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Feb. 5, 2005 - Art Bell

02:54:00

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Charles Seife - Cosmological Theories

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01:11:50

charles seife

01:04:40

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Desert and the great Americans of Expeditor.
		Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, whatever the time may be, and whatever time zone you're resigning, and all of them, every single one of them, covered by this program.
		It's called close to close a.m.
		Weekend edition.
		I'm Mark Bell, and it is great to be here.
		First, I would like to thank Matthew Morrison of Culsa, Oklahoma, for tonight's webcam shots.
		I had to crop it a little bit to fit it into the webcam window.
unidentified		However, he did that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Matthew did that.
		And he did.
		That was a picture that I got many years ago representing, supposedly, the chupacabra.
		And I might add that it really was the only picture of its kind of the chupacabra.
		At any rate, he's added a few little artistic touches in here that I thought made it very cute indeed.
		How'd you like to see one of those show up on your front doorstep?
		Well, if you did, you'd certainly want a milk bone handy, wouldn't you?
		And don't miss the very bottom of it where it says, new bloodier taste.
		Great stuff.
		Hey, tomorrow night we're going to end, well, actually, tonight in just a little while, we will open the lines.
		Unscreened, unprotected, unpretentious, wild, unpredictable, open lines.
		Now, what I would like some of you to do, those of you who have, I understand, you know, it's nearly impossible to get through on the phone.
		So I'm going to offer the following, which will give you 24 hours of prep time.
		If any of you have anything that absolutely, positively has got to get on the radio because it is such a good, riveting, dramatic story, then what you need to do is email me and give me a brief, just a very brief outline of what the story is and include your phone number, and I will call you.
		This is kind of an opportunity in a lifetime because normally the phones, well, already I've got five lines sitting here ringing solid.
		So the odds of anybody ever getting through at any particular moment are slim and none.
		I understand that.
		So what I want you to do is give me a brief idea of what your story is.
		And if it's really an interesting one, I will call you.
		And the way we're going to accomplish this is by you sending me email.
		You can reach me in one of two places, artbell at mindspring.com or artbell at aol.com.
		And if your story is sufficiently alluring, don't forget your phone number.
		Then I'll call you tomorrow night.
		So you have 24 hours in which to put just a brief description of what absolutely, positively must get on the air together with your phone number and send it off to me and we'll see.
		Now, before we begin tonight's early version of Annie Open Lines, I do have a few things.
		The following comes from live science.com.
		And I must say, this one rocked me back on my heels.
		By shooting intense radio beams into the night sky, researchers created a modest neon light show visible from the ground.
		The process is not well understood, but scientists speculate it could one day be employed to light a city or even generate celestial advertisements.
		Researchers with the high-frequency active auroral research program, or HARP, project up in Alaska, tickled, their word, tickled the upper atmosphere to the extent that it glowed with green speckles.
		These speckles were sprinkled amid a natural display known as the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
		The aurora occurs, of course, when electrons from a cloud of hot gas known as plasma rain down from space and excite the holy heck out of molecules in the ionosphere about 30 miles up.
		Now, the HAARP experiment involves acres of antennas and, I might add, a one megawatt, that's megawatt generator.
		The scientists sent radio pulses skyward every 7.5 seconds, explained team leader Todd Peterson of the Air Force Research Laboratory.
		Ha ha, the Air Force.
		The radio waves travel up to the ionosphere where they excite the electrons in the plasma, he told Live Science.
		These electrons then collide with atmospheric gases, which give off light, as in a neon tube.
		Peterson and his colleagues missed the light show, but they snapped images.
		Unfortunately, he said we were indoors watching the data on monitors during the experiment, and we were busy scrambling, trying to make sure the effects were real and not some glitch with the equipment, he said, joyously.
		We knew right away there was something extraordinary showing up in real time on the monitor against the natural aurora, but did not confirm that would have been visible to the naked eye until a day or two later when we had a chance to calibrate the raw data.
		The experiment is detailed in the February 2nd issue of the journal Nature.
		The researchers could improve understanding of the aurora and also help explain how the ionosphere adversely affects radio communications.
		Well, well, well, well, well, think what these men have just done.
		They have, in essence, created an aurora.
		That's right.
		They have some reason to believe that with or without a natural aurora, they can throw enough power up there so that things will begin sparkling and giving off light in the ionosphere.
		And this is such an incredible thing to have done.
		I mean, it takes the sun bombarding the ionosphere normally to create an aurora, right?
		And these guys have done it with HARP.
		Now, let's think about this.
		What does it mean when you have created an Aurora?
		Well, baby, when you've done that, you can affect radio conditions, you can affect all kinds of things, actually.
		So that's an incredible feat to have actually created an Aurora.
		I worry much about what they're doing up there.
		And by the way, I would like to take this opportunity to invite any HAARP officials, anybody involved directly with the project, to phone up my producer and definitely get yourself on the program.
		We have lots and lots of questions for you.
		But that is this week's HAARP news, and it's non-trivial.
unidentified		Now, what do they say we're going to do with it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Light up a city or maybe put up advertisements.
		Nonsense.
		That's not what they're after at all.
		They're not trying to create some mechanism that would light a city or, you know, provide some new venue for Coca-Cola to scroll across the sky.
		That's not it at all.
		They're working on other stuff.
		The Air Force and the other military services, and of course the lettered agencies, do not become involved in projects throwing billions of watts at the ionosphere so they can advertise something.
		Nonsense.
		So there you have it.
		That's the latest, and I must say, somewhat shocking information from the northern latitudes.
		The massive West Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable.
		Now, where do you think I'm going with this story?
		It's from New Scientist, and I just love stories that begin this way.
		The massive West Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, warned scientists on Tuesday.
		Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world's ice, and the loss of any significant part of it would cause substantial sea level rise.
		Scientists used to view Antarctica as a slumbering giant, said Chris Rapley from the British Antarctic Survey, but now he sees it as a, quote, awakened giant, end quote.
		Rapley presented measurements of the ice sheet at a major climate conference in Exeter, United Kingdom.
		Glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula, which protrudes from the continent to the north, were already known to be retreating, but the data Rapley presented showed the glaciers within the much larger West Antarctic ice sheet also are beginning to disappear.
		This is important stuff, folks.
		The ice on the peninsula melts entirely.
		Should it do so, it will raise global sea levels 0.3 meters.
		And the West Antarctic ice sheet contains enough water to contribute meters more.
		The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2001, said the collapse of this ice sheet was unlikely during the 21st century.
		That may now need to be reassessed, said Rapley.
		Changes on the peninsula, where 75% of the 400 mountain glaciers are in retreat, have provided new insights into the way that ice sheets may disintegrate.
		In March of 2002, a huge floating ice shelf known as Larsen B shattered into icebergs.
		Now, this turned out to have an effect, they say here, akin to pulling a cork from a bottle.
		That's right, pulling a cork from a bottle.
		And we all know what happens when you do that, right?
		With Larsen B no longer impeding the movement, ice flows that fed the shelf began moving faster and faster toward the sea and began to thin.
		The finding took scientists by surprise when revealed in September of 2004.
		And now modelers are working hard to try to include such mechanisms in their predictions.
		Anyway, I've always loved and always will love science stories that begin that way.
		Assumed, previously assumed to be stable.
		Oops.
		And akin to removing a cork from a bottle.
		Wonderful stuff.
		Vietnam's biggest city, following up on something I've been trying to stay with week after week after week.
		Vietnam's biggest city, home to 10 million people, began slaughtering its ducks on Wednesday in an increasingly desperate fight to halt the spread of the deadly bird flu virus that now has killed 13 people in the last month.
		Doesn't sound like much, right?
		Health workers and inspectors in Ho Chi Minh City, I'll never get used to calling it that, accompanied by police headed to farms to collect ducks which can carry the H5N1 virus without showing symptoms, as well as pigeons being raised for food.
		So they collected all of them.
		The birds are to be killed by burning or being buried alive, according to an animal health official.
		This is absolutely incredible, just millions of them.
		After the killing, duck raising will not be allowed for one year, according to the city's animal health department.
		World Health Organization WHO officials have headed to Cambodian, the Cambodian province of Kampot, which abuts Vietnam across a porous border to investigate the area the Cambodian woman came from.
		Relatives of the dead woman said chickens had died, and they had cooked and eaten them with her.
		They later complained of respiratory problems, raising concerns of a more widespread outbreak among poultry in general.
