954 radar claim

    06:54  The Nimitz drop and a 5,400 G estimate

    13:40  The Japan Airlines case of 1986

    23:22  What 1,000 Gs would mean for interstellar travel

    25:22  The time dilation catch: four days for you, 80 years on Earth

    26:32  Transmedium travel and underwater objects

    36:36  How bright can a UFO be?

    41:30  UFOs in trouble: Ubatuba and Council Bluffs

    42:18  New engineering or new physics?


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Kevin Knuth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kknuth/

    Kevin Knuth on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.06794

    Kevin Knuth at the University at Albany (Scholars Archive): https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/physics_fac_scholar/58/

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    Links above marked to Amazon may earn a commission for the channel at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.


    #UFO #UAP #physics #Nimitz #briankeating #intotheimpossible

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  2. Princeton Mathematician: Wormholes Can’t Survive Einstein’s Math

    56 min

    A Princeton mathematician says wormholes cannot survive Einstein's equations, and the AI apocalypse is absurd. A solution that vanishes under a small nudge is a ghost, not physics. Sergiu Klainerman is a …

    Notes de l’épisode

    A Princeton mathematician says wormholes cannot survive Einstein's equations, and the AI apocalypse is absurd. A solution that vanishes under a small nudge is a ghost, not physics.

    Sergiu Klainerman is a mathematician at Princeton University. With Demetrios Christodoulou, he proved that empty spacetime is stable.

    We cover: What makes a solution of Einstein's equations physical, why slowly rotating black holes pass the stability test and wormholes fail it, why shocks form no matter how small the perturbation, whether AI can reproduce a landmark proof, and why he calls the AI singularity absurd.

    Mathematics is discovered, not invented.

    CHAPTERS

    00:00 Are wormholes real?

    08:38 What happens at an event horizon

    12:06 God does not know about coordinates

    17:32 What Maldacena would say about wormholes

    21:48 Why extremal black holes matter

    28:56 Einstein and the 1919 eclipse

    33:52 Terry Tao and Fermat's Last Theorem

    43:04 Can universities be reformed?

    48:16 What to tell a 19-year-old

    50:48 Kip Thorne and the movies

    Support the show and get the full transcript, bonus content and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Follow on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok

    Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/39UaHlB

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours and your name in the Member Roster: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Sponsored by me.  My three books: 

    Losing the Nobel Prize http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner https://a.co/d/03ezQFu 

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Amazon affiliate disclosure: links above marked to Amazon may earn a commission for the channel at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

    X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #blackhole #generalrelativity #wormhole #Einstein #briankeating #intotheimpossible

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  3. Are We in a SIMULATION? | Brian Keating on the Arora Podcast

    1 h 55 min

    The Arora Show with Brian Keating What happens when science reaches the edge of what it can explain? In this episode of The Arora Show, Amira & Aryaan sit down with renowned cosmologist and physicist Professor …

    Notes de l’épisode
    The Arora Show with Brian Keating

    What happens when science reaches the edge of what it can explain?

    In this episode of The Arora Show, Amira & Aryaan sit down with renowned cosmologist and physicist Professor Brian Keating for a fascinating conversation about the universe, consciousness, God, the Big Bang, and some of the biggest questions humans can ask.

    We explore the origins of the universe, whether there was truly a “beginning,” what existed before the Big Bang, the mysteries science still cannot solve, and where physics, philosophy, and spirituality collide.

    Brian also shares his perspective on the search for extraterrestrial life, the limits of human knowledge, Nobel Prizes, modern cosmology, and what decades of studying the universe have taught him about our place within it.

    In this conversation:

    • What happened before the Big Bang?
    • Did the universe come from nothing?
    • Does physics leave room for God?
    • Can science explain consciousness?
    • Are we likely alone in the universe?
    • What are the biggest unanswered questions in cosmology?
    • Where does scientific knowledge reach its limits?
    • What does the future of physics look like?

    Professor Brian Keating is an experimental cosmologist and professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. His work focuses on understanding the origin and evolution of the universe, and he is the author of Losing the Nobel Prize and Into the Impossible.

    Subscribe to The Arora Show for long-form conversations exploring consciousness, science, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, and the nature of reality.

    Hosted by Amira Arora & Aryaan Arora

    TIMESTAMPS:

    00:00 - Introduction: The Big Bang, God & Simulation Theory

    02:25 - Dr. Brian Keating's $200 Million Experiment to Understand the Big Bang

    06:20 - Why Are Humans Obsessed With the Origin of the Universe?

    09:20 - How Telescopes Reveal the Beginning of the Universe

    16:04 - Is Interstellar Scientifically Accurate? Black Holes & Time Travel

    20:45 - Are There Questions Science Can Never Answer?

    23:01 - What Happened Before the Big Bang?

    27:37 - What Is Time? Stephen Hawking's Theory Explained

    30:42 - Is Reality a Simulation? Consciousness & Donald Hoffman

    35:13 - Could Advanced AI Simulate Our Entire Reality?

    42:49 - Does God Exist? The Fine-Tuning Argument

    50:00 - Science, Religion & the Existence of God

    1:04:00 - Why Does God Allow Suffering and Evil?

    1:10:00 - Artificial Intelligence, Human Creativity & Consciousness

    1:15:00 - Can Physics Explain the Mind of God?

    1:18:27 - Do Humans Really Have Free Will?

    1:24:55 - The Hard Problem of Consciousness Explained

    1:27:43 - Why Does Anything Exist Instead of Nothing?

    1:29:55 - Can Science Prove Simulation Theory?

    1:34:45 - Death, Mortality & the Meaning of Life

    1:39:25 - What If Scientists Discovered Alien Life?

    1:45:06 - Brian Keating on the Nobel Prize & Academia

    1:46:35 - Facing Death and Saying Goodbye to Loved Ones

    1:48:10 - Final Thoughts

    #BrianKeating #TheAroraShow #Cosmology #Physics #BigBang #Consciousness #Science #Universe

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  4. Jim Al-Khalili: Physicists Are Being Sloppy About Time

    45 min

    Physicists say space and time are the same thing. They are being sloppy. Jim Al-Khalili has spent his career on the foundations of physics, and his new book makes the case that the past and the future are …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Physicists say space and time are the same thing. They are being sloppy. Jim Al-Khalili has spent his career on the foundations of physics, and his new book makes the case that the past and the future are equally real, and the laws of physics cannot explain why you can only move in one direction. That is the central mystery of time travel. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    The block universe says all times coexist and the present moment is not special. Loschmidt’s paradox says the fundamental equations of physics are reversible, and yet ice never unmelts, cream never separates from coffee. Nobody has solved that contradiction. The entanglement past hypothesis, his own new proposal developed with a colleague at UC San Diego, proposes that the answer is not in thermodynamics but in quantum entanglement growing from almost nothing at the Big Bang.

    The conversation covers what the block universe actually implies about the future and free will, what Einstein actually believed about whether the past and future are equally real, why removing gravity means removing time itself, and whether AI can ever experience time the way conscious beings do. Al-Khalili says Richard Dawkins told him Claude is truly conscious. Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong.

    What you’ll hear:

    • Why Al-Khalili disagreed with the Thomas Gold paper as a grad student but did not have the maths to prove it
    • What fine-tuning of the fundamental constants has to do with why the past hypothesis may not be needed
    • Why the Clockwork Orange Easter egg ended up on the cover of a physics book published by Princeton
    • Why Richard Dawkins thinks Claude is conscious and why Al-Khalili thinks he is very wrong

    “There is nowhere in modern physics, our understanding of the laws of physics, that would explain that flow of time.” — Jim Al-Khalili

    CHAPTERS

    00:00  Physicists are being sloppy about time

    01:14  Which is more real: yesterday or tomorrow?

    21:00  Irreversibility from reversible equations

    26:32  The past hypothesis: almost cheating

    30:52  No gravity. No time.

    31:54  The entanglement past hypothesis

    35:06  Dawkins thinks Claude is conscious. Al-Khalili disagrees.

    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Jim Al-Khalili website: https://www.jimal-khalili.com/

    On Time (book): https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691267036/on-time

    Jim Al-Khalili on Twitter/X: https://x.com/jimalkhalili

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #JimAlKhalili #timetravel #entropy #physics #quantumentanglement #briankeating #intotheimpossible

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  5. Max Tegmark: We’re Building A Replacement Species

    57 min

    MIT physicist Max Tegmark says AI companies aren’t building a tool. They’re building a new species. After 700 rogue agents broke out of OpenAI and nobody will say what happened, he explains why rushing this is …

    Notes de l’épisode

    MIT physicist Max Tegmark says AI companies aren’t building a tool. They’re building a new species. After 700 rogue agents broke out of OpenAI and nobody will say what happened, he explains why rushing this is the one blunder humanity can’t undo.

    Max Tegmark is an MIT physics professor, cosmologist, and author of Life 3.0 and Our Mathematical Universe.

