The Beginning of the Universe with Brian Keating

22:16And so that's what these instruments are doing. They're looking for polarization, not of optical light, but of microwave light from the Big Bang, the leftover heat from the Big Bang. So remember I said inflation. Inflation is this theory that there's this quantum field that fluctuated, that produced everything that we know and love about the Big Bang. It would also produce what are called gravitational waves, waves in the fabric of space-time itself. Those waves would perturb the electrons, the protons, early hydrogen atoms in the universe when the CMB, or cosmic microwave background, was produced about 400 ,000 years after the Big Bang.

22:47When light interacts with matter, as you see from the glare, it becomes polarized. that matter would be polarized, that matter in its orientation would change depending on how much gravitational wave energy was present when the CMB was produced. So it's actually a gravitational wave detector. We're using the photons of the cosmic background as a type of film, if you will, and onto which these waves of gravity, if they exist and only if they exist, they get a polarization to them, a curling, twisting pattern of polarization that we call it B-mode polarization. Wow. So it's a lot of logical steps, But actually, it's very well tested and very well theorized.

23:23It just hasn't been detected yet. It's quality physics. Go ahead to that. Yeah. That's super cool, man. Yeah. Literally. And we have to use, we can't use an iPhone. We got to cool our detectors down to my colleague Suzanne Staggs at Princeton. She's built detectors that operate at 0.1 degree above absolute zero. Right. Using isotopes of helium. She does incredible stuff. And they're superconducting detectors. They're basically little thermometers. So you know you go outside, not in New York, but in San Diego. You go outside. you can see the sun with your hand. You can basically detect where the sun is using its infrared and that your skin can absorb infrared heat.

23:56Well, so too, we can have detectors that can see microwaves and infrared radiation, but they have to operate where it's really cold. Otherwise, it's like building, you know, the biggest, you know, James Webb Space Telescope and putting it in Manhattan. And so what's the fluctuation of temperature that you're looking for between what the universe has cooled to and what would have been present right at the Big Bang? Yeah, exactly, exactly what we're looking for. So there'll be deviations in about a part in a billion. So a nano Kelvin. So in other words, if the universe on average is about 2.7 Kelvin, it would be 2.7 plus a nano Kelvin in that direction and 2.7 minus one nano Kelvin.

24:32So you're looking at the ninth decimal place, right? So a billionth of a degree. That's a billionth of a degree. Okay. Above absolutely. Wait, wait, wait. And somebody gave you money to do this? Wait, wait, wait. So. Wow. So here's what. That's insane. So let me drive home why we need inflation. Okay. Okay. Because - Let me tell you why. Okay. Because we're going through a transition. Okay. In this direction, it's 2.7. What's the, give me a few more decimal places. 2.726. It's 2.726 degrees in that direction in the universe. Okay. And I look in the other direction. Right. It's 2.76 degrees. Right.

25:13And how the hell do they know to be the same temperature as each other to a thousandth of a degree? In this room, the temperature fluctuates by degrees. Exactly. By whole degrees. In this corner, that corner, over there, near a lamp. The whole universe is that. That's right. Just one. So what Guth said was the way to get that to be the case, when the universe was small and all talking to itself, in equilibrium, temperature equilibrium, then it quickly expanded. Right. Like so fast, it couldn't go out of equilibrium with itself. So it all has the markings of that same temperature from a bajillion years ago.

25:54That's so cool. Hence, the justification for inflation. Yes, yes. Right, because all of that expansion all at once gives you the uniformity across the entire expansion. Correct. Wow. Correct. Okay, I'm done. No, no, we need you to. No, no, no. It's a cosmic query. It's just crazy. Come back. He's in the L2. He's going to L2. On the stakeout. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's insane. It is insane. I mean, that is literally, who thinks like this? Who thinks like this? My God. Wow, that's brilliant. I mean, that's really cool. So the inflation explains it, but then we needed a cause for the inflation. Right.

26:37And we had to pull that out of our ass. What was that? Basically. I mean, it results, it's related to what's called the multiverse. Basically, without the multiverse, you don't get inflation in most models, according to most models. And that causes some people like a phase transition. There's a phase transition, yeah. And the actual dynamics of it can be explained using quantum field theory, which is a theory everywhere in space. There's a quantum field. Okay, you guys, right now, you sound like an episode of Star Trek. No, Star Trek. Next generation. Next generation. They love phase transitions.

