For our favorite TV scientists, blowing your mind is all part of the job.
While it might not be a big deal to them, the creative ways they bring science to the
masses can be totally epic for us.
Here are a few of the moments where our favorite brainiacs dropped knowledge that almost made
our heads explode.
Life in the Matrix
Between his role as the host of Cosmos, showing up on The Simpsons and other shows, and a
Twitter account dedicated to explaining why your favorite movies aren’t scientifically
accurate, Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably pop culture’s favorite scientist.
In 2016, however, he rocked our world by announcing that we might just be living in one of our
favorite movies.
Unfortunately, that movie is The Matrix.
During the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, Tyson argued that the likelihood that we’re living
in a computer simulation is very real, and very high.
As he said, as long as we accept this as a possibility, then at some point in the years
to come, we'll discover that some highly intelligent species out there has already simulated a
universe, which means we might just be part of it.
“I’m saying the day we learn that it is true, I will be the only one in the room saying,
'I'm not surprised!'"
Of course, actually proving this is pretty tricky, since it would require us to figure
out all the rules of the simulation… which of course is what physicists like Tyson do
for a living.
That’s one way to guarantee your job security!
Bill Nye the Climate Guy
With his long-running role as the Science Guy and a signature lab coat and bowtie combo,
Cornell University graduate and former children’s educator Bill Nye has secured his place in
the hearts and minds of kids everywhere.
Lately, though, he’s turned his attention to informing the world about climate change.
In fact, there are few people in the world who have been more vocal about it, but he
doesn’t want to do all the work alone.
In 2011, he released a call to action in the form of a YouTube video where he both explained
how it works and provided a simple experiment illustrating the reality of the situation
that viewers could perform at home.
He went on to explain the disastrous effects that global warming has on the planet and
our lives, but the lecture wasn’t all doom and gloom.
True to his status as the friendly face of science, he provided information and proposed
some simple steps that we can all take before we find ourselves living in full-on Mad Max
times.
Time travel?
No problem
For years, we’ve been under the impression that time travel is a pretty difficult feat
to accomplish.
At the very least, you need to get a classic car up to 88 miles per hour, right?
Well, not according to British physicist Brian Cox, who truly astounded everyone in 2013
when he said that time travel was actually pretty easy… unless you plan on going backwards.
“But actually, from a nonlinear, non subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly
wobbly, timey wimey...stuff."
During the talk that marked the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, he said that it's actually
very possible to build a time machine and move forward into the future.
You just need to be able to reach the speed of light, and let relativity take care of
the rest.
The faster you go, the slower time passes for you, meaning you could return 10,000 years
after you started.
If you wanted to get back to the past and catch up on everything you missed during those
100 centuries, though, Cox says you’re going to need a wormhole, and it seems those are
a little harder to find than spaceships that can approach the speed of light.
Come again?
We’ve all experienced deja vu, the feeling that we’ve been in the same situation before.
Usually, we write this all off as a trick of the memory, but according to physicist
Michio Kaku, we shouldn’t.
His theory is that deja vu is actually a quick glimpse into an infinite multiverse, just
like the kind you find in comic books, but without the super-powers.
Probably.
In an explanation that seems lifted from the classic “Flash of Two Worlds,” Kaku says
that each of these parallel universes vibrates at a different frequency.
For whatever reason, the vibrating atoms making up our bodies will occasionally sync up with
these other universes, eliciting glimpses of these other worlds, which we interpret
as the feeling we’ve done all this before.
“So the theory of the Muitiverse, that's true?"
"True!
Oh yeah!
Big time.
Yeah."
"I still can't believe it, and I'm from another planet!”
It’s an interesting theory, but it raises some interesting questions, like whether or
not we’re going to eventually meet up with evil goateed versions of ourselves, or get
wiped out by the Anti-Monitor.
Yikes!
James Burke predicts the future
James Burke is well known as the host of Connections, a fascinating BBC series documenting the way
that small changes in the past can have widespread ramifications for the future, like the way
that banking practices in the 10th century eventually led to the Saturn V rocket.
In 1973, he took this idea of connections into the future, predicting that by 1993,
computers would be omnipresent.
He was off by a few years, but he was pretty spot-on about schools, businesses, and even
average people becoming dependent on computers.
He even suggested that people would willingly share their most intimate details of personal
information with complete strangers through networked databases, which we now know as
social media.
“I think, infinitely greater, I think we're about to bump up against a revolution that's
going to make what Gutenberg did look like, you know, quiet afternoon stroll.”
His prognostication caused such a fuss that the BBC upped the stakes a bit, asking him
what life will be like in the year 2100.
His prediction: 3D nanofabricators will eliminate poverty and scarcity.
If he's right, it'll be amazing.
If he's wrong, he'll probably be dead by then, so he's got nothing to lose.
We are all made of stars
As the original host of Cosmos, Carl Sagan spent his career bringing science to the television
audience with a boundless curiosity and optimism, and told us all what we were made of.
"Because the cosmos is also within us.
We are made of star stuff."
It might sound like it’s just a new-agey way of saying we’re all connected in some
existential, metaphysical way, but he actually meant it in a very literal sense.
The elements that make up everything in the universe, from distant stars, to our own bodies,
all originate with the Big Bang.
And if that makes you feel cosmically insignificant, it shouldn’t.
As Sagan said, we, and everything around us, are the end result of a phenomenal series
of events and reactions that began at the centers of primordial stars.