What’s Next in Science? Nobel Prizes, Space Missions & More

Update on our upcoming Navier–Stokes and AI coverage

0:00Hello internet. This is your captain speaking Lester Narre with a brief announcement before we jump into this week's episode. We have received a massive number of requests from many of you in FFP Nation to cover the recent proof published by OpenAI on their solution to the Navier Stokes Millennium Prize problem. We see it in our DMs and comments in our email inbox and we are going to give the people what they want. We have recorded this week's episode prior to Labor Day weekend on our regular schedule. Obviously, this news has created a lot of waves and we have

0:42been working diligently on wrapping our head around not only OpenAI's solution but many of the larger conversation that have now arisen out of the publication of this paper among other things. There is now huge tension within the community of mathematicians as it relates to alignment with AI models. We've now seen multiple CEOs from all of the major frontier labs come out in support of a new AI safety pacing uh request for a regulatory framework uh and government involvement as well as global involvement. Uh there's been a lot of

1:23debate politically about how a democracy can operate in the context of having what appear to be uh increasingly intelligent systems that we may not have quite a handle on how to keep under control. It is a very complex issue. It's a very nuanced issue. There are a lot of uh high emotions and tensions coming from all of the different parties involved in this discussion. And over the last week and a half since OpenAI published their proof, that conversation has reached a fever pitch in part triggered by a tweet from a former uh

2:08anthropic researcher regarding his personal belief about AI's possibility to cause human extinction. We are going to be covering all of that in next week's episode. We are aware about how important the Millennium Prize problem solution as well as these larger conversations are for you and FFP Nation to hear what is our opinion and what is the actual science and mathematics behind the solution. Is it what it's all cracked up to be? Is it all hype? And we will get into all of those details. This week's episode, as I mentioned, was recorded prior to Labor Day weekend. We were going to be taking some vacation

2:49time uh in order to rest up and relax as we get prepared for a very intense few couple of weeks leading up to the Nobel prizes. But science does not wait for those who want time off. And we are going to be sure to get you guys uh a really really strong uh episode on all of those issues next week. And we appreciate you all uh having the patience to let us get that correct because as you know on this show we really want to focus on the facts and make sure we've gathered them uh sufficiently to be able to present them to you. So please in the meantime enjoy this laid-back relaxing episode which

3:30will be more of a rundown episode uh covering some of the upcoming things happening in science in the fall. And we will see you all next week with the Navier Stokes solution and the greater AI conversation. Hello internet. This is

Episode intro and football banter

3:44your captain speaking Lester Nar joined as always by my co-host and our resident PhD Krishna Chowdery. For those who joined us for the last episode as we mentioned we are going into our Labor Day weekend and are going to have a little bit of a relaxing episode and I will start off with something that is not very scientific. but is very near and dear to my heart and it has to do with the jersey that I currently have on my body which was purchased at Stamford Bridge during the Carabal Cup against Tottenham Hotspur, the second biggest team in London behind Chelsea. And this is happening prior to

4:25our first game against the third biggest team in London, Arsenal, which will be happening on Labor Day on Monday. And my assumption is that we're going to win that game. So I am wearing this jersey in celebration of the unexpected success of Jabi Alonzo's vision to bring Chelsea Football Club to a Premier League championship in his first year. It's going to happen. >> It's going to happen. >> I predicted that for the first time in 5 years we're going to beat Arsenal. I believe you know Arsenal and >> five let's not talk about third biggest

5:05team in London it's Chelsea Tottenham Arsenal West Ham we won't even talk about that and so up the Chelse well done boys on a big victory I will stop with the sports ball talk we're going to have a fun relaxing episode we're just going to do a little bit of a rundown we're going into the fall season and there's a couple of different big scientific events that are happening And so we're just going to do a very light overview of what those look like. So unlike some of our normal deep dives, we're just going to cover the surface, but still keep it focused on the science because this is from first principles.

FFP intro

5:49[music]

Nobel Prize season and our coverage plans

6:01So, we're beginning the fall season in science and one of our main events that we are excited for, some may say it's the >> Ballandor >> of science. It's like the Oscars is the Nobel Prizes. And we usually, like we did last year, cover the big three. >> Yep. which will be medicine on Monday. This is going to be from October 5th through 12th. We care about three days. >> Medicine Monday, physics Tuesday, chemistry Wednesday, and then the rest >> the rest. Yeah. >> Our marquee games are at the beginning

6:43of the week. And I'm really excited because we did you did you did pretty good last year. >> I did. I I got one out of the three. >> Yes. last year, which honestly I don't think you guys understand the the probability of getting this right in all of chemistry, in all of medicine, in all of physics to get the the the prediction right is is not easy, but I got Omar Yagi. >> Yes. >> Um, we've talked about him a lot actually on this podcast, not just for the Nobel Prizes, but also for his transfer to China to Singai University. >> Yes. So, um, I got that one right. And I

7:25will be making my own predictions this time as well. Actually, this is, um, this is something that you guys should say in the comments. Who do you think is going to get the medicine, physics, and chemistry Nobel prizes? I'd like to know so that I can maybe piggyback off [laughter] of your predictions when we make our our prediction episode because I'd like to I'd like to go two years in a row back to back >> back to back making a prediction. You know, >> you know who else has gone back to back with winning the Prem? Chelsea. You know who hasn't? Arsenal. >> Oh man. [laughter] >> Just saying. Just saying. >> Dude, my cousins are going to be so pissed. For those who are interested in that prediction episode, it's our episode 10. We did talk about some other

8:06things in that within that episode, but that episode 10 is where we did our Nobel Prize 2025 uh predictions, and it's a great episode. We also covered >> two of my favorite Nobel prizes. the LIGO, which is the gravitational wave observatory that first detected gravitational waves. Um, and also Crisper, which is the great genomic technology that is giving us so many strides in the biomedical field. And for those who would like to get a preview of what it'll look like when we do our Nobel Prize episodes, it's going to be a little bit different than how we do our normal episodes, because each day

8:48we're going to basically do it the day of and release standalones for each of the prizes during Nobel Prize Week. This is a big deal. >> Yeah. >> Uh this is this is our favorite time of the year. So you're going to get live, you know, daily drops and then we also will compile it into a long form episode. So last year's episode 11 was a 2 and 1 half hour epic that combined each of the days where we stay up until we're up at 2 a.m. >> Yeah. >> When it first drops, we see the drop. We then dig into >> the background of it and give an explainer just like our deep dives that you all are so used to. It's a really fun time of the year. Last year's that

