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This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
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And I got with me my co-host, Chuck. Nice, Chuck.
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Hey, hey, hey. What's happening?
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Always good to have you. We're still in the coronavirus, Chuck.
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We are indeed.
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Yeah, that's all right. You know, it's information that matters,
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not how close we are to one another. To convey it.
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That was just your very polite way of saying, I
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am so glad I don't have to be in the
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same room with.
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You, Chuck.
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I'm so transparent to your insights. So we've got a
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special guest today. His name is Kevin Lieber from Vsauce2. Kevin,
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welcome to StarTalk.
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Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor
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and a thrill to be here to meet you both.
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I think it's a little bit of a long time
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coming for us to come together, I think.
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I think so. It was destiny, I think, a little
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delayed destiny. But Vsauce is such a popular YouTube space.
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And it was so popular, you spilled out of Vsauce
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and made Vsauce 2. So that's just an embarrassment of
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riches right there. You're like ESPN of science.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Does that mean he's only getting the high school football games?
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I was going to say ping pong tournaments over on.
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Vsauce2, basically. That's Vsauce4. And the Ocho.
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And so, Kevin, I was just on your channel and
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we were chatting about what science is and how and
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why it works. And I noted how science can inoculate
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you about being susceptible to thinking something is true that
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is not or thinking something is not true that is.
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And so, I knew you guys had some questions related
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to that. But then I said there was more to
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talk about and I sent people over to StarTalk channel.
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Is that so wrong?
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No, no. It's not so wrong because, yeah, I do
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have questions and there are some things that I would
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love to hear you speak about. The conversation is all
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about knowledge philosophically but also kind of technically and what
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the perimeter of knowledge actually is. So here's my question.
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I'll get to the point.
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If the entire objective of science is to know that
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you know something, then are we ever done– knowing about
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something in science? Are there examples where we're done knowing
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about something?
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Okay, it sounded like you took one too many philosophy
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classes in school. Is your next question, Dr. Tyson, what
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is the meaning of meaning? Is that where you're going
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to go next? Is that really?
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That'll be our follow-up collab, yeah.
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I feel that. I feel that's coming. So, Kevin, I
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don't know if there's an end to knowledge in general.
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or an end to knowledge even in a specific question.
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But what I do know is that science does establish
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what is or is not true. And my best example
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here is you've got Isaac Newton figuring out the laws
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of gravity and the laws of motion, and they worked. Hell,
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they got us to the moon and back, all right?
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But they're incomplete. They're not wrong, they're incomplete. There are
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regimes that Isaac Newton could not have possibly tested in
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his day that reveal that his ideas fail in their
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account of nature. But you got to get in the
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weeds to find that. And it would take until Albert
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Einstein came along in 1905 and 1915, where he advanced
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his ideas of the modern relativistic ideas of motion and gravity.
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And when he did that, What we found was that
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in particular regimes of high gravity and high speeds and
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black holes, you needed his version of the laws of
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motion and the laws of gravity. But you know what happens?
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If you plug in low speeds and low gravity to
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his equations, you know what pops out? Isaac Newton's equations.
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So what science did in this case is not change
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what was true. It gave us a deeper understanding of
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what is true. And we drew a bigger circle around
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Isaac Newton's ideas. Now, that being said, we already know
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one of the limits of Einstein's theories. He can't describe
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what happens at a singularity, at the center of a
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black hole, or at the moment the universe was born.
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It's like dividing by zero, okay, in his equations. Everything
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blows up. We can't, we don't know what did, so...
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There could be yet a bigger circle that goes around
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Einstein's ideas that gets us an even deeper understanding of
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the universe. So for me, that's science. To say, we
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know this and is this, that's not the right way
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to even address the question.
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Well, I tell you, Neil, that was painterly, the way
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you put that. I love it. Very, very.
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Wait, is painterly a compliment or an insult?
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No, that's a very big compliment.
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Okay.
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That's a huge compliment. That's a new word for.
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Me, painterly.
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Yeah, painterly. In other words, that was beautifully rendered.
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Oh, thank you.
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Thank you.
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You explained that.
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Painfully sounds like something a sixth grader would say. I
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painterly the picture. It sounds like a word an elementary
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school kid made up.
