Synopsis
A podcast of stories, ideas, and speculations from the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Each month, we'll bring you into a conversation between visionaries from the worlds of arts, sciences, humanities, engineering, and medicine on the nature of the imagination and how, through speculative culture, we collaborate to create the future.
Episodes
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The Discovery of The Century or BUST? High Temperature Superconductor | Inna Vishik and Jorge Hirsch (#335)
06/08/2023 Duration: 01h06minSee the video of this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/live/qQnDatnAWP4?feature=share Breaking news! A team of scientists in South Korea has made an extraordinary claim: they have discovered a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor. This means that they have found a material that can conduct electricity perfectly under everyday conditions. This is a huge deal. If it's true, it could revolutionize many technologies. We could have perfectly efficient power grids, levitating trains, and commercially viable fusion reactors. The possibilities are endless. But the scientific community is taking this with a grain of salt. There have been many claims of room-temperature superconductors in the past, and they've all turned out to be false. So we need to be careful before we get too excited. The researchers behind this latest claim say that they've done their due diligence. They've repeated their experiments multiple times, and they've had their results peer-reviewed. But until their work is published in
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UAP Disclosure: Eyewitness encounters with Ryan Graves (#334)
31/07/2023 Duration: 01h21minSee the Video of this episode here! https://youtu.be/tnQtfv93agA "The gimbal object...we had never seen anything like that before!" In today's episode, we have a fascinating conversation with Ryan Graves, who shares his encounters with multiple unidentified objects that flew past Navy F-18 aircraft over extended periods. As we delve into this extraordinary event, we explore the complexities surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and the challenges of reporting them. From the stigma surrounding UAP sightings to the need for standardized reporting procedures, we uncover the implications for aviation safety and discuss the importance of gathering data to ensure the security of our airspace. Join us as we navigate the mysterious realm of UAPs and contemplate their significance in our modern world. Get ready to explore the unknown on The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. Ryan's fresh off his congressional testimony: Wednesday's hearing included testimony from two former U.S. Navy aviators, Ryan, and David Fra
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Replay: University of Adversity with Brian Keating and Lance Essihos (#333)
26/07/2023 Duration: 46minProfessor Brian Keating tells listeners: “If you go through life and you have this expectation that you are going to have the wind at your back. You are going to be much more disappointed than if you expect there to be adversity, headwinds, friction, and flux. Then you overcome it or maybe it is not even there.” How to engage passion in aspiring astronomers The emotion behind winning a Nobel Prize Coping with rejection and humiliation The importance of meditation Finding meaning in the unknown Lance W Essihos is the host of the University of Adversity Podcast. He created this podcast to help people learn from stories of adversity, which has ranked Top 50 on iTunes Worldwide and the Top #5 in Entrepreneur Magazine’s 20 Podcasts That Will Help You Grow in 2020 List. https://lanceessihos.com/ Please join my mailing list
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No, the Universe ISN'T 27 Billion Years Old! (#332)
21/07/2023 Duration: 01h19minSee the Video! https://www.youtube.com/live/_45U7IjIJDk?feature=share In this episode Brian Keating and Allison Kirkpatrick respond to Rajendra Gupta’s controversial paper challenging the current model of the universe. What is the basis for this claim and why are media outlets and influencers promoting it so wildly? In addition to their detailed critique of Gupta's paper, they discuss galaxy formation, dark matter, and the scientific method. “Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated” Rajendra Gupta — Adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa Find Allison: https://kirkpatrick.ku.edu/ Press release: https://www.uottawa.ca/about-us/media/news/reinventing-cosmology-uottawa-research-puts-age-universe-267-137-billion-years The Paper: https://phys.org/news/2023-07-age-universe-billion-years-previously.html The paper is now available without a
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Avi Loeb: “This object came from another solar system!” (#331)
18/07/2023 Duration: 01h13minSee the Video! https://youtube.com/live/BFuW-zfH5RU Avi Loeb joined Brian Keating after he led a Galileo Project expedition to the Pacific Ocean to retrieve spherules of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1. These samples were brought back to Harvard College Observatory over 50 spherules in total, which lay on the deep ocean floor for nearly a decade. These sub-millimeter-sized spheres, which appear under a microscope as beautiful metallic marbles, were concentrated along the expected path of IM1 — about 85 kilometers off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Their discovery opens a new frontier in astronomy, where what lay outside the solar system is studied through a microscope rather than a telescope. That 83% of the matter in the universe is apparently composed of dark matter which was not found yet in the solar system should teach us modesty in forecasting the nature of interstellar objects. Aliens, UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJGK
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Brian Keating on The Micah Hanks Program: Life Beyond Earth and Losing The Nobel Prize (#330)