		Test results on the dead birds were due on Thursday, said officials.
		And while all of that's going on and the threat Of bird flu is in our face just about every day.
		There is a new story about that, as though the expectation is absolutely that it's going to occur.
		Bothers me.
		Here's a story just to the north of me entitled Canadian Geese Falling Out of the Sky in Oregon.
		Now, these things are very, very important to pay attention to, folks.
		When geese start fall out of the sky, like that, you've got to pay attention.
		Geese are literally falling from the sky in and around Kaiser, and wildlife experts don't have a clue why.
		About 150 Canada geese were found dead Friday at a private pond off Wheatland Road, owned by Morse Brothers Rock Products in rural Marion County.
		30 or so of the dead birds were discovered three months ago near Stratz Lake, a private lake in Kaiser.
		Wildlife officials said that in recent weeks, large numbers of dead geese also have been found in Mammoth and McMinnville.
		They don't know if the incidents are related.
		There are a number of possibilities here, including avian cholera.
		So those of you up in Oregon are going to want to keep a very sharp eye on this.
		And when birds start falling out of the sky, yes, it could be pollution or some other environmental factor, or it could be something far more dangerous.
unidentified		more in a moment stop
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, the following tidbit, obviously, you could not get through the balance of the weekend without having this with you to, I don't know, discuss in mixed company or something.
		Would you pay to see a monkey's backside?
		Hope not.
		Monkeys will, though.
		And I guess that's okay, though it sounds awfully close to the sort of thing that lands guys in jail here in the human realm.
		This is also from livescience.com.
		A new study seems to have found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to oggle pictures of female monkey bottoms.
		Now, the way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, say the researchers.
		The Rhesus monkeys also splurged, it seems, on photos of top dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates.
		Maybe that's like you or me buying People Magazine.
		In other words, I don't know, the monkey of the year or something.
		The research, which will see, you can get money to research anything.
		The research, which will be detailed in the March issue of Current Biology, gets even more interesting.
		You see, the scientists actually had to pay these guys, the monkeys, in the form of extra juice to get them to look at images of lower-ranking monkeys.
		Curiously, the monkeys in the test hadn't had any direct physical contact with the monkeys in the photo, so they didn't have personal experience with who was hot and who was not.
		So, somehow, they are getting this information by observation, seeing other individuals interact, said Michael Platt of the Duke University Medical Center.
		Next, Platt and his colleagues want to see how people will perform in a similar experiment.
		Well, we already know people pay to see other bottoms, right?
		This is all over the internet.
		So we know people do it.
		What's the deal here?
		And so then, and we even know that they buy People magazine, right?
		So the interesting, beautiful people, we look at them.
		And so monkeys do exactly the same thing.
		Whether it's an attractive monkey bottom or it's a prestigious monkey toward the higher part of the monkey food chain, they will pay.
		I mean, that's quite remarkable when you think about it, isn't it?
		So they simply established, you know, a regimen of reward and whatever.
		I guess reward and payment.
		Juice becomes the coin of the realm.
		And either they pay to see bottom or they're paid to look at something they normally wouldn't even give a glance.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, my name is Bill Gidley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not last name.
		Never give a last name.
		That's a very staunch rule here.
		So your name is Bill.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bill, where are you?
unidentified		I'm in California in Riverside.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's up?
unidentified		Well, I sent Art an email.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I am Art.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
unidentified		I saw a program on the Science channel tonight, and it's going to re-air at 1 o'clock in the morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And one of the things that they talked about was an invention called HARP, which you're talking about tonight.
		Yes, and the main topic of the program was controlling the weather.
		And basically, they showed the guy that was hired by how this guy, I can't remember the scientist's name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You may recall the Air Force uses the slogan, actually, owning the weather.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, owning the weather.
unidentified		So what it was is that initially this guy had a lot of background in meteorology.
		And ARCO, the petroleum company, hired him to show them how they can extract natural gas out of some place in Alaska without having to transport it.
		And he built this platform which looks like a bunch of antennas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean are you suggesting they would turn it into some sort of energy they would then beam elsewhere?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that the idea?
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Transporting the energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you know, that actually makes some sense.
		Thank you very much.
		It makes a lot of sense.
		And think about it for a moment.
		It's kind of like the idea of putting a satellite in orbit and beaming down by microwave the results of many solar collectors.
		And that's eminently something we can do.
		I mean, it's well within the realm of the science that we know.
		So why not, indeed, why not, extract natural gas from the ground, if you can find it, and, well, Park probably helps with that, right?
		Underground bunkers, tunnels, and who knows, oil gas and everything else, too.
		At any rate, they find it, they bring it up, they turn it into energy, and then they beam it somewhere.
		Instead of actually having to transport the natural gas, they simply convert it into another form of energy and either transport it with some normal terrestrial route or they do something rather exotic, like beaming it on, beaming it to a satellite and back to Earth somewhere.
		Who knows?
		First time caller line, you're on air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
		My name's Tim.
		I'm calling from Mobile, Alabama.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Tim.
unidentified		I've been listening to you about six months now over Stream Link at Work.
		I love the show.
		I've listened to a lot of your shows where you've had UFO people on and people who talk about disclosure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I had an idea.
unidentified		I was wondering if you thought the government might be forced to some type of disclosure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If we could force them into a disclosure unit?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		We'll get some of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, listen, buddy.
		We're at a break point.
		Can you hold on?
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll think about that during the break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How we could force the government into disclosure.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		To chart with Art Bell, call the wildcard line in area code 7757271295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 7757271222.
		To chart with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country spread access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast, and worldwide on the internet.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like this music gets my blood going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I want Doc introduced the grassroots and guests who on stage up in Anchorage, Alaska.
unidentified		It was a blast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, good evening, everybody, or morning, whatever the case may be.
		I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM reminding you tomorrow night open lines as well, and I'm giving you a unique opportunity tonight.
		Let's me sift through the chaff a little bit, so to speak, to be honest with you.
		And here it is.
		Here's my idea.
		If you have something that absolutely, positively, absolutely must get on the air tomorrow night because it is such a compelling, interesting story, then you need to email me in the next 24 hours with a very short synopsis, enough to tempt me, and your phone number.
		And then we'll turn the tables and I'll call you.
		So you would send such a constructed email to artbell at aol.com or artbell at mindspring.com.
		Artbell at AOL.com or artbell at mindspring.com.
		We will review them, pull what looks really good, and who knows, you may absolutely, positively be on the air tomorrow night.
		Maybe.
unidentified		BOOM
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Kirstie in Bono, Arkansas says, Hey Art, what in the world have you got on your webcam?
		At first I thought it was a black Pokemon steroids advertising milk bone dog shoes, but it's not.
		What in God's name is it?
		Well, we don't know.
		It has been said to be a chupacabra.
		And as I said with the illustration ability of Matthew in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is just, I thought, kind of cute.
		That is indeed the original submitted picture of a chupacabra.
		Somewhat altered.
		Not the picture itself, but the rest of it, with the malt bones and all the rest of that.
		I like the little caption on the bottom, new bloodier flavor.
		Chupacabras are goat suckers.
		That's what that means in Spanish.
		Goat sucker.
		And they plunge two very sharp needle-like front teeth into the neck of the goat and drain all of its blood.
		And for a while, in the southwest part of the U.S. and, of course, South America, Central America, the chupacabra was pretty wild stuff.
		Haven't had any recent reports, but to answer your question, Christy, Chupa, Chupacabra, Chupa for short.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, Art.
		What I was wanting to know is, I was wanting to know what you thought about the government may be forced into some type of disclosure from the commercialization of spaceflight.
		Got like Spaceship One and the Space Island Group, who have got plans to go up in the next few years.
		They've got to record the same things that have been recorded on the STS missions and ask questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, if those things are really going on, then we could expect, I would think, the truth from such a private mission.
		However, I don't know that, you know, I mean, we're going to see things perhaps flitting about in orbit or just outside the orbit of the U.S. or the U.S., the world.
		But still, that's not the same as going to the moon or going elsewhere.
		I would like something, a private, wouldn't you love to have a private spaceship go to the moon, make some orbits, take some really close pictures, settle the damn argument once and for all?
unidentified		Also, if you would let me, I'd like to throw a monkey wrench into free energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you don't have to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's already got a monkey wrench in there, but if you feel the need to toss another one, go ahead.
unidentified		Well, I've heard rumors and ideas of robbing the Earth's magnetic field to power a house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I think this is a bad idea.