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There's no reason to tell people that I have a
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sixth grade education, man. But I will say, I will
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add to that, that what you said kind of sounds
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like science is like laundry. It's never done unless you're
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totally naked. So....
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Okay.
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Gavin liked that one. That's good. Did he like that?
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You've reduced all uncertainty as to whether you have any
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more dirty clothes. There you go. Perfect.
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There you go, man.
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Attained laundry enlightenment. No, no.
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I'd rather think of it a different way. Because once
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we know something, we don't have to rehash it. We
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just keep moving forward. So it would be like you
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run out of clothes and then you just buy more clothes.
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Got you.
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And you refine, you buy more clothes and you refine
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one part of your wardrobe with the new ones you
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bring in.
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Nice.
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There you go. Thanks for totally screwing up my little anecdote.
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So, Kevin, you got more questions.
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Yeah. You know, on that note, I love what you
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said and I totally agree with it because there are
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a lot of things I've researched on Vsauce2 that have
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popped up that way where it's like something was right,
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but it wasn't quite right enough to get the full picture.
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And then it gets more right. And that's what the
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beauty of science is to me.
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Right.
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And we don't dwell on. Is it complete? No, that's
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just the wrong way to even approach the problem. So, Kevin,
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I can give examples all day, but let me give
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one that goes back, okay? How about the concept of
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the atom? The atom, Greek, atom is Greek for indivisible, right? So,
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there was an idea that you could break matter down
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into its component parts and you would get the indivisible
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part of it. That would be the atom of that thing.
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So you would have a wood atom, you would have
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a rock atom, everything would have an atom. And that
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would be the smallest part of it that still had
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the properties of the whole. And it was presumed to
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be the thing you would reach if you kept splitting
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matter apart. Then we got to atoms relatively late in
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the history of science. We got to atoms. By the way,
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that was the 19th century into the 20th century. That's
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when we figured out, yeah, atoms are real. and we
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can break them apart. There are particles smaller than atoms.
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So atoms are not indivisible. Okay, so now again, you're
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getting deeper into the reality of nature. Then you find
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out even those particles can be divided. Protons and neutrons,
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they're composed of quarks. So you ask me today in
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the year 2020, what are the fundamental particles that are
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indivisible in the universe? I can give you that list.
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They're quarks and electrons and neutrinos. And I can give
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you that list, but we don't know if you can
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still get inside of those even further. So it's the
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state of knowledge at the time, but I'm not gonna
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go back and say that what we had discovered is false.
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I'm gonna say what we knew at the time was incomplete.
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That's different from being false. And by the way, the
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Greeks said it was indivisible. That's an unfortunate term to
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have used. We would not have made that claim in
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the era of science in the last 400 years. We
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would say it's the smallest thing as far as we know.
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Because every next step you take gets you farther into
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the labyrinth.
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So is there anything in science that we can't ever know?
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Are there things we know that we can't know? Any
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examples of that?
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There are a lot of people who declare to me
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that science will never know some things. And I wonder, like,
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what's behind that urge? There are people who say science
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will never understand love or science will never understand art
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or science. And I'm thinking, is it because you don't
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want science to understand the beauty of art? Because I
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can imagine a scenario where one day it does. Okay?
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You ready? I'm making this up, but stay with me.
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All right.
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By the way, that's very scientific of you. Making this up,
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stay with me. I'm making this up. Stay with me. me.
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Just stay with me here.
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Okay, let me rephrase that. Let me offer a plausible
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experiment that we're not yet ready to conduct. Chuck, does
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that satisfy you?
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Very nice, sir.
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Very nice. Thank you. All right, here we go. Let's
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say there's a work of art that is... widely agree
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to be beautiful and satisfying and the critics agree, regular
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people agree, okay. So here's what you do. You put
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like electrodes at every neurosynaptic intersection in a person's brain.
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Then you show them.
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The painting and you find out what lights up when
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they see this painting. Then you do it for the
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next person and then the next person. You do this
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for a thousand people. If the same part of the
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brain lights up for looking at that same painting, then
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we found the center of the brain that appreciates art. Now,
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to double test this, what you do is, you put
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some crappy piece of art on the wall, or just
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a blank sheet of paper, and then you go into
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the person's head and stimulate that part of their brain
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on purpose. Then do they say.