9:28we covered in that that episode were it was a macroscopic quantum tunneling for physics, metal organic frameworks for chemistry and one of my favorites which was a sleeper uh peripheral immune tolerance in medicine was super fascinating. It was very very interesting and we've talked about the immune system a lot. Yeah. >> Um in correlation with a lot of our medical or bio stories. Um, so you can catch either the individual explainers or the uh the the big summary episode. It's definitely worth a watch as we prepare a month from now from one of the for one of the most exciting >> Yeah. >> science stories of the year. And let me just um let me let me just tell everyone

10:09who's in the comments and in the DMs telling us to cover the economics prize. First of all, the economics prize is not a real Nobel Prize. That's why it's called the Nobel Memorial Pri. No, it's the Memorial Prize in economics in memory of Alfred Nobel because in his will, he did not think that that the economics prize was something that he was going to dish out money for. Why? Because the economics is not a real science. And I don't know how many times I need to say this, but [laughter] I'm just going to say it again. It's not. So, let's just move on. [laughter] All right. We we and we will be moving on. And

Golden Goose Awards: why basic research matters

10:46what's so interesting about the fall, which is why we wanted to do a fall season rundown, is >> the Nobel Prizes are not the only award show, >> uh, that really recognizes uh, science. Uh, and the other one that's coming a little bit sooner. I think it'll be probably a few weeks, but a week or few weeks before, uh, the Nobels is going to be the Golden Goose Awards. And what's interesting about the Golden Goose Awards, many of you may not be actually super familiar uh with the Golden Goose Awards, which is uh done by TripleA, the same nonprofit that produces the journal Science. We cover a lot on this

11:27show. And the idea behind the Golden Goose Awards is it celebrates federally funded research that unexpectedly benefits society. Um, we talk a lot about this on the pod where the the the benefit of basic research. You know, sometimes the nobells are areas where people know that there's something. >> Yeah. >> And so they go after the thing where they know >> there's something. >> Yeah. >> And the Golden Goose are sort of like, well, the thing that they discovered actually had this weird other benefit that was not expected based [clears throat] on what they were studying initially. And a perfect example of this, which is a call back to our last episode, episode 56, where we

12:09talked about um combating brain disease, MS, and others through this study of >> evolutionary pharmarmacology. >> Yes, >> that's right. Yeah. >> Right. Evolution. In 2013, the Golden Goose Award was given to Dr. John Ang and he had fedally funded research on drum roll please Gil Gila monster venom which as we talked about in our last episode was the precursor that created GLP1s like Ompic and Wiggoi Wiggoi I think it's pronounced Wiggoi and so this this is the idea that how how do we go from a venomous animal in an extreme

12:51environment to a diabet ibetes and obesity weight loss drug that's >> exceptionally popular and sometimes the through line is not very clear and I think that's the focus >> for the Golden Goose which is which is super interesting and I think we're we're exploring potentially adding it into our coverage as as a part of the show. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean it underscores this idea of fundamental science for science's sake for curiosity's sake. The idea that if there is an interesting question out there, maybe it is worth pursuing an answer, just because it's a question out there that is piqued our curiosity as humanity

13:33about the natural world around us, we don't know what it's going to what it's going to come up with, right? Um there's so many examples of this in the history of science. I mean, crisper came out of us studying the bacterial immune system. If you told someone, "Hey, I'm studying the bacterial immune system." They'd be like, "Why is my taxpayer dollars going to study that?" Well, it gives us all of the genetic technologies that we know and love. Um, GLP1 and the Gila Monster Venom is another one of these. I think as a society, we need to be very proud of the fact that we support this kind of research because it it it shows, you know, just sort of where we stand and

14:14what what we're after. I know many of you uh I'm sure are being bombarded by GLP-1 ads in your Instagram and Tik Tok feeds everywhere and you can thank John who figured out the uh active ingredient in this Gila monster venom and I think what's this is this is an active area of conversation right now because there is an ongoing battle within you know the political architecture around two aspects of grants. Grants being the money that goes into research and development. Research and development is a very wide

14:55surface area of things. R&D and funding for basic research does not just exist within the National Science Foundation. National Science Foundation is 4% of the entire research and development budget that the federal government puts money into. The majority of that actually goes to unsurprisingly the department of defense >> recently rebranded the department of war. The second place is health and human services HHS. So a lot of times when people talk about funding for scientific research, scientific research happens in a lot of these other agencies. Uh this includes NASA, this

15:36includes the Department of Energy and several others. And I I the point I'm just bringing up here is while the NSF is probably the agency where the majority of their funding is purely focused on basic research >> as opposed to applied research. Right? The idea that you have a specific commercial outcome that you're driving towards. We actually have a great tool on the site now that looks at the history of funding by the federal government and by the private sector since the 1950s that shows how the government was the largest funer of this research both

16:17basic and applied. And the private sector is now well outsizing the federal government in terms of research and development funding. Most of the private sector is applied. >> Yeah. >> Versus basic. That's a key difference. And so the current battle that's happening around who gets to decide what ideas get grant funding and there's this move to say we want less basic research and more applied research. I think one of the big things that's missing from that conversation is the private sector is already well is funding applied research well beyond the scope of anything close to the amount of money that's coming from the federal government.

