Top Science Stories of 2025 | The New Scientist Features Special

0:00Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. A radical quantum vision of reality. He's pushing it into a sort of a new limit and suggesting real experiments which are a bit out there.

0:37The vital, misunderstood role of body fat. It's perhaps an organ in its own right. It's communicating with your brain, with the rest of the body and it serves an integral function in our health. And the millionaire who's doing everything he can to live forever. The guy has a six and a half hour long morning routine devoted to trying to stay young. Today we're talking about New Scientist's biggest and most thought-provoking features of 2025 from the humans who first tried to settle Europe and failed. What did happen to them? We don't know, but one of the things that's hard to ignore is that there were so few of them.

1:10To how to stop your emotions from getting the better of you. Especially when it comes to times like Christmas and people go to their families of origin and things can get triggered and inflamed. Chill! Fine! Everything's fine!

1:26I'm Dr Penny Sarchet, and this is The World, the universe and us from New Scientist. Joining me today to talk about these remarkable stories we've got the head of features Claudia Canavan. Hi Claudia. Hi Penny. We've got Deputy Joshua Howdjago. Hello. Hello. And we're on our best behaviour today because we've also got our boss New Scientist editor Kat DeLonge. Hello Kat. Stop it. Hello. Let's dive straight into one of the biggest stories of the year. This was hugely popular this one. It's a fascinating piece by Gina Rippon on the lost women and girls of autism and Kat you edited this. What's the story?

1:58Okay, so this is quite a complicated story, but it's really about what does it mean to be autistic? And why have we for so long thought of autism as something that predominantly affects men? And what does this mean for women, for autistic women and girls who we know really struggle to get a diagnosis and basically have been completely overlooked and told that it's just something else that's going on with them? Because there's been this whole idea of autism being an extreme male brain. and we know that's not true anymore. So most of this story comes down to the idea that autistic people struggle with social interactions.

2:36So that's the kind of automatic social contact that we would normally have, but also the motivation behind it. So for instance, there's this perception that autistic people aren't really bothered by rejection. That's a good example. So most of us wouldn't enjoy that interaction and it would sit with us. But the idea is that autistic people don't seem to care. And what this comes down to really is that right from the beginning of studies on autism, people thought that it was a condition that affected men. And this goes back to Hans Asperger, who's sort of the father of autism. And so when they started to try and understand the condition, they looked for it in boys and men.

3:18And so then all of the data was in boys and men. And then when we started to look at trying to understand the autistic brain, Well, what do you want to do? You want to get autistic people, put them in a brain scanner. So who do you choose? Well, it's boys and men. And so when neuroscientists tried to understand the autistic brain, they looked at these kind of areas responsible for social interaction. They did find that they look quite different in the autistic brain. And so that kind of backed up those ideas around the sort of social hypothesis. But what they overlooked was that by just using sort of male case studies and what Gina writes about is that actually autism looks completely different in the brains of girls.

4:00So how does it differ then? What would you see in a sort of stereotypical female autistic brain? So one of the areas that was given particular attention is the striatum, which is really involved in sort of reward processing and reinforcement learning. And so this fit with the idea of being sort of more socially withdrawn and not caring about those kind of social, that kind of social contact. And I think it's actually should just take a minute to say that I think for the fact that this book was written by Gina, who is one of these neuroscientists studying autism. You know, it's a real moment of reckoning for her and for the whole scientific community studying autism, because, you know, they really had to admit and she had to admit that she's been part of the problem because they all were kind of beating the same drum.

4:50but when scientists did start to look at you know do brain scans of girls with autism they did find that it looks very very different and so one study for example found that autistic girls have higher activity in areas associated with social withdrawal and another one looked at sort of over responsiveness in sensory systems so what it was showing was quite the opposite of what had been seen in boys that actually autistic girls are over responsive in these areas that really care about social interaction. And so it does affect them deeply. And so why have girls not been showing these kind of, you know, social effects as much what it looks like is because they're much better at sort of masking it and hiding it.

