all right.

good evening, everyone my name is silence. welcome to author events series. just a few housekeeping. let's just keep the checkout line clear over there. thank you for keeping your phones on silent. there will be time for a q&a, so get your questions ready and

also do note that we'll have a boom microphone coming around to pick up your audio. if you having had picked up a preordered book or you'd like to buy a book, you can do so at the desk over there after the event. we're here tonight to celebrate the release of the miraculous from the material with author alan lightman. alan lightman earned his ph.d. in physics from the california institute technology and is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller einstein dreams and the diagnosis. a finalist for the national book award. his nonfiction includes the transcendental brain, the accidental universe, searching for stars on an island in maine and probable impossibilities. he's taught at harvard and mit. where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities. he is currently a professor of

the practice of humanities at mit and the host of the public television's series searching for meet quest for meaning in the age of science, the miracle from the material is a gorgeously exploration of the science behind the universe's stunning natural phenomena from atoms to rainbows, snowflakes, spiderwebs, the rings of saturn, galaxies and beyond. standing in all of these phenomena, we experience a feeling of connection to the cosmos. for lightman, just research is that all of what we see around us from soap bubbles, scarlet ibises and stars are made out of the same material. stuff and obey the same rules and laws. this is what, he calls spiritual materialism, the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting of our scientific worldview.

in the miraculous from the material light illuminate to the majesty of the cosmos and the remarkable science behind. it. it's a stunning, soaring ode to the beauty and wonder around us. and here to tell us more is professor alan lightman alan lightman. thank you, everybody, for being here. let me see if i can get my laptop working. hmm. sorry about this. so was that.

that. that's what i want. to be up there. thank you. well, thanks again for being here. there are a few people behind that poster can't see. i'm sorry about that. maybe i should buy a two heads. it would be easier. that would be certainly one of the phenomena in my. if i did. so i'm going to read for two or 3 minutes from the book and then i'm going to talk about it. and answer questions. well, seiler said, i call myself a materialist, and by i don't mean that i wear our money suits or drive rolls-royces. i mean that literally that i believe the world is made out of material atoms and molecules

and, nothing more. and that that material obeys rules and laws. at the same time, like many us, i have spiritual experiences, feelings, connection to other human beings and to the larger cosmos. feeling of feelings of being part of something larger than myself. connections to nature, the appreciation of beauty, wonder or falling in love nature is capable of some extraordinary phenomena. and we human beings stand in awe of that phenomenon. that's that's part of my view of. i became a materialist early in life. i love to build things. i read in popular or some other magazine that the time for a pendulum to make a complete swing which called its period is

proportional to the square root of the length of the pendulum. this is a rule but i had to find out whether it was true. so i constructed with with a string and a fishing wait for the bob of the pendulum. i constructed pendulums of various lengths and. i measured their length with a ruler and time their periods with a stopwatch stopwatch. and lo and behold, the rule true. and it worked every time without exception using rule that i had just verified, i could even predict the periods of pendulum even before i built them. evidently the world, or at least my little corner of it, obeyed reliable, quantitative laws. at the same time, i was forming this materialist view of the

world. i observed some amazing spectacles with a microscope. i discovered an entire invisible to naked eye in a thimble full of like water, put under my microscope, i saw tiny creatures wriggling and gliding about shaped like ellipses with little waving hands and there's a chapter on on pyramids in the book. and i explain the science behind the way that they're able to move about moving their cilia. the little hairs that come out of their bodies. our family took vacations kentucky lake, about 175 miles north east of memphis, tennessee, which is where i grew up. many mornings if i rose early, i could see a mist hanging low

over. the lake and birds and lavenders and mossy green hues. they would refract on the air for an hour and then melt away like some rare species of plant. in college i had my first good luck through a telescope and saw the rings of saturn. and i don't know whether any of you have have seen the rings of saturn out of a telescope it is just mind blowing. they are so perfect. they are perfect, pure. and you think that nothing in nature could be that real? you think that nothing in nature could attain that perfection. and yet they are almost a billion miles away. austere, cold and crisp, floating silent perfection and with no understanding the material and scientific