16:57>> Yeah. And so we're not lacking applied >> research and like like we're not lacking funding in that arena. That's a good point. Like the federal government does not need to put more money in that. Yeah. It's like so and again you can see this directly. So there's this argument like oh we want federal government funding more things that become commercial technologies. Why? There's already too much money going into that arena. And these basic research ideas that the Golden Goose Awards identifies that end up having GLP1s, like we talked about last episode, is going to be a driver of GDP growth in America. >> Yeah. >> Period. Because of how successful it is. And if that federal research grant to study Gila Monster Venom was not given,

17:39>> Yeah. none of that would have >> LA would look very different right now. I'm just saying. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> I'm just saying. 100%. >> There's a lot of nuance to the funding conversation and I think it's important to understand the data and one of the things we try to do here at FFP is we have seen a lot of comments as we've talked about funding and part of the thing we did was like okay let's go look at the data and not only look at the data but give you all as the audience the ability to also look at the data and understand what's actually happening here. We'll continue to talk about this. There's an ongoing conversation about where funding goes and why. And one of the interesting

18:20things about basic research in the federal government is the majority of it goes to the hard sciences >> and not the social sciences. And a big talking point as we've seen is people interdigitating the culture war. >> Yeah. without understanding the data of like how much of the funding goes to what they perceive to be social sciences that are not important. They are important, but the majority of the funding is not going to the things that people are complaining about. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And it's a very So again, check out the tracker and those who don't want the funding to go to sciences will use that tiny fringe. >> Correct. to justify

19:01a blanket >> wholesale wholesale like overhaul of the federal funding infrastructure. Look, there's a reason why America is at the forefront of technology and it has been since postwar and it's because we have invested clearly in fundamental science. Right? So before you go on your tirade about how oh you know it's pseudo it's because taxpayer dollars are going into pseudocience the the numbers do not agree with that >> they it's the data does not it that's not and again >> we've provided it so that it can be looked at and this is like it's a it's a valid conversation to have about like

19:41how do we as a democracy choose to spend our money >> science R&D as compared to the rest of the US national budget is a rounding error. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so if you're worried about your taxpayer money >> and the value per dollar >> Yeah. is like well outside other ways we spend our money. Um maybe like all these tax credits and stuff we're giving to record profit corporations. >> Hey, >> maybe that's a great area to start to claw back taxpayer dollars. >> Oh yeah, >> just an idea. Just an idea. So again, the the Golden Goose Awards really tries to identify this connection between curio curiosity based research and these outsized impacts on all of us.

20:23>> And as you can see, uh we're we're just breezing through today, guys. It's been a couple of tough episodes. We did Jacobian conjecture, remon hypothesis, two-part quantum computing. >> Yeah. >> Six hours total over two episodes. >> Yeah. and then a phenomenal deep dive on this like evolutionary pharmarmacology episode. I'm trying to guys I'm trying to give Christian a break here. Okay, >> it's been a lot. It's tough. This is weekly. It's dense. We really try to do our research, provide the information. It's just the two of us. We're doing the best we can. We're going to take a quick break here uh and talk about the shilling we have

FFP website tour and favorite episodes

21:04to uh for those listening for [clears throat] the first time. This is not like our normal episodes. We're talking about some of our great episodes that go into deep dives. But one of the things we did want to do is take an opportunity to look at uh one of our uh recent upgrades that many of you may not know. I always talk about the website and the fact that it's a great resource. And I think many may not have noticed that we did a huge look at that. [laughter] >> We did a huge revamp on the website. You

21:45can see our platonic solids on the homepage now doing our animation around from first principles. But I wanted to take this opportunity to uh identify because we have so many new listeners. >> Yeah. that have joined us uh just in the last couple of weeks and our archive is absolute gold. >> Yeah. >> And so I wanted to go through and ask you our resident PhD Krishna, you know, what are some of your favorite episodes or ones that you think that the viewers should take a look at uh if they want to kind of go back into the archives uh to see something they might be interested in. >> Sure. Yeah. I mean, one one of the big ones that I'm proud of is the Remon Hypothesis episode, episode 53. Um, but

22:28I think a lot of the new a lot of the new um viewers may have actually come from that. So, let's go let's go to some of the other ones that are that are that are a bit older. Um, the one before that would have to be, I think, if you go down episode 46 and 47. Yep. >> Our America 250 celebration. Um, this is where I compiled a giant list of some 400 plus American achievements in science and technology and patents. >> And um, it was something that we had planned for just one episode. And it it became so much. And we we had these these [laughter] we had these uh >> outrageous outfits.

23:08>> Outrageous outfits because it was our 250th birthday as a nation as a nation that has contributed so much to humanity in terms of science and technology. Um so I I would definitely suggest checking those out if you want a fast-paced kind of what did we do? Um it just goes through timeline one after the other of all the things that we have done. And for those who would like to go through the interactive timeline that we actually go through on the episode, you can go through uh innovation and discovery by discovery at our America 250 page. It's a great way to just do a retrospective on it. That is a great

23:50episode to reference. That is fantastic. So I like that one. That's a good call out. >> Yeah, that one's a good one. Um after that I would say the harder than diamond 38 episode 38 when we did um our second >> yes >> um new hexagonal diamond >> that one was a really good one because there was such a nice human story behind it. There were two Chinese groups that >> I think basically hate each other >> that were like trying to claim that they had gotten the new hexagonal diamond first. And we went into some of the intricacies of the reviewer comments about how the reviewers didn't believe them. >> Mhm. [clears throat]

24:30>> And how this group had to really convince them. And once they convinced them, the reviewers went to bat for them. And then they basically had like a a duel in the press where the old the old hexagonal diamonds guy were like, "They didn't do anything new." And then the reviewers like, "No, kind of." I mean, it's it's it's a really fun cool human story about just how competitive yes science is and specifically how competitive Chinese science is in the modern day. I also think another good interesting part about that episode specifically was unpacking the word peer review >> gets thrown around a lot. >> Yeah. >> What does it actually mean in practice?

25:12Uh how rigorous is it really? >> Yeah. Um, and I think because we again went into the actual peerreview files and talked about the back and forth and I think it was a great uh expose and in how >> in how robust that process is um and what it actually looks like. That's a great one. I do >> Yeah, that's that's a really good one. [snorts] Episode 35 is really great. It's um about our good friend Daniel Toker's science of consciousness. Um he is the brain scientist on Instagram. He has a bunch of followers, a great scientific communicator. Um definitely check out that episode because he had developed a new AI model to not only

25:53detect consciousness but also figure out ways to um you know wake them up >> which is hopefully >> big deal >> like people in comas. It was it was a huge deal and it was a really eye openener for me because I didn't know a lot about this subject. So when I was researching it um I had a bunch of calls with him. I mean, he's a good friend of ours, former classmate at Princeton University. So, it was really nice to be able to just call up the first author on the phone and be like, "Hey, what what what was this figure exactly?" And then he'd be like, "Well, okay, this is how I did it." It it it was really cool to see that happen. >> And if you want to see me with extra short hair, this is a great episode to check out. Uh, and when you say AI