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You are evil. You are evil, sir. You are evil.
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No, if you stimulate, they say, wow, this is a
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beautiful piece of paper. I want to frame this. This
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is a beautiful diagram of nothing. It brings me such pleasure.
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And so if you do that, and that works both ways...
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I think we understand what's going on when a human
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being appreciates art. You could do the same for love.
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You can do this. And it might be more than
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one spot. I'm simplifying, of course, saying it's one spot
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of the brain. It's likely a matrix of phenomenon going
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on in the brain. What would make it hard is
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if those stimuli were different in all thousand people's brain.
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Then I don't know how it could be intractable at
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that point. And maybe then science can't really We'd have
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to need a deeper understanding of the brain to make
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any headway there. But even then, even with that scenario–
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You got what I said? I said headway there? Make
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some headway? You didn't laugh.
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What about identical twins, like thousands, like 10,000 pairs of
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identical twins from all over the world?
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Would that help?
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In the case– that's a very good example. So I
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like the way you think. So what you want to
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do is remove the variable of two people being genetically
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different for how they might interpret a visual stimulus. So
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you get two identical twins. And if it's different for them,
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then I wouldn't know how to pose the next question
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to try to solve that. And you might say this
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is an intractable problem. By the way, there's plenty of
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frontiers of science that are still active. Like, how is it?
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You know, you can study a bird, for example, and
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know everything about every molecule within the bird and its
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DNA and everything. And there it is, and it looks
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for food, and it mates, and it feeds its chickies,
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and it builds a nest, and you got all of this.
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But nothing about studying one bird, I don't think, tells
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you that when birds alight off the ground, that they
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flock together. Is there anything you can study about one
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bird that tells you what they will do in combination
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with other birds? I don't think so. I don't know
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for sure, but what I'm saying is there are emergent phenomenon.
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If you study one termite, will you know that it
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builds seven foot high mountains?
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Will you know that?
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So certain questions in science are not entirely reducible to
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looking at the component parts. Sometimes you have to step
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back and say, how is it all happening together? And
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then pose your question differently in order to answer it.
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What we need is everybody watching all of this stuff
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and all of your stuff and to figure this stuff
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out for us. Because I know you're insatiably curious. Chuck,
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you're insatiably curious. And we need more people on board
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to satisfy all that curiosity.
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So is it that we're saying all scientists need like
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a lab jester? like Chuck, who pokes fun at everything
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you're doing.
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That is so funny. I will never again, this will
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be the moment, let me write this down, the time
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and date here where I discovered that I am a
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lab jester.
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You're not a court jester, you have a lab jester.
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No, I love it. And since you're.
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Curious, you'll know what questions to ask to be funny.
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Well, listen, as long as being the lab jester... Doesn't
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mean that if you tell a bad joke, you end
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up with like sulfuric acid in your face.
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In the acid bath.
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Yeah, we don't behead you.
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We just dissolve you.
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Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? It's like, what
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happened to Chuck? Oh, that solution over there? See that
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solution over there?
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Well, that used to be him. There's just a hat floating. So, Kevin,
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we're running short on time. You had a couple more questions,
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I thought, did you?
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One last big question that I have is what puts
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a limit on knowledge? Because I know that we touched
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on that a little bit, but is there anything in
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your mind that clearly puts a limit on knowledge, at
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least for today?
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For today? Today's limit.
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Today's limit.
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So your capacity to make a measurement. So here's a limit.
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And getting back to the philosophy of science here. So
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what we understand about the world and what we know
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about the world is as it comes to us through
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our methods and tools of investigation. If there's a way
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that nature wants to communicate with us and it's not
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coming through the tools that we have invented, there's a
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good chance we just might miss it. Unless, of course,
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it's tapping you on the shoulder, right? But think about it.
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Our ideas about how nature works are based on the
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answers we got from the questions we posed, not from
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things going on that are answers to questions we didn't pose,
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because we might be missing those. Now, for that reason,
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in my field, and I'm sure many others, when we
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design an experiment, there's always sort of a serendipity mode.