underpinnings of these spectacular phenomena hasn't diminished. my and amazed me one iota. so i don't believe in miracles, but i do believe in the miraculous, the miracle is everywhere around us and them. and the material world and its laws are quite enough to. explain it. and that too miraculous. i will stop reading. and show you some of the phenomena in the book. the book is five chapters and chapter begins with a full page photograph of an extraordinary phenomenon. and there's an essay in which i give my personal experience with phenomenon and the explain the

science behind it. so one of the chapters deals spider webs that the silk of a spider web is twice as strong as a steel wire or the same. that is, it would take twice as much strength to. break the spider strand of silk as it would steel strand of the same diameter the galaxy was or another. i'm just going to give you a small sample of some of the phenomena in the book volcano enos lightning. it's probably the most dramatic visual phenomenon i chose all of the phenomena to be visually beautiful as well as interesting. these weirdly shaped clouds, called my modest clouds.

this is a firefly owl. and yosemite. that's actually water pouring over the side. that cliff. it looks like it's molten lava. it for a few hours one day of the year. the sun hits that water at exactly the right angle to it up and make it look red like molten lava, the mandarin fish which all more to say about in a moment. rainbows, of course, that would have to be included. and then they took on amazing phenomena by a luminous science, which is the glow produced by tiny microorganisms. the water and bubbles. and course what what's amazing about so bubbles is they're perfect roundness. so let me say or discuss in a

little bit more detail some of the give you an idea of the of the nature oth book. and here in new england we are ry, ry privileged to. have these beautiful fall colors. the reds, oranges and yellows. and the question is what cause those colors. well, the answer is a large asteroid that hit the earth several billion years ago. but i'll get to that in a moment. first of all, many things in nature. the appearance of something is caused by the suppression of something else. and in the leaves of trees, the reds oranges and yellow are actually always in the form of a couple of chemicals.

but during growing season, the green of the chlorophyl, which every plant has to convert sunlight energy that green completely. and hides the other pigment that are there that are always there. well during the growing season, chlorophyl molecules are constantly being created and destroyed. created and destroyed. so there's always a lot of chlorophyl around. but when the fall and it begins getting cooler, all growing things slow down and their there's not as much sunlight, there's not as much energy and chlorophyl production slows. and with less clear to mask the other colors, the reds oranges and yellows can come out. so let me end with a a

scientific story. all growing things depend temperature and light and the temperature. temperature and light and terms follows the cycles of seasons. so why do have seasons. we have seasons because the tilt of the earth. it's not because the earth is closer. the sun at some times of the year. it's because the earth is tilted on its axis. and that's shown in this diagram in the northern hemisphere here during the summer. we are at the position of that right hand earth, and the earth is tilted the sun. and so the northern latitudes get more sunlight and more

warmth. and that's why that's what the summer season is. on the other side, on the far left hand side is winter, when the the northern latitudes are tilted away from the sun and we have less sunlight, less warmth. so it's all by the tilt of the earth. if the earth's axis perpendicular to the plane, orbit, there would be an equal amount of of of sunlight throughout the and there would be no seasons. so no tilt. no seasons. no seasons no fall colors. and being a i want to keep going asking deeper and deeper questions. what caused the tilt. well, we think that the system and all planetary systems were formed by a rotating cloud of,

gas and dust with the sun, the center and fact all of the planets in our solar system orbit sun with the same sense sense. but in addition to that rotation sense, there were there were some renegade material didn't follow the overall rotation. and a large chunk of that hit the earth during the formation of the solar about 4 billion years ago. and cocteau it over. so its axis was tilted. and in fact, these large asteroids and small planetoid had collided with most the planets in our solar system, and most of them have a tilt. well, you know that the tilt of the earth is 23 and a half