		Maybe one house would be fine, but when you start getting millions of houses powered by this, you'd have to ask what would happen to the Earth's magnetic field.
		And I thank you, Art, for the time, and I'll hang up and listen to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, sir.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		I think the monkey wrench in the free energy thing is that it's not real.
		That's the monkey wrench.
		If somebody would once show me even so much as a over-unity gain toy, just a little toy, something that would scoot across the floor and make me go, wow!
unidentified		Look at that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It goes forever.
		It's perpetual motion.
		It's free energy.
		I would be jumping up and down, as many others would be, but I've never seen.
		I've heard a lot of talk.
		Talk is cheap.
		Toys, even little demo toys, apparently are not.
		So I remain open.
		Do not send me diagrams.
		Do not send me ideas.
		Send me something that demonstrates actual over-unity, and I will lead the parade.
		I will get out front, and I will broadcast your name from here to wherever.
		I know I'm being a little facetious, but I've been, you know, I've just been, I don't know, deluged with claims over the years, and that's all they've ever been of free energy.
		So I sort of toss out this challenge to anybody who thinks they've got an over-unity anything.
		Give me an actual example of it, and I'm sure you will become very rich indeed.
		Wildcard line, you are on the air.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you calling from?
unidentified		I am in Orange County.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Orange County.
		All right.
		Speak up.
		You know, sort of project so everybody can hear you.
		What is on your mind?
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		It's about the weather.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The weather?
unidentified		Weather change.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about?
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
unidentified		Is this Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Hi, I'll be brief.
		Okay.
		The stage is set.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is?
unidentified		Yes, it is.
		I heard you last week.
		Why do you see reports of UFO sightings coming in?
		Because that is what will be told to the people who do not know God and who are left behind when the Lord takes his people from the earth.
		That is the great escape, Art, that you asked three times from the wrath to come before the muck hits the fan, the people left behind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You stole that from my guest.
unidentified		No, don't use that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
		Don't use that.
		You stole that from my guest.
		When the muck hits the fan.
		That was last week.
		That was my guest last week.
		And you stole that.
unidentified		You know why?
unidentified		I've known it since 1991.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You stole the phrase.
unidentified		Do you know why?
unidentified		I read the Bible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're okay.
unidentified		You were interested, Art.
unidentified		You were interested in the word.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there anywhere, where in the Bible does it say the muck shall hit the fan?
unidentified		No, it says the Lord.
unidentified		We will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and we will forever be with the Lord.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What makes it?
unidentified		UFO sightings.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, UFO sightings.
		All right, okay.
		Thank you very much.
		That will do it.
		He's referring, of course, to the, oh, I don't know, what would you call this?
		The hope on the part of some Christians that before the mug hits the fan, the Christians will all, in a giant sucking sound, be removed from the earth.
		So I've always wondered what it would be like, and I may yet find out, to be here on earth and to walk outside one day and find out that most of why 80% of the people, or even 70%, maybe I'm being generous here, 30% of the people are suddenly gone.
		And they were the ones who went to church every single Sunday.
		They were the ones like this scholar who read the Bible, quoteth the Bible, and so forth.
		And they're all gone.
		Taken away by UFOs.
		And up in God's hand.
		And then, of course, comes, well, rough day is ahead.
		But what would it be like?
		I mean, if you woke up and, you know, anywhere between 30 and 70% of everybody else was gone, and You and a bunch of other bad guys were the only ones left.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, this is Andy from Springfield, Illinois.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Andy.
unidentified		Home of the Abraham Lincoln $200 million museum that's opening up here in a couple of months.
		Hey, I got an interesting little piece for you.
		Let's pretend I'm your boss and I've just come to you with a new list of rules that you need to abide by or you can no longer work here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would they be like?
unidentified		Number one, no drinking, period.
unidentified		That's an unhealthy lifestyle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can live on that one.
		I don't drink it.
		And I don't even like alcohol, so that's easy.
unidentified		Number two, if you have more than three speeding tickets in a year, you're unsafe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		Unsafe at any speed.
		Unsafe at any speed is the way you would phrase it.
unidentified		You're unsafe getting that many tickets, so you're a high risk.
		Or if you're a homosexual and you practice that lifestyle, that's considered a high-risk lifestyle.
		So you can't work for us or you don't spend enough hours at the gym.
		How would you feel if your boss has had that kind of control?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, he only has the control that I give him.
		In other words, if I'm unwilling to abide by those rules, then I'll go find somewhere else to work.
		And that, I think, still today, sir, even in, what, 2005, even today, I think that would be the case with more than not.
		So I don't think an employer would get away with that.
		And I know you're really referring to the guy who fired people for smoking, right?
unidentified		Even smoking at home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even smoking at home.
unidentified		Yeah.
		And that's open to Pandora's box.
		I mean, and his rationale was medical cost.
		Well, you could just go through and list lifestyle, you know, legal lifestyle after legal lifestyle, you know, whether you're obese or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, CNN interviewed him about that, and he said that he wasn't going to make any other rules.
		That was his only rule.
		Now, if you, I'll turn it around on you, and I'll be the employer, right?
		You're applying for a job, right?
		Sitting there in your Sunday vest, making your case that you're a good guy and I should hire you.
		And then I hand you a little piece of paper that says, well, okay, I think I'm going to hire you.
		Just one thing.
		You have to sign this little paper that says, while I'm in the employee of my company, Bell Enterprises, you will not drink.
		Now, when you put your John Hancock at the bottom of that paper, buddy, you know, that's your decision.
		You see?
unidentified		Yeah, but that's a door that's closed to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, that's a door that's closed to you contractually.
unidentified		Yeah, but, I mean, that's a door that is going to be closed to you that normally would be open.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, but you are voluntarily accepting the contractual agreement.
		It's like pulling the door shut on your own thumb.
		Hey, you sign it, you abide by it.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I mean, I can understand that, but it's an obstacle that should not be there because, like I said, you're opening a Pandora's box.
		Where does it stop?
		Where does their invasion of what we're doing outside of the workplace?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It stops when you say, no, Mr. Bell, take that paper and put it where the sun don't shine.
		That's when it stops.
		And when enough people do that, then it stops.
		But as long as there are always enough people to sign that little document and sign away some right, freedom, or privilege that they otherwise would have, then it's on them.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
unidentified		It's Cott from Orange County, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, buddy.
unidentified		Hey, I have a question about EVP.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's electronic voice phenomena.
unidentified		Correct.
unidentified		These voices, when the two researchers was on your show, one thing they didn't answer is, do they hear those voices live or not until they review the tape?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a very worthy question.
		And the answer is they don't hear them until they review the tape.
		However, I had a very long talk with some of my EVP people, and there was a special machine made for them that they are playing with and trying to use that actually allows you to hear live.
		You know, it uses like a few seconds of delay.
		And so it actually allows live conversation with the dead, if you will.
unidentified		Is that in reference to those two researchers back in the'70s?
unidentified		But they did it live, but they did it through some kind of other You played the tapes before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, what they did is, sir, they produced a cacophony of tones that together were able to be modulated by somebody on the other side.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, it was kind of an assistance, a way of helping the people on the other side get a message through, providing most of the energy that they only had to then change a little bit to become intelligible.
unidentified		Okay, so what they did was actually live, and it's a different technology that you're in reference to, basically a loop tape or something that takes about.
		Okay, I appreciate your time, Mr. Bell.
		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
		You refer, of course, to Spiricom tapes, these SpiritCom tapes.
		And there are those who, as a result of that broadcast, and I knew it was going to happen, and I'm following up very closely, built some of the SpiritCom equipment.
		And they are now experimenting with it.
		And we will, of course, have the results for you right here as they come in.
		First time caller line, you are on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Yes, I'm calling from central Manitoba in Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		And I get your channel just every once in a while.
		I can pick you up.
		But I do listen to you when I get the opportunity.
		A few weeks back, you were playing this tape about in Siberia where they had drilled this hole down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, yes.
unidentified		And I went to wake my wife up to come and listen to this, but I didn't wake her up in time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You didn't?
unidentified		I didn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, so since it was already gone by the time you woke her up, she probably wasn't real happy with you.
unidentified		Not really.
		That's right.
		You sure are an interesting fella.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have interesting material, sir.
		Yes, you do.
