WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.859 Imagine, for just a second, being the kind of 00:00:03.859 --> 00:00:07.480 person who not only figures out the incredibly 00:00:07.480 --> 00:00:10.619 dense math required to detect two black holes 00:00:10.619 --> 00:00:14.099 colliding like a billion light years away, but 00:00:14.099 --> 00:00:17.280 who also sits down with Hollywood A -listers 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:21.280 to teach them how to navigate a wormhole on a 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:24.420 massive IMAX screen. It really sounds like two 00:00:24.420 --> 00:00:26.760 entirely different lifetimes, doesn't it? I mean, 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:29.609 you have the theoretical physicist. crunching 00:00:29.609 --> 00:00:31.710 these impenetrable numbers in an academic tower, 00:00:31.949 --> 00:00:34.469 and then you have the blockbuster movie consultant 00:00:34.469 --> 00:00:37.369 standing on a red carpet. But for the subject 00:00:37.369 --> 00:00:40.030 of our deep dive today, it is all part of the 00:00:40.030 --> 00:00:42.750 exact same mission. We are pulling from a massive 00:00:42.750 --> 00:00:45.409 stack of biographical and scientific research 00:00:45.409 --> 00:00:48.869 to unpack the mind of Kip Thorne. Oh yeah, Kip 00:00:48.869 --> 00:00:51.149 Thorne. He's a Nobel laureate, an astrophysicist, 00:00:51.189 --> 00:00:53.030 and the guy who just effortlessly bridges the 00:00:53.030 --> 00:00:55.450 gap between the most formidable physics and the 00:00:55.450 --> 00:00:57.710 popcorn cinema you watch on a Friday night. And 00:00:57.710 --> 00:00:59.810 understanding his work is so crucial for you 00:00:59.810 --> 00:01:01.829 listening right now because Thorne isn't just 00:01:01.829 --> 00:01:03.829 doing math for the sake of math. Right, he's 00:01:03.829 --> 00:01:07.150 actually applying it. Exactly. He is fundamentally 00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:10.189 reshaping how humanity perceives the universe. 00:01:10.730 --> 00:01:14.469 Space, time, gravity. He takes the universe's 00:01:14.469 --> 00:01:17.950 most bizarre abstract secrets and translates 00:01:17.950 --> 00:01:20.769 them into tangible concepts we can actually visualize. 00:01:21.049 --> 00:01:23.450 To really understand how a mind like this operates, 00:01:23.629 --> 00:01:26.829 we have to... establish where that kind of curiosity 00:01:26.829 --> 00:01:29.409 comes from. Because before the black holes, before 00:01:29.409 --> 00:01:32.480 the Nobel Prize, there was Logan, Utah. in the 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:35.079 1940s. Yeah, the environment he grew up in was 00:01:35.079 --> 00:01:37.599 just the perfect incubator for an intellectual 00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:40.620 maverick. He was born in 1940 into this deeply 00:01:40.620 --> 00:01:43.140 academic family. By how academic are we talking? 00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:45.920 Well, his father was a professor of soil chemistry, 00:01:46.219 --> 00:01:48.739 and his mother was an economist. But she wasn't 00:01:48.739 --> 00:01:51.060 just any economist. She was the first woman to 00:01:51.060 --> 00:01:53.859 ever receive a PhD in economics from Iowa State. 00:01:54.040 --> 00:01:55.959 Okay, let's unpack this. Growing up in that house 00:01:55.959 --> 00:01:57.879 must have been like an academic boot camp. I 00:01:57.879 --> 00:01:59.760 just pictured the dinner table conversation. 00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:01.730 Oh, absolutely. Critical thinking wasn't just 00:02:01.730 --> 00:02:03.549 encouraged. It was basically the main course, 00:02:03.569 --> 00:02:06.109 right? Yeah. It perfectly primed him to question 00:02:06.109 --> 00:02:08.909 literally everything about his reality. And that 00:02:08.909 --> 00:02:11.310 questioning extended far beyond just his schoolwork, 00:02:11.569 --> 00:02:13.810 too. His family was originally part of the LDS 00:02:13.810 --> 00:02:16.729 church. Oh, wow. Yeah. But shortly before his 00:02:16.729 --> 00:02:19.449 mother's death, she actually urged Kip and his 00:02:19.449 --> 00:02:22.370 siblings to leave the church. Really? Why was 00:02:22.370 --> 00:02:25.330 that? Her reasoning was it's systemic discrimination 00:02:25.330 --> 00:02:27.789 against women. And they all followed her advice 00:02:27.789 --> 00:02:30.520 and just left. Walking away from your entire 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:33.259 community's belief system as a kid, because the 00:02:33.259 --> 00:02:35.560 logic doesn't hold up. I mean, that is a massive 00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:38.560 paradigm shift. It is. And it shows you the psychological 