deserve and has power in the electoral college system there is a defense ãit gives people inflated challenges. but the senate is subject to this. -- that is just a power-play by the small states in the philadelphia convention. tried to justify it with the philosophical reasons of why the small states or be overwhelmed by the large states. a basically a power-play in the small states that we are going to walk out if you don't give us the quality and the senate. i'm sorry that was long-winded. [laughter] [applause] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> good evening welcome to mrs. dalloway's. now would be a good time for you to silence your phones. i just wanted to say that as

you know, the debates are over. the world's series is over. in the election is not until next week. so we have this window of time and wish to hear professor muller. what exactly do we mean by now equate it is enigmatic character has the devil, philosophers and modern day -- equally puzzling, what is time flow? some businesses have been given up and called time religion. but our guest tonight experimentalist physicist richard muller protests this. he says physics should explain reality, not deny it. now, he does more than poke holes in the past ideas. classes on revolutionary theory. when it makes predictions. he begins by laying out a firm and remarkably clear

explanation of the physics building box. i even understood that part. relativity, entropy and entanglement, antimatter and the big bang. with the stage then said he reveals a startling way forward which i a mere mortal cannot begin to explain. his new book has gone wonderful reviews from people like neil degrasse tyson is is is a master class and what time is. and how and why we perceive it the way we do. so perlmutter, a nobel prize winner says a remarkably fresh and exciting approach of the analysis of time. with his usual clarity and wit he perceives the established principles but when he guessed the meaning of the flow of time and now, he forges a new path. there are also cartoons in this book. it is quite fun. tim ferris, the author of

coming of age in the milky way says he sheds light on times dark mysteries. richard muller makes his case and is clearly evocative and wide reaching investigation of how nature may generate the flow of time and must reading for all concerned with the why behind when. richard muller is professor of physics at uc berkeley. by all accounts in legendary and popular teacher and lecturer. he is also the author of physics for future presidents and energy for future presidents, copies of which are right here. for his outstanding work in cosmology he was awarded in 1982, macarthur genius fellowship. also as we were just saying a share of the 2015 breakthrough prize in fundamental physics for the discovery of dark energy. please welcome richard muller. [applause] >> thank you very much. i thank all of you for coming.

good turnout. this was originally scheduled on the day of the last debate. and i thought the same people who read books will probably force themselves to watch the debate. so i didn't want there to be an overlap. so we change the date. i don't know if it is the world series that would stop people from coming or not. but i watched one full game every year. it's the seventh game of the world series sometimes i don't want any. i watched last night, it was a great game. i was told this, what i should do is read some excerpts from my books. i thought that does make sense. so let me do that. i picked out a few here. please feel free to interrupt me at any time. i've taught at uc berkeley, you do not to worry about discombobulated me or of changing my flow. just interrupt me when you have a question.

i'm going to begin with a, i printed this out. unless i have a statement. and the statement is full. it is not true. but in a moment it will be true. and depending on when you read it, i don't know when it will be true. maybe one picture and i will not know if the levitra because maybe you will not read it. maybe your eyes at work that will be here is my statement. that i could write that, that is false now and about to become true. [laughter] is anybody in the back can see that ãkrishna the purpose of this, the bottom

part says ãno, this is an excerpt from how could i say the truth that i don't know? in fact i don't even know the truth. this was simply an introduction to a quandary about time that has bothered me for decades. i will teach about time in my classes. i would teach relativity to the members of the football team. my class physics and future present i taught half of the football team and my goal was relativity is not difficult mathematics but that is not what makes a challenging. it is conceptually difficult. and i sometimes think it is easier to teach children than it is adults. because einstein the same time is variable. in a strange and it is not strange to children, they know when they're having a good time

when time was best at the having a better time to go slowly. children are ready for that. we teach ourselves at definite rates. and that makes relativity difficult. relativity itself is conceptual. everything i'm talking about that is fundamentally a conceptual problem.it is not a math problem, you do not have to understand einstein's elaborate and highly mathematical equations of general relativity to understand the basic features of general relativity and how this all ties together. so let me read some excerpts. i begin the book with what i just showed you. here is a fact about you.