5:36And that's why it didn't get picked up as much. But I just thought it was so fascinating and kind of moving um that autistic girls you know actually seem to have an over responsiveness in this area even compared to neurotypical girls so it's not just compared to autistic boys it's actually compared to to the general population they really do it really does have a big impact on them and one thing that really struck me in the piece was that um you know obviously it's it's good to start understanding these things about their brains but also this has like a real impact on mental health so this kind of um overactive caring about social issues in autistic girls especially in the teenage years it's really linked to things like anxiety and depression and by finally uncovering that we can start to actually help these people absolutely and so this this masking technique might seem like quite a good strategy yeah and you know you think oh good like they're they're they're able to sort of analyze what they should be doing and apply it but actually that just takes such a cognitive toll because as I said these kind of social interactions really matter to them and so that is why um this sort of behavior has been linked to kind of anxiety and depression and I should also say that that you know it's not autistic girls are like this autistic boys are like that you know there is a lot of variation and you know different people will sort of present in different ways but this is just looking at sort of like the broad the broad patterns and um Gina talked about this at new scientists live this year and it was packed wasn't it people found it fascinating yeah the her her sessions were absolutely packed and it was again quite moving to see the kind of questions that you know a lot of people had a lot of questions a lot of young women in the audience and then a lot of um kind of older women as well and um there was one statistic that really stood out to me which is I think it's 80 % of autistic girls get to the age of 18 without a diagnosis.

7:29And so we see so many people growing up with autism, but without a diagnosis. And, you know, those kinds of stereotypes are so pervasive. So there was another study where, you know, school teachers were given like a kind of case study. And I can't remember, I think they were either told that the child was called Chloe or Jack. and if they were told it the the child was called jack then they would say yeah this this child seems to have autism and if they were told the child is called chloe they thought it was something else and so even teachers who you know work with children and who kind of you know you are tasked with understanding these kind of differences and are affected by these kind of stereotypes and it can be really hard for girls to get a diagnosis because all of the odds are stacked against them and the tests if they do get to the point of of going to get an assessment for diagnosis the assessments are standardized on you guessed it boys and so you know a lot of girls go to do these tests and essentially what they're told is you're not autistic enough and it's the same for research studies when scientists are recruiting participants for their studies into autism they do the tests and again they struggle to find the female participants because they're using these tests that have been designed on boys so the whole thing has to be torn apart our entire understanding of autism it you know has been challenged this year and I thought it was just such a fascinating story and you know who better to tell it than Gina who does this research herself I think it made me reflect personally because I have one of my children has an autism diagnosis and he's a boy but it just made me think how different it could have been if he you know he'd been born a girl and would we have realized and I just I also thought it was you know kind of quite a profound piece I really enjoyed it yeah one of the case studies that Gina writes about is a mother who actually has both a girl and a boy who autistic and she managed to get a diagnosis straight away for the boy and then for the girl it was kind of let's watch him wait and see it might be something else as you know the world the universe and us is a podcast that's all about science and technology, which is why we're big fans of Nick Gray and G-Tech.

9:41Nick is the founder of G-Tech, the British design company that took on some giant global brands. And he first built a cordless sweeper in his garage back in 2001, which is still going strong today. G-Tech is all about making life easier with things people love to use, which is why they're the UK's most trusted home and garden brand. So whether it's an air ram vacuum, a nifty garden tool, or just something that gets rid of all those pet hairs on your sofa, GTEC have got you covered. Plus, if you're like us and care about the planet, you'll love all their interchangeable components and batteries.

10:13GTEC stands for Innovation, Simplicity and Engineered Perfection. Find out more at gtech.co.uk. Next up, the millionaire-turned-longevity pioneer Brian Johnson was one of those names I heard all year long, not just around the office, but even people talking behind me in the cafe in the queue were talking about him. And then, Claudia, you went and interviewed him for our special issue on Living to 100. What was he like? So Brian Johnson, yeah, 48-year-old, kind of tech millionaire turned longevity pioneer, as you say. I mean, look, as you would expect, he comes across as a bit of a strange guy.