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where the thing just makes measurements and it looks randomly
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on the sky or you pick a random spot and
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you don't target a purpose for that observation. Just in
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case something shows up that you didn't ask for or
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hadn't looked for. And so that's a very important part.
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So for example, your audience might be familiar, there's a
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famous photo called the Hubble Deep Field, which was the
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deepest window into the universe that had ever been obtained.
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The Hubble Telescope went on one patch of sky and
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hammered it for hours and hours and hours, building the
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signals of the dimmest galaxies there. And in this tiny patch,
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there are galaxies clear to the edge of the universe.
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There was resistance to using precious telescope time to take
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that picture. because we say, you're gonna put it in
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a random spot in the sky? Let's put it in
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an object we care about. There's a galaxy here that
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is my favorite galaxy, and I did my PhD thesis
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on it, and I want more data on it. And
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how about this planet, or this gas cloud? And the
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director of the telescope, who has discretionary time for just
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this kind of need, said, nope, I'm putting it in
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a random spot in the sky that's the most uninteresting
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part of the sky up there. They put in effort
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to find out how uninteresting that part of the sky is,
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aimed the telescope, Out came the Hubble Deep Field, one
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of the most cited telescopic images in the history of telescopes.
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And so, you don't want to be your own source
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of the limits of your own knowledge. And try to
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keep the pathways open for new phenomenon to reveal themselves
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to you. And In that sense, maybe there is no limit.
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The limit is only on how imaginative you are about
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how to make the measurement in the first place.
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Well, this has been so awesome. Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate it. Well, Kevin, don't be such a stranger.
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We should do this again. And like I said, we
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love some Vsauce. Some of my favorite videos all over
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YouTube are on Vsauce. I just want to tell you that.
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So.
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That means a lot.
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Thank you so much.
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So not only does Vsauce and Vsauce2 have some of
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my favorite videos on all of YouTube, this collaboration exists
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now in both places.
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All right.
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I spent some time visiting Kevin on Vsauce2 and you
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can go there right now, just as we had him
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visiting us on StarTalk. So it's time to bid farewell.
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And as usual, I do so asking you to keep
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looking up.
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This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
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And I got with me my co-host, Chuck. Nice, Chuck.
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Hey, hey, hey. What's happening?
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Always good to have you. We're still in the coronavirus, Chuck.
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We are indeed.
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Yeah, that's all right. You know, it's information that matters,
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not how close we are to one another. To convey it.
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That was just your very polite way of saying, I
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am so glad I don't have to be in the
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same room with.
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You, Chuck.
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I'm so transparent to your insights. So we've got a
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special guest today. His name is Kevin Lieber from Vsauce2. Kevin,
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welcome to StarTalk.
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Thank you very much for having me. It's an honor
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and a thrill to be here to meet you both.
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I think it's a little bit of a long time
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coming for us to come together, I think.
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I think so. It was destiny, I think, a little
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delayed destiny. But Vsauce is such a popular YouTube space.
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And it was so popular, you spilled out of Vsauce
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and made Vsauce 2. So that's just an embarrassment of
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riches right there. You're like ESPN of science.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Does that mean he's only getting the high school football games?
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I was going to say ping pong tournaments over on.
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Vsauce2, basically. That's Vsauce4. And the Ocho.
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And so, Kevin, I was just on your channel and
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we were chatting about what science is and how and
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why it works. And I noted how science can inoculate
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you about being susceptible to thinking something is true that
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is not or thinking something is not true that is.
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And so, I knew you guys had some questions related
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to that. But then I said there was more to
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talk about and I sent people over to StarTalk channel.
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Is that so wrong?
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No, no. It's not so wrong because, yeah, I do
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have questions and there are some things that I would
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love to hear you speak about. The conversation is all
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about knowledge philosophically but also kind of technically and what
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the perimeter of knowledge actually is. So here's my question.
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I'll get to the point.
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If the entire objective of science is to know that
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you know something, then are we ever done– knowing about
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something in science? Are there examples where we're done knowing
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about something?
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Okay, it sounded like you took one too many philosophy
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classes in school. Is your next question, Dr. Tyson, what
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is the meaning of meaning? Is that where you're going
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to go next? Is that really?
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That'll be our follow-up collab, yeah.