		Is your wife awake?
unidentified		Yes, she is.
unidentified		She's by the radio in the kitchen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She is, son.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you really want that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know how it disturbs people when I play that?
unidentified		You know what?
		It freaked me out.
		I could only listen to half of it, and that was enough for me, but I thought, you gotta hear this, honey.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, this was, of course, a real wire service story, a Reuters news story.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it seems some scientists in Siberia were drilling the deepest hole in the world, and this is all real.
		I mean, they were.
		And they got down, I forget how far it said in the story, and they lowered microphones and they picked up the following.
unidentified		There it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely awful.
		Anyway, there it is.
		And they took their microphones, grabbed them, and ran and filled in the hole.
		I mean, that was the story, sir.
unidentified		That's incredible.
		Thank you very much.
		I guess.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Whatever it takes to make your night, sir, happy to help you.
		Take care.
		Wildcard line, you're on air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art Bell, you're great.
unidentified		This is Jim calling from Cupertino, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Jim.
unidentified		I wanted to ask you actually about Phil Henry out there in Los Angeles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm so glad you did.
		You know, somebody sent me a fast blast a little while ago saying, when is Colonel Jameson going to be back on the show again?
		I thought, oh, man.
		That is a fabrication of the Henry mind, the Phil Henry mind.
		Now, General Jameson is not a real person, folks.
		He's never been on this program.
		You know, Phil is getting so good that people are beginning to confuse this program with his program and his with mine.
unidentified		Well, and you know, he uses the same Streamlink service to listen on the internet that you do.
		It's the same login page for the password, so you can really make a mistake.
		You know, on his website, he has a clip posted that apparently has a view of your show, like saying how much you like him.
		So does that really use him?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
unidentified		Phil is great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Phil is a blast, and I think what he does is very funny.
		I've enjoyed it over the years.
		And even during those years when I was in semi-retirement, he continued doing that.
unidentified		Well, let me ask you one thing about him.
		You know, it's been like eight years since you let anybody do a bong head on the air, and he does it like every three months.
		Can I smoke a bong head on the air right now?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why would you want to do that?
unidentified		Oh, it's just kind of cool.
		You know, it's been like eight years.
		It was so long ago when you let somebody, you know, I know it's kind of stupid, I agree, but it's been such a long time.
		I'd be like a throwback.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's almost a Levatron.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's almost Passe.
unidentified		Well, that's true.
		Not in California.
		You know the laws?
		They just put the new laws in Leviticus.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So, all right.
		So this is going to be a medical bong hit.
unidentified		Yeah, it is.
		I have a doctor's note.
		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, all right, then.
		All right.
		If you go to the doctor.
		All right, go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, great.
		And then tell us about the Levitron, but here it is.
		Thanks, man.
		You're great.
		Goodbye.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there you have it.
		The first in, well, nearly eight years.
		A medical bong hit right here on Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		My God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you ask why we fear open lines.
		Coming tomorrow night.
		Don't forget, get that email to me, artvell at AOL.com or artvell at MindSpring.com.
		Charles Seythe is coming up.
		We're going to talk about all kinds of interesting way out type things, other dimensions, and what have you.
		If you'll just stay right where you are, I'm Art Bell in the darkness, which is where we do our best work.
unidentified		Well, I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found I have been only here Up on my hands It's all clear to me now My heart is on fire
		Up on my hands Be inside of the sand, the smell of the touch.
		There's something inside that we need so much.
		The sight of the touch, or the scent of the sand, or the strength of an oak leaves deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up from tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
		To lie in the meadow and hear the grass sing, all these things in our memories all.
		I'm the user to help us to follow.
		Ride, ride past your soul.
		Take this place on this trip.
		Just go here.
		Ride, ride past your soul.
		Take a pillow.
		Up a seat.
		It's my freedom.
		Want to take a ride?
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll-free 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		It is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everybody.
		Coming now, Charles Scythe.
		That's S-E-I-F-E, but pronounced Scythe, I believe.
		Charles Scythe is a writer for Science Magazine, where he covers physics and cosmology.
		He is the author of Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, and Alpha and Omega, The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe.
		Prior to his involvement with science journalism, he was a mathematician.
		He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton, an M.S. from the Yale Mathematics Department.
		In addition, Charles attended Columbia Journalism School and is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
unidentified		Charles Seif in a moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I would normally never read a question for a guest before the guest, but I thought this was really good.
		It kind of sets it up.
		Gary writes, Hey, Art, why are dimensions extra?
		Did the universe only come equipped with standard options when it was created?
		In other words, three dimensions?
		Also, what's the difference between extra dimensions and parallel universes?
		Is that where the time factor comes in?
		But then if we're talking physics, which we are, there is no time, right?
		The concept of an infinite universe could break your brain if you thought about it long enough.
		Again, time seems to rear its ugly head.
		You pick challenging topics to try and grasp, Gary.
		They are challenging topics, aren't they, Charles?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They are indeed.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Lots of people have tried to wrap their heads around them and failed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Or ended up who knows where.
		Welcome to the program, Charles Seif.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Am I pronouncing Seif correctly?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That is correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Well, all right, then.
		I guess we'll plunge right in.
		i have as a regularly scheduled guest uh...
		professor michael kaku from the university of uh...
		new york city in uh...
		he talks about the end of the universe and i wonder if you're going to I'm wondering if you're going to tell us the same thing he does, or he believes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I would expect so.
		About 10 years ago, if you asked either Dr. Kaku or any other physicist that question, they would have told you that there are two possibilities, more or less, for how the universe will end.
		Either the universe will expand for a while and get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then gravity will win out and collapse everything back into the ball, into the cosmic egg from which it came.
		It will be a big crunch, an opposite of a big bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And for many years, they did think that to be true, right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They thought that that was one of the two possibilities, and a lot of people thought that there was going to be a big crunch.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In fact, I believe that Stephen Hawking was a believer in a big crunch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's sort of like the rubber band theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You keep stretching it and stretching, and then you finally get out so far, and you can't handle it anymore, and boom.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Exactly.
		And then the other possibility was essentially that the rubber band breaks, that the universe keeps expanding and expanding, and the initial force of the explosion, the Big Bang, is enough to send the galaxies far away from each other.
		And the universe never recollapses.
		Although gravity would slow that expansion over time, the expansion gets slower and slower.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, is that analogy still good?
		In other words, the broken band, a rubber band, one, and then we just all go flinging out.
		There's some sort of magic switch point where the various gravitational attractions lose it and out you go?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, it looks like we are at one of those points where all of a sudden the universe is losing it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		In the past seven years, scientists have come up with evidence for a mysterious anti-gravity force, dark energy, that is blowing the universe apart.
		And it looks like we are living at precisely the moment where dark energy takes over, where it begins to dominate over gravity.
		And instead of slowing down this expansion, where the expansion gets tardier and tardier, it turns out that this dark energy is making the universe expand ever faster.
		It was a totally unexpected finding, just as unexpected as if you had tossed a ball into the air and found it zooming higher and higher into the sky rather than coming back to Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is very upsetting.
		The universe losing it, in effect.
		Just getting out there at the end of the stretch of the rubber band and well.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, the universe ends either way.
		A big crunch.
		Everything would have to get hotter and hotter.
		The stars would come closer together and the sky would glow hot at night.
		And that would be a death to life as surely as this ever-increasing expansion where everything gets colder and colder and the stars wink out one by one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's the current general conventional wisdom, right?
		That everything will .
		But there was something you said that really upset me.
		I was willing to accept the it'll get gradually colder and colder and colder and everything farther away until there's nothing left in the night sky except that very nearby everything else gone.
		But that would be so far in the distant future.
		and what you said was kind of upsetting were the moment where the universe might be losing it or if it was kind of a special It's not so sudden.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I mean, these changes take place over billions of years.
		But we are apparently at what's called an inflection point where things do change.
		It's not like flicking a switch.
		Although there is a theory that came out in the past couple of years, I believe it was Mark Kemiinkowski and a bunch of other physicists who came up with the idea of a big rip.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A big rip.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		A big rip.
		It turns out that at some point it's possible that if dark energy has certain properties, it dominates so much that it tears everything apart.
		First, galaxies fly apart, then solar systems fly apart, then planets, then the stars, and then even the atoms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you say fly apart.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They're held together by forces.
		Solar systems and galaxies are held together by gravity.
		Atoms are held together by what's called the strong force.