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:41.379 through line of his entire career. Leaving his 00:02:41.379 --> 00:02:44.090 childhood faith. guided by his mother's principles, 00:02:44.509 --> 00:02:46.729 reveals a mind willing to follow what he perceives 00:02:46.729 --> 00:02:49.689 as the truth. No matter the cost. Right. No matter 00:02:49.689 --> 00:02:52.210 how uncomfortable or socially disruptive the 00:02:52.210 --> 00:02:55.629 consequences might be. That specific brand of 00:02:55.629 --> 00:02:58.090 intellectual fearlessness is exactly the mindset 00:02:58.090 --> 00:03:00.610 required for theoretical physics. You can't be 00:03:00.610 --> 00:03:02.590 afraid to break the established rules of the 00:03:02.590 --> 00:03:04.830 universe. Yeah. And it also led to a very thoughtful 00:03:04.830 --> 00:03:07.650 personal philosophy later in life. Our sources 00:03:07.650 --> 00:03:09.990 note he identifies as an atheist, but it's a 00:03:09.990 --> 00:03:14.789 remarkably nuanced atheism. Oh, so. Well, he 00:03:14.789 --> 00:03:17.169 openly states that he doesn't believe in God, 00:03:17.669 --> 00:03:21.349 and he maintains there is no fundamental incompatibility 00:03:21.349 --> 00:03:25.090 between science and religion. He holds deep respect 00:03:25.090 --> 00:03:27.409 for his devout colleagues. That's refreshing. 00:03:27.810 --> 00:03:30.990 It is. He completely avoids that combative, purely 00:03:30.990 --> 00:03:33.770 cynical edge you sometimes see in academia. He 00:03:33.770 --> 00:03:36.469 genuinely respects the search for meaning wherever 00:03:36.469 --> 00:03:39.800 it stems from. And his own search triggered this 00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:42.479 meteoric academic rise. He gets his bachelor's 00:03:42.479 --> 00:03:45.379 from Caltech, then his PhD from Princeton under 00:03:45.379 --> 00:03:47.659 the legendary physicist John Archibald Wheeler. 00:03:47.860 --> 00:03:50.060 Wheeler is a titan in his own right. Oh, a total 00:03:50.060 --> 00:03:53.259 legend. And by age 30, Thorne is back at Caltech, 00:03:53.439 --> 00:03:55.419 becoming one of the youngest full professors 00:03:55.419 --> 00:03:57.819 in the university's history. So Thorne has this 00:03:57.819 --> 00:04:00.810 brilliant, rebellious mind. and he decides to 00:04:00.810 --> 00:04:02.909 point it at the universe's most extreme phenomena, 00:04:03.189 --> 00:04:05.110 black holes. Yeah, and while he was at Princeton, 00:04:05.349 --> 00:04:07.509 John Wheeler handed him an absolute nightmare 00:04:07.509 --> 00:04:09.870 of a homework assignment. A homework assignment. 00:04:10.169 --> 00:04:12.009 Well, a research problem, but basically a test. 00:04:12.349 --> 00:04:14.370 Wheeler asked him to figure out if a cylindrical 00:04:14.370 --> 00:04:17.269 bundle of magnetic field lines would naturally 00:04:17.269 --> 00:04:19.430 implode under its own attractive gravitational 00:04:19.430 --> 00:04:21.990 force. I can't even picture what a cylindrical 00:04:21.990 --> 00:04:25.290 bundle of magnetic fields looks like, let alone... 00:04:25.439 --> 00:04:27.579 you know, do the math on its gravity. Right. 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:31.139 It took Thorne months of agonizing calculations. 00:04:31.800 --> 00:04:34.079 But he eventually proved that it was actually 00:04:34.079 --> 00:04:36.540 impossible for those cylindrical magnetic field 00:04:36.540 --> 00:04:39.839 lines to implode. But spherical stars do implode 00:04:39.839 --> 00:04:42.579 all the time to form black holes. So he has this 00:04:42.579 --> 00:04:45.160 massive discrepancy in the physics to deal with. 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:47.579 Exactly. And solving that discrepancy is what 00:04:47.579 --> 00:04:50.720 leads him to formulate the hoop conjecture. The 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:53.459 idea is that an imploding star only turns into 00:04:53.459 --> 00:04:56.300 a black hole if a critical circumference, like 00:04:56.300 --> 00:04:58.860 a literal hoop, can be placed around it and set 00:04:58.860 --> 00:05:00.879 into rotation. It has to be compressed in all 00:05:00.879 --> 00:05:03.339 directions simultaneously. Yeah. Gravity has 00:05:03.339 --> 00:05:06.000 to completely overwhelm all the interior pressure 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:08.980 of the star from every possible angle. It can't 00:05:08.980 --> 00:05:11.120 just be squeezed from the sides like, say, a 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:12.660 tube of toothpaste. So it's basically like trying 00:05:12.660 --> 00:05:15.240 to stuff a massive heavy -duty sleeping bag into 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:18.579 a tiny, specific -sized stuff sack. Oh, that's 00:05:18.579 --> 00:05:20.449 