when that very few people know. maybe no one other than you yourself, you are reading this book right now. in fact, i can be more precise. you are reading the word now right now. moreover i say something that you know is true but i personally didn't know and still don't know. assuming you're reading this book at home, not here. you're reading the word now right now.and i'm completely oblivious of that fact unless of course i am standing over you, over your shoulder and you are pointing with your finger as you read. now is an extremely simple yet fascinating and mysterious concept.you know what it means if you find it difficult to define the dumping circular. now is the moment in time that separates the past from the future. okay, try defining past and future without using the word now. and what you meant by the past and future, it is constantly changing. a short time ago reading this paragraph was in the future. now most of it is already in the past.

now that entire paragraph is in the past. okay. this is from the introduction. you are welcome to skip when your first reading the book. books are supposed of introductions. but sometimes the fun begins when the book begins. you can read the introduction at the end. the elusive meaning of now has been a stumbling block in the development of physics. we understand time dilation relativity from velocity and from gravity. by the way, clocks went back upstairs. done. clocks time later in the park is ready faster. so is everything else.you wouldn't notice it because you would be running faster too.

-- even the footprint of time in relativity theory. harley understand that. these are the things i teach in my class to future presidents. what i mean is this. if, it occurs on the microsphere we say that is simultaneous. if you were sitting on a moving object like the moon, it would no longer be simultaneous. which one comes first? with this one or this one to it depends on what you are sitting on.if the rocket is going to spread this one is going that way. this is absolutely part of relativity. if it bothers you is because you've been taught probably by your parents when you were a kid that simultaneity is an actual thing.get there on time.everybody knows what time is. back to reading. the basic drawing board of physics is known as a

space-time diagram.if you read any of the books on the cross space-time diagrams. it ignores the issues and physicists perversely treat the absence as a strength. in conclusion the flow of time is an illusion. that's backwards. as long as the meaning of now he leaves us, further advances in understanding time, the key aspect of reality, continue to be stalled. my goal in the book is to bring together the central physics assembling pieces like a jigsaw puzzle until a clearer picture of now emerges. for this process to work we also have to find and remove the jigsaw pieces that have become the mistakingly jammed in the wrong place. if you have ever done a jigsaw puzzle i remember my father-in-law ãfather-in-law was doing a jigsaw puzzle. and he just, just didn't fit. and i had this brilliant insight.

i said maybe something is placed in the wrong part. maybe this, look i found a piece. maybe that should move down there. and this was up there and it all came together. the jigsaw puzzle piece jammed into the wrong place can prevent you from completing the picture. and over the years that i have taught about time. there were several things that really bothered me. i was convinced they were wrong. one of them is a pretty standard picture. if you have ever read any book about time, you've probably read that the hour of time, why remember the past is that remember in the future, that sounds pretty trivial but that is the sort of thing that physicists worry about. the fact is, if you know the future you can predict the past. if you know the past you can predict the future.some classical physics anyway. so why does time move forward? this is called entropy.

and most books explain entropy in a mysterious way. i was convinced the entropy theory was wrong. and convince you that it is wrong i had to make entropy theory really clear. so you would understand what it's all about. i tried to do that. yes, please. >> maybe this is wrong timing but have you ever had the experience we turn the light on or off and you swear your hand is back here and is actually over here? there's something about the mind that's very tricky. i'm wondering if it has a space-time of its own? because there are times, maybe i'm crazy, i have trouble turning off the light. did it go off? it clicked. i know that i know it is off. but i know that my hand was down here. >> that is a well-known effects. and they take advantage of in japanese television. so in japanese television they have 3d movies for kids. they are just too deep.

they will have an object moving like this. now, if you wear glasses one side which is darker than the other, then there will be a time delay in the one that is darkened. you don't see it as quickly. and as a result you'll see in a slightly different direction and that will give you a 3d effect. >> there is something else also going on.you think that there really is an abstract instinct we have somehow that throws us off?do you think there is something inherently just basically different that we are not maybe aware of that we have about time? >> i think there is. i think it is the effect that is talked about. that the time that you see something depends on the signal getting to your eye but not just getting into it. i have a lot of processing. they figure out what it is and then it goes to the brain and

the brain figures it out. and that processing takes longer for different objects than bright objects. i think that could explain what you're talking about. >> i think when you try to make it conscious, is one of those things that is just so elusive. >> i love optical illusions. >> i'm just wondering if it is often unconscious. i don't know. >> i feeling is i want to understand everything. not be unaware of things. now here is what einstein said. this was written in a book by a philosopher, physicist and -- he calls einstein as saying, in science and principal can say all that can be said ãthat is the wrong place. here we go. albert einstein was troubled by the concept of now. i didn't know this until i started writing the book. he was bothered by the same thing that bothered me over most of my life. einstein said the problem of the now worried him seriously.