degrees, the tilt of uranus. uranus is 82 degrees. the tilt of saturn is 26.7 degrees. mercury the planet is closest to the sun is the only one that was not hit by a random asteroid and it has no tilt. so mercury has no and if there were trees on it, would that not have fall leaves that not have colored leaves? god, god, i don't think there are actually trees on planet mercury. in fact, there's no life of any kind of so far as can tell. but if there were trees, there would be no fall colors. well, let talk about this little guy, the mandarin fish, which is only three inches long. i's a little guyound mostly in warm waters in the pacific

and the mandarin gets his name because his colors look like he's wearing the robes of a chinese mandarin. one of the most extravagantly colored on planet earth. so the question, where did those elaborate colors come from and why why? probably most of, you know, that that every distinctive trait of a living organism came about because it had survival benefit over the course of darwinian evolution and it allowed the animal that gave it advantage and survival and therefore that trait was preserved and. in fact charles darwin points out that when you see a leaf eating insect that is green and a bark eating insect on a tree that's, a brown, you have to

conclude those colors had survival and camouflaging the animal. well, there are other purposes that extravagant color serves besides camouflage. it also can attract mates. i don't know how many of you were attracted colorful mates, but maybe some of you are. and if you're a poisonous, the color can warn potential predators that you're poisonous and not to take a out of you. it doesn't do any good to be poisonous. if if the predator doesn't know that you're poisonous. so evolutionary period period. potential predators learned that these colored mandarin fish were poisonous in same way the coral snake which is also very poisonous.

dark frog also is poisonous. so these elaborate colors can be a warning to potential predators that you your are poisonous and not to not to mess with you. and the mandarin fish is in that category now the most dangerous natural lethal predator of the fish is the scorpion fish is also poisonous. but the second most lethal predator of the mandarin fish is us human beings. and why are we a predator? because love to collect them and our recreation of fish tanks and. they're so beautiful. in fact, a fish. just this little three inch think in costs costs you about 150 bucks. so we are a predator of mandarin

fish. and there is an irony here because this the elaborate colors of the mandarin fish which are supposed to protect it against predators in the are the reason why it collected and hunted down by us human beings. so the the color is a double edged sword in this case. of course, i don't think human beings collected mandarin fish back in evolutionary history. i think is probably fairly recent. maybe in the last couple of thousand years, which is the blink an eye in evolutionary. have any of you seen halong bay? a few people have.

it's a a natural wonder of the world. i was in vietnam a few years ago and i took a tour of how long bay in northeast vietnam on the gulf of tonkin and it has these these miniature mountains that have sharply. sharply carved sides nearly vertical sides really. it looks like they look like they're science fiction. you can't believe they're real. the legend, of course, vietnam was attacked by many countries, including the united states, france, china portugal, japan and. let the legend is that gods sent dragons to this bay to help the vietnam vietnamese fight off the. and according the legend, the

dragons have begun shedding some of their jewel colored armor. and that became these islands here. these micro mountains and long bay, our globe magical features called carve towers. that's k.r. t towers and made out of dissolvable rock. it's thought that they they formed about 300 million years ago. and the way that form, there's really a couple of steps underneath the earth there are these these the of the earth that is there are these lge plates solid rock plates called plates. they're about seven major tectonic plates that are constantly moving around due to heat generated the interior of

the earth. these plates cause earthquakes and volcanoes and they lift up the the ocean and the when they slide over each other. and it's thought that these tectonic plates produced the micro mountains of halong bay. the reason why these sides are sharply. carved almost vertically is from erosion. the the these micro mountains are made out of limestone, which dissolves and rainwater and the rain comes down, it dissolves the sides of the mountains. anything sticking out from the vertical is exposed to more rainwater and gets washed away. and that's what carves out the vertical structures of these micro mountains.

well another natural phenomenon and before i show you pictures of things, i want to just discuss spirals because. i'm going to be talking about spirals for a couple of. human beings seem to have always been fascinated by spirals by that pattern either consciously or unconsciously your eye starts the middle and starts wandering around winding around almost coming back to where it started, but not quite. and in fact we've seen human beings have been making spirals for or 5000 years. the the oldest known spiral that was carved by hun ings. it's a tomb in ireland. well spirals. and the reason why they're in my book. spirals occur in.