26:33models, I want to be clear, there's a difference between >> what people think of just generative AI and the way in which >> Sure. The AI is a very broad term that addresses a wide variety of the technology and there are amazing ways in which it's being used in scientific contexts. >> Exactly. >> That was a very good one. >> Yeah, that was a good one. Um, episode 33. This is where can human neurons really play Doom? >> Ah, Doom. Can it play Doom? Classic >> question. We we really went into the nitty-g gritties of what does that mean for a human petri dish a petri dish of neurons to play Doom? How does how do you actually train a petri dish of human

27:13neurons to play Doom? How do you keep it alive long enough for it to learn how to play Doom? Because that was the claim. >> Yeah. >> And it turns out there's there's a little bit of hype. There's also some really cool science. But if you want to understand what is hype and what is science, that's a great way of figuring that out. >> Uh what has been deemed wetw wear engineering. >> Yes. Um in the intelligence community, wetw wear or wet works I should say has a very different connotation, but that is not the scope of this show. Yeah. Moving on. Next one. I'll actually go back to episode 23. 23. Okay. Um time

27:55vaults. Yeah. Oh, classic. This was This is a classic. >> This one was crazy. I mean, it starts with um James Webb Telescope's Little Red Dots, which is already that's a great astrophysics story if you guys are interested. But I think the real gem in this one is the time vault story. Um I think it's a future Nobel Prize. They basically I mean you you made the analogy of it's a Mac time machine. >> Yeah. back but for your cells which is has incredible implications. >> Yeah. Uh for cancer research for just understanding how cells work in general. I thought that was a that was a really really cool one. >> This was one of my favorite episodes

28:35we've ever done. Again some you know we've iterated on the show a couple of times doing multiple stories in a single episode versus doing a deep dive. It's it's been an eb and flow. Uh but the time vaults segment in this episode is top tier. Yeah, >> it's been one of our most popular clips, like set of clips on social media, >> 100% >> because [clears throat] it is such an incredible It's so incredible. >> It's so good. It's so good. Next one, episode 20. Okay. >> Um, this was >> the fusion story that got us on Joe Rogan. >> Yes. This is our Christmas special in end of 2025. >> Yes. And so it was it was an unfortunate

29:15sort of Yeah. situation because MIT plasma physicist Professor Nuno Lorero had been recently just murdered in Cambridge in his apartment in what seems like a crazy crazy situation. But we we wanted to just >> give him and his science >> the due spotlight that it deserves. And we talked about some of the science that he was responsible for. We went pretty deep and we talked about some of the fusion problems that he had solved and some of the problems that his science is still solving to this day. this idea of fast magnetic reconnection

29:57>> uh which is is really fascinating and obviously um >> this area uh particularly within uh circles in this new uh nuclear age in America is it's really important because we've seen a lot of these like micro nuclear reactor startups and there's this reinvigoration of of looking at this as a means of energy production. >> Exactly. >> And there's some fundamentals in here that are interesting as it relates to kind of understanding that that boom. Um it did get us shout out to to young Jamie. Yeah. >> Who pulled us up out of the blue.

30:37>> Uh while they were talking about uh UFOs. >> Yeah. >> Where the connection was, I don't really remember, but uh we did get a a huge shout out there, which again, >> yeah. I mean, I look, regardless of what you think about the Joe Rogan podcast, it's the it's the biggest podcast out there. And for for two unknowns like us who just started a podcast like 6 months ago, at that point, it was five five months in. >> Yeah. Like 5 months in to get like a shout out on the Joe Rogan podcast. We we thought it was a pretty cool deal. And I will say if we can bring that audience in and talk to them and help them understand the idea of what we try to do it from first principles, we can

31:19start to kind of again combat this anti-science movement, this conspiracy laden movement and just like we have the tools to understand information. >> Yeah, we got to do it. Next one. Episode 19, the one right before the double helix episode. >> We were on a heater. >> That one was a good episode. I got to say that one was [laughter] a good episode. the Watson and Crick. Watson is not the guy. Uh uh uh Krishna in his Chamath fit. [laughter] That's and I literally do the thing. I think you literally called it out, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But this was about the human story behind the um discovery of the structure of DNA. It was commemorating James

32:01Watson who had recently died. His legacy, both the good and a lot of the bad. We don't shy away from the bad on this podcast. So, we talked about Watson, Crick, and Rosalyn Franklin. And that human story, which is full of drama, it's like something that you could make a movie out of. >> 100%. >> Yeah. And I believe actually Natalie Portman is going to be starring in a movie very soon >> where she is playing Rosalyn Franklin. >> Oh, so for the >> Yeah, I heard on the grapevine. So for the producers who are working on that uh scientific advisors even for creator marketing promotion uh we're the best in the business. >> Yeah. >> You know where to find us.

32:42>> Yep. Exactly. Um next one I would say is episode 14. The Chening episode, the man who unlocked symmetry. This one was a big one. Another one of my favorites. I'm really proud of this one. We explain Yang Mills theory. Chen Yang had recently passed away. one of the greats of 20th century physics on par with Fineman Schroinger like it is it is and and it's been shown to be true. There's so many experiments that show that you know this is the laws of physics. There's no special point in space and time or direction in space and time that like yield different laws of physics right um not in theorem what she

33:24actually showed was if we take if we take the um assumption that physics is the same after these translations that then something must be conserved every single time that we have this symmetry that's something that we can tackle in a later episode and actually prove not theorem. It's a beautiful proof um and it's quite intuitive but at the end of the day what ends up happening is any symmetry is associated with a conservation rate. So for example the fact that I can translate in space meaning I do an experiment here then I do an experiment somewhere else and the physics laws are exactly the same that leads to a conservation of momentum. How

34:04does all of physics in any situation it's >> if I do an experiment today and then I do it tomorrow and and and the week after and the month after and all of the laws of physics are the same that leads to a conservation of energy >> interested in physics. >> If I do an experiment here and I change the rotation where I rotate my entire experimental apparatus and I do it again and the laws of physics are the same that leads to the conservation of angular momentum. >> Right? It's a deep deep notion that we have okay this was in the early 1900s where emmy not came up with this I've never understood it intuitively because we've talked about all three of tal about conservation of angular momentum

34:45quite a bit talked about conservation of energy you guys are stealing all of our scientists right now which you can check out on our trans >> and the conservation of momentum and I've never understood it intuitively in this context took it personally doing your experiment here today and there tomorrow there is no which means >> according to where we [clears throat] talked about the >> this is actually it's the same episode that has the first unbreakable diamonds >> story. So the the the first group that showed hexagonal diamonds and then they're the ones that were on the the more recent episode. Yes.