this is a guy who took time, which previously was simply a way of describing events and said we can study time itself. to me that was his great genius. to put ãi say he gave, he gave physics the gift of time. he made it part of physics. before that it was like a stage in which the acting takes place. but after einstein, we are setting the stage ii. einstein's of the problems of now worried him seriously. he explained that the experience of the now means something special for man. something essentially different from the past. in the future. but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. this experience cannot be grassed by science seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation.

so he concluded quote ãthat there is something essential about the now which is just outside of the realm of science. wow. einstein. [inaudible] >> the initial ãi would like to hear that one more time. >> einstein said the power of the now worried him seriously. the experience of having something special for man. he didn't have an answer. he was looking for something. i like to dream about what einstein ãi don't think i've done have the physics known at the time that was necessary for the elucidation of now. i think since einstein, the advances we have had in quantum theory, the advances in understanding the big bang, these are what make time in the flow of time once again part of physics. now, to get to the end of the

book ãlet me simply say that i bring time into the realm of physics. i have an experiment that will test my theory of time and yet, the reason that now, that moment is so special to us, lies outside the realm of physics. has to do with our consciousness. in negative more about that or you could read the book. limit woman somewhat quotes. despite its appearance the court does not come from a children's book on time. the question is, where does this come from? it is not from the children's section back there. here is the quote, if for instance i say, the train arrives here at 7 o'clock. i mean something like this. the pointing of the small end of my watch to seven and the

arrival of the train are simultaneous. so that quote, nouns like ã maybe something to do with well, okay, that is an elementary sentence that appeared a premier physics journal. on june 30, 1905. the article was arguably the most profound and important article in physics since 1687. when isaac newton effectively jumpstarted the physics with his publication of ãthe author of those words was a man who would later become the icon of genius of scientific productivity, the man named 95 years later dazing by "time magazine", appropriately named, as a man of the century. that is an honor that ãthese

words about the small end of the watch ran by albert einstein. why is he getting back to what you teach a six-year-old? and the reason was relativity theory, it was not difficult mathematically. was conceptually. he had to get people thinking about what did they really mean by simultaneous. and that, he wrote his article and ãpremier science journal. for example, if i say the train arrives here at 7 o'clock i mean something like this. the point of the small hand on my watch points to is seven. okay. that's just wonderful. the same thing is true. everybody here can understand everything in my book. i put in some equations for people who want to go further. but mostly there in the appendix. and you don't have to look at them. in fact, you could jump around.

go to the part you want to read. if there's some turn that looks essential, did a really good index. most books this day have terrible indexes. i insist on doing my own index. it's very good. okay, where our ãwhere are we? okay this is something that i call the death is -- nothing confounds travel faster than the speed of light. with the physics law says is nothing can travel at the speed of light. unless it has zero mass. you cannot have anything that moves slower than the speed of light get up to more than the speed of light but physicists speculate that there might be

something they called a tachyon. -- it was actually going less than the speed of light. so there are people who search for these knowing that if they see it it will establish their credentials in physics. let me read just a little bit longer excerpt here but it is interesting. a tachyon has a surprising role in our understanding of free will. and i pointed out for the first time this has been in print, this context. so let me read this. the chapter on murder. the strange relativity result that the order of events can be opposite for different reference frames. remember the moon and ãwhat happens first depends on which way objects are going.