there's the proliferate plant. some of you may have as level as in your gardens. it has a spiral structure and many plants and other objects nature have a particular spiral pattern called the fibonacci spiral. have any of you heard of the word fibonacci before? a lot of people out. right. so the fibonacci is a spiral in which each the length each quarter turn is equal to the sum of lengths of the two previous quarter turns. and that's a mouthful but you'll see in a minute what where that comes from. so. the nautilus shell has the

fibonacci spiral, that particular. and so. the seed pods of sunflower,he plethora that i showed you at the beginning also has fibonacci spiral. so it's a particular spiral and twice in four there were a couple of scientists at university of arizona that analyzed the stresses on plants as they are growing and as the and spiral forming plants as the cells are subjected to stresses. that causes them to twist and make a spiral pattern. and they found that the energy of those stresses is minimized, the smallest when spiral takes the form of the spiral.

so at you may or may not not that nature always takes the path least energy when it's possible, when it when it can't. human beings don't do that. but but non-human does that. so that's sort of a explanation of why we find fibonacci spirals in nature. well, we're going to enter the kingdom of magic. there was 12th century italian mathematician named leonardo fibonacci, and he discovered a particular sequence of numbers called the fibonacci series and series of numbers is very simple. each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. and that's how you make the

series numbers. so two is equal to one plus one. three is equal to one plus to five is equal to two plus three. if you didn't know came after the five, you would add three and five together to get eight. if you didn't know what would came after eight, you would add five and eight together to get 13. and that's how constructed this series of numbers. so this may begin to ring a bell. when i talked about this even after you spiral and each the the length of each quarter term is equal to the sum of the lengths of two previous quarter terms. now if we form spiral by connecting the opposite corners of. a sequence of squares whose are following the fibonacci series. so t smallest there are two by then by three, fifive

eight by eight, 13 by 13, 21 by 21 and so on. those the numbers of the fibona seren tt produce this, the fibonacci spiral in which the length each quarter turn is the sum of the two previous quarter terms and in fact fact as i mentioned earlier, the belief a lot has as a fibonacci spiral there of superimposed the spiral on top of the plethor now there's even more to this natural magic magic sociology archeologist have long noted that we human beings really love the fibonacci spiral, where we're a statically attracted to it and either consciously or unconsciously we it into our

architectural. there is the taj mahal in which i have supreme the fibonacci spiral by starng it with the smallest structure and, then going tohe next largest structure. the next largest structure. and i would argue or suggest that the architect who designed the taj mahal either consciously, unconsciously had the fibonacci spiral in his or her brain brain. the notre dame cathedral in parislso follows the fibonacci spiral. if you draw a iralattern that connects larger and larger structures. so this special series of numbers that leonardo fibonacci found, which is manifest in the spiral patterns of and shells,

is set of proportions that we human find esthetically pleasing. and to me, it's not so surprising that we human beings find these particular spiral as esthetically pleasing because they are part of nature and are part of nature. and for me. these spirals from the treatment object series on up to this spiral rose of nautilus shells and and so on. and in our own esthetics represent a profound connectedness of all living things. we are part of a whole. you just got a quick sip of water and i'll go to the last bit my talk here.

so i've been talking about. mandarin fish and fall colors and spirals and how long they magnificent visually magnificent extra ordinary phenomena. for me none of them has greater than extraordinary ness if that's a word of us human beings. i think we are the most extraordinary in the universe and particular our. are the most complex object we know in the universe. there. our brains are more complex than galaxies. our brains are more complex than black holes. our brains are more complex than

volcanoes volcanoes. i mean, what other organism has been to build a tajima hall or build the city of singapore or write the tempest or the poetry or macbeth or the ramayana or discover the theory relative or invent antibiotics or computers? what other species, what other living organism has been able to create all of that? and of course, i can't come close to describing all of the things that make us human beings extraordinary. so let me just say a few words about our brains. of course the the most extraordinary phenomena the most extraordinary mental sensation

that we have is just conscious fitness, the feeling of being separate from the rest of the world the feeling of having an and a self self-awareness, the ability to remember your past and plan for the future. all of that is part of conscious genius and. somehow or another that sensation we call consciousness. now remember, i'm a materialist, so i think that everything atoms and molecules, but somehow that sensation that we call consciousness is rooted in the material neurons of the brain. there are 100 billion neurons in the brain and each one is connected to another thousand or 10,000 neurons, an incredibly complicated system and we can't.