27:07and quantum. Let's get to the questions now. Come on. Oh, Chuck. All right. Oh, man, I got so excited. I put this up. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Keating, 10-year-old Ruben, and 6-year-old Eli here from Harrisburg, PA. All right. If everything was compacted into one tiny dot, smaller than a speck of dust before the Big Bang, what indeed formed the dust? What was around prior to the Big Bang? Doesn't this mean that there was another universe that collapsed to form ours. So what's the deal? I wish that those young people would have said, I have a very simple question for you. They're basically asking what caused the Big Bang?

27:48What caused the Big Bang? What caused the universe to start expanding in the first place? So the mark of a good scientist should be, we don't know. We don't know for sure. And there are alternative - That's what he says when he doesn't know something. It's the mark of a good scientist when he doesn't know. That's right. And my wife sends me to the girl. She sort of gets up. Not the mark of a crappy scientist who should have known and doesn't. Right. Okay, good. Well, that's why we call it research. My PhD advisor used to say - What you mean is, it is not known in the field. That's right. Not that you don't know it.

28:15Exactly. But perhaps you should. We are trying to know the answer to that question. We is the full community, yes. The community of scientists, but specifically in the Simons Observatory. Their very question is the question the Simons Observatory is in part designed to answer. Was there any sense? Stephen Hawking used to say, it's nonsensical to ask what happened before the Big Bang because time came into existence. I was going to say. He said, it's like asking what's north of the North Pole, which we all know, Santa Claus, right? There's got to be Santa Claus up there. But in reality, we can answer that question in the affirmative.

28:44As you actually hinted at, there could have been a universe that existed beforehand that actually collapsed in what we used to call a big crunch. Now we call it a bounce. They're actually some of the most eminent theorists on earth, including those that - I never liked crunch because that implies it's brittle and it makes a crackling sound. But it's cereal revenue. And delicious. Anything with the word crunch in it has got to be good. How do they punctuate that? So the actual answer is we're trying to determine not what happened, because in science you can't prove something happened, like you can prove 1 plus 1 equals 2, or 1 times 1 equals 2, as you tell our mutual friend Terrence.

29:18But in reality, we can't prove a physical fact, but we can falsify alternative models. So if we see this twisting, roiling, twisting pattern of polarization called curl modes or B modes, that will falsify the other models, that there was a big crunch, that there was a previous existing universe in a cyclical model. So we can prove those wrong in getting more data about this. If we do see it, that would be the death knell for the alternative models and that would be a huge triumph in the history of cosmology. Okay, so you don't know the answer. Okay, next question. There we go. All right, glad we cleared that up.

29:51All right, this is... No, it's good to know that floating ideas do have ways of being tested. Exactly. And rejected. Because some things you can just conjecture anything, literally like thousands of theorists did that are consistent after the fact. But the key thing is to do it before. You want a prediction, not a post-diction. Exactly. Retro, retro. Good day, gentlemen. This is Matt from Oklahoma. My burning question is about the origins of the universe. What exactly are we trying to gain by looking into the past? Will it help advance the population on Earth in a technological standpoint, or is it solely for the history books?

30:29Ooh. Oh, I got a feeling that Matt D has a little problem with your work. But as polite as that was, he's really questioning your existence. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I have to justify it to myself and the taxpayers as well. And I don't mind that. And actually, I want to ask you guys that as they step in because Matt's not here. What's your favorite day on the calendar every year? My favorite? My birthday. Your birthday. What about you, Neil? I like the four cardinal points of the calendar. Yeah, okay. So what are those? The equinoxes and the solstices. Okay. Okay. That's right. You know what?

31:02When he was like, I like the four cardinal points, I was like, Jesus, Neil. But then I was like, oh, my God, he actually does. Because as long as I've known him, he's the only person that points those days out to you. Right. Like, if we're texting on that day, he will point out to you all those days. I look forward to those days because that's when he's on Twitter. I know that's the only time. That's what I am. That's correct. All right. So go ahead. So you mentioned it and it's related to yours. So it's your birthday. What is a birthday? What is something people say? Christmas, their anniversary, the kid's birthday, whatever you want.

31:37But it's a beginning. And why do you like that? Because you have no idea from firsthand evidence what happened before you were born, do you, Chuck? You have to rely on other people's eyewitness testimony. Well, I had video. Oh my God. I don't want to see that. No, he was reincarnated. So he has knowledge before. He had his own big crunch too. So people want to know what happened before they came here. It's the ultimate in history. and that fulfills a need in us. Like does knowing history create, you know, some excess GDP or something? No, but it's part of being a well-rounded, educated, civilized society.