a good way to put it. You can't just push it 00:05:20.449 --> 00:05:22.069 from one end or it'll just bulge out the other 00:05:22.069 --> 00:05:24.550 side. You have to force it in from every single 00:05:24.550 --> 00:05:26.589 direction at once, and the moment you zip it 00:05:26.589 --> 00:05:29.430 up, boom, you've created a black hole. I love 00:05:29.430 --> 00:05:31.589 that analogy. And what's fascinating here is 00:05:31.589 --> 00:05:34.449 how Thorne handles the math of that zipped up 00:05:34.449 --> 00:05:37.610 sleeping bag because black holes are notoriously 00:05:37.610 --> 00:05:40.370 problematic for physicists. Because of the singularity, 00:05:40.470 --> 00:05:42.889 right? Right. They contain a singularity, a point 00:05:42.889 --> 00:05:46.050 of infinite density where all our standard laws 00:05:46.050 --> 00:05:48.089 of physics completely break down and basically 00:05:48.089 --> 00:05:50.850 just output gibberish. They're essentially giant 00:05:50.850 --> 00:05:54.389 division by zero errors in the universe. Precisely 00:05:54.389 --> 00:05:57.019 why they're so hard to study. The singularity 00:05:57.019 --> 00:05:59.399 is surrounded by an event horizon, the point 00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:02.439 of no return. But Thorne and his colleagues built 00:06:02.439 --> 00:06:05.079 a mathematical framework called the membrane 00:06:05.079 --> 00:06:07.500 paradigm. The membrane paradigm. Okay, walk me 00:06:07.500 --> 00:06:09.459 through that. So they figured out a way to allow 00:06:09.459 --> 00:06:12.139 other scientists to treat the event horizon not 00:06:12.139 --> 00:06:14.939 just as an invisible boundary, but as if it were 00:06:14.939 --> 00:06:17.680 a physical, stretching, electrically conducting 00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:20.800 surface. Like a membrane. Oh, I see. So instead 00:06:20.800 --> 00:06:23.600 of trying to do math on a terrifying singularity 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:26.360 that breaks all the rules, he's giving physicists 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:29.639 a way to use normal, everyday physics. Exactly. 00:06:29.779 --> 00:06:33.160 Normal physics like thermodynamics and electromagnetism. 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:35.519 just applying it to the surface of the black 00:06:35.519 --> 00:06:38.279 hole. He made the impossible workable for everyone 00:06:38.279 --> 00:06:41.319 else. It was a monumental tool. It allowed researchers 00:06:41.319 --> 00:06:44.180 to finally understand how black holes might act 00:06:44.180 --> 00:06:47.420 like giant batteries powering massive distant 00:06:47.420 --> 00:06:50.860 phenomena like quasars. That is wild. And Thorne 00:06:50.860 --> 00:06:53.500 used these own tools to calculate the maximum 00:06:53.500 --> 00:06:56.220 spin of a black hole. He figured out that if 00:06:56.220 --> 00:06:58.579 a black hole is spinning faster and faster by 00:06:58.579 --> 00:07:00.759 devouring surrounding matter at what we call 00:07:00.759 --> 00:07:03.680 an accretion disk, it can never spin infinitely 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:07.819 fast. It tops out at .998 of the maximum spin 00:07:07.819 --> 00:07:10.120 allowed by general relativity. Wait, why not 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:12.639 a perfect 1 .0? What's actually stopping it from 00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:14.579 hitting the max? Well, think about all that matter 00:07:14.579 --> 00:07:17.360 swirling around the drain. As it speeds up, friction 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:20.339 generates unimaginable heat and blinding radiation. 00:07:20.759 --> 00:07:23.899 That radiation actually shoots out and pushes 00:07:23.899 --> 00:07:27.060 back against the infalling matter. It acts as 00:07:27.060 --> 00:07:30.120 a physical cosmic break against the black hole's 00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:33.040 rotation. The universe is just so wildly mechanical 00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:35.639 when you get down to it. And his work on stars 00:07:35.639 --> 00:07:38.740 gets even weirder, doesn't it? Oh, much weirder. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:41.240 The sources mention he predicted, along with 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:44.360 astronomer Anna Zitkow, these bizarre hybrid 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:48.120 stars called Thorne -Zitkow objects. Yes. Imagine 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:51.519 a massive red, supergiant star. But instead of 00:07:51.519 --> 00:07:54.399 a normal fusion core powering it, it has a dead 00:07:54.399 --> 00:07:57.019 hyper -dense neutron star sitting right in its 00:07:57.019 --> 00:07:59.480 center. The neutron star literally sinks into 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:01.639 the core of the larger star and just acts like 00:08:01.639 --> 00:08:04.199 a parasite, slowly eating the red giant from 00:08:04.199 --> 00:08:05.620 the inside out. It's like something out of a 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:07.639 sci -fi horror movie. It really is. But once 00:08:07.639 --> 00:08:09.519 you start understanding how these extreme objects 00:08:09.519 --> 00:08:12.339 warp the actual fabric of space and time, the 00:08:12.339 --> 00:08:14.959 next logical question arises. Can you manipulate 00:08:14.959 --> 00:08:16.899 that warped space? Which brings us straight into 00:08:16.899 --> 00:08:19.199 wormholes. Exactly. Can you use it to travel? 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:21.639 This is where Thorne's research deliberately 00:08:21.639 --> 00:08:24.379 pushes the absolute boundaries of general relativity. 00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:28.000 He, along with researchers Mike Morris and Ulvi 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.439 Yertsever, started looking mathematically at 00:08:30.439 --> 00:08:32.879 whether the laws of physics permit traversable 00:08:32.879 --> 00:08:36.220 wormholes. Basically a shortcut connecting two 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:39.480 vastly separated regions of space. Right. But 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:43.580 the sources point out a huge glaring catch. Gravity 00:08:43.580 --> 00:08:46.279 naturally wants to crush a wormhole, shut the 00:08:46.279 --> 00:08:48.399 millisecond it opens. So how do you keep it open? 00:08:48.649 --> 00:08:51.190 To keep it propped open, you need something called 00:08:51.190 --> 00:08:54.190 exotic matter. Matter made of quantum fields 00:08:54.190 --> 00:08:56.389 with negative energy. Okay, I've got to push 00:08:56.389 --> 00:08:58.990 back on the science here. Wait, negative energy? 00:08:59.570 --> 00:09:01.470 That sounds like a complete math trick to make 00:09:01.470 --> 00:09:03.210 science fiction look real. It does sound like 00:09:03.210 --> 00:09:06.149 magic. Are theoretical physicists just inventing 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:08.590 magical substances to make their equations balance? 00:09:08.889 --> 00:09:11.409 That is the exact right reaction to have. It 00:09:11.409 --> 00:09:14.190 sounds completely like a cheat code. But this 00:09:14.190 --> 00:09:16.309 raises an important question about how theoretical 00:09:16.309 --> 00:09:19.230 physics actually functions. How so? Well, Thorne 00:09:19.230 --> 00:09:21.470 isn't claiming he has a jar of negative energy 00:09:21.470 --> 00:09:24.289 sitting on his desk or that humanity is about 00:09:24.289 --> 00:09:27.190 to build a stargate tomorrow. He is stress testing 00:09:27.190 --> 00:09:30.070 the fundamental laws of physics. Walk me through 00:09:30.070 --> 00:09:32.830 what stress testing means in this context. He's 00:09:32.830 --> 00:09:35.250 asking if Einstein's equations of relativity 00:09:35.250 --> 00:09:39.129 are 100 % correct, what are the absolute extreme 00:09:39.129 --> 00:09:42.409 logical conclusions? Oh, I get it. So, if the 00:09:42.409 --> 00:09:45.090 math technically allows for a wormhole, what 00:09:45.090 --> 00:09:47.210 does the universe demand as the price to build 00:09:47.210 --> 00:09:50.269 it? Exactly. The math says the price is negative 00:09:50.269 --> 00:09:53.850 energy. OK, so do quantum mechanics allow for 00:09:53.850 --> 00:09:57.090 negative energy to exist? Under very specific 00:09:57.090 --> 00:09:59.710 microscopic conditions, it turns out they might. 00:09:59.929 --> 00:10:02.549 That's incredible. By pushing the math to its 00:10:02.549 --> 00:10:05.529 absolute breaking point, Thorne forces the entire 00:10:05.529 --> 00:10:07.730 physics community to figure out exactly what 00:10:07.730 --> 00:10:10.029 prevents these wild scenarios from destroying 00:10:10.029 --> 00:10:12.509 the universe. Right, because if you have a traversable 00:10:12.509 --> 00:10:14.250 wormhole, you essentially have a time machine. 00:10:14.299 --> 00:10:16.259 You can connect two points in different times. 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:18.519 Yep. And if you have a time issue, you immediately 00:10:18.519 --> 00:10:21.360 run into the grandfather paradox. You go back, 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:23.500 prevent your grandparents from meeting, and then 00:10:23.500 --> 00:10:25.879 you are never born to go back in the first place. 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:30.049 Reality just breaks. and physicists hate paradoxes. 