35:26>> Um but the hacking the human brain one was really cool because it was a mind readading brain computer interface. >> Yes. Yes, >> that at it at its face was something that is very benign because you know a lot of people have debilitating >> paralysis and so they can't actually express what they mean. This is something that was reading inner thoughts. Well, it gets a little hairy and we get we get into some of these some of these questions there. I I will note for those who are watching the show right now, you can see uh the production has evolved quite a bit. >> Yeah, it has actually since since we started. Um it's taken a while. Um but

36:09one of the things that's always been consistent >> is we've been overlay heavy >> since day one. Always citing sources has been a key part of the show. Y >> uh shout out Princeton Tigers. As you can see, this is like this is a very >> trip down memory lane. >> I mean, this is a month in. This is literally I mean, this is our fourth fifth episode. >> Yeah. Like we had just >> five weeks in. >> Look at We were just like, "Yeah, keep going. [laughter] Look at how we look so old now compared to that episode. >> We do. Oh my god. >> We've aged so much [laughter] in that time. >> In like a year. >> Look, the content hamster wheel is tough, y'all. I don't I don't father,

36:50right? I don't know what your excuse is. [laughter] >> Look, look, look, I I agree with you. My hairline is not receding. I was born this way. Uh so that's not where it's coming from. Um >> yeah. And then finally, I think I think the last one I would say is just episode one. If you want to see like >> where we started, >> where we started, >> where we it was it was >> I I still remember this day when we were like, you know what? Yeah, whatever. Let's let's let's post it online. >> Oh my god, look at this. >> We still had the platonic solids. The color scheme is different now. We've we've honed in on it. >> Honed in on it. We didn't have a logo yet. Um >> I'm still wearing Princeton at the time because I felt I needed to wear I thought I needed to wear it for every episode.

37:31>> Studios very different. >> Uh the same same >> same same. Yeah. >> But different. And at the time we just basically had two static videos of both of us >> awkwardly looking at each other across the video in the middle. So clearly we've we've come a long way. But that's as a as a small kind of uh for those who may be new to the show and haven't gone through the archive. Uh there's a lot of great great stuff that's evergreen. It's it's stuff that's still relevant unlike news and sports where like this week it's relevant, next week it's not. U a lot of what we talk about is timeless. Yeah. >> Um and there's >> it's not by accident. Um so again, the

38:14website is great. Actually, you know what? Hold on. We're having fun today. Let me let me do a couple let me do a couple things. >> Yeah. No, you should show them, dude. Sick >> because there's a couple things on the website that folks might not be aware of that are there. And so when you come to the homepage, what one of the things you'll be able to see is we talked about the science funding piece earlier. Our science funding explorer is very robust. And so if you don't really understand who pays for American science and the history of that, we have a great sort of story view that'll take you through the history of how this has happened. And you can just see from this view here, the red line we're looking at is the federal government and how it used to spend for research and development in the US going back to the late 50s, 60s,

38:56and 70s where the federal government was the biggest driver here. This is where we're getting things like Manhattan Project etc. etc. >> No, that was the cold war, >> right? So it need it made sense. There was a military incentive blah blah blah. But you know basically after you know 1980 industry is orders of magnitude more in spending on research and development. So this is why when we talk about this argument about the federal government shouldn't be spending on basic science research. You need to understand the scope of the volume of how much money is being spent by the federal government versus it's literally 5x. >> Yeah. >> So you know it it's just very different. There's great charts. It's super interactive. But we also have the

39:36ability for you to dig in by agency. So if you want to know, right? So we have this ranked here in terms of like what agencies get the most money. Um and this is sort of looking at uh the the current year's budget. DoD is number one. Department of Health of Human Health and Human Services is number two. Department of Energy Nukes uh is number three. NASA unsurprisingly number four. Only then Yeah. Do we get to the National Science Foundation which get takes so much oxygen in the room? Uh NSF is $7 billion. DoD is 95 billion. Yeah. So like we're we're not even the same. But people would be surprised to know that Department of Commerce and Agriculture and the VA and DOT and Department of

40:19these agencies also have very interesting research programs. And again, you can click into any of these to see a breakdown of like how that budget has changed over time. what are they spending their money on? So there's the office of science in the DOE versus energy efficiency and renewable energy and you can see how those budget ranges have changed over time. Nuclear energy as you can see in the DOE has seen a huge boost. Uh it's always been big but especially recently has seen a a huge boost. So it's very detailed. It's well worth a look to really get a grounding about what's happening in that space. Another cool thing is all of our

40:59research papers that we cover, uh, you can get to here. So, if you're like, "Oh, where's the DOI link?" Like, "Where's the research paper link?" Go to the website, the quantum computing episode we just did. We have the research paper right here. You can get to it, what the paper is, what episodes we cover in those papers. We've really spent a lot of time trying to build an ecosystem that's interesting. And as a fan of the Prem, we've now implemented our science transfers, our transfer market, something that's making people very upset because the idea that the US is losing its edge is a math amathema, whatever the word is, uh, is just is so counter to their worldview. We're still building it out piece by piece, but you can start to see with our first 37

41:41scientists we've put in here who are big names, global laureates, people who have won big prizes, leaders of labs. Uh it's not looking good right now. >> Yeah, >> it's not a complete data set, but you'll be able to look at each of the transfers individually, their effective date. You can see where they're coming from, where they're going, what the sources are for it. This is really cool stuff, y'all. And we already talked about the America 250. I'll just mention if you want to support the show, the shop's got a couple things in it. It's got some good stuff. We just added the platonic tea. I think we're going to order some of these uh these bone >> Yeah. We're going to get some of these soon. So, in any event, >> we'll stop shilling. We had to take a

42:22little bit of time to talk about it. >> Yeah.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

