WEBVTT 00:00:02.029 --> 00:00:05.150 Hi. The more I've learned about our universe, 00:00:05.410 --> 00:00:09.529 the stranger it seems to become. For most of 00:00:09.529 --> 00:00:12.689 us, space feels pretty straightforward. We've 00:00:12.689 --> 00:00:16.269 got up, we've got down. Left, we've got right. 00:00:16.670 --> 00:00:20.550 Forward, we've got backwards. And time seems 00:00:20.550 --> 00:00:23.969 to be even simpler. Yesterday happened, today 00:00:23.969 --> 00:00:27.390 is happening, and tomorrow hasn't happened yet. 00:00:28.289 --> 00:00:32.859 And then Einstein came along. He showed us that 00:00:32.859 --> 00:00:35.659 space and time are not really separate things. 00:00:36.100 --> 00:00:38.820 They're connected into something that we now 00:00:38.820 --> 00:00:43.700 call space -time. And even time itself does not 00:00:43.700 --> 00:00:48.320 pass exactly the same way for everyone. How fast 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:50.899 you're moving and how close you are to a massive 00:00:50.899 --> 00:00:55.899 object can affect the passage of time. That is 00:00:55.899 --> 00:00:59.600 strange. And then we look in the other direction. 00:01:00.079 --> 00:01:02.820 Rather than looking out at the galaxies, we look 00:01:02.820 --> 00:01:06.540 down into atoms, and things get even stranger. 00:01:07.700 --> 00:01:10.980 At the quantum level, reality does not behave 00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:13.640 the way that our everyday experience tells us 00:01:13.640 --> 00:01:16.439 that it should. And the deeper we investigate, 00:01:16.700 --> 00:01:19.939 the more we discover that reality is not obligated 00:01:19.939 --> 00:01:24.060 to match our intuition. Math has taught me something 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.420 similar. Take square root of 2. It's simply the 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:29.939 length of the diagonal of a square. where the 00:01:29.939 --> 00:01:34.319 sides are length 1. Pretty ordinary. But its 00:01:34.319 --> 00:01:38.239 decimal expansion continues forever without repeating. 00:01:39.319 --> 00:01:41.680 And then there's numbers. If we think about the 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:44.879 numbers between 0 and 1, and 1 and infinity, 00:01:45.239 --> 00:01:48.239 it seems like there are a lot more numbers from 00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:52.840 1 to infinity. And yet, they are the same size 00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:57.379 of infinity. It seems impossible. But it is what 00:01:57.379 --> 00:02:01.900 math tells us. reality turns out to be stranger 00:02:01.900 --> 00:02:06.340 than we expect. And I find that humbling. We're 00:02:06.340 --> 00:02:08.539 pretty good at creating categories for things. 00:02:08.939 --> 00:02:12.159 We name them and measure them. We even write 00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:15.759 equations about them. And those things help us 00:02:15.759 --> 00:02:19.159 understand our world. But I do not want to confuse 00:02:19.159 --> 00:02:23.180 our descriptions of reality with reality itself. 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:28.719 Because there is always more. And that affects 00:02:28.719 --> 00:02:33.240 my worldview. It reminds me to hold some of my 00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:37.539 conclusions with some humility. There are things 00:02:37.539 --> 00:02:40.840 I know, and there are things I think I know, 00:02:40.979 --> 00:02:44.740 and there are things I don't know. And I'm pretty 00:02:44.740 --> 00:02:46.659 sure there are things I don't even know that 00:02:46.659 --> 00:02:49.560 I don't know. And to me, that's not something 00:02:49.560 --> 00:02:56.460 to fear. It's a mystery. And maybe mystery is 00:02:56.460 --> 00:03:00.060 an invitation to keep looking, to keep learning 00:03:00.060 --> 00:03:03.280 and wondering, because the universe keeps reminding 00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:07.759 us that reality is bigger than the boxes we create 00:03:07.759 --> 00:03:12.759 for it. So here's our question today. What if 00:03:12.759 --> 00:03:17.159 reality is bigger and stranger than your current 00:03:17.159 --> 00:03:18.560 worldview allows?