10:49And I think you can see that in the video interview that you can watch on YouTube. But I think also it's like, he really, really, really, like desperately wants to get across this kind of like very intense work that he's doing and this is intense stuff right like the guy has a six and a half hour long morning routine devoted to trying to stay young he's not going to be some guy that you would meet down at the pub right he's probably not allowed to go to the pub he is absolutely not the guy goes to bed I think at like eight or nine p.m something like that so I found him yeah he's a bit of an odd guy but perfectly polite and charming and and you mentioned his routine that that really struck with me from the piece his routine is insane can you give us some of the sort of highlights of his six and a half hour wake up six and a half hours is a long time yeah you can do a lot in that so some of it's like intuitive right yeah he works out and does his strength and he does his cardio these things that you would absolutely anticipate yeah he has a really horrible sounding breakfast where he mushes up like seeds and nuts and extra virgin olive oil and like blueberry powder i have to say i was really uh impressed by the breakfast because as it slightly overlaps with mine and i I was like, yes, for the win.

11:59The overnight oak crew is like, yes, come through. Represent. Absolutely. The kind of weirder stuff he does is he does like altitude training, right? So like imagine you were going to go Trek Everest and you might do this altitude training in a chamber where you go up and down in oxygen concentration. He does that. He applies loads of hair serums for hair growth. He does red light therapy. He does sauna, which we have a lot of evidence to suggest is extremely good for you. So he does he does lots of these things that might be on kind of the far out kind of side, but also lots that are perfectly standard health advice.

12:30One of the sort of themes of your interview is what can we actually learn from what he's doing? Because some of it there is some evidence for some of it is really quite fringe. What can he teach the rest of us? So I think this is the really interesting piece, right, because some of what he does, like you say, Penny, it's absolutely wild. something he did relatively recently was he went to prospera which is this like nation state libertarian network state out in honduras that's like you know staffed by people who are all like peter teal protégés and he had this experimental gene therapy okay very strange that is not fda approved no no medical body is into that that's kind of out there and weird and let's not even try um but some of the stuff that he does do um seems perfectly kind of like good and normal right so like when I asked him what is one thing that you would teach or that you would communicate to our audiences like good health advice he said lower your resting heart rate before bed and that's very very very normal advice right so if you eat your last meal what like four hours before you sleep if you don't doom scroll you don't look at your phone you do something chill like you read or you meditate you're going to sleep better if you sleep better you're going to exercise the next day it starts a positive cascade i think what's like really important to know obviously is if you've got a sample size of one there's not like lots of stuff you can extrapolate to everybody right like brian johnson might have these effects where his biomarkers say hey i'm 48 years old chronologically but i have the fertility health of a 20 year old but if you and i do all this crazy stuff he does it might well not apply to us and i think that's absolutely absolutely fine but i think what is interesting and I think what's important is and this is what Dr.

14:10Richard Sale who's the director of aging research at King's College London said to me when I when I asked him about what Brian's up to and he said look he does some stuff right that is like a bit out there but I'm glad he's doing it because this is all stuff that we can't do in clinical trials it would be way too ethically contentious you can't pump people through some experimental gene therapy but if he has results and he share those with mainstream science and they signal or indicate an interesting area of research that's useful for all of us right the only person he's potentially hurting is himself there's one bit he talks about where he takes rapamycin for a while which you know there's some mouse evidence that that might be good for longevity but then another study came out suggesting that it might go in reverse and he doesn't take it anymore and um i was quite struck by he you know you you put to him what about these risks and he said well everyone else is risking their health by drinking and doing all of the not exercising did did that work for you as an argument i mean look i totally take his point right it's like i might say to him hey brian johnson you do all this crazy out there stuff and he's like you sit for eight hours a day at a desk and sarah a screen and it's like yeah of course that's horrible for me i know that's horrible for me and yet here i am doing it and i know that drinking alcohol is bad for me and yet i do and i know that sugar is bad for me and yet i have had like half a tub of quality street today so like I totally take his point I really really do I think when it comes to the really really super fringe stuff like um that's when it starts to feel a little bit more dicey but yeah I mean like who's who's to say his life is net more risky than the average person in the developed world who doesn't have an amazing diet doesn't sleep very well well since reading your interview I have thought a bit more about trying to eat a bit earlier I end up eating really late usually and I know that's not good for me but he makes quite a point about making your sleep as restorative as it could be and one of the things is kind of eating four hours before bedtime which I cannot achieve.