42:24>> Uh because we have to fill some air time here, everybody. We're having a good time. We're having a break. We're going to get back to the rest of the fall season calendar. uh as we are going through some of the exciting things. The next thing we're going to talk about, we did not talk about the launch which occurred on August 30th. >> But we are going to do a little discussion on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope which is already launched. What we're seeing now is a visual of how it's going to deploy as it reaches L2, Lrangee point 2, which is its destination. Uh, with the first

43:04images, again, space-based telescope, uh, very similar to the James Web Space Telescope in that it's space-based, but very different in what it's going to be capturing. We should be expecting images in early 2027, which is fantastic. So again, we're watching this deployment sequence here, which I think it's so good. >> Yeah. >> I mean, there's so many things that have to go right in order for this thing to work. And did you know that this started its life as a spy satellite? >> Ah, I was I saw some headlines about this. >> Yeah, it's pretty crazy. The the mirror is from a former spy satellite that the

43:45military was like, "Oh, we're not using anymore." or NASA was like, "Well, can we have it?" And then they put it on this on this thing. It's the mirror is actually identical to the Hubble >> mirror. >> Um, but the camera is very different, which is why this particular >> telescope is going to be very different. And there it is flying to L2, which is just behind the Earth >> where the James Web Space Telescope is hanging out. And we can see how far we're talking like we you know we talked about >> the the orbit of the moon >> well past and we talked about Artemis 2 and now it's crazy and we can sort of see the the orbital mechanics here a

44:26little bit. Yeah. >> Um >> it's just behind the Earth. If if the sun is in front this is behind and it's going to be orbiting that L2 point the Lrange 2 point. And so I saw this description where it talked about how we can think about the the James Webb Space Telescope as like a zoom lens on a camera looking really far away >> to the beginnings of the universe. And Roman is more like this wide angle >> survey camera very much like Hubble. >> Yeah. >> Trying to just capture >> although no I would say it's I would say it's very much like Vera Rubin. >> Ah that's a very good point. Yes. >> Right. Because Vera Rubin is one of these survey telescopes with a very large field of view. The Hubble is kind

45:07of like James Web in that it's still zoomed in. >> It's still zoomed in. That's very fair. No, that's very fair. And there's so many aspects >> of science with uh dark matter, huge exoplanet census through this microl lensing concept. There are so many things like we talked about in our Verub verin episode which was important is this idea that let's just capture all the data. >> Yeah. dump it down and then let people have at it. Yeah. And there's so much science you can do once we start actually doing these, you know, Sloan Digital Sky survey, Ver Rubin surveys, and now this this Roman and and the uh the sports analogy because for all the sports ball fanatics, I'm so determined to continue

45:50this ESPN for science concept. Um it's like we're in the process now where we're going through training camp as we prepare for the first season of this new signing. Uh and it's uh it's a very promising signing. Yes, it is. I mean the the thing that I think everyone is excited about is the fact that it has the same resolution as Hubble, but the field of view is something like 100 times larger. So it can see a bigger patch of the sky at the same fidelity. Um what I and a lot of astronomers are

Microlensing, exoplanets and dark matter

46:22really excited because it's going to answer questions about dark energy and dark matter. Me personally, if you were to ask me, I am very excited about this idea of microl lensing. >> And you're going to like this idea because >> so most of the planets, most of the exoplanets that we know about are from Kepler. And Kepler was a transiting observatory, right? which means that the planet has to go in front of the star and then the stars light is going to dip. And if that dip is rhythmic, then we know that the planet has gone in front and it's gone in front and it's gone in front and we know that there's a planet there. And then we can do all sorts of um nice analyses about the

47:02atmospheric retrieval. >> Retrie, yes, atmospheric retrieval. What is the atmosphere on this planet? And so on and so forth. But in order to find those types of planets, you have to get very lucky, >> right? >> Because the angle of that solar system, the axis or the the plane of rotation of that solar system has to be in line with however the Earth is looking at that star, >> our line of sight to the star, >> right? Yeah. Like if if the star is over there, then the solar system better be rotating this way such that the plate is like edge on, right? If the star is over there, then it better be edge on and so on and so forth. Um, and that's because it relies on the transit method.

47:44>> What about solar systems that are oblique right? >> For example, the star is like this and the solar the planet is revolving this way. >> Meaning the planet is not going to uh uh revolve in front of its parent star. There's no eclipse in our line of sight. >> Yeah. So there's no dip in the brightness >> in the brightness. Um, what about then? That's where this microl lensing techniques comes in. Okay. What they're using is piggybacking off of Einstein's general relativity to say that when there's a star, let's say the star is right here and there's a background star behind it. If the star moves in front, it's going to gravitationally lens that light and the background star is going to get a little bit brighter. Mhm.

48:25[clears throat] >> Well, if there's a star and a planet right in front, >> then I'm going to see a sort of spike in that gravitational lensing, right? And so now this is a technique where we can start having access to solar systems, exoplanets that no longer have that constraint, you know. And if you're interested in this topic, we actually talked to a friend of the pod astrophysicist Dan Gilman. Yes. While you were on paternity leave about how scientists actually study dark matter. And we talked in depth about this concept of strong gravitational

49:06lensing. But it'll at least be somewhat adjacent or t you know to this idea which is very interesting. And again to your point I is a is a very important distinction between the transit method in terms of how we do exoplanet detection. >> Yeah. >> Um his reference point for um this idea of gravitational lensing is for dark matter detection. >> Yes. And it's an incredible episode. Um and this one is you know you can use gravitational lensing for exoplanets itself. And also shout out to Dan. He's actually organizing a conference right now at the university >> at the University of Chicago at the KICP. Um it's a dark matter physics in the era of large surveys conference. So

49:48best of luck to you Dan. Um hopefully the the conference goes well. >> Uh there's some news headline I just saw the other day about uh Slack finding figuring out something about dark matter and I don't remember what the headline was but it was >> Oh yeah. Um I don't think it was Slack. It it was well maybe it was select but it was it was direct detection >> correct >> of dark matter. There was a news headline. Um I was tempted to do a story on it but I want to >> it's a little early. >> It's a little early is let's let them cook. >> The sigma is not that high and um it's a notoriously hard measurement to make. I mean, all power to them. If if

50:30we get a coincident measurement at another direct detection dark matter, like Japan has one, Italy has one in these mines. The South Dakota one is in a mine and they, you know, they purport to have found a dark matter particle. Um, if there is a coincident detection with the same mass and the same energy scale, that's a Nobel Prize waiting to happen, right? So, um, >> immediately. >> Yeah. And yeah, that is an immediate [laughter] immediately. Yes. immediately. Immediately. Yeah. So, we're not going to wait until you're on your deathbed for that one. >> Yeah. So, um I'm I'm waiting for this type of coincident detection. If it does happen, we will 100% cover it. It's very exciting. >> Uh to stay tuned for future news there.

