at this particular feature but if they don't then it's very admirable. and that brings you up to date the news for this hour back again in about 30 minutes. we've named this mom a little boy keep me in we. need to look at the same. studio let's just look like a little mom who knows she's good to look at isn't a moment ago i. finally managed. to. get. his for those who would just don't.

believe in it since it doesn't. seem wrong when all rolls just don't hold. any newbold yet to shape out these days comes to educate and in again from an equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

well welcome to soviet vision or is me sophie shevardnadze. the best efforts of scientists this fundamental question a still a conundrum my guest today has his own formula for tracing the answer is joined by professor paul davies is a system astrobiology cosmologist and bestselling author. professor paul davis. bestselling author really great to have you with us today. so i should talk about special information because i'm a journalist and i work with information a lot now you're interested in this concept of organized information for me as a journalist information is more obstructive a concept than mathematicians think of it as bits and binary code and stuff without making it to complicate formality and says can you explain what is information in

physics. right say you're correct that we use that data nice but we have a sort of rough and ready idea of what information means and the best definition is that it reduces on certainty so for example if you were going to carry moscow to the metro and you just got random you might quite tight on a 10 minutes or something her friends come along but if you have a timetable it reduces your onset when they train with the ride but that initial one should be can be made very mathematically precise about 70 years ago a movie now according to mission period was based on that notion of reduction in onset. can you not a simple example you toss a coin into account that heads or tails i don't know if you use that expression in russia one side on the other and you don't know but when you look you you get the

definite it with nation you quote one bits of information so that's a technical definition and so using that we can apply some biology to the nature of life and it was recognized a long time ago where the famous double helix of the structure of d.n.a. was worked out and that d.n.a. storms the genetic information it's a blueprint if you like what makes you you meet me and that information has to the store and process them right down to manage them manipulate it and so we will reckon hons out of what makes living systems so important this i think us all more express the nation house of one generation next well they express it in the making proteins or carry hence a puncture wounds so that's the basic idea about how warm i came to exist still are very the it's oh

a trading information as if it. no matter was the stuff out of which the world is builds is one of the avenues in sa that you're pursuing great so what do you get as a scientist when you trade information this way with one kind of new understanding about the universe can you find if you accept hypothetically that information is the primal building block of our world. and you've raised a very interesting issue but wait understand but as a practical matter information is critical to the operation of biological systems. there's a whole show go by over into magic so now known her about gene entity we can treat the d.n.a. as like a book of life and you can get in there new. edit it and change some of the letters some of the meaning you can create a robot for so this is current technology so we all understand that but you asked a deeper question about whether somehow information is the primary stuff of which

the universe is built and the american chooses use john real heat it was he who coined the term black hole he was a great advocate of this idea that at the bottom what we might call the great chain of being is information matter we think about sums or electrons or something we normally think they are the primary stuff but he said no no information is the primary stuff matter is simply a manifestation of various states of information and so yeah wonderful to have it. it's about the battle of the bits is the bit of information he felt information is a primary source now that's still a minority view. a number of my colleagues feel that yes the universe is really a vast information processing of of that is the ultimate reality of the this thing

we call matter you can you can you can change it you can touch it it shapes call it . it down it's all about information so regarding that question of matter there's an equation of yours that i came across life because matter class information said that means that means information equals life minus matter right can i. get information they interpret it as so all of this include equation. a saudi has one child is a lady of course when it comes from a religious you. most scientists talk about some as a separate thing and some you think the plates around alongside mine but if by that by the word so i've brought is state of mind when we think how does the brain work

out of it have consciousness so we call this sort of rather abstract chain who have a mind and we have. consciousness and. we don't think of it as a substance of his i don't but somehow there's a matter of story to tell we have the brain rev sense it's in the frame of electrons signals got rid of the brain and then we've got this extraordinary from of a cold consciousness of material them have to be fitted together now i don't think we've done that yet but. i suppose your question is leading me in that direction to say well if you can from a ship is prime or if. maybe we should think of mind as being primary matter as being 2nd rate now i'm carrying this a little bit but that idea it carries banking drench of history as crude idealism that those facts are ancient greek philosophy of the ultimately well it is you know towns are sort of as it were a modern stuff of a mass of stuff that's

a big stretch for a book physicist. but unlike many things when she died is often a grain of truth and it. can back some of that engine thinking but when yeah but i still want to lay ponder on that a lot of it because when you talk it works in your 'd recent book in cells in atoms how can information be on a same level as matter i mean doesn't informationally exist when there is something or someone to read it is an information basically confined to the eye of the beholder. yes so you're absolutely right it's had a lot of trauma so this whole fascinating air 'd of information theory 'd 'd in just 6 rounds land. he famously says information is just what he meant by that is he in 2000 solar flight 3 is in the ija it's always tied to math so for example i mentioned d.n.a.