12/07/2023 Duration: 43minBrian Keating is interviewed by Micah Hanks. Micah is a writer, pocaster, researcher, adventurer, and cofounder of The Debrief, He delves deep into science, technology, history and UAP and UFO research. In this interview Micah focuses on Professor Keating’s book, Losing the Nobel Prize, Brian’s personal Nobel stories, and his outspoken criticisms of the coveted Nobel. Brian gives his ideas on how the award process could be improved. In addition, You're going to get a faced paced introduction to the field of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, its history and evolution. What are the chances of find life beyond earth? What are the chances of discovering technosignatures revealing alien civilizations? If you appreciate a civilized dialogue about controversial science, including research on SETI and UAPs, Please Keep Into The Impossible in your feeds by subscribing and following. Please help us evolve by Paying it forward with a share to curious friends. Jump over to our Youtube Channel at DRBR
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Nobel Laureate Adam Riess: Tension In The Cosmos! (#329)
09/07/2023 Duration: 01h01minWatch the full video on youtube here: https://youtu.be/b3Tx1g8gKmY Other Episode with Adam Riess: https://youtu.be/WZUqzHRuzhA Adam Riess is a renowned astrophysicist recognized for his groundbreaking research on the expansion of the universe with the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics Through extensive measurements and collaborations with other scientists, Riess discovered an intriguing tension in the size of the universe's expansion, which has steadily grown over the past decade. These results, reaching a significant level of more than 5 sigma, revealed an unexpected phenomenon: the rate of the universe's expansion seems to differ based on whether one starts from the beginning shortly after the big bang or from the present. This unexpected autonomy in the expansion challenged the traditional cosmological model, which tells the story of the universe's evolution from its inception to its current state. Riess's research has generated suspicion among many scientists, leading them to question whether the cosmologi
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No, No Nobel: How to Lose the Prize: Brian Keating on Scientific American's Science Talk (#328)
06/07/2023 Duration: 45minPhysicist Brian Keating talks about his book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor. Past episode with Avi Loeb on Youtube: https://youtu.be/N9lUceHsLRw Please join my mailing list
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How to Find Aliens | Jaime Green (#327)
04/07/2023 Duration: 01h05minWatch the full video on youtube here: https://youtu.be/EY8b5g31j44 Welcome author Jaime Green! We discuss her moving and delightful book about the possibility and actuality of alien life. The discussion covers a range of topics, from the role of waste of space to the significance of life on Earth. The episode also delves into other scientific questions, such as the definition of a planet, the simulation of the Drake equation, and the morality of abortion from a religious perspective. The episode concludes with a discussion on the potential impact of discovering alien life on society. Jaime Green is a science writer, essayist, editor, and teacher, and she is series editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia, and her writing has appeared in Slate, Popular Science, The New York Times Book Review, American Theatre, Catapult, Astrobites, and elsewhere. Jaime Green is interested in the fundamental nature of life and how it arises. She is working
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Einstein's Quantum Riddle! In Memoriam to Dr. Andy Friedman (#326)
29/06/2023 Duration: 01h07minWatch the full video on youtube here: https://youtu.be/-lRuFqXzfJU Andy Friedman: In Memoriam: A tribute to our beloved colleague -- Astronomer, Physicist, Friend https://youtu.be/lKo5Ed-_eSo Andy Friedman, Brian Keating and David Brin Many Worlds & The Multiverse: https://youtu.be/9oahwWBcg1A Three years ago our beloved colleague, Astrophysicist Andrew Friedman unexpectedly and tragically passed away. Andy was an outstanding science communicator and presented at many events with your host Brian Keating and other colleagues from the Arthur C. Clark Center For Human Imagination and UC San Diego. This is a replay recording of one of his last public appearences where he discussed one of his favorite subjects, Quantum Entanglement and Bell’s Inequality. Einstein famously thought Quantum entanglement was impossible and called it spooky action at a distance. Dr. Friedman was a Principle collaborator on an experiment of such galactic scale that it was the subject of a PBS NOVA Feature documentary, Einstein’s Quan
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Kim Stanley Robinson: The High Sierra: A Love Story (#325)
25/06/2023 Duration: 01h06minWatch the video of this episode here. In this live in-studio episode of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE, host Brian Keating sat down with renowned science fiction author, Kim Stanley Robinson, to discuss his fist major non-fiction work, The High Sierra: A Love Story. Equal parts memoir, guidebook, geology tutorial, and historiography, in High Sierra, Robinson describes the geological forces that shaped the Sierras and the history of its exploration, going back to the indigenous peoples who made it home and whose traces can still be found today in the knapping fields of obsidian chips. He celebrates the people whose ideas and actions protected the High Sierra for future generations. He describes uniquely beautiful hikes and the trails to be avoided. Robinson’s own life-altering events, defining relationships, and unforgettable adventures form the narrative’s spine. And he illuminates the human communion with the wild and with the sublime, including the personal growth that only seems to come from time spent outdoors.
