April 25, 2025 • 12 mins
George Noory and astrophysicist Dr. Charles Liu discuss some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries about the universe, how the universe could have started from nothing at the Big Bang, and the possibility that the universe is just an illusion.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Astrophysicist doctor Charles lou with Us, professor at the City
University of New York's College of Staten Island and an
associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at
the American Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on
colliding galaxies, star wars, galaxies, coisars, and the star formation
(00:29):
history of the universe. His book is called The Handy
Quantum Physics answer Book. And he's back with us on
Coast to Coast Charles. Welcome have you been. Oh, I've
been very well, George, Thank you so much. I really
appreciate being here tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh my gosh, when you look at the marvels of
the universe, it is just truly unbelievable. Now taking God
out of the equation for a moment, and that's not
easy to say or do. How in the world did
this start from nothing?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, this is a great question, and the reality is
that scientists are humble enough to recognize that we don't
know how did these start from nothing? It may well
have been something, but it's something that we don't understand yet.
For example, our understanding of space and time three dimensions
of space and one dimension of time. If there are
(01:20):
other dimensions, there could have been plenty of stuff from
which those other dimensions funneled into what we now know
is our four dimensional space time, and some sort of
a quantum event or a multidimensional event having to do
with membranes or string theory or something like that, but
we don't have any evidence for it yet. We can
(01:43):
set up the equations, shall we say, the structure for it,
but then we have to design the experiments and have
enough technological capability to test those hypotheses to decide which
one is actually reality. We don't have that technology yet, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Do you think we will ever get the answers your
real answers?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I think so, and I think the answers will be
much more complicated than we hope.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
We always like to think that there's one thing that
explains everything, all right, one idea, But we've found out
that the simpler the basic idea, the more complexities that
it can spawn. Right, So, for example, the idea that
the universe started with a big bang. That's pretty settled
(02:36):
in terms of the observational evidence. The universe used to
be much smaller and much hotter than it is now,
and it is now bigger and colder, and it's continued
to grow bigger and colder over time. That's something we understood.
But that simple idea has led to much more complication,
like what is the density of the universe in terms
(02:56):
of matter? How about the dark energy distribute? Has the
changing of the expansion rates caused changes and variations in
the development of stars and galaxies and planets and people.
So the more we simplify and create the truth shall
we say and answer, the more we realize that there
(03:17):
are greater details that yet have to be explained.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We have emotion, we get sick, we get the happy.
So I'm pretty sure that we are real, We're alive.
But is there a possibility, Charles, that all of this
is an illusion?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You have hit upon a fundamental question that astronomers are
asking ourselves all the time, and in fact all scientists
really when we're thinking about the concepts of consciousness or
reality or perception, right, we actually cannot mathematically prove that
there is any universe outside our own heads. So, George,
(04:00):
you and I are talking right now, but you actually
don't know if I am actually a person just like you,
or I'm just some sort of a clever simulation that
responds so perfectly that you're imagining me to be a
real person with actual thought, and you, yourself are the
(04:20):
only person in the universe with actual thought. Indeed, you're
the only person in the universe period. And all of
the other stuff is not the reality that you think
it is, or that anybody else thinks it is. And
because all of us, all the billions of us humans,
have the same problem, we can get a sense of
what everything else is, but we always have to reserve
(04:44):
the possibility that we are fooling ourselves.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
What about the possibilities that Charles that I'm chat GPT,
that I'm more intelligent?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
George, I can't just prove that, right, I mean, I
can just prove that you're not CHATGPT. Because if someone, say,
on the other side of this phone line, were to
go into a studio and see, oh, there is George right,
there is a perception, there is an observation of reality
(05:17):
that we share, and that person could then call me
or contact me and say, yep, George is a human being.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
But if we were only talking through a screen, and
I did not know that you were a person over there,
and you did not know I were a person over here,
then there may not be a way for you to
confirm definitively that I'm not a clever computer program. It's
just a matter of whether or not that computer program
(05:45):
that chat, GPT or any other large language model can
express itself so effectively that you can't tell. And right now,
the artificial intelligence scientists are able to create computer programs
that can fool a human being after five minutes of
(06:08):
conversation about a third of the time.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, with doctor Charles lou we are going to be
taking calls with him next hour. We're talking about the
marvels of the universe. Is science continuing to find new
discoveries of this fourteen billion year oly universe all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It's amazing how much we're discovering. I mean, even on
the smallest scales, things like human DNA and the evolution
of life here on Earth, and the possibility of planets
existing in such abundance that there is life elsewhere, Like
that's the smallest stuff, the biggest stuff that's happening right now.