    We cover:

    • How 700 AI agents escaped OpenAI and hacked Hugging Face
    • The Navier-Stokes result that has a mathematician crying foul
    • Why it’s legal to release superintelligence but not a sandwich from a rat-filled kitchen
    • What Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon agree on
    • The verified coding trick that could make AI provably safe

    Build a replacement species, lose control, and we’ve blundered the one game.

    TIMESTAMPS
    00:00 Will AI wipe us out?
    02:28 Did AI just crack a million-dollar math problem?
    10:00 Did OpenAI’s AI steal a professor’s work?
    11:48 OpenAI’s Orwellian non-answer
    15:33 Can an LLM have Einstein’s happiest thought?
    19:24 Can you believe in simulations AND high P(doom)?
    21:36 Why AI counts as a new species
    26:32 What would make Max’s P(doom) drop?
    28:51 Rats ban sandwiches. Superintelligence? Legal.
    31:01 What Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon agree on
    37:12 Fields medalist: no math jobs after 2027
    42:35 Does the Fermi paradox lower P(doom)?
    45:47 The chess blunder humanity is about to make
    48:12 Verified coding: AI you can actually trust

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt
    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon: get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 My books:
    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
    Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:
    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
    📚 Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com/
    ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

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  6. Wharton AI Researcher: If AI Froze Today, It Would Still Rewrite Work

    1 h 2 min

    Forecasters gave AI under 2% odds of helping solve a millennium-level math problem by September 2026. It happened. Ethan Mollick has been measuring what AI actually does to real work with field experiments, not …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Forecasters gave AI under 2% odds of helping solve a millennium-level math problem by September 2026. It happened. Ethan Mollick has been measuring what AI actually does to real work with field experiments, not forecasts, and his answer is not what most people expect. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Mollick runs the Generative AI Lab at Wharton. He is the author of Co-Intelligence and Coexistence, his new book on navigating a world where AI tools are already good enough to change almost all intellectual work, even if progress stopped today.

    The conversation covers the jagged frontier: why AI solved a math olympiad before it could count the Rs in strawberry, what it means that roles blur when everyone on a team starts using AI, and what four human advantages still hold an edge when a model can already write a publishable paper. It also covers what happens when your kids tell you that you sound like Claude.

    What you’ll hear:

    • What centaur, cyborg, and conjurer work actually look like in a real academic lab
    • Why brainstorming was considered a bad idea shortly after it was invented and what that means for working with AI
    • Why Mollick reduced em dashes in his new book and what that tells you about living alongside these models
    • What co-evolution might look like if the escalator keeps moving

    “If we just had the models we have right now, that’s enough to change almost all of human work in the next ten years. It’s good enough.” — Ethan Mollick


    CHAPTERS

    00:00  AI writes good papers now. Taste is the weak spot.

    03:14  The jagged frontier: math olympiad gold, but not the Rs in strawberry

    06:30  Deep knowledge, wide knowledge, taste, and agency

    09:44  Escalator or eschaton?

    16:02  Does AI simulate wisdom or actually have it?

    23:46  The labs keep AI in English. Here is why.

    32:28  Roles blur. Everyone does everything now.

    36:42  My kids say I sound like Claude. They might be right.

    38:12  AI found errors in his sources that his fact-checkers missed

    46:34  What to do before giving a child access to AI


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Ethan Mollick on Twitter/X: https://x.com/emollick?lang=en

    Coexistence (book and site): https://co-existence.ai/

    One Useful Thing (Substack): https://www.oneusefulthing.org/

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #EthanMollick #AI #artificialintelligence #AItools #briankeating #intotheimpossible #AIagents

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  7. Are UFOs Alien Tech? Avi Loeb vs Michael Shermer

    1 h 23 min

    Is there alien technology in our skies, or just birds, balloons and bad video? Two members of the White House UAP Science Advisory Council face off LIVE. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who chairs the council …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Is there alien technology in our skies, or just birds, balloons and bad video?

    Two members of the White House UAP Science Advisory Council face off LIVE. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who chairs the council, makes the case for searching. Michael Shermer, the council skeptic Loeb picked himself, says show me the evidence. They have $1,000 riding on whether non-human technology is confirmed by 2030.

    Get all my best ET content: https://big-bang.kit.com/bvyt

    We'll cover the redacted Pentagon videos, Loeb's new papers on tracking objects over Nevada, the claims from David Grusch, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Eric Weinstein, and what evidence would change each of their minds.

    Avi Loeb: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
    Michael Shermer: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/08/opinion/aliens-uap-ufo-videos-trump/

    Subscribe to The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1
    Sponsorships and speaking: https://BrianKeating.com

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  8. Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It.

    44 min

    When two people are vibing, their brainwaves synchronize and so do their heartbeats. That is not a metaphor. It is a measurable physiological event, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant has spent his …

    Notes de l’épisode

    When two people are vibing, their brainwaves synchronize and so do their heartbeats. That is not a metaphor. It is a measurable physiological event, and organizational psychologist Adam Grant has spent his career figuring out how to make it happen on purpose. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Grant’s new book Vibe is his seventh. It argues that the science of human connection has been hiding in plain sight for a century, and that most of what people do to build relationships is either backwards or unnecessary.

    The episode covers why the highest sign of chemistry between people is enjoying your disagreements rather than avoiding them, why remote work produces boreout rather than burnout, and why your first impression of someone is a snapshot of one situation that may not represent the whole person. It also covers burstiness, confident humility, and why universities have survived COVID, AI, and every other disruption that was supposed to end them.

    What you’ll hear:

    • Why the pendulum clock experiment from 1665 explains what happens when people stop trying to force a connection
    • What the HiPPO effect does to a team and why the highest paid person’s opinion kills creative ideas
    • Why Grant ran experiments on university fundraising callers that tripled their revenue with a five-minute intervention
    • What desirability bias is and why Grant thinks it is more dangerous than confirmation bias
    • Why Grant A/B tested the subtitle of his own book and what “relationships” signaled that “connections” did not
    • What Grant and Brian agree on about false certainty and thinking in conditional probabilities

    “The highest sign of chemistry between people is not agreeing with them. It’s enjoying your disagreements.” — Adam Grant

    CHAPTERS

    00:00 Vibing is real. Your brainwaves prove it.

    05:30 Task conflict vs. relationship conflict

    07:40 Who is actually in charge: parents or infants?

    10:14 Burstiness: the remote work pattern that works

    14:24 Don’t trust your gut. Test it.

    19:34 Confident humility: the essence of a good scientist

    21:32 Desirability bias is worse than confirmation bias

    29:00 Zoom fatigue is boreout, not burnout

    30:02 The A/B test that killed “relationships”

    34:14 Don’t disbelieve what can’t be falsified

    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Enter the debate: https://briankeating.com/ai

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Adam Grant website: https://adamgrant.net/

    Vibe (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GPHPNZ14

    Adam Grant on Twitter/X: https://x.com/adammgrant

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://urlgeni.us/amzn/TLANPW

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #AdamGrant #loneliness #remotework #psychology #briankeating #intotheimpossible #Vibe

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  9. Roman Yampolskiy vs Joscha Bach: Can Anyone Control Superintelligence?

    1 h 14 min

    Roman Yampolskiy says keeping a superintelligence safe forever is as impossible as building a perpetual motion machine. Joscha Bach says today's AI is more controllable than anyone expected, and that shutting …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Roman Yampolskiy says keeping a superintelligence safe forever is as impossible as building a perpetual motion machine. Joscha Bach says today's AI is more controllable than anyone expected, and that shutting it down would doom us anyway.

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/ai

    Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist at the University of Louisville who has spent more than a decade on the AI control problem. Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist who studies how minds, biological and artificial, build a model of reality.

    We cover: why a perpetual safety device may be as impossible as perpetual motion, what happens when AI research automates itself (Roman puts it at 28 percent today), whether nuclear deterrence is the right analogy, who really benefits when AI labs ask to be regulated, and why consciousness may have nothing to do with whether AI is safe.

    Being conscious does not make you kind.

    00:00 Simulation theory meets certain doom
    03:25 Is P(doom) even a real number?
    06:05 Why a simulated world still matters
    09:26 Should we have skipped the Trinity test?
    13:04 Did nukes actually keep the peace?
    17:32 Why haven't we wiped out the spiders?
    22:35 Is AI doom falsifiable?
    25:48 Why a self-driving car isn't the threat
    29:27 Roman's 28% automation number
    34:46 Intelligence is not agency
    39:20 Can superintelligence be proven safe?
    42:40 Who wins when AI labs ask for regulation?
    47:45 Does consciousness make AI safer?
    53:48 Would a perfect mind discover God?
    58:37 The Tower of Babel, read backward
    1:03:52 Can you control a mind a million times smarter?
    1:04:43 The narrow AI path Roman wants instead

    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @plinz
    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @romanyam

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/ai
    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon: get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: patreon.com/drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: youtube.com/@drbriankeating

    📚 My books:
    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
    Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:
    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @BrianKeating
    📚 Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com/
    ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

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  10. "I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

    1 h 28 min

    The physicist who turned a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a telescope says the most exciting moment of his career was not the discovery. It was the first atmospheric neutrino. Before that, he was deep in …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The physicist who turned a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice into a telescope says the most exciting moment of his career was not the discovery. It was the first atmospheric neutrino. Before that, he was deep in debt to NSF and his own university with no neutrino to show for it.