leave that to a new aspect of reality. the deeper issue of causality and free will. these issues can be traumatized by the story of the tachyon murder. it is a particle that travels faster than the speed of light. and then i say relativity does not rule that out. discover a tachyon exists and you make physics history. yet despite the upside of such a discovery i decided many years ago not to bother searching for tachyon's. i reason borders on religion. i believe that i have free will. and the existence of tachyon's would violate that. let me explain. imagine that mary, is denny 40 feet away from john. and she has a tachyon gun. it fires tachyon bows that were

four times the speed of light. she fires. skipping a few words here, and john is killed. mary is brought to trial. she doesn't deny any of the facts that were described but you see is an unusual change of venue. she says she has a right to argue the case in whatever reference frame she chooses. there are valid as a judge knows, so he allows her to proceed. i talk a lot about reference frames and what that means in the early part of the book. she chooses a frame moving at half light speed. in that frame the two events -- are separated by 10 nanoseconds. but as i show in the appendix, in the frame she pecked, john died before she fired. [inaudible] so this you can think of as a paradox.

and most physicists, people like richard dawkins would say that's not a paradox. john dies, she fires she had no choice. we are simply the result of lots of little molecules bouncing around. we may have the illusion of free will but she couldn't decide not to fire. those two events are linked. which happened first hardly matters. i go to a different conclusion. if someone finds a tachyon then i will admit that my understanding of free will is wrong, that mary doesn't have free will and we are ãthe idea that free will is testable experimentally, not testable but disapproval. let's that is fascinating to me. i have said that my class many times. i've never said imprints. it shows there is a relationship when you're

thinking about time and your thing about free will the two are linked to each other. so i delved in the end of the book after establish all the physics, you don't have to be the end if you like that kind of stuff. but it is in the air. >> the part of you that has free will something a physical or a chemical and something extra? >> that's what i think. yes. i talked a lot about that. there are many things that are a physical, a chemical. i will give you an example. the fact of the square root of two is irrational. it could never be discovered from physics, chemistry for many experimental sciences. it is an abstract to that exists independent of the physical world. anyway i have lots of other examples in thereto.

here and talk about how you know, i started, this is interesting genesis. it started when my wife who is here, rosemary, say hello. [laughter] and i were watching a t.v. series called outlander. it is about time travel. time travel used to be, there were a few books about it.the first book i ever read on time travel was mark twain. connecticut yankee in king arthur's court. that came out six years before wells came out with his time machine. go back to the time of king arthur. i read that when i was a teenager. now, my six year old granddaughter, almost every book she has has time travel in it.

this is something that really has become quite ãa dozen t.v. series that depend on time travel. none of which i particularly like. i always give new series a try. [inaudible] >> and having some twists and ? >> i will enjoy. i suspend disbelief when i get into these things and i think my book has been proven wrong. there are millions of conclusions i reach at the end that time travel is impossible. now that is odd when you have movies like interstellar. in which people can travel through wormholes. and while they don't actually go back in time. in that movie. but they do slow down time. there was an article in scientific article about time travel in which they talked about the possibly of going

through wormholes to go back in time. and i discussed that in here because it turns out that article says if we can change wormholes, so that they violate the laws of physics in the following way that maybe some thing will be discovered and made we can go back in time through wormholes. and everybody is that article as a reference for wormholes make time travel possible if we can create a wormhole. it's not true.

turns out the answer is yes. put a black hole in between you and me and it turns out the distance is infinite. from the black hole -- the distance between you and me has become infinite even though neither of us has moved. what happens is in general relativity theory space is flexible. metric -- einstein had the trick that describes space, you have to add up all the little cubic centimeters in the metric and that will tell you. one of the things i knew was around a black hole, the amount of space, if you go a little bit out there is a lot of space. black holes are drawn like this indicating there is a lot of space in there even though you think you are close. there is a lot of space. one thing i knew from general

relativity is you have two blackholes together, you actually increase the amount of space. by an amount, when it hit the newspapers i quickly worked out the numbers and it turns out at least two giant black holes, each is 30 times the mass of the sun, was 29, what is 36, much bigger than the sun. no one just such black holes existed and they come together, the amount of space between the increases. the number turns out to be about 1 million cubic miles. that is the space between us. space has not conserved energy or momentum, not space, not time. when the new space is created according to the theory i had worked out, that would create

more time. i calculate how much it would be. and physicists terms it is a lot. an entire 1/1000 of a second. my iphone has a clock in it billion times effective. it doesn't million of these things. it is easily measured. gravity waves, you can see them around each other and they come in and the church should be delayed by 1000th of a second because of the additional time created. turns out i was really lucky. i could not verify the theory from the gravity waves. if i had i would have published

it, can you make any predictions? it is not a prediction unless you publish it before the word. it is barely unobservable. the uncertainty, one and 2000 subsections, next time we see something like this takes place closer, we had a stronger signal and should be an additional delay that should be observable. if it is not observed it is wrong. i have this daydream, it was turned off, maybe i missed the call. what did i do with my phone? here is my phone. hi, kip, how are you? you are kidding. you have observed a new event, 30, 45 masses and they came together and this was closer.