32:08And knowing the answers to the big questions is what makes us different from the animals. We're the only people. Homo sapien means one who is wise, not one who knows, it's one who is wise. So we have wisdom that is to ask questions that perhaps have no answer, but that's what makes us unique and different from all other species. Okay. Listen, I think - It's my existence, Justin. I think you defended yourself well. Yeah, okay. All right. We'll give him that. So there you go, Matt. Give me some more. This is Alan Rayer who says, Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Keating. I always wondered how and when will CMB last in our frame of reference?

32:43When will radio waves kick in? Should I say CRB? Ooh. I like that. Let me preamble that by saying radio waves at one point, and are not that distant past included what would later be called microwaves. Right. And microwaves are simply small radio waves. Micro waves. And they're really like a few centimeters, and radio waves are even longer than that. Bigger, yeah. So historically, it's still radio waves. But since we have a word for it, we use it. That's right. So small radio waves we call microwaves. Okay, pick it up from there. So if you go out into the universe and you make a little box, and it's one cubic centimeter, okay?

33:27Inside of that box will be mostly nothing. There might be maybe, maybe, you know, a proton or neutrino, but mostly there'll be 419 photons from the Big Bang and they all have an average wavelength of about two millimeters, on average. There's a spread, it's a black body. So that two millimeter wavelength over time has stretched from much, much shorter wavelengths from, you know, before that it was infrared, then it was optical, then it was ultraviolet, and eventually it was gamma ray when the universe came into existence, highly energetic. Wait, wait, I don't think that was a photon that you can describe that way, moving through the volume before recombination, right?

34:06Oh, yeah, no, it was, yeah. You can think, can you? Yeah, recombination. I'm thinking the free photon since then. That's a temperature from which it, but you're saying we're okay. We can extrapolate back to. You can go before that. It's just not a free photon. It's not, it's not a free, yeah, it's scattering. It's a scattered photon. That's right. Okay. Just as you did that video recently, it's beautiful, about how long it takes for a photon to get out of the sun. Oh, yes. Okay. Tightly coupled matter and radiation. The universe has been expanding and cooling. So eventually it will get into the radio waves, but, you know, keep paying your taxes because that's going to take billions of years.

34:38The universe has to go expand by more than a factor of 10 from where it is now, which could take more than a factor of 10 times the age of the universe. Because the wavelength 10 times bigger is basically when we start calling it a radio wave. So the universe has to be 10 times bigger. It's just stretching into the universe. That's so cool. So the answer is yes. You're just not going to see it, buddy. I don't know if you want to spend money on the trademark of that guy. But just to clarify, before it was the cosmic microwave background, it was the cosmic visible background. Yeah, or infrared. Or infrared background.

35:08That's right. Then the cosmic visible background. Optical. Well, visible. Visible, yeah. And then ultraviolet on the other side. And with a cosmic X-ray background. Yep. And then gamma ray background. That's right. Yep. There you go. Okay. I love it.

35:45This is Yogesh Jod, who says, Hello, Lord, and I. It's Dr. Keating and my personal astrophysicist. I love that. Yogas from Nagpur, India. My question is, is the CMB anisotropy really random? For those who may not know, what is anisotropy? It means not isotropic. Right. That makes sense. And why would it be and then? Why isn't it just a? A isotropic. A isotropic. Right. I don't know. Anyway. Okay, so tell me about isotropy. Yeah. So isotropy is the feature that you have complete uniformity. and things look the same and they are the same. The homogeneity, it's similar in In every direction. In every direction.

36:28No matter which way you point the tallest. No matter what. So if you're ever flying on an airplane and you're in the clouds. You go through a cloud. You go through a cloud. Yeah. And that cloud, to you, when you look out the window, it looks perfectly isotropic. Anywhere you look out the window and if you're in the cockpit, it's the same brightness. It's the same brightness. It kind of looks like you're inside of a ping pong ball. Everything is the same brightness and intensity. That's isotropic. That's perfect isotropy. The principle of looking the same everywhere. But anisotropy just means fluctuations from that amount.

36:53So it's not that. It's not that. You look in one space, you'll see something different than you look in the other space. That's right. Now, if the universe were perfectly symmetric at earlier times, the amount of matter was the same everywhere, the amount of dark matter was the same everywhere, any exotic particles, everything was exactly identical, the universe would have no way to know where it should form a cluster of galaxies, a single galaxy, a planet, et cetera, et cetera, right? So if you had perfect isotropy, and Isaac Newton realized this 300 plus years ago. Perfect isotropy is incompatible with our existence because we don't see perfection wherever we look.