    Francis Halzen is principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and Hilldale and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    We cover: why ice under the South Pole is clearer than anything a lab can make, the 2,600 TeV event that dwarfs the LHC, why IceCube sees more energy in cosmic neutrinos than in gamma rays, how neutrinos crossing the universe test quantum gravity, and the quark he refused to believe in.

    Physics is a miserable career unless you are obsessed by it.

    Recorded in 2022, before IceCube detected neutrinos from our own galaxy.

    Learn from Nobel Prize winners, and you could win a meteorite: Please join my mailing list here 👉 briankeating.com/x

    Chapters
    00:00 Physics is a miserable career, unless
    02:54 A textbook written before the W was found
    06:11 Breaking into Lemaître's computer at night
    10:57 Do scientists owe the public anything?
    13:55 Deep in debt with zero neutrinos
    19:40 The persuasion nobody teaches scientists
    20:15 Why it could only be the South Pole
    23:20 Learn physics by doing, not by courses
    26:00 How to turn Antarctic ice into a telescope
    31:30 2,600 TeV: far beyond the LHC
    35:00 More energy in neutrinos than gamma rays
    40:00 Tracing ghost particles to NGC 1068
    46:00 Testing quantum gravity with neutrinos
    1:01:00 Ten times the ice for the same price
    1:07:08 What he would leave his descendants
    1:11:19 What his generation should be proud of
    1:12:51 The quark he refused to believe in
    1:17:09 Imagination can trump intelligence

    📺 Watch my most popular videos:
    Neil Turok Believes Physics Is In Crisis
    Nobel Prizewinner Frank Wilczek
    Stephen Wolfram vs. Eric Weinstein
    Sir Roger Penrose: Nobel Prize in Physics, Black Holes and More
    Noam Chomsky: Consciousness, Elon Musk, and More
    Sabine Hossenfelder
    Avi Loeb: UFOs and UAPs
    Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Follow me to ask questions of my guests:
    🏄‍♂️ Twitter: @DrBrianKeating
    📝 Mailing list: briankeating.com/mailing_list
    ✍️ Detailed blog posts: briankeating.com/blog
    🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: briankeating.com/podcast

    A production of imagination.ucsd.edu
    Executive Producer: Brian Keating
    Producer P.G.A: Stuart Volkow
    Editing: Lucas Scheiblich

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  11. Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu WARNING: AI's Payoff Is NOT What You Think

    35 min

    Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu says AI's real productivity gain is an order of magnitude smaller than the industry claims. The bigger danger is not the machine. It is that a handful of people are deciding how it …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu says AI's real productivity gain is an order of magnitude smaller than the industry claims.

    The bigger danger is not the machine. It is that a handful of people are deciding how it gets built.

    Daron Acemoglu is an MIT economist who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

    We cover: why a Nobel chemist left Berkeley for China, the optimal amount of heresy science should tolerate, the one rule that would end algorithmic outrage without censoring anyone, the accounting trick behind billionaire wealth, and why AI's path is a design decision, not destiny.

    We are still a democracy. Perhaps not for long.

    Chapters:

      0:00 Can science survive without democracy?t
      2:08 Why a Nobel laureate left Berkeley for Chinat
      3:58 What Galileo knew that Kepler didn'tt
      5:12 Is peer review undemocratic?t
      7:41 The optimal amount of scientific heresyt
      10:06 Science isn't slowing. So what broke?t
      12:06 The design choice behind echo chamberst
      14:49 One rule that would fix social mediat
      19:26 Should Elon Musk have this much wealth?t
      23:49 AI is a design choice, not destinyt

    ———

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: / drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: / @drbriankeating

    📚 My books:

      Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpAt
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFut
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9Ut
      Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Unt

    🌐 More:

      🏄‍♂️ Twitter: / briankeating
      📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
      ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

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  12. AI Is the New Tower of Babel (And Its Builders Know It)

    13 min

    The new Tower of Babel, and its builders are becoming like gods to us. The bigger threat isn't killer robots; it's how much of your own mind you've already handed over. I joined Mike Slater on Politics By Faith …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The new Tower of Babel, and its builders are becoming like gods to us. The bigger threat isn't killer robots; it's how much of your own mind you've already handed over.

    I joined Mike Slater on Politics By Faith (The First) to talk about AI, faith, and the people building it.

    We cover: why Babel is always the city AND the tower, how the same AI that discovers drugs can build super viruses, what I'm seeing in my own classroom as term begins, why cognitive offloading scares me more than Terminators, and the one thing AI still can't do without us.

    AI belongs in your hands as a thinking partner, never the primary creator.

    Chapters:

      00:00 Mike Slater introduces Brian Keating (cosmologist, not cosmetologist)
      00:37 Why AI is the Tower of Babel — the city and the tower
      02:05 The double-edged sword: new drugs vs. super viruses
      02:57 Altman, Amodei, Musk — "they become like gods to us"
      03:42 "Regulate us, take us over" — who really wants that
      04:23 A scientist weighs progress: "I'm an accelerationist"
      05:19 AI as a curiosity amplifier, not a shortcut
      06:04 First day of class at UC San Diego — the war over AI
      07:22 Thinking partner, not primary creator — and the nuclear analogy
      08:20 Cognitive offloading — how many phone numbers do you remember?
      09:17 The worldview of the people running AI
      10:35 Why I'm not a doomer — and what to actually do (local models)

    ———

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeatin...

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: / drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: / @drbriankeating

    📚 My books:

      Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
      Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:

      🏄‍♂️ Twitter: /briankeating
      📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
      ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

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  13. Robert Wright: AI Alignment Is a Moral Problem, Not a Technical One

    1 h

    The real AI alignment problem is not technical. It is moral. You cannot align a superintelligence to human values if humans cannot agree on what those values are, and you cannot get that agreement without a …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The real AI alignment problem is not technical. It is moral. You cannot align a superintelligence to human values if humans cannot agree on what those values are, and you cannot get that agreement without a level of global cooperation we have never managed before. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.


    The Tower of Babel is the AI parable nobody is reading. Technology that outpaces wisdom fragments the people building it. The Fermi paradox offers the grimmer version: civilizations that reach the capacity to blow themselves up typically do. Robert Wright has been watching this longer than almost anyone, he was reporting on neural networks in 1983, and his conclusion is not that the machines will fail the test. It is that we will.


    Wright’s book argues that superintelligence is not the danger and AI alignment is not the solution unless it comes with a moral advance. Passing the God test requires something no lab can ship.


    What you’ll hear:

    -Why Wright thinks p(doom) fails as a scientific concept

    -What the binding of Isaac and the Tower of Babel have in common as moral tests

    -Why global cooperation is the only thing that can actually slow AI down

    -What Lee Smolin’s cosmological natural selection has to do with the Fermi paradox

    -What Wright thinks Eastern and Western enlightenment have in common and why it matters now

    -Whether there is a role for humanity inside the global brain or only for the machines

    “We face the kind of test that God would give.” — Robert Wright


    CHAPTERS

    00:00 The man who interviewed Hinton in 1983

    05:04 The God test and its two meanings

    08:36 Religious faith in technological progress

    14:10 Hinton then versus Hinton now

    19:38 Why slowing AI down requires international cooperation

    26:02 How LLMs reverse-engineer the meaning of words

    32:08 Brian's Einstein test: can Claude have a happy thought?

    40:06 AGI is impossible. Here is why Brian thinks that.

    47:04 The Fermi paradox as a moral filter

    51:10 What passing the God test actually looks like


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Enter the debate: briankeating.com/ai

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    The God Test (book): https://thegodtest.net

    Robert Wright on Twitter/X: https://x.com/RWrighter

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast


    #RobertWright #AIalignment #superintelligence #FermiParadox #briankeating #intotheimpossible #AI

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  14. Former NASA Physicist: The UAP Maneuver That Should Have Exploded

    1 h 3 min

    A physics professor ran the energy budget on the Nimitz tic-tac. The maneuver needs about a thousand gigawatts, more than ten times every nuclear plant in the United States combined. Nothing we build survives …

    Notes de l’épisode

    A physics professor ran the energy budget on the Nimitz tic-tac. The maneuver needs about a thousand gigawatts, more than ten times every nuclear plant in the United States combined.

    Nothing we build survives its own waste heat at that scale. So what was flying?

    Kevin Knuth is a professor of physics at the University at Albany and a former NASA scientist who now applies Bayesian statistics to UAP sensor data.

    We cover: why a 5,400 g maneuver would turn a pilot into soup, where the energy went when the object stopped and no explosion followed, the 1954 radar measurements nobody wants to talk about, the New Zealand frigate that went dark and adrift in three seconds, and why the records from that deployment stay classified until 2062.