my theory is wrong. it was fun. may be he will say he thought the delay that was predicted. >> i am a layman so might be a stupid question. my question is reading that the sun is getting closer, there will be an extension by getting too close to the sun and you are talking two huge black holes that are larger than the sun, we might be able to control and bring together to save the earth

between us and the sun? >> the sun -- we understand the way the sun works and it is expected to grow in size until it reachedes where the earth is. that is supposed to take place, forget the exact number but something like 15 or 20 billion years from now. >> in that time in that spot to create, merge a blackhole, as big or bigger than the sun, will we be able to create a space between us and the sun to change the prediction? >> i suspect yes, we will be able to do that but whether we can do that without extinguishing the heat of the sun is a separate question. i suspect if you bring a

blackhole into the sun you will create that space but also turn off the sun. >> not to swallow the sun to emerge in between us and the sun. >> put it between us and the sun. >> it would be easier to move the earth further out. >> we are creating the space -- >> creating space when you move the earth out. >> how far in the future do you put something like that? >> the number is well known and i don't remember it comes something like tens of billions of years. the sun has been around for 5 billion years and so far, changing very slowly but that is expected to happen as the fuel is burned up in the sun, then the heat, gets weaker, the inner

part of the some collapses. the outer part comes out so there will be an outer core of the sun but the surface of the sun is what we have to deal with. >> going back to now. the idea of "now: the physics of time" comes from time and space equally being created. >> i would say the amount of time goes up locally when we create more space locally. the recent time flows of the universe is because the universe is expanding. that is called the hubble expansion. >> one point we won't see other galaxies or anything else, going all a part. what happens when there is

nothing moving in the middle of all that space? there is nothing left to measure against? >> what happens very late in the big bang when the universe has expanded so much you are all by your self? that has a lot of attention. there is no consensus what it is going to be like. the standard understanding is things will just get colder and colder, radiate heat but can't generate any more because we burned off the sun and they have what we will call the cold death. freeman dyson analyzed that years ago. he always thinks more cleverly than other people in the room, doesn't fall into any of these cliché traps. what he calculated was as the

universe gets less interesting, the earth, will actually develop more structure. and great detail on the paper, his conclusion can be stated simply, the universe will continue to get more interesting. it is great dispute with larry krause who says his calculations are wrong and i don't know what the status of that is but it is not necessarily true that as these billions of years past, life will get dull. >> changing the shape of the earth as we get further away? >> change the shape of the earth? not sure what you are referring to. because it is spinning the equator is a little further out

than it would be. as that's been slows down it will change the shape a little bit. >> this is a little off but i can't see that the big bank, don't know how we will never get around the thing about time. we know before the big bang there had to be time. there had to be time. something was existing. i think so. because the big bang is very, very, highly physical process of course. >> time and space are part of physics. let me give you an alternative which is the way i think about it. i'm departing from what i know into since we don't really understand the big bang let me speculate and come up with a

speculation that is completely 100% consistent with what we know but i have no way to test it. here is my hypothesis. it fits with everything we know. the big bang was not an explosion taking place within a space. it was an explosion of space. prior to the big bang there was no space. prior to the big bang there was no time. the big bang was the creation of space and time. to say what happened before the big bang is like what happens what if two points are closer to each other than zero. when you say big bank, there had to be a space and time for that to occur to begin with. >> the big bang usually refers to somewhere between the first one trillionth of a second and out to the first three minutes.