00:10:30.529 --> 00:10:32.909 This is where his fascinating work with Sungwon 00:10:32.909 --> 00:10:35.870 Kim comes into play. They investigated whether 00:10:35.870 --> 00:10:38.289 the universe has a built -in defense mechanism 00:10:38.289 --> 00:10:40.190 against time travel. And what did they find? 00:10:40.590 --> 00:10:42.990 They found that if you try to turn a wormhole 00:10:42.990 --> 00:10:45.950 into a time machine, something called the explosive 00:10:45.950 --> 00:10:49.149 growth of vacuum polarization happens. OK, we 00:10:49.149 --> 00:10:51.389 definitely need to unpack vacuum polarization. 00:10:51.639 --> 00:10:54.399 In quantum physics, empty space isn't actually 00:10:54.399 --> 00:10:57.340 empty. It's constantly boiling with virtual particles 00:10:57.340 --> 00:10:59.580 that pop into existence and vanish instantly. 00:10:59.919 --> 00:11:02.480 OK, so space is fizzy. Basically, yeah. So if 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.860 you have a time machine wormhole, a virtual particle 00:11:04.860 --> 00:11:07.419 can travel through it, go back in time, and exit 00:11:07.419 --> 00:11:10.200 the wormhole at the exact moment it entered. 00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:12.360 Oh, man. So now you have two particles. Right. 00:11:12.519 --> 00:11:14.779 The loop again, you have four, then eight. It 00:11:14.779 --> 00:11:17.980 creates an infinite, instantaneous feedback loop 00:11:17.980 --> 00:11:20.179 of energy. Like putting a microphone right next 00:11:20.179 --> 00:11:22.220 to a speaker and until that screeching feedback 00:11:22.220 --> 00:11:25.659 shatters the glass. Exactly like that. The quantum 00:11:25.659 --> 00:11:28.159 fluctuations build up infinitely and destroy 00:11:28.159 --> 00:11:31.100 the wormhole the exact macroscopic second it 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:33.820 becomes capable of backward time travel. So the 00:11:33.820 --> 00:11:36.340 universe literally vaporizes the time machine 00:11:36.340 --> 00:11:38.779 to protect its own causality. That is poetic. 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:41.980 Perhaps. But Thorne pushed the math even further. 00:11:42.639 --> 00:11:45.019 He later calculated that if you did somehow manage 00:11:45.019 --> 00:11:48.710 to send simple masses, like, um... billiard balls 00:11:48.710 --> 00:11:51.929 through a traversable wormhole, they might never 00:11:51.929 --> 00:11:55.549 engender paradoxes. Wait, really? How? His calculations 00:11:55.549 --> 00:11:57.970 suggested that no matter what the initial trajectory 00:11:57.970 --> 00:12:00.970 of the ball is, the universe always finds a consistent 00:12:00.970 --> 00:12:03.580 solution. Like the ball just gently knocks its 00:12:03.580 --> 00:12:05.940 past self off course rather than preventing its 00:12:05.940 --> 00:12:08.200 own journey entirely. So it implies that the 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:10.379 universe might fundamentally prevent paradoxes 00:12:10.379 --> 00:12:12.600 from existing at all. Exactly. So Thorne has 00:12:12.600 --> 00:12:15.120 all this beautiful mind -bending math about warp 00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:17.559 space, black holes, and time travel on paper. 00:12:18.100 --> 00:12:20.379 But math isn't reality until you can observe 00:12:20.379 --> 00:12:22.840 it. And that is incredibly frustrating when you 00:12:22.840 --> 00:12:25.299 study black holes because they are completely 00:12:25.299 --> 00:12:27.879 invisible to every traditional telescope on Earth. 00:12:28.429 --> 00:12:30.809 I mean, how do you see something that doesn't 00:12:30.809 --> 00:12:33.269 emit any light? You have to build an entirely 00:12:33.269 --> 00:12:36.830 new type of machine. And this is Thorne's crowning 00:12:36.830 --> 00:12:40.149 real world achievement, the Laser Interferometer 00:12:40.149 --> 00:12:43.409 Gravitational Wave Observatory, LIGO. Yeah, back 00:12:43.409 --> 00:12:46.490 in 1984, Thorne co -founded the LIGO project. 00:12:47.429 --> 00:12:49.929 And the scale of this ambition is just staggering. 