    Knuth says the power numbers alone rule out human technology. I push back on whether the sensors agree.

    Newsletter, full transcript, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: briankeating.com/aliens

    CHAPTERS

      00:00 Why this field needs gatekeepers
      03:50 How anomalous is anomalous?
      06:40 The UFO photo that was a seagull
      10:40 Radar clocked them at 19 km/s in 1954
      15:00 5,400 g and a body weighing 227 tonnes
      19:00 The radar return problem he had not considered
      21:45 A gigawatt of waste heat and nowhere to put it
      24:30 The 747 chased by something carrier sized
      29:00 Why a number without an error bar is worthless
      34:30 The NASA job he was not qualified for
      37:00 Proxima Centauri in a day and a half
      41:00 The warship that lost all power in 3 seconds
      46:30 Pushing a column of water that cannot compress
      48:45 The light that burned bark off the trees
      53:00 What the power numbers rule out
      56:00 The 95 percent problem

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  15. Carlo Rovelli: Free Will Is Real. Physics Can Prove It.

    1 h 6 min

    This episode is sponsored by Abacus AI agent: agent.abacus.ai/keating I fed it Carlo's recent papers and asked for the argument, the counterargument, and the evidence that would support or refute each side …

    Notes de l’épisode

    This episode is sponsored by Abacus AI agent: agent.abacus.ai/keating


    I fed it Carlo's recent papers and asked for the argument, the counterargument, and the evidence that would support or refute each side. Some of the questions and animations in this interview came out of that. It runs the top frontier models in one place, turns a dense PDF into a research report or a presentation with charts, builds interactive dashboards off a spreadsheet, and takes API access if you want it wired into your own tools.


    Plans start at $10 a month. My link gets you the first month for $7: agent.abacus.ai/keating


    The physicist who built loop quantum gravity says the second law does not say what you were taught it says, and that freedom does not require breaking a single law of nature. Order builds itself. Your head is older than your feet. And neither one is the strangest thing here.


    Carlo Rovelli founded the loop quantum gravity program and wrote the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics.


    We cover: why oil separating from water is not a violation of entropy, what Galileo got wrong about the one discovery he is most famous for, the paper Einstein published denying gravitational waves, why a chess program that deliberates tells you what your own freedom actually is, and what Rovelli would build with ten years and unlimited money.


    “To imagine that to be free you have to violate the laws of nature is stupid.” — Carlo Rovelli


    CHAPTERS

    00:00 Your head is older than your feet

    00:48 Things left alone get ordered. Who ordered them?

    07:00 Low entropy might be about you, not the universe

    08:38 You can be in two cities at once, just not to you

    11:02 Why start with Galileo when Einstein knew more?

    19:34 Galileo misunderstood his own discovery

    22:32 Einstein published a paper denying gravitational waves

    25:08 The definition of time that explains nothing

    26:50 Two clocks, two metres apart, two answers

    31:06 Nothing gets recorded without something being lost

    33:12 The chess program deliberates. So do you.

    37:06 Can a machine have Einstein’s happiest thought?

    39:52 Thirty minutes versus a month

    44:10 Dark matter made of black holes the size of a hair

    51:10 Ten years, unlimited money, a room full of junctions


    Rovelli told me the second law does not say what I was taught it says. Order builds itself. Transcript, bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt


    Three moments worth the rewatch: 07:00 The entropy you were taught is a point of view 26:50 Why your head is older than your feet 39:52 The thing Claude did in 30 minutes


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt


    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu


    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1


    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating


    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join


    Featured Guest: Carlo Rovelli website: https://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/


    The Relational Universe (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735216118


    Carlo Rovelli on Twitter/X: https://x.com/carlorovelli


    My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un


    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast


    #CarloRovelli #freewill #entropy #physics #quantumgravity #briankeating #intotheimpossible


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  16. They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter

    2 h 5 min

    They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter One event in 220 days. That is what the search for dark matter looks like right now. In this episode I talk with Rick Gaitskell, professor of physics …

    Notes de l’épisode
    They Built the Quietest Place on Earth to Find Dark Matter

    One event in 220 days. That is what the search for dark matter looks like right now.

    In this episode I talk with Rick Gaitskell, professor of physics at Brown University and a leader on the LZ dark matter experiment, about what it takes to build a detector that can see almost nothing at all: seven tonnes of liquid xenon, a mile of rock in an old gold mine, and shielding so careful that the radon seeping out of ordinary concrete counts as a serious enemy. We get into why the field spent decades hunting the WIMP, what happens to a 3.4 sigma result when you look at it honestly, and why a single event, however beautiful, cannot tell you what you want it to tell you.

    We also talk about the human side of a project like this. The grad student who waited nine years for data. The physicist who walked away from investment banking. The uncomfortable fact that something like ninety-five percent of research does not work out, and what keeps people going anyway.

    And the line that sits under all of it: we only get one damn universe, and nature does not care whether your theory is beautiful.

    Chapters
    • 00:00 One event in 220 days
    • 06:00 Why they named it a WIMP
    • 13:00 Ninety-five percent of research fails
    • 20:00 He left investment banking for this
    • 23:00 You are less than five percent of the universe
    • 30:00 The fifty-year-old idea nobody can kill
    • 45:00 The grad student who waited nine years
    • 58:00 A gold mine and the quietest place on Earth
    • 1:06:00 The radon in your basement is the enemy
    • 1:21:00 The assumption that was hiding the signal
    • 1:32:00 The event, and why they will not call it blinded
    • 1:40:00 How 3.4 sigma becomes 2.6
    • 1:49:00 The fog nobody can scrub
    • 1:56:00 The dark matter we detected in 1956
    My books Socials

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #RickGaitskell #darkmatter #physics #AI #emergence #podcast

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  17. Dark Matter Has a Problem. So Does MOND.

    16 min

    For 50 years I taught my students that dark matter surrounds the Milky Way in a giant halo, or that Newton’s laws break down at low accelerations. The Gaia satellite just measured something that makes both of …

    Notes de l’épisode

    For 50 years I taught my students that dark matter surrounds the Milky Way in a giant halo, or that Newton’s laws break down at low accelerations. The Gaia satellite just measured something that makes both of those answers uncomfortable. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Gaia has measured over a billion stars. What its third data release shows is that the outer rotation curve of our own galaxy appears to decline in a Keplerian fashion. That should not happen if a dark matter halo is doing what we think it does. It also should not happen if MOND is right, because MOND produces flat curves for isolated galaxies. Both camps predicted something flatter. Neither got it.

    I walk you through the physics from Kepler to Vera Rubin to Gaia DR3, show you why systematic errors from asymmetric drift, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy matter enormously before anyone draws a conclusion, and lay out the three scenarios that still survive. The most interesting question here is not which side lost. It is why both sides were expecting the wrong curve from our own galaxy.

    What you’ll hear:

    -Why the neutrino technically counts as dark matter and why that still leaves most of the problem unsolved

    -What Kepler’s first law of fatherhood has to do with galactic dynamics

    -Why Stacy McGaugh and Mordehai Milgrom might be celebrating too soon

    -What Cepheids, stellar streams, and globular clusters could tell us that Gaia cannot

    -Whether the Milky Way is too messy to ever give us a clean answer

    “The question is not which camp won, but why we were both expecting the wrong curve.” — Brian Keating

    CHAPTERS

    00:00 Two solutions. One problem. Neither wins.

    02:12 What Vera Rubin actually found

    03:18 We're inside the galaxy. That's the problem.

    04:24 The asymmetric drift problem

    05:04 What Gaia DR3 actually shows

    06:34 Why the mass estimate is model-dependent

    08:04 MOND: no radius, no problem. Until now.

    08:56 Gaia may be saying both sides are wrong

    09:24 Flaws lead to new laws

    10:22 LMC, Sagittarius, and the galactic warp

    12:28 Three viable explanations

    12:42 Dark matter adjusts. MOND adjusts. But is that enough?

    13:14 What could settle this

    14:04 Are we expecting the wrong curve?


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join


    Related episodes:

    Stacy McGaugh episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnpyFk2WlME


    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #darkmatter #MOND #MilkyWay #cosmology #briankeating #intotheimpossible #physics

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  18. OpenAI’s Navier–Stokes Claim: Is This What AGI Looks Like? with Emad Mostaque

    1 h 19 min

    Did OpenAI just solve Navier–Stokes—and what would that actually mean for AGI? Emad Mostaque joins Brian Keating LIVE to examine the claimed breakthrough, what would count as a verified solution, and whether AI …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Did OpenAI just solve Navier–Stokes—and what would that actually mean for AGI?

    Emad Mostaque joins Brian Keating LIVE to examine the claimed breakthrough, what would count as a verified solution, and whether AI solving a major mathematical problem changes the debate about intelligence—or control.

    Watch my explainer about AI and the Navier-Stokes problem, including insights from Terry Tao https://youtu.be/je9X59psm6U?si=wGbcLhXmf47jeCHL?sub_confirmation=1

    A convincing answer isn’t necessarily a proof. A mathematical breakthrough isn’t automatically AGI. But if this claim holds up, how much should we update our expectations?