51:14Uh we just have two more in our fall season update to cover. Uh and we thought this was going to be a short episode, but like always, we find a way to yap away. Uh, so our next one, uh,

MMX: where did Mars’ moons come from?

51:27many of you know I'm a big space fan, so pulled a lot of space stuff. >> Mhm. >> For this, uh, but this is some of the most exciting things at the frontier, uh, that people all feel very resonant around. And our next story is going to be about JAXA's Martian moon exploration mission. I should say Martian Moon's exploration mission. We're now looking at their fancy video breakdown of what we're going to do. >> And JAXA, real quick, is the Japanese >> Yes, excuse me. >> version of NASA. >> Correct. That's correct. And this is a mission that is uh in collaboration with NASA as well as the European Space Agency, ESA, along with both the French

52:09and German space agencies. The idea is to do a survey of Mars's two moons, Phobos and Daimos, and to land on Phobos to take to take a sample. >> Okay. >> Um, and you know, so we're seeing here it's getting close and it's doing slowing down >> cuz you know, we got to slow it down. >> And what what we've covered on the pod before here, right? And I'll actually pull up this next video example where we're going to see it's going to drop its little probe. This is very similar to the Hibusa 2. >> Very similar. Yes. >> Um and it's effectively like the level up where they, you know, took a sample

52:50from an asteroid which has been returned to Earth. >> And so now we're like, okay, let's do one better. And so this is a very interesting. >> We're now seeing the solar panels pop out, >> the wheel structure, >> right? And it's it's super fascinating. Uh it takes a village to make something like this happen and then it goes and retrieves it. >> Retrieves it, right? >> Yeah. From the surface, comes back up again. Very similar to Hayabusa 2, which we covered on the pod. And then it's going to return back to Earth, and then it's going to just shoot it apparently at Australia. >> Australia. [laughter] Yeah. Um, but the core scientific question that it seems like they're looking to

53:31answer with this is are Mars' moons captured asteroids or are they debris created by a giant impact? >> Ah, okay. Okay. kind of like cuz there's a hypothesis that our own moon is created by uh debris from giant impact when a Mars-sized object ran into us like a you know a few hundred million years into our existence like 4 billion years ago. >> That's that's exactly what's interesting. And we now know we can land on something, send something down, collect something. And when we talked about Hibusa 2, it's like had a little detonation to loosen up the the asteroid surface to be able to collect it and

54:12come up. And so this is going to be again an interesting next step here. Um it's it's sort of like uh Jax is moving up from the championship to the Prem. They're moving up a division in complexity. Uh and so we shall see. Um this is now uh slated for October 20th uh for a launch window. >> Okay. and looking to return samples to Earth by 2031. It is a long drive.

BepiColombo and the mysteries of Mercury

54:40>> Uh so this is again in this fall window, something that's super exciting and we'll keep an eye on. >> Yeah, that is super exciting. >> Uh speaking of ions, which is something we've talked about a lot in the brain in recent episodes. No, I'm kidding. Uh for for our last piece of coverage here, we will talk about surprisingly another space story. All right. Uh, and this is the Bey Columbo Mercury Arrival. So, this is what is the second and most complex mission to orbit Mercury, the first rock from the sun. Um, going towards Mercury's tough

55:21because it's so close to the sun. There's so many challenges of of doing that. We've had some solar, you know, missions go and have been very impressive. >> Yeah. I mean, some of the ones like straight up like go and like touch the sun. >> It's very impressive. >> Yeah. Like the Parker Solar Probe, which is named after Eugene Parker, who we um cover in the America 250. He's the one who um postulated that something like the solar wind should exist. So, again, plugging that episode. That's a great episode. Interestingly, Mercury is the least explored planet of the inner solar system. And one of the goals of learning about

56:01Mercury would be to shed light on the history of the entire solar system given given its proximity to the parent star. It's named after >> uh Jeppe Bey Columbo >> uh who's a scientist, mathematician, and engineer. Yes, they exist. Triple threat at the University of Padua in Italy. who first proposed this idea of interplanetary gravity assist maneuvers which was used by the 1974 Mariner 10 mission. And if anyone has watched Interstellar >> is is now it's in every movie. It's everything when we do >> it's how we got to Pluto. It's how we get anywhere. >> It's how we get anywhere. Um it's packed

56:43with a bunch of scientific instruments. And so part of what they're looking to do in terms of the questions they're trying to answer is why is there ice in the polar craters of Mercury given how close it is to the sun and how hot it is? >> Oh, interesting. Yeah. >> Um why does Mercury have a magnetic field? >> That is a weird [clears throat] one actually. [laughter] >> Right. And what are the mysterious hollows on its surface? Because it has these sort of hollow areas on its surface. Um and so there's a couple of different uh components to the mission. It has the Mercury planetary orbiter. It has the Mercury magneettospheric orbiter which is specifically around this idea of uh studying the magnetic fields. And

57:25it has the Mercury transfer module. Now it launched in 2018 uh from Europe's spaceport. Europe still in the game. >> Um it's in operation and on route to Mercury. It's done several Mercury flybys already. >> Oh, okay. October 21, June 22, June 23, September 24, de uh uh September 24, December 24, and January 25. Its arrival at Mercury is scheduled, and it's basically it's been tuning its >> It's tuning [clears throat] its approach. They've been testing the systems. >> Yep. It's expected to arrive around Christmas time 2026, December 2026, and

58:08to begin routine scientific operation hopefully around April of 2027. Um, and the the two orbiters that we discussed, the ESA is going to be doing the uh planetary orbiter [clears throat] that's studying Mercury itself. JAXA, Japanese Space Agency, is going to be the one studying the uh magneettosphere. And so it's it's a weird planet. >> It is. >> And we don't really have enough data to make any conclusions around it. And so this has been an 8-year road trip and we're finally getting to our destination to be able to do the science. >> Yeah. >> Uh and this should be pretty interesting. Yeah. I I'm I'm actually quite excited about that. Mercury, you