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I feel that. I feel that's coming. So, Kevin, I
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don't know if there's an end to knowledge in general.
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or an end to knowledge even in a specific question.
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But what I do know is that science does establish
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what is or is not true. And my best example
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here is you've got Isaac Newton figuring out the laws
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of gravity and the laws of motion, and they worked. Hell,
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they got us to the moon and back, all right?
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But they're incomplete. They're not wrong, they're incomplete. There are
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regimes that Isaac Newton could not have possibly tested in
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his day that reveal that his ideas fail in their
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account of nature. But you got to get in the
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weeds to find that. And it would take until Albert
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Einstein came along in 1905 and 1915, where he advanced
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his ideas of the modern relativistic ideas of motion and gravity.
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And when he did that, What we found was that
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in particular regimes of high gravity and high speeds and
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black holes, you needed his version of the laws of
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motion and the laws of gravity. But you know what happens?
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If you plug in low speeds and low gravity to
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his equations, you know what pops out? Isaac Newton's equations.
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So what science did in this case is not change
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what was true. It gave us a deeper understanding of
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what is true. And we drew a bigger circle around
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Isaac Newton's ideas. Now, that being said, we already know
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one of the limits of Einstein's theories. He can't describe
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what happens at a singularity, at the center of a
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black hole, or at the moment the universe was born.
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It's like dividing by zero, okay, in his equations. Everything
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blows up. We can't, we don't know what did, so...
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There could be yet a bigger circle that goes around
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Einstein's ideas that gets us an even deeper understanding of
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the universe. So for me, that's science. To say, we
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know this and is this, that's not the right way
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to even address the question.
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Well, I tell you, Neil, that was painterly, the way
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you put that. I love it. Very, very.
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Wait, is painterly a compliment or an insult?
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No, that's a very big compliment.
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Okay.
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That's a huge compliment. That's a new word for.
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Me, painterly.
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Yeah, painterly. In other words, that was beautifully rendered.
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Oh, thank you.
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Thank you.
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You explained that.
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Painfully sounds like something a sixth grader would say. I
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painterly the picture. It sounds like a word an elementary
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school kid made up.
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There's no reason to tell people that I have a
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sixth grade education, man. But I will say, I will
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add to that, that what you said kind of sounds
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like science is like laundry. It's never done unless you're
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totally naked. So....
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Okay.
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Gavin liked that one. That's good. Did he like that?
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You've reduced all uncertainty as to whether you have any
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more dirty clothes. There you go. Perfect.
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There you go, man.
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Attained laundry enlightenment. No, no.
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I'd rather think of it a different way. Because once
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we know something, we don't have to rehash it. We
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just keep moving forward. So it would be like you
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run out of clothes and then you just buy more clothes.
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Got you.
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And you refine, you buy more clothes and you refine
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one part of your wardrobe with the new ones you
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bring in.
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Nice.
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There you go. Thanks for totally screwing up my little anecdote.
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So, Kevin, you got more questions.
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Yeah. You know, on that note, I love what you
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said and I totally agree with it because there are
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a lot of things I've researched on Vsauce2 that have
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popped up that way where it's like something was right,
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but it wasn't quite right enough to get the full picture.
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And then it gets more right. And that's what the
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beauty of science is to me.
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Right.
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And we don't dwell on. Is it complete? No, that's
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just the wrong way to even approach the problem. So, Kevin,
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I can give examples all day, but let me give
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one that goes back, okay? How about the concept of
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the atom? The atom, Greek, atom is Greek for indivisible, right? So,
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there was an idea that you could break matter down
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into its component parts and you would get the indivisible
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part of it. That would be the atom of that thing.
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So you would have a wood atom, you would have
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a rock atom, everything would have an atom. And that
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would be the smallest part of it that still had
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the properties of the whole. And it was presumed to
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be the thing you would reach if you kept splitting
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matter apart. Then we got to atoms relatively late in
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the history of science. We got to atoms. By the way,
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that was the 19th century into the 20th century. That's
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when we figured out, yeah, atoms are real. and we
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can break them apart. There are particles smaller than atoms.