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Sir Roger Penrose Faith, Fantasy, and the Big Questions in Modern Physics (#324)
22/06/2023 Duration: 01h45minWatch the video of Sir Roger's lecture here: https://youtu.be/smUYz9ti_bA Sir Roger Penrose, the celebrated English mathematician and physicist as well as author of numerous books, including The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, joined the Clarke Center to share a talk titled "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics" based on his book of the same name. In his book Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics, Roger Penrose argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas—string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. * **String theory** is a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to unify all of the fundamental forces of nature in a single framework. However, string theory requires the existence of six extra hidden dimensions, which Penrose argues is not physically plausible. He
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Brian Keating's Advice To The Graduates 2023 (#323)
15/06/2023 Duration: 32minSubscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts Please leave a rating and review: On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB On Spotify it’s here: https://spoti.fi/3vpfXok On Audible it’s here https://tinyurl.com/wtpvej9v Find other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The Realistic Future of AI With Peter Diamandis & Brian Keating on Moonshots and Mindsets (#322)
11/06/2023 Duration: 01h49minSee the video here: https://youtu.be/nzy4jVOPC6E Peter and Brian discuss asteroids, multiverses, and how AI will impact the universe. Brian Keating is a renowned astrophysicist, cosmologist, inventor, and author. He is a professor at the University of California, San Diego and director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination. Keating's groundbreaking research on cosmic microwave background radiation has earned him prestigious awards, and his book "Losing the Nobel Prize" has received critical acclaim. Visit his website: https://briankeating.com/ Follow the Brian's Podcast, INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE, on Apple devices https://apple.co/39UaHlB, Spotify spoti.fi/3vpfXok, Audible it’s here: adbl.co/3MeLPTj or, briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to Moonshots and Mindsets here: https://youtu.be/bJ190tosW5A Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts Please leave a rating and review: On Apple devices, click here,
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How Evidence Sometimes Loses Out to Emotion The AlphaMind Podcast with Brian Keating (#321)
07/06/2023 Duration: 53minIn this interview on the ALPHA MIND podcast, hosts STEVEN GOLDSTEIN & MARK RANDALL interview Professor Keating about some of the connections which bind trading, investing, and science. Brian talks about how scientists, despite being held on some sort of an intellectual pedestal, are human, and are just as prone to the foibles and behavioral errors which are common to people in all fields, including trading. The theme, which resonates throughout this interview, alludes to the meta game of science and trading, something which was captured in a quote by Dr. Keating, and which featured prominently in Greg Zuckerman’s 2019 book about the trading legend Jim Simons, ‘The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution.’ The quote is: ‘Scientists are human, sometimes all too human. When desire and data are in collision, evidence sometimes loses out to emotion.’ Themes explored in this interview are; confirmation bias, ego, and our ability, or even inability, to separate our outcomes from our e
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Life's Edge: Exploring the Boundary between Living & Nonliving | Carl Zimmer | Into the Impossible (#320)
04/06/2023 Duration: 01h14minOn this episode of The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast, Carl Zimmer discusses the importance of ethics in scientific communication and how scientific discoveries can be inaccurately reported by journalists, leading to misunderstandings by the public. The difficulty of defining what it means to be alive is explored and the stakes of this debate, particularly in regards to the autonomy of one's own body, are discussed. The episode also touches on the controversy surrounding gain of function research on pathogens and the importance of verifying scientific findings. The guest shares anecdotes from her career, including her experience covering the controversial discovery of arsenic life, and reflects on why biology continues to surprise and fascinate her. The episode ends with a discussion on the human brain’s difficulty in dealing with ambiguous states and the challenge of capturing people’s interest in retractions or flawed findings. Carl Zimmer is an expert science writer who is highly curious about the mysteries o