16:10Was there anything that you sort of changed or tweaked after speaking to him? So yeah I mean I will say I was like raised by parents who liked having their tea at five o 'clock in the evening so eating early is very second nature to me so I kept that up and that was fine but I think what I've really really tried to do from his advice is actually do more like sauna um he mentioned it and there is actually so much evidence to suggest that that kind of heat therapy is really really good for you so now I make time every single week to go down to my local sauna and spend like 20 minutes there doing that and I've really taken his advice to heart again like you say Penny around like the kind of pre-bed wind down time but this this is stuff we all know right like I don't need to tell you that it would be good for you to read for an hour before bed but I guess having someone just to like remind you of how beneficial that is can be helpful.

16:58I suppose like the one question I have is what is he actually trying to achieve like is he trying to live a really long time or is he trying to be healthier as he gets older and if he's trying to live a really long time those six hours a day I mean like would you be better off just living your life and ending it a bit sooner? I mean that would be exactly what I would say I would rather to have fewer years on this earth and like really enjoy them but i think it is just the lifestyle he genuinely enjoys like i think we're all wired a bit differently and and that's probably what he's about but i think his his big thing right is that he passionately believes that we're going to see such advances in ai and potentially artificial general intelligence quite soon that he believes he's going to upload himself to some kind of system right he's going to live forever in that way that right when i actually said to him how long physically do you anticipate living for do you think you'll get to 120 he was like it doesn't matter because the advances we're going to see in ai are so kind of mad and vast that things are just going to be really really different so he actually wouldn't put a number on it which i thought was interesting he just wants to stay in the game basically i don't know i don't know what it's hard to know with these people isn't it Like what are their kind of like genuine motivations?

18:17But I get the sense, yeah, he wants to be like in the top percentile of healthy people. He does want to lead, not in a naturally long life, but like, yeah, a very long natural life. But at the same time, he actually doesn't see that as the game plan. He sees himself being uploaded to some kind of thing and he'll live literally like forever as long as the software can host it, I suppose. one of the most mind-bending things i've read this year was a proposal that to make quantum sense of everything we need to abandon concepts as fundamental even as as particles themselves and josh this was a piece you worked on with the physicist vlatko vedral can you tell us more yes i can so this was a piece written by vlatko vedral he is a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford.

19:05So I just want to be clear he is a legitimate physicist but yes some of his ideas do when you first hear them sound a bit out there. And we put this story on one of our covers and the cover line was like no space, no time, no particles. So basically what Vlatko was trying to do in this piece was to kind of put forward his kind of vision for how reality works at the kind of fundamental level. So we're not talking about chairs and tables or even like molecules. We're talking about like the fundamental kind of like essence of reality when you really drill down to it. I suppose where he starts from is he kind of says that like with quantum theory, the real essence of quantum theory is basically these things that are called quantum numbers so in quantum theory when you describe a particle like an electron say for example like traditionally you'd like maybe expect that that would if you're describing like say how fast it's going or it's energy you would just put a number on that like it's 52 or whatever but in quantum theory what you do is you there's this famous kind of uncertainty baked into the theory at the fundamental level so instead of just one number you have a table of numbers which is called a quantum number so it's called this is like a matrix that's the mathematical term for a table basically and so what vlatko says is we've got to see these quantum numbers as the real essence of reality and that's kind of where he he starts from in his and in his ideas in a way it sounds it sounds kind of a bit out there but it's this is so far like we're on sort of solid ground in terms of quantum theory.