00:12:50.370 --> 00:12:52.570 It became the largest single enterprise ever 00:12:52.570 --> 00:12:55.129 funded by the National Science Foundation, costing 00:12:55.129 --> 00:12:57.179 hundreds of millions of dollars. And Thorne's 00:12:57.179 --> 00:12:59.940 role wasn't just being the ideas guy or the famous 00:12:59.940 --> 00:13:02.500 name on the letterhead. He was deep in the trenches 00:13:02.500 --> 00:13:05.419 of engineering and data analysis. What was he 00:13:05.419 --> 00:13:08.299 actually building? He designed the complex mathematical 00:13:08.299 --> 00:13:10.080 signatures that computers would need to look 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:13.080 for to identify a gravitational wave. He even 00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:15.460 designed physical baffles for the massive beam 00:13:15.460 --> 00:13:18.200 tubes to control scattered laser light. And crucially, 00:13:18.419 --> 00:13:21.320 the sources note he helped invent quantum non 00:13:21.320 --> 00:13:23.860 -demolition measurements to deal with thermoelastic 00:13:23.860 --> 00:13:26.019 noise. We definitely need to translate that because 00:13:26.019 --> 00:13:28.519 it sounds impossible. Let's start with thermoelastic 00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:33.379 noise. The mirrors in LIGO are so incredibly 00:13:33.379 --> 00:13:36.519 sensitive that just the microscopic jittering 00:13:36.519 --> 00:13:38.740 of their atoms at room temperature is enough 00:13:38.740 --> 00:13:41.419 to completely drown out the signal of a black 00:13:41.419 --> 00:13:43.440 hole colliding. So they have to cool things down. 00:13:43.690 --> 00:13:45.789 Right, but then they hit another wall, the Heisenberg 00:13:45.789 --> 00:13:48.470 Uncertainty Principle. The idea that at a quantum 00:13:48.470 --> 00:13:51.429 level, the mere act of measuring a particle alters 00:13:51.429 --> 00:13:54.610 its state. How can you possibly measure a gravitational 00:13:54.610 --> 00:13:57.470 wave without ruining the very measurement you 00:13:57.470 --> 00:13:59.750 are trying to take? That's the genius of quantum 00:13:59.750 --> 00:14:02.289 non -demolition. Thorne and his colleagues figured 00:14:02.289 --> 00:14:04.649 out ways to measure a specific property of the 00:14:04.649 --> 00:14:07.509 system, say, its momentum, in a way that dumps 00:14:07.509 --> 00:14:09.730 all the quantum uncertainty into a different 00:14:09.730 --> 00:14:11.889 property, like its position, that they don't 00:14:11.889 --> 00:14:14.269 care about. Oh, wow. So they observe the system 00:14:14.269 --> 00:14:16.250 without destroying the fragile quantum state 00:14:16.250 --> 00:14:18.570 they actually need to read. Exactly. Here's where 00:14:18.570 --> 00:14:20.129 it gets really interesting, because we have to 00:14:20.129 --> 00:14:22.509 talk about how tiny a measurement we are talking 00:14:22.509 --> 00:14:26.529 about. Lego consists of these massive LSH tubes, 00:14:27.029 --> 00:14:30.049 miles long, shooting lasers back and forth. When 00:14:30.049 --> 00:14:32.830 a gravitational wave from a black hole collision 00:14:32.830 --> 00:14:35.450 passes through the Earth, it literally stretches 00:14:35.450 --> 00:14:39.169 and squeezes the fabric of space itself. And 00:14:39.169 --> 00:14:41.669 LIGO measures that stretch. And the change in 00:14:41.669 --> 00:14:43.610 distance they're looking for is smaller than 00:14:43.610 --> 00:14:45.929 a fraction of a single proton. Think about that 00:14:45.929 --> 00:14:48.750 for a second. Imagine the distance between you 00:14:48.750 --> 00:14:51.429 and the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 00:14:51.590 --> 00:14:54.289 which is over four light years away. Okay. Now 00:14:54.289 --> 00:14:56.509 imagine measuring a change in that entire distance 00:14:56.509 --> 00:15:00.190 by the width of a single human hair. That is 00:15:00.190 --> 00:15:02.090 the level of sensitivity Thorne and his team 00:15:02.090 --> 00:15:05.070 were trying to achieve while standing on a vibrating 00:15:05.070 --> 00:15:07.950 noisy planet. which is why it took decades of 00:15:07.950 --> 00:15:10.830 relentless refinement. But then on February 11th, 00:15:10.870 --> 00:15:14.289 2016, the announcement finally came. Months earlier, 00:15:14.529 --> 00:15:17.850 in September 2015, LIGO had successfully recorded 00:15:17.850 --> 00:15:20.509 the signature, a distinct chirp of two black 00:15:20.509 --> 00:15:22.629 holes colliding. And these black holes were 1 00:15:22.629 --> 00:15:25.649 .3 billion light years away, meaning that violent 00:15:25.649 --> 00:15:29.049 collision happened 1 .3 billion years ago. Yeah. 00:15:29.289 --> 00:15:31.250 Those ripples in the fabric of space traveled 00:15:31.250 --> 00:15:33.350 across the universe for over a billion years 00:15:33.350 --> 00:15:35.409 and finally washed over the Earth just in time 00:15:35.409 --> 00:15:37.759 for LIGO to be turned on. It was the ultimate 00:15:37.759 --> 00:15:40.840 vindication. It confirmed Albert Einstein's century 00:15:40.840 --> 00:15:43.440 -old prediction of general relativity, and it 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:45.799 rightfully brought Thorne, along with his colleagues 00:15:45.799 --> 00:15:49.419 Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish, the 2017 Nobel 00:15:49.419 --> 00:15:52.440 Prize in Physics. So why does this matter so 00:15:52.440 --> 00:15:55.299 much to you, the listener? Why is a microscopic 00:15:55.299 --> 00:15:58.919 chirp