		But if dark energy grows stronger and stronger and stronger, the repulsive action of dark energy might be stronger than gravity and even the strong force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if we were living on Earth as this process of being ripped apart went on, what actually would we experience?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It would happen pretty suddenly.
		I think for a number of years, we'd probably see the sky get darker as galaxies kind of disintegrate.
		And then within a matter of hours, I believe.
		I don't remember the exact time table.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hours?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Hours.
		Stars disappear, planets disappear, and then atoms fall apart.
		It would be very sudden.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then atoms fall apart.
unidentified		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Nothing left.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Nothing left other than a soup of lifeless radiation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we would just sort of dematerialize.
		We would no longer exist.
		Our planet, everything on it, would just no longer exist?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		There would be nothing in the universe other than radiation.
		of course this depends upon this is a theoretical construct at this point it depends upon the dark energy having a certain property that no one is quite sure whether it has or not but speculation like that was unheard of just a decade ago because no one knew that the stark energy existed well it worth asking how scientists know this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I get stories all the time.
		Like, here's one.
		I read it in the first hour of the program tonight.
		The massive West Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists warned on Tuesday.
		Now, that's the magic phrase.
		Previously assumed to be stable.
		So all the time in science, you seem to get these sorts of stories where scientists, well, that's the way they all begin.
		And what it really means is, oops, we were wrong.
		Here's what's really going on.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, science is always changing on some level.
		Part of the good thing about science is that bad theories get replaced by better ones and better ones as time goes on.
		And this story about dark energy seems fantastic.
		It seems just as fantastic as any myth out of Greece or Norse mythology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, have we proven dark energy yet?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There are a number of actually direct consequences of dark energy that scientists have seen.
		The reason scientists believe in dark energy is they were led there by their nose.
		They didn't want to believe in it.
		In fact, it dropped out of one of Einstein's calculations.
		He, early, before Edwin Hubble in the 1920s discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein realized that his equations led to an unstable universe.
		It would either fly apart or collapse back.
		So to fix the universe, to make it stable, he added this cosmological constant, an extra term, a fudge factor, to stop this instability.
		It turns out when Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding, Einstein said, oh, what was I thinking?
		That was a mistake.
		And for decades, scientists saw the idea of a cosmological constant, this anti-gravity force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But wait, Einstein wasn't alive when Hubble discovered that.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, he was, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He was?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Hubble discovered this stuff in the 1920s.
unidentified		The Hubble...
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Not the Hubble Space Telescope.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Edwin Hubble, the astronomer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh!
		Oh, thank you.
		I'm sorry.
		I was still with the soon-to-be-deorbited Hubble.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Einstein had died by the time Hubble went up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At least.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But this is the astronomer, the eponymous astronomer whom the Hubble Space Telescope was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And in the 1920s, he did some nice observations that showed that the universe was expanding.
		And so Einstein tried to fix his equations and realized he had made a mistake.
		And since then, no one figured that there would be an anti-gravity force until the late 90s, 97, 98, when scientists began to be led there despite themselves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By what?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		By observations of distant exploding stars known as supernovae.
		These supernovae are of known brightness.
		They're what are called a standard candle.
		And by looking at these supernovae at various distances, you can measure how fast the universe is expanding.
		And since looking at great distance in astronomy is the same as looking very far back in time, because light takes a certain amount of time to reach us, something that is 13 billion light years away will take 13 billion years for that light to reach us.
		That's a long way of saying the further something is away, the further back in time you're looking.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're looking back 13 billion years or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Something like that.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it also means that that light emitter 13 billion years ago might now be dead as a doornail, and we might not know that for 11 billion more years or something.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely correct.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Much of what scientists are looking at in the universe has long since ceased to exist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then doesn't that to some degree put a caution in what they have to say?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		They don't know for sure that the early universe had the same laws, the same properties that our modern universe did.
		In fact, you look back and in very distant galaxies, they have slightly different properties.
		You have to take that into account.
		So, of course, that is a caution, but actually they're very, very good at this.
		And the supernovae are a very nice check on that because it's a single star that seems to have the same properties at all eras.
		And when you see it explode at different periods back in time, you can measure how fast the universe was expanding at different periods of time.
		So by looking at these supernovae, you get kind of a gauge of how fast the universe is expanding.
		And it turns out, by looking at these supernovae, scientists found out that the universe is expanding faster and faster and faster.
		And the only way that that would make sense is if Einstein's cosmological constant or some other anti-gravity force were blowing up the universe faster and faster.
		Now, when this evidence was first shown, I mean, everyone took notice and thought, this is very interesting, but it didn't convince a lot of people because it's a fantastic story.
		But since then, a number of other lines of evidence have come up, like the cosmic background radiation, the soup of radiation that streamed forth when the universe was only 400,000 years old.
		By looking at shapes in the cosmic background radiation, scientists have shown that there really has to be a dark energy.
		In fact, they saw a distortion in this energy called the integrated Sachs-Wolf effect.
		It's just an extra wiggle in this radiation that can only be caused by dark energy.
		So it really looks like there's something there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they call it dark energy, and I guess that's all right.
		And I guess they've proven fairly well that there is a force there.
		And I guess dark energy is as good a name as any, but it still means unknown energy, right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		There's only a few ideas about what could be causing this energy, but it is pretty much the biggest mystery in physics today.
		What is this dark energy?
		What is causing it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are the best guesses about what causes it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm curious about that.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Many of your fans would probably be familiar with the term zero-point energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they would.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		For those who aren't familiar, zero-point energy has to do with the fact that at every point in space, even in the deepest vacuum, particles and antiparticles are being created and destroyed.
		And if you set up an experiment in the right way, you can actually cause those particles to move things around.
		In 1996, experimenters at the University of Washington showed that this zero-point energy, this force of nothing, essentially, could move metal plates.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's really a misnomer, though.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		it's not a force of nothing is it idiot it is a Well, it's a force.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		You can't get rid of it.
		Even in the deepest vacuum, you pump out every particle in a box.
		The zero-point energy will still be there.
		It's because these particles are constantly being created and destroyed.
		Even though these particles exist on some sense, they don't exist on another sense.
		They're almost like a bookkeeping trick that nature uses to keep her books in order.
		And yet, they have this measurable effect.
		It could be that dark energy is caused by some sort of zero-point energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be matter and antimatter colliding?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		On some level, yes.
		It's matter and antimatter created, energy being created and being destroyed in the vacuum.
		And because of this energy in every point in space, it causes the very fabric of space-time to expand.
		The problem is, if you do the raw calculations just from straight theory and figure out how much force the zero-point energy would create, it's way, way, way too much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's way too much.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's way too much.
		Something has to be raining in the zero-point energy.
		And no one quite knows what is going wrong with those calculations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's an energy out there that's really an energy of nothingness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At least from our current perspective, it's nothingness.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it's a monstrous force.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It is absolutely monstrous.
		In a tiny little box, in your toast, something the size of your toaster, in theory, there is more energy than all the nuclear arsenals in the world.
		Of course, it's not so easy to harness this.
		In fact, it doesn't look like that that is an energy that can be harnessed, even in theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if it can be done, I'm sure our military will figure out some way to do it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Let's hope they're not the first.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Aren't they usually?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, actually.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They've got the most incentive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		A force of that magnitude that could be harnessed in a little box toaster-type box really does make quite a deterrent.
		That's being kind.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but luckily, I mean, nature seems to be protecting that zero-point energy so far.
		And most likely, in the indefinite future, every single way you can think of to harness that energy, for instance, you move these plates together, you can make that run a generator.
		However, you have to expend energy to pull those plates apart again.
		So to get a really energetic, to get a motor running, you have to have a cycle.
		And the zero-point energy doesn't seem to be amenable to cycles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Charles, I was just talking about this, too, in the first hour.
		Inevitably, people come and talk to me about over-unity devices.
		I've been doing this show now for probably going on 15 years, and I have received calls and emails and diagrams and descriptions and claims about free energy and over-unity devices.
		And in all of those years, beg though I have, nobody has sent me so much as even a toy, even a little demonstrative toy that uses more energy, creates more energy than it uses in its function.
		Have you seen one?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No, I have not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You haven't either?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Neither has the patent office.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, and the patent office hasn't either?
		nope gee now there's some people who would probably argue with that and they'll they'll send all kinds of uh...
		have Claiming?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I have looked at some of them, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And not a one.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Not a one.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There's a couple of claims that they say they do, but they don't have working devices.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold it right there, Charles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the nighttime, this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast AM.