even neuroscientists don't know how to fill in all the blanks to get from those material neurons to the that we consciousness by. but there is there is concept that makes leap plausible and there's something science called emergent phonon metal and that is phenomena that occur when you have a system of many parts even though you may understand the workings each individual part that when you have many parts interacting with each other get qualitatively new phenomena that are unpredictable, even they're all rooted and. the individual parts and example

is a certain species of far. afterr when they comed unison together. if you have a bunch of these far. and in the south where i up we call them lightning bugs if all congregate in a field night at first they're blinking randomly like christmas tree lights. but after a minute two, they all start blinking in unison and synchrony and even though we understand everything about individual fireflies, the chemistry the biology, we still aren't quite sure how it is that? when you get a group of a thousand fireflies together, they start blinking and unison. and now, if you think about the human brain. with 100 billion fireflies lie light neurons neurons.

you get all kinds of qualitative phenomena that are not apparent. and in individual neurons, even with several hundred neurons, we can't really predict what that system is going to do. so even though we have a we believe that the brain is rooted and the material neurons when you have a large collection of them, you get all kinds of amazing phenomena capable of producing this magical sensation we call consciousness capable of of our art and our science and everything else that we do. well, i'll end just a couple of comments where humans might be going in the future. i believe that we probably, for the last few hundred years have bypassed normal darwinian evolution.

i mean, just think about our our eyeglasses in our in hearing aids, the those were not designed by nature. we created those ourselves. and now look at what we're creating with artificial chad beatty. we now the ability to put computer chips in the brains of paralyzed people that will them to move robots arms by pure thought. just an amazing csequence of of human ingenuity. this particular guy he named eric sordo. he was in a gang war and, los angeles. and i had the pleasure of having conversation with him a few years ago. so it took a couple of million years to get us to where we are,

say a few hundred ago and now technology is advancing at an exponential rate. and i would argue that we now evolving into a new species that you might call --. which is part human and part machine, and who knows, we're going to be 500 years from now. it's just impossible of all to predict. but we're going to be part human and part machine machine. so. and this is this evolution now is happening? not in millions of years, in single human lifetimes. just think how rapidly things have developed ai in the last few years. so the question is what will remain of us -- sapiens 500

years from now. it's my hope that we will still feel all when we look up at the night sky and see the stars twinkling. it's my hope that we will still fall in love. it's my that we will have compassion. other people. it's my hope, even, that we will still feel anger and jealousy. and finally, it's my hope that we will still have hope. so end there. thank you. so. i'd be happy to answer questions. hear comments. if you have a short comment to make you can you can do that. you don't have to ask a

question. yes. there with the coming. you're writing. i love. i love it. i love you because. you are so freaking part of. and you see beauty, everything. but i think you don't see the destructive nature of humans. you talk about art and shakespeare's you of bombing the. 2024 to smithereens. what the heck is that. well, i'm. that everybody here. that well the comment i've have positive outlook on everything but what about all the destruction that human beings are doing and 2024 still. well i'm not anthropologist and i'm not a social ologist. i'm not a political scientist

scientist. and where are colorful? you. but i would say and this is an amateur opinion because here i am an amateur. but think that our divisions and to us and the other which is part of behind this destructiveness it had survival benefit early in our evolution when people you had 20 people living in a cave and that was community and the outside world was threatening to that community that small community. so i think you know, some traits survival benefit have both pluses and minuses that cut both ways and so left over you know