37:25We aspire to it. We also know that there's clumps of dark matter. Plus we know that we exist. We know. Exactly. So it's kind of what's called answer. We are clumps of matter. We are clumps of matter ourselves. So the question's asking, what is that significant of? And it's basically related to the fact that we formed in a region where there was an excess of dark matter. Right. Where did that excess of dark matter know where to coagulate though? That's where inflation comes in. Because all fields, all quantum fields, have tiny fluctuations in them. They are not isotropic either. Quantum physics enabled this universe.

37:58That's right. We are quantum fluctuation. We are the product of quantum. If inflation is right, we shouldn't presuppose that it is. We're looking to see if there is. So yeah, so those pools of dark matter knew where to coagulate because of the fluctuations in the quantum field. So now these fluctuations, are they disruptions in the field itself that create something pops out of the field? So the universe itself, is it just one big field? According to some, according to some, that the universe is in a particular instantiation of these conditions of our quantum field in what's called the multiverse.

38:33When we were kids, there was just a universe, right? Now there's a multiverse, which some say should be more encompassing. Just as we know we're just one star, one planet, there's many, many billions of galaxies. There could be trillions or an infinite number of universes, but where do they inhabit? They inhabit the multiverse. The multiverse is the collection of all points in four-dimensional space-time, and maybe higher space-time, that could, where ever will exist. So, yeah, so we are a fluctuation in that greater space. You're absolutely right. And then within those fluctuations, it's like waves in the ocean.

39:01They're waves upon waves upon waves. And we are the manifestation of this infinite series of wave trains that perhaps dates back to the Big Bang itself. So, Chuck, as insulting as it sounds, to accuse someone of being a fluctuation is actually quite the compliment, cosmically speaking. Look at that. All right. Good question there. Time for just a couple more. All right. This is Brandon Christian. Brandon Christian says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, Dr. Keating. This is Brandon from New Jersey. My question today is, do we have any idea what could possibly be on the other side of the CMB? would it be considered a part of our universe if we were to discover it or would it be something else altogether okay so the cmb is the shell of photons it's a it's a it's a fictitious shell of photons that are coming to us from a particular event what do you mean fictitious what does that word show up in your sense well because it's it's an artificial um it's a non there's no place you can go where the cmb is which is what the question is asking right the cmb is a representative of an event that occurred.

39:59It's the event at which the very first electrons fused with the very first protons, making the very first atom, hydrogen. When that happened, the universe became transparent to those waves of light that were existing beforehand. Those waves of photons then can free stream and come towards our telescopes. They come in all directions. So it's a moment. As you look back in space, you're looking back in time. So it's a moment in time, and it looks like a shell to us. We look out and we see a shell of photons, a little bit hotter here, a little bit colder there, but on average, 2.726 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero.

40:30There are tiny fluctuations in that. So beyond that just means earlier in time. So yes, there were things earlier in time, but it was a pretty boring life. It was pretty boring before that 200. It's nearly 400 ,000 years before that. Yeah. So for 400 ,000 years, there was nothingness except for, there was protons and neutrons and plasma and so forth and electrons, but there was no cosmic event. There's no place. There's no there, there. Well, the universe was just glowing at these different temperatures. It was a plasma. It was almost a uniform plasma. Right. Okay. Expanding, cooling, and then shifting and wavelength.

40:59Red shifting and wavelength. There you go. Wow. All right. Super cool. This is 1701 Cara who says, greetings from Tennessee, Dr. Tyson and Comrade Nice. Why you got to make me Russian? I have a cosmic query regarding the Higgs field. Is the current model of the Higgs field evenly distributed? or could there be areas in space time where the field is more dense? Mm, this is a great question. Ooh, I like that. That's a really good - Could that mean that it's giving different masses to particles over here than over there? Yeah. Wouldn't that be wild? That'd be a messed up universe though. That's, woo!

41:38What mass are you? Well, today or yesterday, right? So a good friend of mine, Matt Strassler, guys should have him on, he wrote a wonderful book about this called Waves in an Impossible Sea, and it's all about the Higgs field. I'm glad that - You just like that impossible word. I know, I love it. You'd be surprised how many books have the word impossible. So the Higgs field is what, and that's why it's impressive. Most people talk about the Higgs boson. That's not what's so fundamental. The Higgs boson is just one instantiation, one creation moment of a particular fluctuation of this field called the Higgs field.