		Oh, my God.
		Where are those happy days?
		They seem so hard to find.
		I tried to reach for you, but you have close to mine Whatever happened to our love I wish I hadn't faced you.
		Just the face of the moon So when you're near me, darling, can't you hear me?
		S.O.S.
		The love you gave me, nothing else can save me S.O.S.
		When you're gone, how can I inside you go home?
		S.O.S.
		To talk with Art Bell.
		Form a wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
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		From coast to coast, and worldwide on the internet.
		This is coast to coast again.
		With our bells, we're doomed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I always knew it.
		We're doomed.
		Absolutely.
		One day we're going to wake up, and we're not going to wake up.
		One day, everything.
		The planet, the trees, the birds, everything.
		Like that.
		Gone.
		Just like it was never here.
		That's something to try and wrap your mind around, the way it may end one day when dark energy makes its final snappy push.
		And that's it, baby.
		We're gone.
unidentified		We're gone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Charles Seife is my guest.
		Well credentialed indeed to be speaking of these matters.
		And inevitably, you get this kind of response.
		Here is something from my computer, directly from my computer.
		From Milton in Columbia, South Carolina, Art.
		Ask him about Tom Bearden's patent, 803-331-8059.
		Charles, have you examined the patents of Tom Bearden and some others?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		The name rings a bell, and I think I did a number of years ago.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I think he was one of the people who was attending this controversial DOE conference a number of years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		but i can't say i remember that patent in particular but generally you've studied these patents and find uh...
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And nominally, the Patent Office has a rule that if you have an over-unity device, you have to provide a working model.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I like that.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But it seems not to have been followed strictly all the time.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And a couple slip in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		So, yeah, it's like you, I'll believe it when I see it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And there's some pretty powerful physical laws that say it's not going to happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there are.
		And there are also psychological forces at work.
		I mean, if you rest on the belief that science will, I don't know, come along and save us from our oil-using ways, why, then you might be tempted to just lie back and wait for science to save our butts.
		And in the meantime, keep on pumping those barrels.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		I mean, there's lots of money involved.
		There's psychological barriers when, I mean, whenever you're a scientist, you think of something and you think you have a great idea.
		You're lying back in bed at night, and it may take you a while to figure out that there's a flaw in your thinking.
		And once in a while, some scientists will be unable to back down when they've got this apparently great idea, unable to see the flaw that's staring them in the face.
		So I think that there's quite a number of people who genuinely believe that they have some sort of idea or device, but just don't see why it fails.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm kind of sorry it's been going on for the reasons that I stated, because it does cause people to sort of lie back on their laurels and not worry about it, thinking science will save them.
		And, well, it might, but, you know, I don't think I'd go to the bank on that.
		You're here to answer some pretty some of these questions, like, for example, the Big Bang.
		Why are scientists so confident it happened at all, that there ever was a how do we know there was a big bang?
		None of us were here.
		And the story I get is something smaller than even a quark, or the size of a quark at least, or smaller, became all that we now know.
		All the planets, all the suns, everything.
		That's so incredible to try and even imagine that isn't it somewhat arrogant to even say we know what happened?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		Well, you've got the scenario just right.
		The universe, most scientists believe that the universe started as some sort of seed smaller than anything we know.
		And everything in the universe came from that seed.
		But that was not the only scenario a number of years ago.
		When scientists found out that the universe was expanding, they thought long and hard and came up with a couple of scenarios that made sense.
		One was the Big Bang, that everything came from a point and that's why everything's expanding out.
		The other key contender was something called steady-state theory, where perhaps there's some sort of fountain that creates matter in the center of the universe, and it spreads out, making the universe ever bigger.
		But as things age and die towards the end, they fade out.
		So as a whole, the universe doesn't change.
		Even though the stars and galaxies start in the center, move out, and die.
		As a whole, the universe looks pretty much the same.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Big Bang.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		The reason the Big Bang has so much power is when people analyzed the Big Bang scenario, they went to their blackboards and did some calculations and said, you know, if there was a Big Bang, it had to be very hot.
		And if it was very hot, there has to be this remnant radiation floating around everywhere in the universe that should be around 10 degrees Kelvin or below.
		And they looked in their telescopes and looked for that radiation, and there it was.
		It was everywhere.
		So that was nice.
		And then they said, you know, there are stars and galaxies.
		This is not completely uniform radiation.
		Even though our telescopes are not sensitive enough to see splotches in this radiation, they should be there.
		It took 20 more years, but when they got the equipment there, they looked, and sure enough, there were these splotches.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do the splotches mean?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		The splotches are remnants of the time when the universe was extremely small, and the zero-point energy, in a sense, had its mark on the cosmos.
		These quantum fluctuations made the universe not completely smooth.
		It was bumpy.
		There were places where there was more density and less density.
		And as the universe expanded extremely rapidly in a phase now called inflation, those over-dense and under-dense sections became spread out and got very, very large.
		And places where there was a lot of density became galaxies, and places where there were underdensities became voids.
		And sure enough, when they had the sensitivity to look, they saw these over-dense and underdense regions in the cosmic background radiation, which seemed to correspond extremely well with the distribution of galaxies and voids that we see today.
		So it made this nice prediction, and the prediction was verified.
		And every time there's a very concrete prediction, that prediction is verified.
		So it's a very nice marker that you're heading in the right direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So this verifies that the energy that would be expected of a Big Bang, or the remnant energy of a Big Bang, and the details associated with it all are there, saying, yes, there was a Big Bang.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, to great, great accuracy.
		It's stunning, actually, to, I mean, I have a mathematical background, and when I look at a graph of what is predicted by these Big Bang models, I look at the data, and the match is beautiful.
		It is really a very nice, clear indication that they're onto something.
		Even if they're wrong on some level, maybe there wasn't a Big Bang, but whatever happened has to look very much like a Big Bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me try and see if I'm grasping this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Prior to the Big Bang, there was nothing but dark energy.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Prior to the Big Bang, well, physics doesn't really reach that far, although there are some theories.
		You can actually get down to the first few microseconds after the Big Bang.
		Physicists know pretty well how physics works up to the just very, very millionths of a second after the Big Bang.
		But go beyond that, and physics breaks down.
		And the laws don't really give you much traction.
		So you go to the points of the Big Bang, and everything breaks down.
		You have to just guess.
		And there are a number of good guesses.
		One guess is that there was nothing at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All of a sudden, it just...
		There cannot be nothing.
		Well, that in itself is something.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In some sense, of course, especially in our vacuum with the zero-point fluctuations.
		Things are being created and destroyed.
		It could be that the universe is just a really big zero-point fluctuation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One time, somebody said something I thought was very elegant.
		They said that God was lonely, and so God blew himself up.
		You know how many people say, you know, we are God.
		God is part of us all.
		God is everywhere.
		You know, that fits in kind of elegantly into that.
		I mean, God blew himself up, and he was lonely.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And we are certainly all part of this thing that was much smaller than any of us, much smaller than any of the particles in our body.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And once you get back to this Big Bang and you start, as your word, guessing, this is as good a guess as any.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And there's some other guesses also, actually.
		Like what?
		In the past few years, there's something called the acperotic theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then that would be...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, parallel universe.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		That you have these two membranes floating somewhat near each other, and they periodically smack into each other and separate.
		And smack into each other and separate.
		And every time they smack into each other, you get a big bang, essentially.
		And it seems kind of silly on some level, but the mathematics behind it is based in the successor to string theory called M-theory.
		It was really the first M-theoretic description of the birth of the universe, and a number of scientists, including Paul Steinhardt at Princeton.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're suggesting two bubbles floating in space.
		I mean, you've got to get this in your mind.
		And occasionally these bubbles bump into each other, these dimensions.
		Right.
		And when that occurs, there's a Big Bang.
		Now, there have been recent announcements by science that they have discovered energies equivalent to perhaps the Big Bang, these sudden onrushes of energy that are recorded that are near Big Bang strength.
		You've heard about those, I presume.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There's several candidates.
		There's gamma ray bursts, which are the most energetic explosions in the universe.
		Yes.
		There's also ultra-high energy cosmic rays, where you have a single particle which has, when it smacks into something, it's almost like a little Big Bang.
		Were you referring to gamma-ray bursts?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gigantic gamma-ray bursts that detected.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They're absolutely huge.