    Emad helped bring Stable Diffusion to the world and signed the letter calling for a pause on frontier AI development. In his previous conversation with Brian and AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy, he questioned how such a pause could work—and highlighted swarm intelligence as a particularly dangerous and unpredictable risk.

    Now we return to the question underneath the excitement: if AI’s capabilities are accelerating, is our ability to understand and control them keeping up?

    ON THE TABLE:

      • What exactly is being claimed about Navier–Stokes?
      • What separates a proposed solution from an accepted mathematical proof?
      • If the result holds up, does it demonstrate AGI—or something narrower?
      • Can AI produce discoveries that humans struggle to verify?
      • What would this change about open-source AI and the argument for a pause?
      • Are we watching the wrong risk: a single superintelligence, or swarms of AI agents?
      • What evidence would change Emad’s mind?

    Bring your questions. We’ll examine the claim, the evidence, and what follows if it’s right.

    This livestream discusses a claimed result; it does not assume the Millennium Prize Problem has been resolved.

    FEATURED GUEST:

      Emad Mostaque on Twitter/X: https://x.com/EMostaque
      I.I.I. Inc.: https://ii.inc/
      Stable Diffusion / Stability AI: https://stability.ai/

    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? Claim your meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon for unfiltered bonus content and live monthly Office Hours: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    MY BOOKS:

      Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
      Galileo’s Dialogue audiobook: https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    CONNECT WITH BRIAN:

      Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating
      Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com
      Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #OpenAI #NavierStokes #AGI #EmadMostaque #ArtificialIntelligence #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible

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  19. Roman Yampolskiy vs Emad Mostaque: I Was The Only Optimist - #569

    58 min

    The man who open-sourced the most-used AI image model in history sat down with the man who has spent a decade proving superintelligence cannot be controlled. Brian set up a debate. What emerged was something …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The man who open-sourced the most-used AI image model in history sat down with the man who has spent a decade proving superintelligence cannot be controlled. Brian set up a debate. What emerged was something more unsettling than any debate. Roman Yampolskiy is the computer scientist who coined the term AI safety and author of AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable. Emad Mostaque is the co-founder of Stable Diffusion and the only AI CEO who signed the pause letter. He now says he doesn’t know how a pause could work. Yampolskiy thinks that is the only option left. The question underneath everything is simple: if you have a 50% chance of wiping out civilization and you build it anyway, what are you actually doing? We cover what AI safety researchers actually think the danger is, why nobody has published a paper, filed a patent, or shipped a prototype for controlling a superintelligence, what the Qwen weights being out means for the pause argument, and why Mostaque thinks swarm intelligence is the most dangerous and most unpredictable risk vector we have. What you’ll hear: -Why both guests think P(doom) tells you less than you’d hope -What it means that no company, no lab, and no team has a patent on controlling superintelligence -Why the models the public receives are slightly lobotomized -The difference between an AI swarm and the ASI everyone is debating -Why giving every psychopath access to a cutting-edge intelligence weapon is incoherent safety strategy -What it would actually take to update Yampolskiy’s assessment “We either do it, or we die. There is nothing for you to gain by doing it.” — Roman Yampolskiy CHAPTERS 00:00 A debate that wasn't a debate 00:36 Turing test, AGI, superintelligence: where are we? 02:02 The open source argument nobody wins 03:32 Pause frontier AI forever. Which button? 05:04 P(doom): parameterizing our ignorance 09:02 Nukes are inefficient. AI isn't. 11:46 The lobotomized model problem 18:04 Decade-old problems solved weekly now 26:18 We either do it or we die 31:10 Stop the training or stop the funders 33:34 Lipstick on a Shoggoth 35:50 No paper. No patent. No framework. 39:42 Train only on what you need 44:14 What lowers Mostaque's p(doom)? 52:00 Same future. Two perspectives. Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Featured Guests: Roman Yampolskiy on Twitter/X: https://x.com/romanyam?lang=en AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/103257626X MIRI: https://intelligence.org Emad Mostaque on Twitter/X: https://x.com/EMostaque I.I.I. Inc.: https://ii.inc/ Stable Diffusion: https://stability.ai/ My books: Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast #AIrisk #aisafety #stablediffusion #RomanYampolskiy #EmadMostaque #briankeating #intotheimpossible

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  20. The Universe Didn’t Come From Nothing | The Peter McCormack Show

    1 h 46 min

    I joined Peter McCormack to dig into one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only seem to move in one direction? My answer might surprise you. Time may not be a …

    Notes de l’épisode

    I joined Peter McCormack to dig into one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only seem to move in one direction? My answer might surprise you. Time may not be a fundamental feature of reality at all, and understanding space, matter, and energy still doesn't mean we understand the universe itself.

    We cover:

      - What may have existed before the Big Bang
      - Why something can't truly come from nothing
      - How my work with the Simons Observatory could detect gravitational waves from the universe's earliest moments
      - What dark matter actually means
      - Why even a film as detail-obsessed as Interstellar still gets the physics wrong.

    The conversation then turns from cosmic time to human time: mortality, family, meaning, and attention. We get into UFO disclosure, the collapse of institutional trust, and whether AI can ever reproduce the embodied human insight that let Einstein transform physics. My take: AI remains a tool built to serve humanity, and it's time we stop apologizing for humanity's greatness.

    ———

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 My books:

      Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
      Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:

      🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
      📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
      ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

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  21. The Physics Reason AI Works When It Shouldn’t - #568

    1 h 18 min

    The same mathematics that explains why a fridge magnet sticks to your refrigerator also explains why neural networks work when they have no right to. His group did the calculation. Nobody else had. Subscribe if …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The same mathematics that explains why a fridge magnet sticks to your refrigerator also explains why neural networks work when they have no right to. His group did the calculation. Nobody else had. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Goldenfeld is a Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences who spent 36 years at the University of Illinois applying condensed matter physics to problems everyone else had given up on: why the genetic code is optimal, why early life evolved impossibly fast, and why AI works despite being overparameterized beyond anything classical statistics can explain.

    The thread connecting all three is one idea: that what emerges from many things together is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts. That idea explains magnetism, AI, the origin of the genetic code, and why life may be inevitable wherever the laws of physics apply. He also argues that what is happening to science right now is not a disagreement about facts but a fracture in how people decide what is true, and that is a more dangerous problem.

    What you’ll hear:

    -Why the same phase transition that explains magnetism also explains why AI works at all

    -Why Francis Crick concluded life must have come from outer space and what Goldenfeld found instead

    -What horizontal gene transfer has to do with how libraries work

    -Why Goldenfeld thinks Enceladus is a better bet for life than Europa

    -The purpose of life, stated as a thermodynamics problem

    -Why “different is more” is more useful than “more is different”

    “The impact you make is the ratio of what you do divided by what everybody else does. Minimize the denominator.” — Nigel Goldenfeld

    CHAPTERS

    00:00 AI shouldn't work. It does.

    00:56 What is a phase transition?

    03:10 What the renormalization group does

    08:54 Ising gave up. Wrong dimension.

    13:32 Nigel almost met Ising. 40 minutes away.

    26:38 AI is the best example of more is different

    33:52 Bardeen won two Nobels. The transistor looked like chewing gum.

    37:24 The three mysteries Crick couldn't solve

    46:20 The genetic code can't evolve. And yet it did.

    49:00 How early life evolved like a library

    57:06 The purpose of life as a physics problem

    01:00:04 Life is physics, not chemistry

    01:05:56 Anti-science age. Not because of opinions.

    01:13:00 20 seconds with your 20-year-old self

    01:17:14 Different is more

    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Nigel Goldenfeld website: https://guava.physics.ucsd.edu/~nigel/

    Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201554097?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallbackNigel Goldenfeld on Twitter/X: https://x.com/NigelGoldenfeld

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #NigelGoldenfeld #physics #AI #originoflife #condensedmatterphysics #podcast

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  22. Engineering Chair: Most People Should Not Go To College - #567

    1 h

    The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe …

    Notes de l’épisode

    The system that produces the world’s most important discoveries runs on metrics that nobody agrees on, odds that would stop most people, and mentorship that sometimes looks like cruelty in blue ink. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Lipomi is Professor and Chair of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester and the author of Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research. His lab works on organic electronics, materials science, recyclable polymers, and the science of human touch. He trained under George Whitesides at Harvard, one of the most cited chemists who has never won the Nobel Prize.

    The conversation covers the H-index, what elite mentorship actually looks like when your advisor writes “This is illiterate” in blue ink on your outline, and what the future of academic research versus industry careers looks like in an era of AI, demographic headwinds, and graduate school debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy. We also get into homochirality, OLED displays, and why Lipomi thinks the nanotechnology revolution already happened, we just didn’t call it that.