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So atoms are not indivisible. Okay, so now again, you're
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getting deeper into the reality of nature. Then you find
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out even those particles can be divided. Protons and neutrons,
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they're composed of quarks. So you ask me today in
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the year 2020, what are the fundamental particles that are
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indivisible in the universe? I can give you that list.
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They're quarks and electrons and neutrinos. And I can give
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you that list, but we don't know if you can
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still get inside of those even further. So it's the
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state of knowledge at the time, but I'm not gonna
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go back and say that what we had discovered is false.
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I'm gonna say what we knew at the time was incomplete.
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That's different from being false. And by the way, the
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Greeks said it was indivisible. That's an unfortunate term to
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have used. We would not have made that claim in
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the era of science in the last 400 years. We
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would say it's the smallest thing as far as we know.
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Because every next step you take gets you farther into
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the labyrinth.
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So is there anything in science that we can't ever know?
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Are there things we know that we can't know? Any
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examples of that?
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There are a lot of people who declare to me
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that science will never know some things. And I wonder, like,
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what's behind that urge? There are people who say science
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will never understand love or science will never understand art
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or science. And I'm thinking, is it because you don't
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want science to understand the beauty of art? Because I
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can imagine a scenario where one day it does. Okay?
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You ready? I'm making this up, but stay with me.
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All right.
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By the way, that's very scientific of you. Making this up,
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stay with me. I'm making this up. Stay with me. me.
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Just stay with me here.
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Okay, let me rephrase that. Let me offer a plausible
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experiment that we're not yet ready to conduct. Chuck, does
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that satisfy you?
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Very nice, sir.
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Very nice. Thank you. All right, here we go. Let's
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say there's a work of art that is... widely agree
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to be beautiful and satisfying and the critics agree, regular
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people agree, okay. So here's what you do. You put
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like electrodes at every neurosynaptic intersection in a person's brain.
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Then you show them.
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The painting and you find out what lights up when
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they see this painting. Then you do it for the
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next person and then the next person. You do this
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for a thousand people. If the same part of the
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brain lights up for looking at that same painting, then
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we found the center of the brain that appreciates art. Now,
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to double test this, what you do is, you put
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some crappy piece of art on the wall, or just
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a blank sheet of paper, and then you go into
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the person's head and stimulate that part of their brain
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on purpose. Then do they say.
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You are evil. You are evil, sir. You are evil.
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No, if you stimulate, they say, wow, this is a
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beautiful piece of paper. I want to frame this. This
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is a beautiful diagram of nothing. It brings me such pleasure.
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And so if you do that, and that works both ways...
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I think we understand what's going on when a human
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being appreciates art. You could do the same for love.
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You can do this. And it might be more than
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one spot. I'm simplifying, of course, saying it's one spot
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of the brain. It's likely a matrix of phenomenon going
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on in the brain. What would make it hard is
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if those stimuli were different in all thousand people's brain.
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Then I don't know how it could be intractable at
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that point. And maybe then science can't really We'd have
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to need a deeper understanding of the brain to make
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any headway there. But even then, even with that scenario–
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You got what I said? I said headway there? Make
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some headway? You didn't laugh.
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What about identical twins, like thousands, like 10,000 pairs of
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identical twins from all over the world?
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Would that help?
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In the case– that's a very good example. So I
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like the way you think. So what you want to
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do is remove the variable of two people being genetically
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different for how they might interpret a visual stimulus. So
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you get two identical twins. And if it's different for them,
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then I wouldn't know how to pose the next question
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to try to solve that. And you might say this
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is an intractable problem. By the way, there's plenty of
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frontiers of science that are still active. Like, how is it?
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You know, you can study a bird, for example, and
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know everything about every molecule within the bird and its
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DNA and everything. And there it is, and it looks
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for food, and it mates, and it feeds its chickies,
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and it builds a nest, and you got all of this.
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But nothing about studying one bird, I don't think, tells
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you that when birds alight off the ground, that they
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flock together. Is there anything you can study about one
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bird that tells you what they will do in combination
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with other birds? I don't think so. I don't know
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for sure, but what I'm saying is there are emergent phenomenon.
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If you study one termite, will you know that it
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builds seven foot high mountains?
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Will you know that?