		They are, let's see, a supernova is what, in terms of energy, it's 10 to the 51 ergs.
		Let's see how to describe that.
		It's just so far beyond anything earthly.
		It's unbelievable.
		A supernova outshines the rest of its galaxy, all the stars in the galaxy.
		A gamma-ray burst is even more energetic than that.
		But even that energy is Nothing compared to the Big Bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are we talking, perhaps, by the way, about the collision of black holes producing gamma-ray bursts of that sort, or what are the best guesses?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's a very good guess.
		Or the creation of black holes in some fashion.
		It has to be an extraordinarily energetic event.
		And the collapse of matter into a black hole is energetic.
		All of a sudden, the star collapses, sets the universe rippling.
		It creates gravitational waves that ripple throughout the universe.
		And in fact, a spacecraft that should go up sometime in the next decade, if the budgets go right, would be able to detect that sort of collision.
		And at the same time, it releases gamma radiation, X-rays, that are so bright they can be seen from half a universe away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, again, prior to the Big Bang, you're suggesting one alternative is there was nothing, hard as that is to grasp.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the other?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And the other was that you have these pre-existing world sheets, membranes, smacking into each other.
unidentified		That's the ekproduct universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, then we go back to this.
		I think I read it just before you came on, this thing where Gary asks, are there why are dimensions extra?
		Did the universe only come equipped with standard options when it was created?
		In other words, three dimensions?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you look around your room, you can stick your arm out in three mutually exclusive directions.
		You can stick it out front, back, left, right, or up, down.
		And so an ordinary human being, if you're left to his own devices, you ask him how many dimensions there are, there's three.
		But mathematically, if you look at it a little more carefully, as Einstein did, he realized that time was not separable from these three dimensions.
		When you affect your movement through those three dimensions, you also affect your movement through time.
		So in a sense, time is the fourth dimension.
		And scientists call this the three plus one universe because it has slightly different properties.
		That's an extra dimension in a sense because people don't think of it like the ordinary three dimensions.
		You have to intellectually get your head around it in a way that you don't have to do with other three dimensions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're moving your arm around the room, the air, the adjacent objects, everything you can see, all three dimensions.
		But you're actually also moving it through the fourth dimension, time.
		As you move your arm from here to there, you have used time.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		And in fact, you might be moving it through more dimensions.
		One of the key theories that physicists are kicking around right now, string theory and M-theory, require 10 or 11 dimensions for these things to work out.
		They believe that on some level, you have other dimensions that are really not accessible to us.
		These dimensions are curled up very small, so it's beyond even our best microscopes, our best particle accelerators to detect.
		But as you move your arm, you're also moving through these extra seven or eight dimensions.
		It's hard to grasp, but mathematically it makes sense.
		In fact, mathematicians have no problems with infinite dimensions.
		Hilbert space, which is a space crucial to quantum mechanics, is an infinite dimensional space.
		And mathematicians work with it all the time.
		They don't think about it very much.
unidentified		They don't like it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They don't go bananas, totally bananas.
		You can't grasp the infinite.
		You just truly, and I guess a mathematician can work with it and know that something's going to go on calculating this virtually forever.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But no, you can't.
		Before they exclaim that, yeah, that's so, they should try grasping even the concept of the eternity.
		I mean, you just, you can't really do it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's very, very difficult.
		Mathematicians have some angles in.
		They have some ways of controlling infinities.
		And they, in fact, have theories of infinities.
		Around the turn of the century, a German mathematician, George Cantor, showed that there are different levels of infinity, which in itself is totally baffling.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it almost sounds ridiculous.
		Different levels of infinity.
		How could that possibly be?
		The moment you get to a level of infinity, that's it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are, in fact, infinities bigger than other infinities, bigger than other infinities, and there's an infinity of infinities.
		He mathematically proved it.
		This is incontrovertible fact.
		So long as you believe the axioms of mathematics, this is true.
		It's the difference between the number line, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the natural numbers.
		That's one level of infinity.
		All those numbers are infinite.
		But if you take the full real line, all the decimal numbers, all the irrational numbers, pi, square root of 2, add those, that's a higher level of infinity than just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
		It's really hard to grasp, but it's all true.
		And once you've worked with it for a while, it's almost as if there's no other way it could be.
		makes perfect sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And in fact...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying a mathematician can get so comfortable with the concept that, as you put it, it makes perfect sense, because it certainly doesn't to me.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		It's actually not too difficult.
		You just need a few minutes with someone a mathematician who's willing to train you.
		And then you can start grasping infinity, and a whole new world opens up.
		It's like exploring a new land.
		I try to do that a little bit in my book, Zero.
		I do discuss the different levels of infinity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A good book title, Exploring Infinity.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and there was last year, I think, David Foster Wallace, the famed novelist, wrote a book about infinity also.
		There's lots of people who are very interested in it.
		And scientists are interested in it too, because infinities crop up in their equations all the time.
unidentified		It usually causes problems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose if they stop to actually think about it, which you're suggesting they really don't.
		They just accept the numbers and they become satisfied from the math angle and they don't contemplate the other problems associated with it.
		Hold on, Charles, we're at the top of the hour.
		Charles Seitz is my guest, and we're talking about things that, well, it's a little difficult to get your mind wrapping around some of them, like infinity.
		During the break, let's have everybody think as much as they're able about infinity.
		Something with no end ever.
		Unlike our universe, apparently, which, well, could be at a turning point.
unidentified		All we do is only by your side.
		You better know how much you want.
		You know it's just your foolish man.
		Yeah.
		I don't know.
		I'll tell you what's wrong.
		Before I get up and go, don't let me down.
		Don't let me down.
		You're looking good just like a snake in the grass.
		One of these days you're gonna break your glass.
		Don't let me down.
		Don't let me down.
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with ArtVell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In the presence of Charles Sythe this night, and Charles and I are going to have quite a conversation in a moment because, you know, over the years, many years now, I've interviewed some of the best minds in America, best scientific minds, certainly, mathematicians, people like Charles, and of course, Michael and many more over the years.
		And there's one thing I found, and that is that when you really pin these guys down, and I mean you really pin them down, they don't believe in God.
		They don't believe in God.
		That's all.
		The theoretical physicists, the mathematicians, the astronomers, the scientists in general, don't believe in God.
		Some will, when asked the question, of course, sort of hedge around a little bit and allowing for at least the possibility of it, I think, more to satisfy some listeners than because of their own belief.
		But by and large, it's true.
		Most scientists don't believe in God.
		You know, when you get things like the Big Bang and all that was coming from that which is so small it can't even scientifically yet be detected, I mean, that's quite a story, you know?
		Quite a fish story.
		Even with all the evidence of the energy and all the rest of it.
		It's quite a story.
		This Big Bang and this infinity that we're asked to consider, something that goes on forever, all of this is quite a bit to consider and still at the same time be able to reject the concept of a God, a controlling entity, a creation force.
		A creation force to be able to reject that.
		Now, in a moment, we'll ask about that.
unidentified		Square
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Remember the movie Contact with Jody Foster, Charles?
		Yes.
		You remember when the scientist was sitting in the seat and there were representatives of Earth, you know, government and everything, interviewing him, trying to determine if he was the right guy to go through the wormhole to meet with the aliens?
		And the last question, of course, was, well, do you believe in God?
		Will you carry the word of God and that we believe on Earth to these aliens?
		And he sat there and said no.
		You know, so he couldn't take the ride.
		The ride was unavailable to him because he didn't believe in God.
		Most of the scientists that I interview on this program, in the end, Charles, they don't believe in God.
		Why do you think most scientists, underline most, not all, don't send emails, most scientists don't believe in God?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it has to do with the fact that science has a breadth.
		It has extreme power in a certain sphere.
		But as soon as you go outside that sphere, it loses its power.
		If you don't have experimental evidence or some way of examining a question, it is beyond what you can look at.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like what happened before the Big Bang, what was around before the Big Bang, they don't know.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you can do a little speculation.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		You can go a little Bit beyond the edge, but you can't go too far because then it stops being science and starts being philosophy or even religion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, so what is it about science that dictates to these learned men and women that there couldn't be a creative force behind it all?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's more that they don't see any reason to go to a God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They can't explain it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No, they can't.
		But in some sense, God punts the question forward a little bit.
		If there is an immortal being that was the creative force, then what created that creative force?
		And you can say God is eternal.