such a monumental shift for humanity? Well, 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:01.700 if we connect this to the bigger picture, humanity 00:16:01.700 --> 00:16:04.299 has spent its entire history just looking at 00:16:04.299 --> 00:16:06.639 the universe. Every tool we have ever built, 00:16:07.100 --> 00:16:09.320 from Galileo's first spyglass to the James Webb 00:16:09.320 --> 00:16:13.019 Space Telescope, relies on capturing light. electromagnetic 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:15.100 radiation. But a vast portion of our universe 00:16:15.100 --> 00:16:17.679 is completely dark. Exactly. LIGO gave humanity 00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:20.259 a brand new sense organ. We are no longer just 00:16:20.259 --> 00:16:22.240 looking at the cosmos. We now have the ability 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:24.440 to actually hear or feel the physical vibrations 00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:26.600 of space -time itself. Most people, if they won 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:28.460 a Nobel Prize for giving the human race a new 00:16:28.460 --> 00:16:30.440 sense organ, would probably, you know, retire 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:32.759 to a beach somewhere. Right. But Thorne decided 00:16:32.759 --> 00:16:35.259 it was time to take all this unimaginable physics 00:16:35.259 --> 00:16:37.700 and show it to the rest of us. He stepped directly 00:16:37.700 --> 00:16:40.679 into pop culture. Yeah, in 2009, he actually 00:16:40.679 --> 00:16:43.600 resigned from his prestigious Feynman professorship 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:46.399 at Caltech. He stepped away from his day job 00:16:46.399 --> 00:16:49.500 specifically to pursue a career in writing and 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:52.259 movie making. I mean, imagine being so incredibly 00:16:52.259 --> 00:16:55.379 successful at your day job of literal astrophysics 00:16:55.379 --> 00:16:58.519 that you retire to go work on Hollywood blockbusters. 00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:01.120 It's such a flex. It really is. But it's also 00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:03.799 deeply refreshing that a scientist of his caliber 00:17:03.799 --> 00:17:06.900 respects the general public enough to put serious, 00:17:07.259 --> 00:17:09.529 rigorous effort into the media we consume. And 00:17:09.529 --> 00:17:11.569 his crossover into Hollywood actually started 00:17:11.569 --> 00:17:13.769 years earlier. He was a longtime friend of Carl 00:17:13.769 --> 00:17:16.670 Sagan. When Sagan was writing the iconic sci 00:17:16.670 --> 00:17:19.670 -fi novel Contact, he asked Thorne for advice 00:17:19.670 --> 00:17:21.829 on how his protagonist could travel across the 00:17:21.829 --> 00:17:24.450 galaxy quickly and realistically. Sagan initially 00:17:24.450 --> 00:17:26.150 had her traveling through a black hole. Right. 00:17:26.150 --> 00:17:28.369 He did. And Thorne corrected him, suggesting 00:17:28.369 --> 00:17:31.490 he used traversable wormholes instead. That ensured 00:17:31.490 --> 00:17:33.569 the physics in the novel and the subsequent Jodie 00:17:33.569 --> 00:17:36.089 Foster movie were theoretically sound. And in 00:17:36.089 --> 00:17:38.910 a bizarre Hollywood twist, Carl Sagan actually 00:17:38.910 --> 00:17:41.190 set Thorne up on a blind date with a woman named 00:17:41.190 --> 00:17:44.170 Linda Obst. Oh, that's right. They only dated 00:17:44.170 --> 00:17:47.349 briefly, but they remained great friends. Linda 00:17:47.349 --> 00:17:49.430 Obst went on to become a major Hollywood film 00:17:49.430 --> 00:17:53.210 producer. Years later, Thorne and Obst co -developed 00:17:53.210 --> 00:17:55.490 a treatment for a movie about exploring the warped 00:17:55.490 --> 00:17:57.970 side of the universe. And that treatment eventually 00:17:57.970 --> 00:18:01.349 evolved into Christopher Nolan's epic Interstellar. 00:18:01.480 --> 00:18:04.059 Yeah. Thorne's influence on Interstellar is just 00:18:04.059 --> 00:18:06.880 unprecedented for a blockbuster. He didn't just 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:09.079 lend his name as a consultant for credibility. 