it's a byproduct of of of trait that at one time had survival benefit but that's immature response. thank you. another anybody any other questions or comments? yes, i'm here. well, i'll try to repeat the question so that. yeah, i was just going to ask what influenced you to write this book in the first place. okay. so the question is, what influenced me to write the book in the first place? well, first of all, the idea of spiritual materialism, which is something i define a couple of books ago, is that i've been very interested in for long time and that is that the reconciliation with the science of a worldview with our human

experiences and our of nature and just. our appreciation of being in the world this particular was inspired by i'm a i'm a jogger not as fast as i used to be. and i was running by a field one morning early in the morning and there was a low mist hanging over the ground. and i'm sure that many of you have seen that. and as the day goes and the sun comes out, it burns away mist. but it's very beautiful. early the morning and i went home. first of all, i was just by the sight. it affected me emotionally. and when i got home. wanted to explain it to myself scientifically. what behind that and then that was the start of the book.

then i thought of other stunning natural and it occurred to me that that i could have book with beautiful pictures those phenomena, but also a scientific explanation of them. so that's how book started the phrase the miraculous from the material came from a public television series that i was involved with that came out a little while ago ago. yes. have you had the opportunity to to see the river of fire? many of the other things you've noted. i've seen many of the phenomena and the river of fire and yosemite. i have not seen. i have been. i have hiked in yosemite, but not on the one day of the year where that spectacular vision occurs. have you seen it?

i have. yeah. is a day. no, it's not an equinox day. but it. it has to do with the angles, the the the slope, the cliff and all of that. yes. so i have a question about mandarin for the mandarin fish. yes. how how humans have impacted its evolution. so i'm thinking if if humans like to collect mandarin fish for their phenomenal colors. mm hmm. so the ones that are more colorful would become extinct. and the others who are less colorful continue to support. is. is that you would explain that. well, that that could be the explanation. i think that the that even though humans a predator that

compare to the scorpion fish we haven't really wiped out a large fraction of them. so but in principle what you suggest could could be true true but i think that since the scorpion fish is still the most dominant predator in the vicinity that they would still keep those strong. yeah interesting comment. yes. well, one of your prior books speaks about most of and that were effectively 99% empty space. and in this book, you're focusing on the miraculous from material. just wondering if you consider you know what it might look like if we looked into that empty space that were all created

created and even extrapolating, you know with like dark matter and just on a more macro level as well. well, yes. so the reason we're mostly empty space is because we're composed of atoms and an atom is mostly empty space. so i'm not sure exactly what the question. i think a a picture of interior would not that visually beautiful. i did once i did have a colonoscopy ten years ago and. i was not fully enough to size. and i saw a picture of my colon on on a tv screen. now, i was very to see my materiality.

so, so, so vividly. but but in general, i think it would not be a pretty picture. i don't think really answered your referring to you some of the those the the the scales that we possibly cannot see humans but you know if i mean in the in the natural world are so many animals that have you know, the different of the world that may not be accessible to us. so just about some of that hidden that we might not be privy to. well, there's the physical, but there's also the mental space that we don't really know what animals are thinking. i'm sorry. yes yeah, i'll try to stay out of the microphone. yeah. thank so the comment was, what about all the the invisible space animals that we are not aware of?

and it's certainly true that. also we know that that that a lot of the the universe as a whole is made out of material that give off any light at all. and we see see as gravitational effects. so we know what's but we can't see it. and if you want to go further in that direction, there are a lot of wavelengths light that i can't see. we only a very narrow range of wavelengths and there are longer wavelengths longer than red like radio waves that are going through all the time that we can't see. and at the short end, there that are shorter than blue ultraviolet and x rays that can't see with our eyes either. so there are all kinds of things going on around us that we can't