42:05Yes, it could vary from time to time. And the most exciting thing is that it's what's called a scalar field. I don't want to get too technical, but that's the first and only scalar field that we know about. The other one that's postulated but not known yet to exist, we hope we can shed some light on it, no pun intended, is the inflaton field. Those are scalar fields. They don't have what are called vector properties. They don't have property. They only have a value. Like the temperature in this room is a scalar. It's a point. Every point in space, there's a value, you know, 30 degrees Celsius.

42:32It's kind of hot over here. You know, I'm talking, it gets even hotter. But the point is, it's a number at every point. But the Higgs field is a special case like that. The other types of field, like fermions, quarks, and other types of fields in photon fields, they are not. They have a sort of direction at each point in space-time. So the Higgs field... Like a gravitational field has a value and a direction that it wants to pull you. Yep. Right. So this just has a value. Exactly. Okay. Yep. So why do we care about that? So if it did vary, it could be connected to the two, the Higgs field and the inflaton.

43:03So that would be really exciting. It would say that the particle, the field that is responsible for giving inertia and mass to massive particles was in existence and coupled somehow to the origin of the universe itself. So maybe there's some connection between the masses of all particles that were, are, or ever will be, and this initial phase of the universe called the inflation. Something we haven't figured out yet, because all the masses look pretty random. Yeah, we have no fundamental theory that predicts why they should be. Of the masses of particles in the universe. Yeah, exactly. That's a great question.

43:31All right, Eric Venus, and he says, yes, like the planet and the goddess. He says, I understand that as we look further into the the universe, we're looking further back in time. What have we learned so far about the early universe that we can expect to impact life on earth in the near future? So is there anything looking back that we can use looking forward? I like that. Yeah. So there's a lot of mysteries that we still don't know about. We don't know how the very first galaxies formed out of nothingness that was left over from the CMB. We don't know exactly how they went through this transition.

44:03It's called the cosmic dark ages. So just as we learn about history, we learn about the actual medieval dark ages that impact decisions that we can make as a society. So too, I think learning about how the early universe evolved, the types of physics that were in play. And yes, if there is, as some hinting, there are some hints that actually some of the bulk properties of the universe, most particularly dark energy, is evolving. We need to know that. We need to know, was it different in the past? Was dark energy a different value than it has today? Was the Hubble constant? If you thought it was constant for the whole universe, and we now might be true that it has changed in the past, it could change in the future.

44:39Exactly. Yeah. And that could involve the properties of the space-time itself. It's called vacuum energy of the universe itself. And that could lead to, again, you know, a different scenario for the end of the universe. Everyone always talks about the beginning of the universe, the big rip, the big crunch. We don't know what would happen. But, you know, as I say, keep paying your taxes because it could be another trillion years before we find the answer. And another fast bit to that, it's not as dramatic as your answer, but I came of age when we had catalogs of peculiar galaxies. and they were called peculiar we didn't know what the hell they were only in the era of computing were we able to simulate what must have happened to ordinary galaxies to make them look like that because they're colliding with each other yeah train wrecks and so once we learned that that had happened in the past to create this catalog of peculiar galaxies we now say hey wait a minute wait a minute we're we're headed towards andromeda we're going to be one of these simulations that somebody else says, hey, Dave.

45:35Some future graduate student. The future would say, hey, look at those two galaxies over there. Isn't that beautiful? Wow. They didn't always look like a sombrero. Why are there so many Kardashians in that game? In Milkdromeda. One more. Last one. Matt Newcomb says this. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Keating, Lord Nice. My name is Matt Newcomb, like Duke Newcomb, and I'm from San Diego, California. San Diego, that's your hometown. I mean, your current hometown. I'm curious about Simon's observatory ability to detect new particles. How do you know what to look for and how does it collect that data? Cheers from a fellow science educator.

46:11Yeah. Come on, my lab. Can you discover things you're not looking for? Right. That's a side light to that question. Can you predict serendipity? So the CMB itself was discovered accidentally. They weren't looking for this glow of the Big Bang. It's aftermath. So it's actually great. But there are, what I love about the Simons Observatory is that there are things we're swinging for the fences on. We don't know if inflation took place. If we see it, it could be the same hullabaloo as happened with Bicep 2. Just for our international audience, when you swing for the fences, it's a baseball reference.