>> the big bang proves there was something for because of their wasn't something before there wouldn't have been a big bank. >> that is a speculation which is not accepted by most experts. >> it measures according to everything we know since then. everything you know since then is something follows the other as a result of the other, something has to resolve the big bang. >> some physicists are trying to see if they can make it work, that says the big bang was not the creation of time and space but just a special moment in time and base. that is an alternative. it may be right. in the back. >> talking about the big bang, this may be the first three

minutes of your talk so i missed it but how is time defined? >> that is part of the problem. time cannot be defined. when i was in ninth grade i took a wonderful course in geometry in which they started by saying we have concepts call they point and a line and they are undefined terms. we explain everything in terms of those. euclid in his great work on geometry always began with undefined terms and postulates and that is how you begin any study. in the theory of time you cannot define time because everything else was defined in terms of time. it is the most fundamental aspect of existence other than space. those of the most fundamental things, we cannot define them because what would you define

them in terms of? >> i started by talking how mysterious time is and many people think physicists understand time. know. i have a theory, people say we understand time a little better than we did before. >> there were recent experiments in which they discovered gravitational waves or evidence of gravitational waves by determining a just between locations. does that also change time relationships between those locations or is there any way of determining that? >> it did so there's no way of determining that. the gravity wave observatory, all it did was had two mirrors and they were suspended so they wouldn't be vibrated by earthquakes or people walking by which is really tricky.

i learned about that experiment when it was first proposed in the 1970s. it has been a long time to get that to work and people who did that are true scientific heroes for sticking with this. they stuck with it against my doubt. i didn't think it would ever work, i really didn't i said that publicly but it did. i was wrong. what they do is you measure the distance by bouncing light. that distance changes. they had two observatories. when in the us, two in the us, when in the south, when in the north and saw the same pattern. when these things are going around each other, these black holes, these are big masses. anytime you shake and electron you get a radio, all radio waves come from shaking electrons and antenna if the electron is moving back and forth and then incandescent bulb vibrating at

high temperatures that generate waves. that you get gravity waves but there is so much weakness that to see them you need huge masses that they did. they are oscillating, generating these waves. one wave every time they go around and that was observed. they are pulling in and losing energy and generating waves. we take the mass, 36+29, at 64 times the mass of the sun, 5% that mass was turned into gravity waves. turning mass into energy. fantastic. that is why we could see it but as they were losing this energy they came in and it is all gone, just one blackhole so you see the wave like this, it is gone.

in the back. >> what is the speed of gravity waves? >> we believe the speed of the gravity waves is the speed of light. according to theory we don't have a very good measurement of the speed, but we do know these two events, they arrive at different times, the difference in time was small enough, it one first and then the other so that is approximately right. according to all theory they move at the speed of light. >> i went back to your comments, your view of now which is creating time, what do you mean by that? >> even though we can't define it einstein made some definite

predictions. he predicted for example, he put:00 upstairs it would run faster and then come back down and you can compare, you can define distances in time even though he can define the meaning of time so i am doing the same thing saying i can't define time but i will tell you this, predictions will be mistaken if you don't take into account more time was created. a wonderful experiment done in the 1970s alreadys by two scientists, what they did is took a really active clock and put it in an airplane and flew up in the air and then the clock on the ground, just the amount einstein predicted. these days we have general relativity and time dilation built into our cell phones.

it is built in because we have gps. we are told where we are, satellite positions send signals, time the arrival of those signals. if we didn't for that we would be off by several miles. we have the einstein equation built into our cell phones. if einstein hadn't rejected it we would have discovered it as soon as we build gps, we would find clocks run at different rates in orbit. what is this and some theorists would come up with general relativity. the theory came first. it inspired the original theory of relativity.

and this unbelievable physical intuition, a few failures. einstein is responsible for inventing the laser. using the einstein equation for simulated mission, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, emission was a term einstein made up when he said molecules should behave in this way. unbelievable things. >> psychological aspect or scientific one? >> psychological aspect or a physical one, it is both. i argue in this book that there are physics aspects to reality that we are all aware of

although some of us deny it. and this gives us the ability to use our own free will to change the future. the argument is hard to make quickly, verbally, i make a pretty good case for this in the book but the only time you can exercise your free will is in that realm of reality which physics has not accessed and that is now. you exist in the past. you know you do. you remember where you were a year ago. you exist in the past but you can't change it. but now this moment, you can exercise your free will. you can listen to a lecture on

time. you did that, you exercise real free will. my claim is now has a solid physics basis. a moment that is created when space is created mostly from the big bank which is still expanding is creating more space and sometimes locally when you have two black holes, but what makes it important to us is it is the only moment in time when you can exercise your free will. unfortunately this rules out time travel. we are moving forward in time but we will out time travel backwards in time. >> the past is controlled by psychological memory. it is devoid of physics. it is all in our head. it is very very real. >> the past has a reality beyond the psychological reality. part of this came from the fact