With new technology. Specifically, I'm thinking of the James Webb
(06:52):
Space Telescope and also other telescopes that are both on
Earth and in space. We are able to look so
far away and into the distant past that we're seeing
objects in the universe that we only theorized could exist
so early in the history of the cosmos. As a result,
we're discovering that we have to keep adjusting our models
(07:17):
and understanding how the universe is going forward is being
continuously informed by new discoveries that are literally being made
every night.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And James Webb just discovered a planet that they think
has the possibility of harboring life because it's got all
the makeup. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
That's a really neat story. Yes, this telescope is just
the latest to provide evidence on this particular planet. This planet,
which orbits a star many light years away, was seen
to have possible indications that in its atmosphere there was
a kind of gas that here on Earth is produced
(08:01):
by biological life, DNA based life, and we haven't yet
figured out a way to produce this gas in quantity
that could saturate in an entire atmosphere in any way
other than having like algae or other kinds of semi plant,
semi animal microbiome to be able to produce it. And
(08:23):
so when the JWST came online, scientists asked to point
that telescope at this planet and take a more detailed
observation to see what they could find, see if they
could confirm those hints that they had found before using
other telescopes, And sure enough those hints were confirmed at
(08:46):
a higher confidence level than ever before. And so this material,
this gaseous material that seems to be in this planet's
atmosphere could well be have formed if chemistry and biochemistry
is the same on that planet as it is here,
could have been formed by microbiobes. But these microbes we
(09:07):
don't know of their existence there. We just have this
one chemical signature. And so right now what we're doing
is well, not me specifically, but my colleagues who are
involved in things like astrobiology and biochemistry, are trying to
figure out are there any other ways with which this
gas can be formed in such quantity that it could
(09:29):
signal a planet wide kind of process other than extraterrestrial
life as we know it.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Doctor Low, give me your impression, your thoughts on the
Big Bang and what happened.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Okay, the Big Bang has been tested and has been
poked and prodded and used looked at by hundreds of
scientists thousands of scientists over decades, and so it is
now quite certain scientifically that the universe as we understand
(10:10):
it and experience it was once very small and very hot.
By very small, I mean smaller than an atom, and
by very hot, I mean trillions upon trillions of degrees.
And now it's not right. So, over the past thirteen
point eight billion years or so, give or take maybe
(10:32):
one hundred million years, based on our measurements, the Big
Bang has happened. That doesn't mean though we know how
it happened or what the pieces of it are going
on with it, that event could have been triggered by
a wide variety of physical activities which we can't test
(10:54):
yet because we don't have the technology. We can't see,
for example, much smaller than the sub atomic particles that
we detect, things like electrons. Right, But the physics of
what must have happened when the universe was that small
is not reproducible. In a laboratory that we have today.
(11:15):
All Right, the closest we've been able to get is
being able in our most powerful particle accelerators to mimic
what the universe might have been like about a trillionth
of a second after the Big Bang, but not before
that point. And before that point, trillionth of a second
(11:37):
doesn't seem like a much time, but so much can
happen at the quantum level, at the sub atomic level
in that period of time that it could have shaped
everything that's happened since then. So the short answer, which
I've just given you a long answer, right, my personal
take is that the Big Bang did happen, and there's
(11:58):
a lot of evidence scientifically to show that it did.