00:18:09.640 --> 00:18:12.559 He actively fought to ensure the math on screen 00:18:12.559 --> 00:18:14.799 was accurate. The visual effects in that movie 00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:17.200 are mind blowing. And they're real. He worked 00:18:17.200 --> 00:18:19.619 directly with the visual effects teams, handing 00:18:19.619 --> 00:18:22.880 them the actual agonizing equations for how light 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:25.779 would physically bend and warp around a supermassive 00:18:25.779 --> 00:18:28.420 black hole. The resulting images of the black 00:18:28.420 --> 00:18:31.730 hole. gargantua in the film were so scientifically 00:18:31.730 --> 00:18:35.150 accurate that Thorne and the VFX team actually 00:18:35.150 --> 00:18:37.609 co -authored and published peer -reviewed scientific 00:18:37.609 --> 00:18:40.089 papers based on the computer simulations they 00:18:40.089 --> 00:18:42.529 had to invent just to render the movie. He followed 00:18:42.529 --> 00:18:44.589 it up by publishing a brilliant tie -in book, 00:18:44.769 --> 00:18:47.089 The Science of Interstellar, explaining the real 00:18:47.089 --> 00:18:49.490 physics behind the fiction. And he didn't stop 00:18:49.490 --> 00:18:51.849 there. No, he didn't. He advised Christopher 00:18:51.849 --> 00:18:54.430 Nolan again on the extremely complex physics 00:18:54.430 --> 00:18:57.339 of time inversion for the movie Tenet. He even 00:18:57.339 --> 00:18:59.779 sat down with actor Cillian Murphy to advise 00:18:59.779 --> 00:19:02.140 him on how to accurately portray the mind and 00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:04.799 mannerisms of a brilliant physicist in Oppenheimer. 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:08.440 It all clearly ties back to a core belief system. 00:19:09.059 --> 00:19:11.380 Knowledge is most valuable when it is shared. 00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:14.359 By demanding that the science in these massive 00:19:14.359 --> 00:19:17.380 cultural touchstones was accurate, he fundamentally 00:19:17.380 --> 00:19:20.019 elevated how millions of ordinary people visualize 00:19:20.019 --> 00:19:23.410 the cosmos. He took the most abstract, terrifying 00:19:23.410 --> 00:19:26.329 math in the universe and made it viscerally real 00:19:26.329 --> 00:19:28.970 for anyone with a movie ticket. So to summarize 00:19:28.970 --> 00:19:31.549 the wild journey of Kip Thorne, here's a man 00:19:31.549 --> 00:19:33.730 who conquered the theoretical math of black holes 00:19:33.730 --> 00:19:36.490 and paradoxes, engineered the practical physical 00:19:36.490 --> 00:19:38.789 tools to detect the invisible waves of gravity, 00:19:38.950 --> 00:19:41.450 and then painted it all onto the silver screen. 00:19:41.509 --> 00:19:43.950 It's incredible. He took us from the most rigorous 00:19:43.950 --> 00:19:46.450 academic boot camp in Utah to the ultimate heights 00:19:46.450 --> 00:19:49.269 of human discovery. A true maverick who never 00:19:49.269 --> 00:19:52.009 stopped asking what if. and then possessed the 00:19:52.009 --> 00:19:54.890 sheer willpower to do the math to find out. But 00:19:54.890 --> 00:19:57.869 before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one 00:19:57.869 --> 00:20:00.289 final mind -expanding nugget from the source 00:20:00.289 --> 00:20:01.789 material that we haven't even touched on yet. 00:20:01.869 --> 00:20:05.769 Oh, what's that? By 2005, Thorne had started 00:20:05.769 --> 00:20:07.869 shifting his intellectual focus towards something 00:20:07.869 --> 00:20:10.869 called the quantum foam of quantum gravity theory. 00:20:11.750 --> 00:20:14.109 He wanted to figure out the actual origin of 00:20:14.109 --> 00:20:17.349 classical space and time themselves. Wow. So 00:20:17.349 --> 00:20:19.349 I want you to ponder this as you go about your 00:20:19.349 --> 00:20:22.920 day. What if the space and time we experience 00:20:22.920 --> 00:20:26.119 every single second, the physical distance to 00:20:26.119 --> 00:20:28.980 your car, the minutes ticking by on your watch, 00:20:29.480 --> 00:20:31.619 aren't fundamental elements of the universe at 00:20:31.619 --> 00:20:34.119 all? Right. What if space and time are just temporary 00:20:34.119 --> 00:20:36.660 bubbles constantly emerging and popping from 00:20:36.660 --> 00:20:40.559 a chaotic microscopic boiling quantum foam that 00:20:40.559 --> 00:20:43.769 exists underneath reality? It entirely reframes 00:20:43.769 --> 00:20:46.410 what it means to exist. It really does. Thank 00:20:46.410 --> 00:20:47.950 you for joining us on this deep dive. The next 00:20:47.950 --> 00:20:49.970 time you look up at the dark night sky, or the 00:20:49.970 --> 00:20:51.509 next time you sit down on your couch to watch 00:20:51.509 --> 00:20:54.049 Interstellar, we hope you see it all with a whole 00:20:54.049 --> 00:20:56.910 new perspective. Because whether it's an invisible 00:20:56.910 --> 00:20:59.109 ripple from a billion light years away shaking 00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:01.970 a mirror, or a Hollywood A -lister explaining 00:21:01.970 --> 00:21:04.109 a wormhole with a piece of folded paper and a 00:21:04.109 --> 00:21:07.009 pencil, the universe is far weirder and far more 00:21:07.009 --> 00:21:08.549 connected than we ever imagined.