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So certain questions in science are not entirely reducible to
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looking at the component parts. Sometimes you have to step
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back and say, how is it all happening together? And
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then pose your question differently in order to answer it.
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What we need is everybody watching all of this stuff
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and all of your stuff and to figure this stuff
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out for us. Because I know you're insatiably curious. Chuck,
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you're insatiably curious. And we need more people on board
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to satisfy all that curiosity.
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So is it that we're saying all scientists need like
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a lab jester? like Chuck, who pokes fun at everything
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you're doing.
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That is so funny. I will never again, this will
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be the moment, let me write this down, the time
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and date here where I discovered that I am a
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lab jester.
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You're not a court jester, you have a lab jester.
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No, I love it. And since you're.
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Curious, you'll know what questions to ask to be funny.
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Well, listen, as long as being the lab jester... Doesn't
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mean that if you tell a bad joke, you end
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up with like sulfuric acid in your face.
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In the acid bath.
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Yeah, we don't behead you.
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We just dissolve you.
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Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? It's like, what
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happened to Chuck? Oh, that solution over there? See that
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solution over there?
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Well, that used to be him. There's just a hat floating. So, Kevin,
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we're running short on time. You had a couple more questions,
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I thought, did you?
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One last big question that I have is what puts
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a limit on knowledge? Because I know that we touched
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on that a little bit, but is there anything in
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your mind that clearly puts a limit on knowledge, at
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least for today?
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For today? Today's limit.
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Today's limit.
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So your capacity to make a measurement. So here's a limit.
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And getting back to the philosophy of science here. So
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what we understand about the world and what we know
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about the world is as it comes to us through
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our methods and tools of investigation. If there's a way
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that nature wants to communicate with us and it's not
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coming through the tools that we have invented, there's a
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good chance we just might miss it. Unless, of course,
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it's tapping you on the shoulder, right? But think about it.
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Our ideas about how nature works are based on the
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answers we got from the questions we posed, not from
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things going on that are answers to questions we didn't pose,
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because we might be missing those. Now, for that reason,
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in my field, and I'm sure many others, when we
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design an experiment, there's always sort of a serendipity mode.
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where the thing just makes measurements and it looks randomly
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on the sky or you pick a random spot and
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you don't target a purpose for that observation. Just in
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case something shows up that you didn't ask for or
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hadn't looked for. And so that's a very important part.
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So for example, your audience might be familiar, there's a
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famous photo called the Hubble Deep Field, which was the
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deepest window into the universe that had ever been obtained.
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The Hubble Telescope went on one patch of sky and
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hammered it for hours and hours and hours, building the
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signals of the dimmest galaxies there. And in this tiny patch,
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there are galaxies clear to the edge of the universe.
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There was resistance to using precious telescope time to take
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that picture. because we say, you're gonna put it in
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a random spot in the sky? Let's put it in
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an object we care about. There's a galaxy here that
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is my favorite galaxy, and I did my PhD thesis
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on it, and I want more data on it. And
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how about this planet, or this gas cloud? And the
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director of the telescope, who has discretionary time for just
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this kind of need, said, nope, I'm putting it in
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a random spot in the sky that's the most uninteresting
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part of the sky up there. They put in effort
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to find out how uninteresting that part of the sky is,
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aimed the telescope, Out came the Hubble Deep Field, one
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of the most cited telescopic images in the history of telescopes.
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And so, you don't want to be your own source
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of the limits of your own knowledge. And try to
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keep the pathways open for new phenomenon to reveal themselves
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to you. And In that sense, maybe there is no limit.
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The limit is only on how imaginative you are about
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how to make the measurement in the first place.
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Well, this has been so awesome. Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate it. Well, Kevin, don't be such a stranger.
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We should do this again. And like I said, we
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love some Vsauce. Some of my favorite videos all over
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YouTube are on Vsauce. I just want to tell you that.
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So.
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That means a lot.
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Thank you so much.
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So not only does Vsauce and Vsauce2 have some of
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my favorite videos on all of YouTube, this collaboration exists
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now in both places.
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All right.
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I spent some time visiting Kevin on Vsauce2 and you
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can go there right now, just as we had him
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visiting us on StarTalk. So it's time to bid farewell.
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And as usual, I do so asking you to keep
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looking up.