20:52But it takes us to some quite interesting places because what happens with these quantum numbers is that they start to predict some quite strange things that most physicists just sort of ignore. So I'll give you an example. So when you start to take our theory of light, like the old sort of classical theory of light, and you apply this sort of quantum lens to it, one of the things that comes out are these extra particles which physicists call ghosts. And basically they are a kind of a mathematical figment. And we could never in principle observe these things. So there's something that sort of crops up in the mathematics.

21:34And most physicists just say, well, well, they just sort of brush them under the carpet. But Vlatko says, look, if we're going to, he's kind of quite rigorous about this. So he's saying, look, if we're going to say that quantum theory is our most successful theory of reality, It's given us all these amazing insights in terms of technology. We should take it seriously. And when it predicts these particles and these kind of ghostly photons, we should believe that they exist. And so what he then does is he says, we won't be able to detect these things directly. We'd never be able to see one. But what we can do is use this phenomenon in quantum theory, which is called entanglement, which is the way that particles can have these kind of strange connections that sort of transcend space and time.

22:20And he says that we could see the influence of these ghost particles in the way that they would entangle with things that we can observe, basically. So he's proposing those kinds of experiments that can kind of take us a bit beyond the curtain of where normal physics can take us. And so that's where it gets quite interesting. So what's his argument then for why we need to sort of take quantum as seriously as that and then kind of see it through to reality and start kind of extending it and losing these other concepts that we've been using instead? well I think he'd probably be the first to say that it is to some extent his view and his opinion but I think why it's valuable and why it's a useful way to think about it is that those of us who think about physics a lot such as like people like me in my job is that like we have this kind of edifice of physical theories you know we've got like general relativity we've got quantum theory we've got thermodynamics and they are all beautiful and wonderful and paint this incredible picture of reality and yet we know that there's a lot of things that they can't explain i mean there's things like dark matter dark energy and we also just have this nagging sense that when you hold all these theories together they just don't sit very well together you know quantum theory talks about the world being broken down into chunks general relativity imagines space and time as this very smooth kind of almost like fabric of reality So they just don't gel.

23:52And so I think what's interesting about Vlatko's work is that he's kind of starting from a very orthodox position, but he's pushing it into a sort of a new limit and suggesting real experiments which are a bit out there. But, you know, they could open, just pull the curtain back a chink and kind of show us where we might be going wrong in physics, I think. One of the things I really sort of remember about this feature is the role of the observer, because that's a key thing in quantum physics, this idea that you can't observe something without altering it. And that's a real problem and it feels very counterintuitive.

24:26And if I'm remembering this right, he kind of argues that we don't even need to worry about the observer. No, just forget about it. He's very sort of dismissive about it. He says that the way that we teach physics, like if you're like an A-level physics student or something, you sort of have to start there. You know, we talk about sort of you observe a quantum particle and you get a particular result. And this is very much like the way that quantum theory works. It tells you what you will see. It predicts what you will see if you make a measurement of a quantum particle. But his point is that like, that is really only just a lens, you know, a human lens for understanding it.

25:06And we shouldn't really think about observers. I mean, and he sort of makes a good point. Like if we're really saying, this is why quantum theory is confusing to people. If we're really saying that a particle is in this kind of nebulous cloud of possibilities and then we look at it and it snaps into a defined position and it's the observer that makes that happen. I mean, that just doesn't really make a lot of sense. Like why and what counts as an observer? Can a cat be an observer? Of course, we get Schrodinger's cat, this paradox which relates to all of this. And this idea that every time you observe something, you collapse the wave function.