a position of new kids hides very intense information in a biological organism in a computer it'll be your no one's and zero's stored in. the hard drive or something like that it's always a physical media. the same is true of energy we talk about energy in an abstract sense as more it a mass of it energy can be competitive from one form or the other of the 3 different systems of energy itself else and. make it spread out a bit but it's always somewhere in a physical system already in a sense it has a life of its own informations a bit like that we can talk about it as if it hasn't and that exists somewhere do all the time. we. after all the silly and the united states banks billions of billions of dollars by. selling a manipulated information of insider you know it must have in some sense be real

but it's always going to be instantiated in matzoh somehow somewhere about doesn't mean that it can still be a crime rate comes. some information a matter go hand in hand there's no doubt about it where assuming that information is the primal thing right or at least as primal as the matter assuming that information is the foundation of the universe is it kind of like saying that nap of a town is the town. yes friends as they map become a territory if it's a one time on math mathematicians will tell you then then the map is the territory . i think once what we're discussing here maybe hung up on this this point. in china little bit of a hike or be a dichotomy a train hardware and software in computing. we will understand the computer well

anyway. it's loaded with the appropriate software and i don't draw the analogy here with lush life seems to me like magic but so does this computer i'm talking to you on this computer i think looks like it's much account as. well as your mentor computer science department and. knew when said went in and they pulled it back off from they said well if you know it can get silicone here and there's bits of copper or. some other and some plastic it will compete to show how now it all goes together but we're beginning to understand well you know that that was wrong that you have to go to a contingent of problems and they'll tell you all about the software and about the that's been written into the machine it's all you need but the same for a count round that out. of their computer is more than the house. and same document does the software have independent existence well shown in

a sense because i can pop it i can put it on a memory stick i can send it out optical fiber it still has. seen a promise exists in nature but they were using exists in something they're instantiated in something. and and so i think that's really what we did with him when he comes from biology we have to go beyond just saying well there's a past because we don't have that information. has a more active all supervisory role in living jane and just think of developments in the embryo it's not just a matter of information being bred out everything has to be. occur around closely has to be a great detail it's. unfolding in the development of the embryo so this monster isn't just counting bits and. well i don't think we are. 'd

giving rat's. involving him but. that we only. have a complete work about his new physics so i believe. if you try to get started thinking about this in the if you call then take a sharp break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to professor paul davis physicist astrobiologist. bestselling author talking about is life made out of information stay with us.

and she. didn't just sit in japanese and i. don't mind. let me come up to my face you know for how long to name a country not an established at the map. of the economy to have more than a last step is that. there are no i mean the last are going. on. around the. momentum. and among them. going to come up they're going to. go missing i'm just going to go.

is there such a thing as public opinion any more droll after 2 elections like this in the break david has been largely imperfect is there is more than just one publication are there good reasons not to trust the papers. now we're back with professor paul davis physicist astrobiologist and bestselling author paul how is information connected to light in your eyes i mean i heard you say that living beings are information processing systems this could sound simple

but if we can for a moment accept that is this what we're for to process information come to like what we make computers for. well that's that some cynics will say. yes. the your body is just a vehicle of mapping we want a lot of information and what not a lot of information. on my reading at it. stop from having to think about the nature of information in biology say we've discussed already in the example everybody knows which is the information in d.n.a. which is copied. to the next generation it's expressed in the development of the embryo in a very complicated brain but it doesn't stop there because in a cell. we all know we have genes and these genes can be switched on or off but

they don't act in isolation they form complex. information swellings around these combated people doing. biologists figure out more genes for each other as all men they draw in these network diagrams wiring diagrams it can computation and so there's a lot of information presence even in those now and then cell signal signaling molecules. same to the other as this great information processing system out here between areas. everybody knows about that and it doesn't stop in towns right through each systems right up to palm tree scale. and i think we're all these days obsessed by power since a case in point. but you know paris is a central part of the planetary system the planter treatises they

viruses get everywhere out there like my body could antigovernment so little bits of information that a pasta around and are essential for the health of the planet. and so i wanted to say. a rat's. ecosystem of life is the original wildlife it's a wave of information. extensor pov just so it's everybody's life but we understand only the bottom level of this and i'm sure there are no i don't think these are the miracles of a belief in anything like that but i think we don't yet fully have. a batch the facts straight from how many young people are. watching us and i listened to this conversation but i would say i was going to make a career of j b that intersection of physics and chemistry and information theory of biology and . that's where the big discoveries were made in the coming decade. so in one

interview you described life as a complexity that cannot be achieved through fixed rules and there's a famous quote by and saying god doesn't play dies meaning that there's got to be underlying laws for what seems random at the moment are you actually saying that god indeed plays out as if the rules of nature are not fixed but flexible. well using our einstein's language i am saying god does play dice i he was very much in a minority at the time and experiments in foundations of quantum mechanics of the last few decades are pretty last night doubts that nature is intrinsically unsound or indeterministic so what einstein meant by god does not play dies he recognized that it's common to have all things were sort of pretty random chance but he told the beneath that was