that i worked for several years on radiocarbon dating and i remember being fascinated by the fact -- what an amazing thing, you dig up an old bone and you can tell when the person died. that wasn't in my memory. we can explore the past. the fact is we can learn more about the past and i do all the time by reading books. the past isn't completely in my head. there is a reality to the past. just the operative reality is my thing. >> very poetic and philosophical. >> my main philosophical collusion -- that is the

philosophical conclusion, we see a religious conclusion but it is not physics. 90% of the book is about physics. i do all this wonderful city physics and it is fascinating me and i am proud of it. i couldn't stop there. i had to think about how this affects reality and i make an argument, give an example in the book i could read this to you. and i was bothered by perception of color. when i saw color, i see color and you see color, asked my teacher and said of course.

it wasn't of course to me. when i got to junior high school i said dish the same part of the brain. it leaves the brain. didn't understand what i was talking about. what does blue look like. i had a chapter for what does blue look like. when you see blue and icy blue we are seeing the same color. you are seeing what i see when i see red. my teacher wasn't helpful. that story was a quandary to me. still bothers me. half the people i talked to said it bugged me too. of course you see the same

color. i couldn't communicate what i meant by it which a wonderful article written by a fellow named jackson who is a philosopher, frank jackson. in 1982 australian philosopher, post my childhood color question in a way i find compelling. he created a story of mary, brilliant scientist raised indoors in a colorless environment with nothing to look at that wasn't black, gray or white without color pictures, watched black and white television there is a great room in san francisco my granddaughter loved. everything is a shade of yellow. they know colors. who is colorblind? my granddaughter?

she wasn't. she is not colorblind. jackson's imaginary brilliant scientist mary in her black and white and gray home except for the absence of colors, reads about color in the physics book, wonders living in a world of color would be like, find the theory of the rainbow, beautiful in the physics sense. she ponders what a rainbow would actually look like. would the beauty be different from the physics beauty? i know the physics -- ultimately mary has a brilliant scientists which and any other thing you go

in. she understands how different frequencies work. central processing and different parts of the brain. she never experienced that. mary opens the door, into a full-color world. what will her reaction when she finally sees a rainbow? and her visual ability. and this is exactly what he expected. from the science i studied, will she say wow, i had no idea. jackson asks will she learn anything or not. if she does learn something what will it be?

i told the story to people that half the people say nothing is half the people say she will learn what it looks like. each side thinks the other side -- this is another example of a kind of knowledge we have beyond the reach of physics which i think will always be the on the reach of physics. physics to use einstein's terminology is complete but i am not depressed by that. change neural activity in the brain is physics and chemistry. >> did mary learn anything when she saw the colors? >> she did because the process never happened in her brain before and when she went out and experienced the full-spectrum of light, something happened in her brain that haven't happened

before. >> a reasonable position to take. >> we don't know what laura -- neurolinguistic, we can say the same word and none of us really mean the same thing. >> great topic for you to discuss with your friends. it is a great difference, won't be able to convince them they won't. one more question. >> two things. how does language, the fact we have mostly, maybe thinking and language, and the comment i had as someone who thought for a long time each of us is seeing the world differently in color and what we choose to look at,

one possible reason artists make art is to show what we see that we could never say by making it a picture, we are offering a way of showing how we see blue to someone else who sees blue. >> i agree enthusiastically what you are saying, disagree only the first statement that we can explain everything through language. >> how does -- how does the fact -- i don't know what your process is as you, i will say, contemplate time, how much of that is in language and how much -- >> anyone who has a book knows we don't have the words to express what we are trying to express and the result is we use metaphor, simile, figures of speech, art, to convey those things that cannot be conveyed with words and the books we love

are the ones that convey it through metaphor, not by having just the right words. you learn when you write books, the right word usually does not exist. in religion, excuse me for going back and mentioning jesus, they tell stories and get it from the story, to describe in words what you were teaching so we teach in metaphor, music, why do i love beethoven so much. can't articulate in words, it is outside just like radar is outside the verbal. thank you all for coming. i want to hang around for