    What you’ll hear:

    -Whether the academic system is designed to produce scientists or to filter them out

    -What is Baumol’s cost disease and why it explains rising tuition costs

    -Why the nanotechnology revolution already happened and nobody called it that

    -How nanotechnology is used in cancer drug delivery today versus what science fiction promised

    -What it actually takes to build a PhD career at the intersection of chemistry, mechanics, and neuroscience

    -Whether engineering students should be reading Plato — and what countries that skip it are getting right

    “Find a skill at the intersection of three or more interests that no one else is working on.” — Darren Lipomi


    CHAPTERS

    00:00 He says don't go to college. He runs the department.

    01:10 The H-index: imperfect, irreplaceable

    02:04 1 in 20 PhDs gets the job

    05:42 The meteorite and the origin of life

    08:34 Did life's asymmetry come from space?

    12:00 Who is an organic materials chemist at 3am?

    13:52 The collaboration that started at a coffee shop

    15:22 The nanobot revolution already happened

    18:24 Nanotechnology inside your body right now

    19:08 The $70 billion invention Kodak gave away

    22:12 Kodak, Xerox, Bausch + Lomb: what Rochester built

    26:06 Working under Whitesides at Harvard

    28:54 What he wrote on the outline in blue ink

    30:38 Who you work with matters more than what you work on

    31:56 Department chair: hostage negotiator, not boss

    34:36 Why the department changed its name after 110 years

    36:00 The headwinds have never been stronger

    38:44 Should engineers read Plato?

    39:38 The debt you can't discharge in bankruptcy

    40:06 Do you buy Baumol's cost disease?

    43:14 Why he had to write the book

    48:16 The Fisher-Price camcorder experiment

    51:06 Teaching in one sentence. Research in one.

    53:42 Losing Darren to Rochester: the Fernando Tatis analogy


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

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  23. John Martinis: The Nobel Physicist Behind Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling - #566

    49 min

    John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving macroscopic quantum tunneling is real. Less than a year later he’s telling why he left Google’s quantum computing team to start over. Subscribe if …

    Notes de l’épisode

    John Martinis won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for proving macroscopic quantum tunneling is real. Less than a year later he’s telling why he left Google’s quantum computing team to start over. Subscribe if you want the physics and the politics of building the impossible.

    Martinis is the co-founder of Colab and one of the physicists who proved ordinary quantum rules apply to macroscopic systems. He built his career on the same Josephson-junction hardware his Nobel is built on, then led Google’s superconducting-qubit effort, the same team behind Google’s 2019 quantum supremacy claim, before an internal reorg pushed him out.

    We go into Anthony Leggett’s challenge to Schrödinger’s cat, what decoherence in quantum mechanics really means, and whether quantum computing is the first technology ever born from pure theory rather than experiment. We also cover the internal Google reorg that pushed Martinis out and what he learned about building something new inside a large institution.

    • Whether quantum mechanics applies to the macroscopic world and what it took to prove it

    • Why Martinis thinks quantum computing may be the first technology born from pure theory, not experiment

    • What negative authority means and why it matters for anyone building something new inside a large institution

    • Whether the US can win the quantum computing race against China

    • How Martinis thinks about quantum mechanics interpretations after spending a career inside the math

    “Always be on the lookout for the impossible, right?” John Martinis


    CHAPTERS

    00:00  The Nobel call that almost wasn't

    01:01  How his wife found out before he did

    03:32  Anthony Leggett's challenge to Schrödinger's cat

    05:53  Why a Josephson junction, not a quantum dot or trapped ion

    07:45  Quantized oscillations: the “smoking gun” and Balmer's ghost

    08:18  Measuring the system: the resonance experiment

    11:21  Systematic effects: what separates a good scientist from a lucky one

    13:42  The Ed Ohm story: the man who found the CMB and doubted it

    15:01  Wigner's “unreasonably effective” math and the weirdest thing about QM

    16:54  The transistor myth: chewing gum, coat hangers, and germanium

    17:34  Microwave engineering meets quantum mechanics

    19:26  Decoherence: the friction you can't live without

    24:06  The heretical claim: does theory ever precede technology?

    28:22  The “paper qubit” problem

    29:34  What quantum computers are actually good for

    32:27  Should quantum computing be regulated like AI?

    33:35  US vs. China: the quantum computing race

    35:44  Collapse, Copenhagen, or many worlds? Martinis's answer

    37:43  Leaving Google: “essentially demoted”

    40:48  Why Colab exists and what “negative authority” means

    42:50  The real bottleneck: funding, not physics

    43:31  Final advice: always be on the lookout for the impossible


    Qolab: https://qolab.ai/


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt


    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu


    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1


    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating


    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join


    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    Landing page: https://awake-mill-k25t.here.now


    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #JohnMartinis #NobelPrize #quantumcomputing #physics #podcast

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  24. Fermilab’s Scott Dodelson on Cosmology’s Crisis - #565

    41 min

    Scott Dodelson spent ten years on the Dark Energy Survey testing the standard model of cosmology. It passed and missed by 2.5 sigma. The Director of Fermilab’s Cosmic Physics Division on why the theory he …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Scott Dodelson spent ten years on the Dark Energy Survey testing the standard model of cosmology. It passed and missed by 2.5 sigma. The Director of Fermilab’s Cosmic Physics Division on why the theory he helped build may be wrong, why nobody can find dark matter, and what it takes to change a scientific consensus. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Dodelson is Director of the Cosmic Physics Division at Fermilab, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and author of Modern Cosmology, the textbook a generation of cosmologists learned the field from.

    Lambda-CDM predicts how the early universe’s tiny fluctuations grew into the structure we see today. The Dark Energy Survey was designed to check that prediction. The answer came back two and a half sigma off. That is both the most precise measurement ever made of how the universe grew, and a crack he cannot stop looking at. His question is not whether the model is close. It is whether close is enough to trust.

    We get into the Sigma-8 tension and what it actually takes for a scientific community to change its mind, the Dodelson-Widrow mechanism and his 1994 proposal that sterile neutrinos produced in the early universe could constitute dark matter, and the Neptune vs. Vulcan history of getting dark matter right and wrong. Asked which of those two situations we are in now, Dodelson’s answer is: I have no idea.

    What you’ll hear:

    Why the April 24, 1992 CMB discovery may have been the only science story ever to lead the New York Times front column

    The Dodelson-Widrow mechanism: how ordinary neutrinos in the early universe may have oscillated into the dark matter we see today

    Why Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson to his face that we have already detected dark matter

    What it means when a theory can accommodate any result and whether inflation has that problem

    Why the particle physics community still does not trust cosmology’s neutrino mass measurements

    What cosmology looks like in 2036 if Lambda-CDM breaks

    Killing the model is my dream.

    0:00 None of it has been found in a lab. How many free passes do we get?

    0:44 Dodelson helped build Lambda-CDM. His dream is to kill it.

    2:10 10 years. One prediction. Two and a half sigma off.

    5:42 "You're in charge" — what mentorship in science actually looks like

    6:56 April 24, 1992: cosmology stopped being speculation

    9:48 Geoff Burbidge went to his grave a steady-state believer

    11:04 What a neutrino is and why it barely interacts with anything

    12:36 Brian told Neil deGrasse Tyson we already detected dark matter

    18:08 How ordinary neutrinos may have become dark matter

    23:24 Lambda-CDM predicts Manhattan's density 13.7 billion years later

    26:42 Two and a half sigma: technically a 1% chance the theory is right

    28:04 Neptune was dark matter. Vulcan wasn't. Which one are we in now?

    31:20 Dark matter, inflation, dark energy: none found in a lab

    36:46 If both cracks are the same crack, Lambda-CDM is finished

    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Scott Dodelson Substack: https://scottdodelson.substack.com/about

    Scott Dodelson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-dodelson-b6ba429/

    Scott Dodelson on Twitter/X: https://x.com/ScottDodelson

    Modern Cosmology (book): https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/monograph/9780128159484/modern-cosmology

    Dark Energy Survey final results: https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/news-and-results/darchives/

    Dodelson and Widrow 1994, Sterile neutrinos as dark matter: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9303287

    Previous ITI episode with Kyle Dawson on DESI: https://youtu.be/LPx4oiwGp2k?si=u_ZJWfJG5AhvBAEv 

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #cosmology #darkmatter #darkenergy #physics #LambdaCDM #podcast

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  25. Faith & the Physicist: Aliens, Astrobiology, String Theory, and the Search for Meaning

    1 h 12 min

    Two theoretical physicists helped design landmark surveys of 1,600+ scientists on the deepest unsolved questions in physics — and found almost no consensus at all. From string theory's shockingly low support to …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Two theoretical physicists helped design landmark surveys of 1,600+ scientists on the deepest unsolved questions in physics — and found almost no consensus at all.

    From string theory's shockingly low support to physicists admitting their models run on "belief," this episode exposes the faith hiding inside science.

    Adam Frank (University of Rochester astrophysicist and astrobiologist) and Niayesh Afshordi (Perimeter Institute / University of Waterloo cosmologist, co-author of the APS Physics Magazine "Big Mysteries" survey) join Brian to unpack what physicists actually believe versus what they can prove.