a hit of deterministic order where everything that happened happened a very particular reason but in principle he could predict exactly 'd what an ass would do if you had that level of detail which we now know that that is not correct experiments of refuted that so there is something intrinsically. indeterministic chancy or open if i can see my views about systems of it's all may come molecular level so quantum physics introduces absolute they have quantum physics is essential to understanding. but how these things fit together how the uncertainty of quantum mechanics my ship together with 'd the information processing of living organisms can carry out some ohio level we don't doubt but this is an area south of them. and so somewhere in that mix is the secret of mine but i come back to

anything trying to get out of the founders of quantum mechanics who in $140.00 stray and dump in an island gave his friends lectures with time to watch his life and then wrote a book about that and he recognized the quantum mechanics was essential from the standing the stability of the information content of cells but he also left open the idea that there may be a new kind of physical more operating. he didn't say why he was definite about it but he was for that idea i think it was. the physical 'd operation you live in message doesn't. that's for sure. in addition to the conceiving system just as you heard but what are your biggest invasions as far as i understand is to find x. or trace your life and you say one of the reasons why we still haven't found it is because we don't really know how life on earth 1st started how does knowing how

a lifeline are started going to affect our researcher on alien life. well but i'm so serious that was a long time ago a lot of. i was a passionate belief in life beyond death and everybody told i was crazy looking crazy hands people setting might as well look for sharon's it's obvious that life is some complex that he can surely have happened only once the idea being that there was some sort of amazing chain of chemical reactions leading to this very extraordinary improbable thing we call life will have a journey manchuria the pendulum has swung the other way and now many many scientists say. you know this is teeming with life where if you have asked like planets as you can chance life whatever other truth is we absolutely don't know because the big step is how do you go from non-life to life isn't something that is

going to happen. easily in infants and me wait a few minutes how come or is it the case that it's like a freak. sequence of chemical reactions which prints again are extremely improbable a manhattanite he wants in the universe and we don't know how to answer that because nobody has made life. a long way from understanding how a chemistry tends to live how did molecules organize ourselves into something even a primitive in the gulf is huge. mishmash of chemicals and even the simplest of it being so i mean i know we don't want numbers of credit and simply don't know that number we can't estimate how many it happens of planets we know that in the milky way galaxy there are. billions probably of s. like planets on which life as we know it could be met at least if we took

a very good so i say we know there are plenty of candidates. that the chances that. on those planets chemical reactions were 10 to life could be that such probable friends such a basic. unlikely step that a branch of happen anywhere else in the galaxy or company but if i'm right about these gene principles. praising and living matter there alone. in living matzoh if we knew those rules but revamp a say oh yes those rules well operate the time chemistry and a life with. probability. then we can put a number to it and the mom we don't have those loans and we have americans for the number who live beyond the oh so this is complete speculation your beliefs my belief. so if we connect life to information in a meaningful way does that mean that alli in life could just be some form of

information that is not related to having cells or a certain chemical adamant like it could be as douglas adams suggested a particular shade of blue for instance. gerri 'd. that's a very very good question that it goes to the house what we're trying to achieve in our research. university because. everybody knows this is fair astrobiology it means to look for lashed the on death but of course you have to the what to look for. and we know. what terrestrial life is like but what we were not ready is to have some sort of more general definition of what is life and that definition in my view is based on software and hardware. which a living holder has in his main to some way that is information his organizing presence so if it's a case of bad luck if we can to try my life as

a particular type of informational organization it's organized information not as any. 'd very specific definition as eyes of his life than. my money we look for all night informational signature of a software signature issue and i can state of the how president johnson sort of concentrate on those they sold out i don't have the right sort of molecules we would be more thinking about does it have the right conditions so that information processing to take place in and the man other represents life this is all wishful thinking of the moment we don't have a fully worked out there finish of our life which is independent of the stuff of which is made. of the end of the day i don't that's what it will be about life beyond earth or the existing. replica of our life. there will be some

common principles of those principles i think. software over just right now you have banks of computers and. their own. well you know i read some of your chips old you might have also like plastic. or was are all made of. individual computers so distant you breath is the software a muscle just like the hardware has in principle. so basic your ideas circle the same mr a book. paul paul it was such a pleasure talking to you a true delight and i hope we get to do this again because the subject is and less and there are so many unanswered questions still thanks a lot for this chat and good luck with everything stay so thank you hard going brain enjoyed talking to your rb chats ok thank you absolutely.

is there such a thing as public opinion anymore now droll after 2 elections like this in the break dana has been largely encouraging because there is more than just one public demand are there good reasons not to trust the king's. problem drugs don't always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies to in every state in the united states we see me very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids invited america under the banner of medicine persisted with the pain but this of trying to wean him

off though she just goes after dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer so who's to blame patients doctors manufacturers or the governments of . the headlines this hour with covert 19 cases creeping towards $3000000.00 in russia experts say the infections are reaching a plateau it was the country ready spent weeks 3 of its mass vaccination program in an r.t. exclusive wiki leaks confirms the authenticity of the recording that could spin the narrative on choosing the sonship shows the whistleblower it did try to prevent not facilitate the release of thousands of sensitive u.s. cables it's claimed that the calls knew about the tape when deciding on his extradition to america this evidence led you heard in arkansas.