25:41It seems a bit silly. It seems a bit silly. and I think says the biologist guilty I'm rude no but you're completely right Penny and physicists agree with you they agree it's silly and so what Vlatko is saying is that really it goes back to this idea of these entanglement connections and he's saying really we talk about observing something in the quantum world really what we're doing is we're sort of entangling ourselves with it and he says if we start to think about that a lot of these paradoxes dissolve and that's partly why he's then going on to make these further arguments about entanglement later on.

26:20And so this is all quite radical and out there. It's a really interesting idea. Is there any sort of nugget or core of it that kind of really sticks with you, Joshua, that you think will be taken further and become less fringe? Well, I don't know about less fringe. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think the thing that really stuck with me about this is at the end, and Vlatko was writing something that was completely new to me. So I talked about how in quantum theory, you don't just have single numbers, but everything is described with these tables of numbers. But at the end of the piece, he points out that actually, it's not quite true.

26:56There are parts of these equations that do have just simple numbers in them, things like the speed of light, for example. It's just a number that appears in some of these quantum equations. and he kind of says well what happens if we actually go fully quantum and we make sure we make these equations like fully quantum through and through where does that take us and what what it suggests is that there could be these other quantum fields out there that we haven't yet discovered and this is really this is the most speculative part of what what he writes to be clear but he he proposes experiments that could could show these things up and i think if we were to see that kind of thing happen, I mean, that would be very earth shattering.

27:41One piece I really enjoyed this year was this gorgeous cover feature. I've actually had it on my desk ever since because it's so pretty. But it's all about the ancient human relatives of ours who vanished. And this is the eye opening story of the first modern humans to move into Europe. And we know that all modern humans originally came from Africa. And around 50 to 60 ,000 years ago, there was this wave of migration into Western Asia that then led to homo sapiens populating the whole world. But as Michael Marshall wrote for us, this gives kind of a linear story of our success, like this progress, it's all kind of moving in one direction, quite simply.

28:17And we're now discovering this wasn't the case before modern humans moved into Europe, and then pushed out the Neanderthals. There were other groups of earlier modern humans who attempted to do the same and failed and we didn't know any of this until we could actually get the dna data to show us so there are these amazing stone tools from a wide area and this is really wide actually from britain to poland and until recently we weren't really sure what they were but we now know there was this people the lrj people who were literally there's a couple of hundred of them they roamed across this vast area in Europe about 43 ,000 years ago.

28:57They had this kind of shared culture, this shared stone technology, and then they vanished. They left no genetic trace in our history whatsoever. And that sort of really changes that idea of how people came out of Africa and started colonising the rest of the world. So what did happen to them? So we don't know, but I think one of the things that's hard to ignore is that there were so few of them and so when there's only a couple of hundred people you're incredibly vulnerable one of the scientists that mike spoke to you said you know if you lose one great hunter or someone who's really good at keeping the group together that could entirely ruin your crew and at the same time um this was just at the end of the last glacial period so britain and poland are pretty chilly at the best of times but it was much much harder to live there back then so potentially part of their undoing was there weren't enough of them to support each other and really live in these difficult environments.

29:54And do we know if they were here on their own or did they overlap or how did humans then come to populate Europe? So one of the people that Mike spoke to from looking at various DNA evidence and the rest of it they now think that there were multiple waves out of Africa into Europe and so this LRJ people they seem to actually be part of a second wave there was an earlier wave all around the same time and then finally around 45 000 years ago there was a third wave and that was the one that was successful and um one of the key things there is there were loads more people they weren't quite so isolated um and also it's starting to warm up around that time so it wouldn't have been quite so cold up here so is it just a numbers game there weren't enough of them or is there something more fundamental about the ones who did survive i it's really hard to say isn't it we were only just starting to sort of fill in that picture but um It does kind of make me think, often you think of like human tribes as warring, but actually maybe we need all of those networks and the kind of trade and the support systems.