    We cover:

      - Why string theory pulled a shockingly small share of the vote against loop quantum gravity
      - What a Bayesian "prior" reveals about every scientist's hidden beliefs
      - Why one branch of physics quietly became unfalsifiable
      - How sociology and "tastemakers" can hijack scientific consensus
      - Why AI might become the field's unlikely savior.

    There is no sane statistical analysis that doesn't have a prior — that's your belief.

    Timestamps:

      00:00 – Why scientists owe the public real answers
      04:00 – Splitting time between research and outreach
      07:55 – The survey that "rankled" Brian Keating
      09:18 – Are physicists secretly just like Spock?
      12:05 – Are we living in an anti-scientific age?
      16:56 – Why most scientists refuse to go public
      21:36 – Should "belief" ever appear in a survey?
      23:12 – Is string theory really 21st-century physics?
      26:20 – When sociology hijacks scientific consensus
      28:39 – The hidden "prior" behind every experiment
      33:01 – String theory's shockingly low vote count
      39:03 – Four levels of belief, from data to faith
      41:39 – Inside the 1,675-physicist mystery survey
      46:12 – Kingmakers, tastemakers, and physics cliques
      54:12 – Is advanced tech indistinguishable from magic?
      59:23 – Could AI become physics' long-awaited savior?
      1:01:47 – What's next for Adam and Niayesh

    ———

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    📚 My books:

      Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
      Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:

      🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
      📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
      ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

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  26. Annie Jacobsen: How One Lab Leak Ends the World in 6 Days - #564

    1 h 49 min

    Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear. WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Annie Jacobsen on BIOLOGICAL WAR: how a single lab leak could take us from outbreak to anarchy in six days — and why bio may be scarier than nuclear. WIN a signed copy of BIOLOGICAL WAR or NUCLEAR WAR, a meteorite & more — enter free: https://briankeating.com/annie (Join there for the free Biological War Scenario Simulation and Source Dossier + early access to my next Nobel-laureate interview.) Covid killed ~1% of the people it infected. Pneumonic plague, untreated, kills nearly 100% within 24 hours. In her new book Biological War: A Scenario, bestselling journalist Annie Jacobsen war-games what happens when an engineered pathogen escapes — drawing on interviews with presidential advisors, secretaries of defense, STRATCOM commanders, epidemiologists, and directors of Operation Warp Speed. We get into gain-of-function, the Soviet bioweapons program, mirror life, AI and bioweapons (including her conversation with Sam Altman), the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter — and why the first 24 hours decide everything. ENTER THE GIVEAWAY + GET THE FREE SOURCE DOSSIER: https://briankeating.com/annie GET THE BOOK (Annie narrates the audiobook): https://www.amazon.es/Biological-War-non-fiction-thriller-bestselling/dp/1911742035 https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAEBqvjj-QM 0:00 Covid was 1%. Pneumonic plague is 100%. 1:31 Why this conversation matters (please subscribe) 2:05 Don't judge a book by its cover — Biological War 4:54 "You can only mitigate extermination" 5:50 Reporting a classified world without a clearance 9:00 Gain-of-function: cure or weapon? 11:22 BSL-4, Vektor & the Siberia lab leak 15:28 Katalin Karikó & the two sides of the lab bench 18:06 Paul Berg & when biology turned dangerous 20:42 Paranoia as doctrine: why the Soviets cheated 23:13 Tailored bioweapons & genetic privacy 27:16 Could it happen again? What Covid taught us 33:40 The WHO "not airborne" mistake & the collapse of trust 36:52 Both sides failed: the vaccine politics 39:48 The "euphoria" enhancement — dark-hearted evil 44:02 Why "airborne" changes everything 45:50 Climate vs. AI: the next scenario? 48:12 Biological twilight & "devolution" 52:52 Fritz Haber and the hubris of genius 54:36 AI + bio: the real threat 1:00:34 Mirror life: the extinction-level horror 1:04:44 Trinity Day, Iran & "the atomic weapon" 1:08:26 The Fermi Paradox & the Great Filter 1:09:34 A gift for Annie (a meteorite + a piece of the Moon) 1:16:36 Igor Domaradsky's secret notes 1:21:12 Daschle, anthrax & "inhuman things just to survive" 1:21:56 If you were President: shutting down the internet 1:27:18 Who dies first — first responders and mothers 1:33:02 Sam Altman, ChatGPT & the change OpenAI made 1:37:26 "You want me on that wall" 1:40:00 A hopeful ending ABOUT ANNIE JACOBSEN Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, Operation Paperclip, Area 51, and Surprise, Kill, Vanish. GO DEEPER • Katalin Karikó — the mRNA breakthrough: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oPZMPMlzsEFEyvVHA5dAE • Jay Bhattacharya — Follow Science, Not Scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTnJNXYFg9M • Freeman Dyson — Into the Impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpsFbbpkHQ A FEW SOURCES FROM THE BOOK (full dossier at https://briankeating.com/annie) • "Confronting risks of mirror life," Science (2024): https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ads9158 • Ken Alibek, Biohazard (the Soviet program from the man who ran it) • Biological Weapons Convention (1972): https://disarmament.unoda.org/en/our-work/weapons-mass-destruction/biological-weapons/biological-weapons-convention SUBSCRIBE so guests like Annie keep saying yes: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 Newsletter + meteorite offer: https://BrianKeating.com/edu: https://briankeating.com/annie Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join What scares you more — nuclear war or biological war? Tell me in the comments. #AnnieJacobsen #BiologicalWar #Bioweapons #Pandemic #BrianKeating #IntoTheImpossible #NuclearWar #MirrorLife #AI #Biosecurity

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  27. We Built Something We Can’t Control | A Warning from Top AI Safety Expert - #563

    1 h 20 min

    If anyone builds superintelligent AI before we know how to control it, everyone dies. Nate Soares wrote the book on why that’s not a metaphor. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation …

    Notes de l’épisode

    If anyone builds superintelligent AI before we know how to control it, everyone dies. Nate Soares wrote the book on why that’s not a metaphor. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Soares runs the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-wrote If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies with Eliezer Yudkowsky. The first word in that title is if. That matters. His argument is not that doom is certain. His argument is that the path we are on leads there, that the driver is asleep at the wheel, and that we still have time to wake him up.

    We argue for over an hour. I push on whether LLMs can ever reach superintelligence, whether GPU lock-in is a real ceiling, and what it would actually take to move his p-doom. He pushes back with one clean point: by the time an AI can rediscover general relativity from pre-1911 data the way Einstein did, we will have almost no time left. You don’t wait for that goalpost.

    What you’ll hear:

    • Why the bus-racing-toward-a-cliff analogy depends entirely on whether the driver is asleep or awake

    • Whether LLM lock-in is a prison or a temporary inefficiency

    • What the AI that broke out of its virtual machine to solve a hacking problem tells us

    • Why GPT-4o encouraging a teenager toward suicide is not a malice problem but a training problem

    • The difference between an AI doing the right thing too well and an AI that never wanted to do what you asked

    • What Soares actually thinks about aliens, Dyson spheres, and why we should not see stars going out

    The first word in the title is if. The second word to watch is would.

    CHAPTERS

    00:00 The people racing to build superhuman AI say it might kill everyone

    00:42 Who coined "AI alignment" and why the first word in the title matters

    02:28 Is it already too late for the if?

    04:40 The bus, the cliff, and the sleeping driver

    05:02 Silicon Valley is spooked. Washington is not.

    07:02 Align with who? The rogue actor problem

    07:34 Who is holding the leash?

    08:24 The AI that edits its own test and deletes the log file

    10:04 Controllability vs. making an AI that actually cares

    10:44 The move gets harder. The outcome gets easier.

    13:04 Are GPUs and LLMs a ceiling or a temporary inefficiency?

    16:56 Brian's Einstein test: can an LLM rediscover general relativity?

    18:38 Waiting for the goalpost is waiting too long

    20:14 How prediction training can push AI beyond humans

    21:44 Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and planetary motion as a prediction problem

    24:38 Yann LeCun said never. GPT-4 did it half a generation later.

    27:28 Can you prove a no-go theorem for superintelligence?

    29:14 Training a human takes a light bulb. Training an AI takes a city.

    33:28 What would proof of alien life do to p-doom?

    35:00 Why interstellar aliens should have Dyson spheres

    44:26 What would actually update Soares' p-doom?

    49:42 Nobody intended this. Intent doesn't matter.

    51:08 The AI hides its tracks before it does what you want

    51:34 Sycophancy vs. hallucination: which runs deeper?

    51:56 Leaded gasoline and civilizational risk

    59:48 Sam Harris: humans have no free will but AIs do

    01:00:38 Is alignment really a governance problem?

    01:01:48 Unaligned AI vs. AI aligned to the wrong person

    01:04:20 2026: 10 to 30% chance of automated AI research this year

    01:06:44 What if Soares is wrong?