see. but we have been able to detect a lot of these things with with our scientific instruments. and it is constantly awesome to me that we've been able to learn so much about the universe that not apparent to our senses. we've basically extended our sense answering perception enormously by the that we've built. i was thinking a little how you left off the last thing. the most interesting thing to you was people and that it's really hard for physics from first principles to understand people and their behaviors and such and i remembered that you know, the nobel prize in physics this year was given for i which is, you know, an excellent pattern matcher, i think. and, you know, it's been good at predicting to limited degree it

very surprising in how people think. so this is a bit of a spitball question around the belt to say, do you think physics might have some surprises in store us to really understand a bit more about you know in this way of maybe it through a.i. or other fashions of a yeah. i think that that chemistry biology might help us understand more about people. but i also think that some of the humanistic like psychology and sociology and anthropology also helping us understand more about people. i talked recently a neuroscientist at mit named robert dushman and asked whether he thought that neuroscience would ever advance to the degree where you could predict whether to people would fall in love.

and. what he said was, well, right, it's a question of probabilities. that if you give me the brains of two different people. that i can tell you that there's a 30% probability you'll fall love with mary and a 50% probability you fall love with alice. and so on. and then. and. neuroscience improves those probabilities will get higher and higher. even though i'm not a neuroscientist, i found his reply very unsatisfying and i personally not want a computer ever to predict who i was going to fall in love with. and i don't think that neuroscience ever reach that level. in fact i think there are a lot of random elements that go on in

the brain. so i that that there will always be i think although science is progressing and we're learning more about the animate world the inanimate world. i think there will always be mysteries that we don't. and i actually think that mysteries a good thing because they provoke they stimulate creativity. the most wonderful. quote from einstein for me as he said that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. it is the emotion that lies at the cradle of truth and true science. so even though i'm a scientist, i hope that there will always be things that we don't understand. and i hope that that will be a computer that can predict who

i'm going to fall in love with. yes. reminds me a few years ago when netflix aired a trip to infinity. yeah, it was before i knew who you were and towards the end of documentary, i just start bawling. you start talking about, you know, what's the point, a purpose in life. and you fell in love and. this reminds me, you know, the questions and everything and i just followed through until the end of the i'm sorry ending it was amazing had a and then the science book club that we're from new orleans which we flew in today and tomorrow to see and we did an interview with you and i asked you about man because i love man i fell in love with you in 2011 cause my was as a pharmacist. why do university in england they're killing it. but.

i. i'll repeat what she says i, i, i have many questions for you, but i don't know. i think you're amazing and deep and so poetic since three like your first book and i'm excited to read your new one but i don't even know what to ask you please. well, how do you feel about in the multiverse? well, thank you for i don't know what a thank you for coming from new orleans and my mother grew up in new orleans so i bet you used to go there a lot. so anyway, that not really a question. it was just i know i do love her. yes yes. one thing i think we're on c-span and here. so they're trying to get the microphone around to you. so everybody here is going to be on television so when you

explain our fascination with the universe and all that phenomena and that is spirituality. you say that there is a material basis to that. how far to explain the material basis. can you go before it becomes before it becomes a what. mystery. mystery. you mentioned mystery. but i'm wondering, you know, what is what are your thoughts about the paintings in, the material? well, one of the greatest scientific and philosophic questions is why is there something rather than nothing. so we know a lot about how our universe came into being. we think it started about 4 billion years ago, a mystery 14

billion years ago, what we call the big bang. and there were some kind time in space before that. we don't understand that. complete like there are physicists who think that are other universes besides our universe. but there's no experimental evidence for that so that may or may not be true but you can ask the question how did the original time and space before the big bang come about? and that is something that we will probably never know answer to. we're very good at calculating what happened after two equals zero, but we're probably never know what what happened before two equals zero. so, you know, if you're a

religious person. you can say that god, the cosmos if you're not, you have to fall back on quantum physics and relativity. but we won't know the answer to that. so that's if you if you want to go deeper and deeper levels beyond materiality and get to the ultimate mystery, i would say why is there something rather than nothing. wonderful. thank you so much, everyone, for coming the professor is going to stay right here to sign books. feel free to grab them back there or head out and we're going to form a why going this way. thank you. i'm going to take