30:56And yes, sometimes that gets tense. But if there's loads of you and you can trade things off and help each other and support and replenish the population, you're much more likely to make it as a whole. And that is ultimately what happened. There's now 8 billion of us, but none of us are related to these first two waves that came out of Africa. So maybe there's something more about that kind of like social fabric, that societal element to it. Or am I taking it too far? No, I mean, it's all a hypothesis, isn't it? But I think that's really fair. And, you know, people often talk about, well, why did we make it?

31:27And all these other kinds of human didn't because there were Neanderthals, Denisovans and various others that were around the same time of some of these first waves. And maybe it was this kind of social element that we have that really is the reason that we're the sort of one of the most successful species ever. And that's Europe. What about everywhere else? I know, right? Because it's very Europe centric. One of the things is that it's much easier to do this kind of study in Europe because it's so cold. So the DNA gets preserved. It's much, much harder in South America or Africa to get ancient DNA.

31:58And it's really frustrating that we don't have enough ancient DNA from Africa where all of the really key steps for homo sapiens happened. But also, if you think about Africa, there was a much higher population density there. So we know, you know, once upon a time we thought humans started in East Africa. We now know that it was a thriving continent. There were so many communities and all of that. So we know that it wasn't the same picture as what happened in Europe. Some people think similar things might have happened with North America. So they might have taken several attempts to move in and colonize, but that's still very hypothetical.

32:33They really haven't done those studies yet. So there's always an archaeological bias, isn't there? So Europe comes first and hopefully people will start finding out similar fascinating things elsewhere in the world. Good. More stories for us to write about then. Good. Out of a job yet.

32:49Josh, shall we come back to you? We've got another bonkers physics proposal. This one is that pure emptiness, space-time itself can remember or store information. Yes, that's right. So this was a story written by a scientist called Florian Newcart. And it was funny because I, you know, even I, who, I mean, you've already heard me talk about some crazy ideas today. But this was one where he pitched it to me and I kind of was like, OK. But it was funny because when I was speaking to him on the phone about his draft and about this story, this was the idea, just the idea that space time could somehow remember or store information.

33:32this was like he was like yes josh of course like it wasn't it wasn't like that mad to him yeah and i suppose the reason is that he starts from this assumption that space-time is quantum now that is a bit of a leap but it's not an unusual one for for physicists to make like we believe that quantum theory is our best theory of reality really and so therefore a lot of people think that ultimately space-time itself although we don't really have a good theory of quantum space-time people ultimately think it must be quantum and what that means is that it would be made at the finest level of essentially little like atoms of space-time and so his idea is that those would therefore have these quantum numbers attached to them and so therefore anytime anything kind of moves moves uh through space it would change the description of those atoms and sort of leave like an imprint on space that's the that's the idea yeah so this idea um could we ever test it i mean that's the problem with some of this physics right how can we know yeah um and so the answer is kind of um so if you i asked florian this as you might expect and i kind of said look this is quite a wild idea and he said well look look josh like the obvious way like if i'm proposing that spacetime can remember or store information the obvious test would be to see if we can somehow extract it now that uh sounds bonkers and it kind of is like we wouldn't really ever be able to do that but there's a twist to this so if spacetime is made of these little atoms of spacetime you can actually simulate it inside a quantum computer and this is kind of where florian the writer his expertise came in because he works for like a really prestigious quantum computing company and so what he could do is take his quantum computer and simulate one of these atoms of space time and then he could apply the mathematics that he's developed as this is you know this is a whole theory that he's not he's not just kind of saying space time can remember you know something or other he's got this whole mathematical framework which he calls the quantum memory matrix and so he was then applying this his matrix framework to this simulated atom of space-time inside a quantum computer now i know that that sounds like quite like well but you could sort of make up anything and simulate it but the point is that with a quantum computer Like if we believe that reality is essentially made of quantum particles and information, then a quantum computer is not like it's indistinguishable from reality, but it's speaking the same language.