And then the question now is to figure out the details,
including what happened before the time that our technology has
been able to study the Big Bang.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
oneam Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot com
for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Astrophysicist doctor Charles lou with Us, professor at the City
University of New York's College of Staten Island and an
associate with the Hayden Planetarium and Department of Astrophysics at
the American Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on
colliding galaxies, star wars, galaxies, coisars, and the star formation
(00:29):
history of the universe. His book is called The Handy
Quantum Physics answer Book. And he's back with us on
Coast to Coast Charles. Welcome have you been. Oh, I've
been very well, George, Thank you so much. I really
appreciate being here tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh my gosh, when you look at the marvels of
the universe, it is just truly unbelievable. Now taking God
out of the equation for a moment, and that's not
easy to say or do. How in the world did
this start from nothing?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, this is a great question, and the reality is
that scientists are humble enough to recognize that we don't
know how did these start from nothing? It may well
have been something, but it's something that we don't understand yet.
For example, our understanding of space and time three dimensions
of space and one dimension of time. If there are
(01:20):
other dimensions, there could have been plenty of stuff from
which those other dimensions funneled into what we now know
is our four dimensional space time, and some sort of
a quantum event or a multidimensional event having to do
with membranes or string theory or something like that, but
we don't have any evidence for it yet. We can
(01:43):
set up the equations, shall we say, the structure for it,
but then we have to design the experiments and have
enough technological capability to test those hypotheses to decide which
one is actually reality. We don't have that technology yet, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Do you think we will ever get the answers your
real answers?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I think so, and I think the answers will be
much more complicated than we hope.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
We always like to think that there's one thing that
explains everything, all right, one idea, But we've found out
that the simpler the basic idea, the more complexities that
it can spawn. Right, So, for example, the idea that
the universe started with a big bang. That's pretty settled
(02:36):
in terms of the observational evidence. The universe used to
be much smaller and much hotter than it is now,
and it is now bigger and colder, and it's continued
to grow bigger and colder over time. That's something we understood.
But that simple idea has led to much more complication,
like what is the density of the universe in terms
(02:56):
of matter? How about the dark energy distribute? Has the
changing of the expansion rates caused changes and variations in
the development of stars and galaxies and planets and people.
So the more we simplify and create the truth shall
we say and answer, the more we realize that there
(03:17):
are greater details that yet have to be explained.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We have emotion, we get sick, we get the happy.
So I'm pretty sure that we are real, We're alive.
But is there a possibility, Charles, that all of this
is an illusion?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
You have hit upon a fundamental question that astronomers are
asking ourselves all the time, and in fact all scientists
really when we're thinking about the concepts of consciousness or
reality or perception, right, we actually cannot mathematically prove that
there is any universe outside our own heads. So, George,
(04:00):
you and I are talking right now, but you actually
don't know if I am actually a person just like you,
or I'm just some sort of a clever simulation that
responds so perfectly that you're imagining me to be a
real person with actual thought, and you, yourself are the
(04:20):
only person in the universe with actual thought. Indeed, you're
the only person in the universe period. And all of
the other stuff is not the reality that you think
it is, or that anybody else thinks it is. And
because all of us, all the billions of us humans,
have the same problem, we can get a sense of
what everything else is, but we always have to reserve
(04:44):
the possibility that we are fooling ourselves.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
What about the possibilities that Charles that I'm chat GPT,
that I'm more intelligent?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
George, I can't just prove that, right, I mean, I
can just prove that you're not CHATGPT. Because if someone, say,
on the other side of this phone line, were to
go into a studio and see, oh, there is George right,
there is a perception, there is an observation of reality
(05:17):
that we share, and that person could then call me
or contact me and say, yep, George is a human being.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
But if we were only talking through a screen, and
I did not know that you were a person over there,
and you did not know I were a person over here,
then there may not be a way for you to
confirm definitively that I'm not a clever computer program. It's
just a matter of whether or not that computer program
(05:45):
that chat, GPT or any other large language model can
express itself so effectively that you can't tell. And right now,
the artificial intelligence scientists are able to create computer programs
that can fool a human being after five minutes of
(06:08):
conversation about a third of the time.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, with doctor Charles lou we are going to be
taking calls with him next hour. We're talking about the
marvels of the universe. Is science continuing to find new
discoveries of this fourteen billion year oly universe all the time.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
It's amazing how much we're discovering. I mean, even on
the smallest scales, things like human DNA and the evolution
of life here on Earth, and the possibility of planets
existing in such abundance that there is life elsewhere, Like
that's the smallest stuff, the biggest stuff that's happening right now.