58:49know, you remind me of all the things that make Mercury so weird. One of the things is as you mentioned here um in the notes, enormous iron core. That's a weird one because like if if you've ever seen the um a photo of Earth and its core, um the core is about the size of the pit of a peach and then the meat of the peach is like the mantle. With Mercury, it's kind of like um you know those lint chocolates. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Or something where the it's mostly the core and then there's a there's a layer of like crust. >> That's what mercury is like. most of it is iron and then and then the crust and mantle are like very very thin. Now one

59:31of the reasons for that is because Mercury is closer to the sun and so when the solar system formed the heavier elements were closer to the sun while the lighter elements sort of just got like blown off by the protostellar wind that happens when you start first start like making that furnace of of of a star, right? Like imagine you've got the gas cloud that's like collapsing. The heavier elements are in the in the in the center. The lighter elements are in the in the in the periphery. And then when you create fusion, there's going to be intense stellar wind that's going to blow off everything. That's why Jupiter and Saturn and Neptune and Uranus are the gas giants that are on the outside

1:00:12and the rocky planets are on the inside. Well, Mercury is like the extreme version of the rocky planets, right? where like the heaviest elements like iron, which is where fusion stops, >> right? >> So that's that's where you're going to have most abundance, that mercury is going to have most of the iron. But what's weird is like for how small Mercury is, for how small Mercury is, its core should basically be solid. Like it should have cooled off. But the fact that it still has a magnetic field means that there's some activity happening within the core that is creating the magnetosphere. That's how magnetic fields originate, right? Is because of charged particles moving around. That's

1:00:53why the earth has a magnetic field is because the core, the outer core mostly is like moving around and that's why we think >> got a little jiggle. >> Yeah. Have you seen the movie The Core? It's a great movie. >> No. No, I haven't. >> Dude, it's a great movie. Um, actually, even though a lot of a lot of science people hate on it because it's like terrible science. Yeah. It's terrible science, but like >> it's a great movie. >> Look, it's I'm not going to lie. >> It's entertaining. >> Yeah. Yeah. The the the Earth's core stops spinning. So, then the magnetic field stops being a magnetic field and then we're about to get roasted by the sun. So, they have to like go into the core to restart the core by nuking it. Come on. Like, that's that that's dope.

1:01:34>> That sounds very entertaining to me. It's dope, dude. Um the the the science not so much, but like the the human stories behind it. Stanley Tucci's in it. He's like he's like one of the main big scientists. >> Of course he is. >> Um who's like who's like one of the famous scientists and the ego of the Stanley Tucci character is just so very on point with some of the big egos that I've interacted with in [laughter] academia. Anyways, so Mercury is like this enigma because it still has a magnetic field, but it shouldn't because it's small enough to have cooled off. You know, the moon doesn't have a magnetic field and the moon is comparable to the size of Mercury. So, it it is a bit weird.

1:02:14>> What's going on? >> Yeah. >> Um, thank you all for uh dealing with us

Your questions, future deep dives and sign-off

1:02:20in our half break week where we wanted to have a little bit of fun, talk about some of our favorite history. I'm gonna ask two questions for those who may still be watching. We're keeping this almost exactly at an hour. This is record time. [laughter] The YAP sesh is going to cut at record time. The two questions I have is of all of the things we covered today, which one of them do you want us to do a deep dive on? Like the Nobels is happening. Uh are folks interested in the Golden Goose Awards? Uh do they want us to look at any of these space missions and get a little bit more deep into what's going on there? Uh, so that's question number one. Then question number two, for

1:03:00potential longtime listeners, what's your favorite episode? >> Yes, >> we talked about some of our favorite episodes. I would love to know uh what brought you to the show. What was one where you're like, "Oh, this was fire. This is this this you guys were in your bag on this episode." >> Um, >> it helps us >> it helps us know kind of where to go and what to do. Um, but again, uh, kind of like the rundown format for those who've come the show for a while where we touch on different things and give you a little smorgish board. That was the goal for this episode. At some point in the future when we have the ability to do so, a deep dive a week and a rundown a week would be ideal. >> Yeah. >> So you get to know exactly what's

1:03:42happening at the frontier right when it happens. But then you still get the best part of the show which is the real first principles deep dive which in my view is like that's our that's our uh Michelin star dish. >> Yeah. >> Uh you can't get anywhere else because this is the best science show on the planet. I'm Lester Nar joined as always by my co-host and our resident PhD Krishna Chowdery. We are going to get out of your hair. We hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. We are about to go into ours up the Chelse. Can you believe it? It's unbelievable. Arsenal, it's unbelievable. I I don't know what to tell you. You thought just

1:04:22cuz you beat us for the last 5 years meant that you were just going to stomp all over us in your own house. I'm sorry to tell you times have changed. Enzo Fernandez, who needs him? He can go to Man City. It's fine. We don't need him. Y'all thought our center Oh, we're going to get Chance. Oh, we have a good team. It's a good team. We had a great transform. >> Wait, so is Enzo not coming back to Tuls? >> He's not. It's okay. >> It's okay. >> There's a lot of drama around it, which we're not going to get into because this is not a this is not a sports show, but there's some great drama. >> Well, I didn't I didn't like him anyways. >> We got $125 million for him. >> Yeah, that's pretty good. >> Look, >> and you got rid of Enzo and he didn't want he didn't want to be there. Look, if you don't want to play for the Blues

1:05:03for the badge, if you don't want to play for this, that's okay. We get it. Move on. >> You wanted to go to Real Madrid and you ended up in Man City. I don't know what to tell you. You guys are probably going to get re relegated for your crimes against the league because of all your cheating. So look look when we see Enzo Fernandez next season in the championship. I'm just look and we're going to win the Prem. We're going to be world champions from the FIFA World Club World Cup and we're going to be Prem champions and you know unlike Arsenal, we have a Champions League. You know I I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry for your loss. Uh you're going to come to the Stanford Bridge and you're also going to lose. [laughter] I'm done. We will see you all next week. Yeah.