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Rebuilding Higher Education for the 21st Century | Brian Keating & James Altucher (#319)
31/05/2023 Duration: 01h31minDr. Brian Keating and celebrated bestselling author and podcast host James Altucher, discuss and debate ideas for new higher learning frameworks, focused on remote and metaverse learning and the concept of virtual mentors - 3D-rendered avatars of interactive historical figures built using large language models and natural language processing. Dr. Brian Keating - the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences (CASS) in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego - has been working in higher education for 25 years. Still, today he's facing an identity crisis. Brian has become disillusioned with how the university and accreditation system is organized, and he's looking to reinvent how higher education looks, costs, and interacts with students. Mentioned in the episode: petersonacademy.com/ www.uaustin.org Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/p
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Felix Flicker: The Magic of Physics on The Into The Impossible Podcast (#318)
28/05/2023 Duration: 01h10minWatch the video of this episode here: https://youtu.be/AJJGv-5Rk4I #CondensedMatter #superconductors #quantummechanics The tagline for our podcast by Arthur C. Clarke is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Theoretical physicist Felix Flicker’s imaginative new book The Magick of Physics provides ample service to that notion. In Flicker’s book the magic is in “condensed matter physics”, the quotidian solids, liquids, and gasses that surround us—and the more exotic matter— which form the foundations for our electronic lives, and may hold the keys to a transformed future, from quantum computing to real-life invisibility cloaks. Flicker finds magic in real physics like creating new particles which never existed before, and making crystals that shoot out light that can cut through metal. Using metaphors of wizards, infinite libraries, staffs and wands, the book has a compelling narrative that circumvents the need for equations and charts, yet conveys real, practical knowledge. F
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Fighter Pilot's Stealth Secrets to DOMINATION: Hasard Lee: The Into the Impossible Podcast (#317)
23/05/2023 Duration: 01h19min#F35 #StealthFighter #HasardLee "Being able to regulate your emotions, regulate your stress, your self-talk is really important. The Air Force has moved to this human performance aspect -- all pilots, as soon as they show up, they start this sports psychology training that we've adapted to flying fighters and that carries with them throughout their career." — Hasard Lee In his first book, The Art of Clear Thinking, veteran USAF F-35 Stealth Fighter Pilot Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft. With gripping firsthand accounts from his time as a fighter pilot and fascinating turning points throughout history. As a fighter pilot, Hasard believes that his primary task is good decision-making, and he believes that with the amplification of technology, that skill is more important than ever before. In the book, Hasard reveals powerful decision-making principles that can be used in business and in life. Hasard spent his career flying both the F-
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RED FLAGS! Room Temperature Superconductor or FRAUD? Jorge Hirsch on the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast (#316)
17/05/2023 Duration: 01h16minVideo version of this episode: https://youtu.be/cAMSoAUo288 UC San Diego Physics Professor Jorge Hirsch... ...joins Professor Brian Keating to discuss recent claimed a breakthrough in high-temperature superconductors, including claims they work at near ambient pressure and temperature. Here come cheap magnetic levitating trains, low-loss power distribution, free MRI scanners in every clinic…. Or not? Watch my solo episode about the controversial claims here: https://youtu.be/hbER0AnwXD4 Since the discovery of superconductors in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, earning the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics, they have been the subject of much fascination and inquiry. Some of the greatest minds in physics have grappled with how superconductivity works to drive electrical resistance to 0. The 1972 Nobel prize in Physics was awarded to John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper, and John Robert Schrieffer "for their BCS theory of superconductivity. Now the race is on to get the highest temperature superconductor possible; another N