With new technology. Specifically, I'm thinking of the James Webb
(06:52):
Space Telescope and also other telescopes that are both on
Earth and in space. We are able to look so
far away and into the distant past that we're seeing
objects in the universe that we only theorized could exist
so early in the history of the cosmos. As a result,
we're discovering that we have to keep adjusting our models
(07:17):
and understanding how the universe is going forward is being
continuously informed by new discoveries that are literally being made
every night.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And James Webb just discovered a planet that they think
has the possibility of harboring life because it's got all
the makeup. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
That's a really neat story. Yes, this telescope is just
the latest to provide evidence on this particular planet. This planet,
which orbits a star many light years away, was seen
to have possible indications that in its atmosphere there was
a kind of gas that here on Earth is produced
(08:01):
by biological life, DNA based life, and we haven't yet
figured out a way to produce this gas in quantity
that could saturate in an entire atmosphere in any way
other than having like algae or other kinds of semi plant,
semi animal microbiome to be able to produce it. And
(08:23):
so when the JWST came online, scientists asked to point
that telescope at this planet and take a more detailed
observation to see what they could find, see if they
could confirm those hints that they had found before using
other telescopes, And sure enough those hints were confirmed at
(08:46):
a higher confidence level than ever before. And so this material,
this gaseous material that seems to be in this planet's
atmosphere could well be have formed if chemistry and biochemistry
is the same on that planet as it is here,
could have been formed by microbiobes. But these microbes we
(09:07):
don't know of their existence there. We just have this
one chemical signature. And so right now what we're doing
is well, not me specifically, but my colleagues who are
involved in things like astrobiology and biochemistry, are trying to
figure out are there any other ways with which this
gas can be formed in such quantity that it could
(09:29):
signal a planet wide kind of process other than extraterrestrial
life as we know it.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Doctor Low, give me your impression, your thoughts on the
Big Bang and what happened.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Okay, the Big Bang has been tested and has been
poked and prodded and used looked at by hundreds of
scientists thousands of scientists over decades, and so it is
now quite certain scientifically that the universe as we understand
(10:10):
it and experience it was once very small and very hot.
By very small, I mean smaller than an atom, and
by very hot, I mean trillions upon trillions of degrees.
And now it's not right. So, over the past thirteen
point eight billion years or so, give or take maybe
(10:32):
one hundred million years, based on our measurements, the Big
Bang has happened. That doesn't mean though we know how
it happened or what the pieces of it are going
on with it, that event could have been triggered by
a wide variety of physical activities which we can't test
(10:54):
yet because we don't have the technology. We can't see,
for example, much smaller than the sub atomic particles that
we detect, things like electrons. Right, But the physics of
what must have happened when the universe was that small
is not reproducible. In a laboratory that we have today.
(11:15):
All Right, the closest we've been able to get is
being able in our most powerful particle accelerators to mimic
what the universe might have been like about a trillionth
of a second after the Big Bang, but not before
that point. And before that point, trillionth of a second
(11:37):
doesn't seem like a much time, but so much can
happen at the quantum level, at the sub atomic level
in that period of time that it could have shaped
everything that's happened since then. So the short answer, which
I've just given you a long answer, right, my personal
take is that the Big Bang did happen, and there's
(11:58):
a lot of evidence scientifically to show that it did.
And then the question now is to figure out the details,
including what happened before the time that our technology has
been able to study the Big Bang.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
oneam Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot com
for more
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Host
George Noory
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