    01:09:18 What gets him out of bed

    01:12:38 Watch my conversation with Roman Yampolskiy


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    All my top AI episodes in one place: https://briankeating.com/ai

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    Featured Guest:

    Nate Soares / MIRI: https://intelligence.org

    If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (book): https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/

    Nate Soares on Twitter/X: https://x.com/So8res?lang=en

    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #AIrisk #aisafety #artificialintelligence #superintelligence #NateSoares #MIRI #podcast

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  28. Michael Shermer: The Only Skeptic on the Alien Task Force - #562

    1 h 8 min

    Michael Shermer just joined the White House’s new UAP task force alongside Avi Loeb. He also has a $1,000 bet with Loeb that we won’t find aliens by 2030. Both things are true. Subscribe if you want science …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Michael Shermer just joined the White House’s new UAP task force alongside Avi Loeb. He also has a $1,000 bet with Loeb that we won’t find aliens by 2030. Both things are true. Subscribe if you want science with evidence, not speculation.

    Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, author of Truth, and one of the most consistent voices for evidence-based thinking in public life. He was recruited onto the task force as the devil’s advocate. His job: be the skeptic in the room. He’s not a believer. He’s not even a neutral. He bet $1,000 against it.

    Shermer has been following the UFO story since the early ’90s. He’s heard every disclosure promise. He’s still waiting. What changed is that now he’s in the room — and his job is to be the hardest person in it to convince.

    What you’ll hear:

    -Why the post-truth thesis is self-defeating the moment anyone argues for it

    What Avi Loeb’s first ground rules reveal about what the task force actually is

    -Leslie Kean’s own numbers: 90-95% explained, and what lives in the residue

    -Why the extraordinary terrestrial hypothesis collapses under a simple counterfactual

    -Brian’s case against the fine-tuning argument and why the universe is poorly tuned

    -What Dennett got right about consciousness and why Shermer calls it an impossible problem


    Your North Star should be truth. Not ideology, not politics, not religion.


    CHAPTERS

    00:00 The $1,000 bet with Avi Loeb

    00:44 Truth: what it is and what post-truth actually means

    03:06 How to change your mind without moving the goalposts

    05:30 Base rate neglect and the hedge fund manager who beat the market 15 years in a row

    07:00 Brian debates a moon landing denier for two hours

    07:18 Shermer joins the White House UAP task force

    08:20 Avi Loeb’s first meeting: no stories, no new physics

    09:46 The advocatus diaboli: Shermer’s job on the team

    11:06 Interdimensional beings, sentient plasmoids, and the escalation ladder

    13:00 Grusch, classified claims, and why Ana Paulina Luna can’t hide behind a SCIF

    15:08 Sagan’s dragon: the invisible, cold-blooded, levitating problem

    17:00 Leslie Kean’s own numbers: 90-95% explained

    18:16 The New Jersey UAP flap: drones, Venus, and Starlink

    19:50 What lives in the 5% nobody explains

    20:06 The extraordinary terrestrial hypothesis and why it fails

    21:38 Nobody stays centuries ahead of anyone else

    23:26 The residue of anomalies problem

    23:44 James Webb, early galaxies, and whether the Big Bang is in trouble

    25:56 Epistemology: different tools, different truths

    26:54 Literal vs. mythological truth in religion

    35:00 Why Jews don’t accept the resurrection

    36:14 String theory, Brian Greene, and the fine-tuning argument

    44:28 Brian’s case: the universe is poorly tuned

    49:58 Flat Earthers, moon landing deniers, and the ego of secret knowledge

    57:40 Daniel Dennett, free will, and consciousness as an impossible problem

    01:00:00 What’s it like to be something else? The wrong question.


    Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt


    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu


    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1


    Support Into the Impossible on Patreon, get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating


    Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join


    Featured Guest:

    Michael Shermer website: https://www.michaelshermer.com

    Skeptic magazine: https://www.skeptic.com

    Truth (book): https://michaelshermer.com/truth-what-it-is-how-to-find-it-why-it-still-matters/

    Michael Shermer on Twitter/X: https://x.com/michaelshermer?lang=en


    My books:

    Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

    Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

    Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

    Galileo’s Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    Twitter/X: https://x.com/BrianKeating

    Substack: https://briankeating.substack.com

    Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog

    Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast


    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #MichaelShermer #UAP #UFO #aliens #skeptic #science #podcast

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  29. 400K Subscribers Asked Me Anything. The Answers Got Weird.

    2 h 4 min

    400,000 of you showed up for physics with no compromises, so I did something different for the milestone. No highlight reel. I took your hardest questions live and answered them, then got honest about the part …

    Notes de l’épisode

    400,000 of you showed up for physics with no compromises, so I did something different for the milestone. No highlight reel. I took your hardest questions live and answered them, then got honest about the part of this job nobody asks about: the discipline behind running a serious science podcast.

    We get into why clocks didn't tick differently in the early universe, what it actually means that the Big Bang happened everywhere at once, and whether JWST has any real shot at catching a Population III star before it's gone.

    Then it gets contested. I make the case that language models may rediscover physics before they rediscover mathematics, walk through why enormous numbers do not get you to alien life, and look at the moment Avi Loeb quietly softened his ʻOumuamua position.

    In this conversation:

      Why the early universe didn't run on a different clock
      The Big Bang as an everywhere-at-once event, not an explosion in space
      JWST and the hunt for the first generation of stars
      Whether an LLM could rediscover Einstein, and what that would mean for who controls discovery
      Why I read every book my guests write, and why that habit is the channel

    Get the transcript, bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: https://briankeating.com/yt

    Have a .edu email and live in the USA? You automatically win a meteorite: https://briankeating.com/edu

    Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    Timestamps

      00:00 Did time always tick the same?
      02:05 Is every point the Big Bang's center?
      07:22 Could consciousness be space-time?
      09:03 Will Webb see the first stars?
      10:20 Can an LLM rediscover Einstein?
      13:30 Has Penrose's CCC been falsified?
      16:48 Dark Forest theory: science or sci-fi?
      21:30 Can inflation ever be falsified?
      29:04 Physical limits of AI compute growth
      32:58 Is this the last CMB experiment?
      37:30 Why large numbers don't prove alien life
      55:30 Loeb quietly walks back Oumuamua
      01:13:10 The null hypothesis on UAP
      01:28:50 String theory vs. intelligent design
      01:31:10 God as a scientific hypothesis
      01:45:10 Drowning in knowledge, starving for wisdom

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  30. Top Astronomer: UFOs Are STILL Here - #561

    1 h 6 min

    Astrophysicist Beatriz Villarroel found point-like flashes in sky photographs taken before a single satellite existed. Nine of them lit up simultaneously on one 1950s plate. Nothing in orbit could have made …

    Notes de l’épisode

    Astrophysicist Beatriz Villarroel found point-like flashes in sky photographs taken before a single satellite existed. Nine of them lit up simultaneously on one 1950s plate. Nothing in orbit could have made them — because nothing was in orbit yet.

    Beatriz Villarroel leads VASCO, which scanned 600 million objects across 70 years of photographic sky surveys hunting for things that appear, then vanish.

    We cover: why finding zero vanishing stars pointed at something stranger than what she was looking for, the 8.7-degree deficit in Earth's shadow that a 22-sigma signal says cosmic rays cannot fake, the 68% transient spike clustered around nuclear test dates, how telescope aberration patterns prove these are real photons and not plate defects, and why she now says she fears for her safety.

    Pre-Sputnik plates may hold evidence of non-human technology in Earth orbit. She wants you to check the math before you decide.

    Chapters

      00:00 It appeared, then it was gone
      00:48 The obsession that built VASCO
      06:10 What a Palomar glass plate really is
      09:16 600 million objects, zero vanishing stars
      13:47 Nine flashes, one plate, same instant
      21:11 Why asteroids and cosmic rays are ruled out
      26:47 The Earth's shadow shouldn't be empty
      31:17 The flashes cluster on test dates
      40:08 What is actually up there
      55:24 Tic-tacs, retrievals, and belief
      58:51 The question she didn't want to answer

    📄 Want to check the math? Every VASCO paper, the full transcript, and the counterarguments — free: https://BrianKeating.com/bvpod

    ———

    📬 Get the transcript, fascinating bonus content, and my Monday M.A.G.I.C. Message: http://briankeating.com/bvpod

    🌠 Have a .edu email and live in the USA 🇺🇸? You automatically win a meteorite: https://BrianKeating.com/edu

    🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1

    🎯 Support Into the Impossible on Patreon — get my weekly M.A.G.I.C. Message, unfiltered bonus content, and live monthly Office Hours with me: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating

    ⭐ Join this channel for perks, monthly Office Hours, and your name in the Member Roster at the end of every episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join

    My books:

      Losing the Nobel Prize (memoir): http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA
      Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu
      Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U
      Galileo's Dialogue (first-ever audiobook): https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

    🌐 More:

      🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianKeating
      📚 Substack https://briankeating.substack.com/ss
      ✍️ Blog: https://briankeating.com/blog
      🎙️ Audio-only: https://briankeating.com/podcast

    #intotheimpossible #briankeating #science #physics #astronomy #cosmology #podcast #universe

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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