46:38Yeah. And it means you're swinging for a very deep home run. Yeah. And so you might strike out. Yeah. When you swing that way, you might strike out. But if you connect, all the way. So, yeah, for international listeners, think a cricket century. That's what. Oh, is that it? Oh, yeah. Excuse me. That'll be even better. We'll get that. So we're going for the cricket century, if you like. But there's things that are guaranteed to happen. they're guaranteed to know about. And that's the only particle of dark matter. Do you know that we've detected dark matter? There's dark matter detection. It's called the neutrino.

47:08Neutrino has every property of dark matter. It just doesn't make up enough to so-called, you know, make the universe flat and so forth. But we've detected dark matter. However, embarrassingly enough, shamefully enough for physicists, there are 17 elementary particles. We don't know the mass of three of those 17. We know the mass exquisitely accurately for the other 14, the Higgs boson, the electron, et cetera. What don't we know? We don't know the mass of the three types of neutrinos, the three neutrino flavors. We have a lower bound and we have an upper bound, but we don't have a measurement.

47:36It's like someone looking at Chuck and saying, oh, you're somewhere between, you know, one inch tall and a thousand feet tall. Like, it's interesting. It's true. It's true. But not useful. Yeah, it's not true, but not useful. That's a beautiful way to phrase it. So what we're going to go after is because we can take these early images of dark matter and the composition of the universe that is affected by them, we can effectively weigh the neutrino by getting enough of them together. They're very light. They're a million times less massive than the electron. At least they could be even less. We can for sure constrain their properties, weigh them, if you will, but only by collecting them on the universe's most grand scales, literally to weigh enough of them, you need to measure a huge fraction of the universe's volume.

48:15And that's what we're going to do. So we're guaranteed to make an imprint on that and detect not new particles, perhaps, but we could possibly detect new particles. We just don't know if they're out there. and that's why serendipity is so hard to predict. Wow. That sounded like one of Yogi Berra's predictions. It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Take it, yes. There you go. This conversation about the beginnings of things reminds me just of how interesting that question is. We can spend all our lives studying what is, what already exists, what will become of what already exists.

48:57What makes that scientifically accessible is that you can find some other object that's like it and do a different experiment on that to check for what properties it has, check for how it will respond to whatever you do to it, to see what it becomes in the future. We can do all of this. That's what most of science is. But there's a subset of scientists that are not content with knowing what something is or what it will be. They want to know where it came from. What are its origins? Sure, we did it for the Earth. There was a day we didn't know where the Earth came from or the sun. We found other planets.

49:40We found other stars. We see them being born. And our star looks like that. We say, that's probably how our star was born. How about the galaxy? We've got JWST helping us there. How did galaxies form? There's a point in the early universe where all that would have happened. We got top people working on that. But you keep doing this and you reach a point where, well, how did the universe begin? Is there another universe to compare it with? No. Is there some, some, no. What do you do? You say, well, maybe there's a multiverse. That would account for a beginning of our universe. But then all that does is push the origins question back one more notch in the past.

50:31Fine. You can tell me how this universe got here. Now tell me how the multiverse got here. And whatever made that, tell me how that got here. That's what makes questions of origins so challenging and so fulfilling. when you finally arrive at those answers. And that's a cosmic perspective. This has been a Cosmic Queries CMB edition. That's what it is. That's what it was, that's what it is, and that's what it will be. Brian, thanks for coming. Thank you so much. And we can find you online where? BrianKeen.com slash StarTalk. I've got some special giveaways from your listeners as well. Whoa! What?

51:09Look at that. Not Mars meteorites, but other types of meteorites. What? He's the only guest that comes here and leaves swag. That's amazing. I love what you guys do. Seriously, I love what you guys do. You do the most important thing, which is to teach the audience, teach the public how important science is. Yeah, yeah. And also your book that you - Losing the Nobel Prize. Losing the Nobel Prize. Into the Impossible, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner. And then in the fall, coming out on my birthday, September 9th, is Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner. It's a self-help guide for STEM nerds like me and Neil and maybe like you.

51:42Sounds like the publisher's milking that subtitle there. Go through life like a Nobel Prize Winner. Right. drive like a Nobel Prize winner. Cook breakfast like a Nobel Prize winner. Exercise like a Nobel Prize winner. Hey, you guys are giving me ideas. I got a franchise here. Thank you guys. You guys can do the blurbs on the back. Yeah, you need to come up with one that says, lay on the couch and watch TV like a Nobel Prize winner. That one will be a bestseller, I guarantee you. I guarantee you that. All right. Chuck, Brian, always good. Always a pleasure. Until next time, this has been StarTalk.

52:15Cosmic Queries Edition. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.