		But in the same way, you can say that the universe is eternal.
		And in fact, there are some theories, one is called eternal inflation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, put another way, eternity might not have anything to do with a creator.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		The universe might have always been here on some level.
		And so when you ask a scientist, do you believe in God?
		They may, they may not, but it certainly has nothing to do with their scientific beliefs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mostly not.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Mostly not.
		Although I have encountered quite a few very religious scientists.
		In fact, I was lucky enough to go to a conference at the Vatican a number of years ago for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
		And there were some of the most eminent scientists in the world who were deeply religious there.
		I mean, Charlie Towns, for example, who invented the laser, was there, and I was privileged to meet him and George Ellis, who was very high in the Quaker church in South Africa, and also just a great cosmologist and scientist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I was going to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those involved in cosmology, like yourself, it's very rare, very rare that you find a belief in God.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It tends to be.
		Again, with exceptions.
		And at some point, you have to be able to accept mystery.
		Whether you're religious or not, you either accept the mystery of God or you accept the mystery of the universe.
		And where you place that mystery determines whether you believe or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you were on your deathbed and you were offered an opportunity to continue to exist in the same mental state you're in now, except in a machine, would you accept that?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Hard to say, I guess, if I'm on my deathbed.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, pretty much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, you're right in there with that group, pretty much.
unidentified		Yeah.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		You caught me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Most would say, no, I am prepared for the other side.
		Let the Lord take me now, and I know what awaits me, and off we go.
		I don't want to live in no machine.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I wish I had that certainty, actually.
		There's a comfort knowing what's beyond death.
		And uncertainty is uncomfortable often.
		And atheism is often uncomfortable in that sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Atheism is almost itself a religion.
		It has to be.
		To believe that strongly in something, it's almost exactly like a religion in a lot of senses.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In some senses it is, but in some senses it isn't.
		It's a negative belief in some sense.
		Like in the same sense that not believing in purple monkeys is a positive belief.
		It's also a negative belief.
		That just because you don't believe in purple monkeys doesn't make you a non-purple monkey believer.
		If someone handed you evidence of purple monkeys, you might become a believer.
		But absent that belief, absent that evidence, you don't have that belief.
		That's kind of a twisted.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in today's genetic unraveling world, purple monkeys could be just around the corner, so I wouldn't reject that at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then I'd become a believer.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I think they've actually got glowing monkeys, or at least they've got glowing zebrafish now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		They're beginning to get to the point where they can take the attributes or whatever from one animal or one mammal and transfer them to another.
		This all has me very worried.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's like lots of technologies.
		It's got great pluses and great minuses.
		Nuclear power, for example, has the potential to solve a lot of the energy problems, but at the same time, it can destroy civilization.
		And genetically modified foods can make it much easier to have and distribute food.
		But maybe if genes leak into the environment, they can cause superweeds or something like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm very concerned, and I wonder how concerned you are watching what science is on the verge of right now in so many areas.
		Just so many areas.
		I mean, nanotechnology is a pretty good example of where they're marching ahead into I'm not sure what, and I'm not sure if they're sure what.
		Science is doing a number of things today, like the HAARP.
		Are you familiar with HAARP?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you are?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		HARP, I've got a story here, which I read in the first hour, that HARP has now actually managed to create, in effect, an aurora.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think that was in Nature recently.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Yes.
		They actually created an aurora.
		Now, if you can do that, if you can beam something from Earth and cause the ionosphere to jump around like jelly and start creating lights and all that sort of thing, you're beginning to manipulate forces that you don't have the first idea of the outcome.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, there can be lots of effects, but actually that's one of the electromagnetic radiations is something that scientists do have a pretty good handle on.
		It's the auroras there.
		The effects of that are a little less certain.
		I'm more worried what would happen if they start using that for advertising.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the same thing.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But you mentioned these glowing signs at night, they drink coke.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
		That's what was actually suggested by the scientists when they were asked about it, to either light up cities or put advertisements up in the sky.
		I thought that was, I don't know, perhaps a little disingenuous on their part, Charles, because I don't know.
		I think they're working on other stuff.
		The Air Force is up there.
		All these lettered agencies are up there.
		And I just don't think they're working on the Coke in the Sky idea.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Probably not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Probably not.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Although, you often see projects, first real displays in almost commercial senses, like the Russians had this enormous banner called Snamya, where they tried to illuminate, use a space mirror to illuminate, make a large spot on Earth of light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happened to that?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I think it failed.
		I think that it failed to unravel properly, but I'm not 100% sure.
		That was about six or seven years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're noticing on the short wave bands that they're really screwed up, and many of us believe that HAARP is leading that march at the moment.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I would tend to think not just because it would be local.
		However, I think that there is a great deal of solar activity right now.
		I mean, anything that we can do on Earth is dwarfed by what's happening naturally on the Sun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we're always told, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I think the whole concept of HARP is like a very small force comparatively creating a very large effect, or at least that's what they're hoping for.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I remember some of the early reports.
		I remember reading a very funny article talking about how HARP was causing caribou to walk backwards.
		I tend not to believe that, but it's just whenever you have a shroud of secrecy around a project, you always get a lot more worries than are necessary, even though there might be some worries to them.
		Like there was a project, I think, in the Midwest somewhere to signal submarines, and they would have a low-frequency signal that submarines could hear out in the ocean.
		Again, I'm only dimly remembering this, but some people thought that this was responsible for the Teos Hum and had other much more sinister purposes than they actually were for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, with regard to the Teos Hum, I really like the idea of deep burrowing government machines myself.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I'd love to see them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just scourging through the earth from one secret site to another.
		That's widely thought, by the way.
		Yes.
		listen let's talk a little about parallel universes uh...
		parallel universes we sort of touched on it in a way but uh...
		occasionally brushing I think it's unlikely in our lifetime, but it's not impossible.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In fact, some scientists like David Deutsch out in England believe that we already have evidence of parallel universes.
		And he's not on the fringe at all.
		He's actually a very mainstream quantum theorist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that evidence being?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That evidence being the very nature of quantum mechanics itself, that you have some very bizarre behavior of particles that are very small, that are in the quantum realm.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They can do things like superposition, where it can be in two places at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		same time that seems so One object being in two places at the same time, folks.
		That's what we're talking about.
		They've proven this, right?
		Done it?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They've observed it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In NIST in Colorado, I believe, a number of years ago, they took a single atom and put it in two places at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		IBM did something with light or something, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can't recall.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		IBM, I think, did a teleportation thing not so long ago.
unidentified		That's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's essentially, for an instant, at least.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't that mean the object is here and there?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Actually, the object is destroyed as soon as it's transported, so it's not in both places at the same time, but it uses a similar technique, something called entanglement, where two particles, even though they might be halfway across the universe, feel what happens to the other one.
		If you measure one, the other feels the measurement instantly.
		And David Deutsch thinks that by positing parallel universes, you can explain all of these effects in a very natural way.
		And there's quite a number of scientists who have believe in what's called the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, that superposition and entanglement all are things happening on various parallel planes.
		For instance, a particle which is in superposition, an atom in two states at once, two places at once, is really a particle in two different sheets, and the sheets are on top of each other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why doesn't this explain telepathy or something like that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, a thought simultaneously occurring to two minds on opposite sides of the planet, just as an example.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, in fact, a number of people are trying to figure out whether entanglement is related to telepathy.
		There is a foundation in Switzerland created by a banker Marcel Odier.
		And the Odier Foundation funded a number of really good experiments, really good scientific experiments that went in peer-reviewed journals having to do with teleportation and entanglement.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An even more fascinating one might be that the experiments going on now at Princeton.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		At the Pearlab?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		All right.
		Well, yes.
		I'm talking now specifically about the Human Consciousness Project.
		You don't know about that?
		Oh, it's so fascinating.
		What they've done is they've taken computers and scattered them geographically around the world, reporting back to Mama Computer at Princeton.
		And these computers are constantly generating random numbers.
		Yes.
		And then Princeton is keeping track of when this randomness becomes not so random.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I know this project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah.
		Well, okay.
		Did you note that before a lot of big events, like before 9-11, for example, the spike Just went damn near off the chart three hours before the event itself.
		Now, you were talking about quantum entanglement, and we were talking about time as another, well, we were saying time was another dimension, possibly.
		Well, if it went off the chart, registering some kind of human consciousness spike three hours before the event itself.
		That says all kinds of things about all kinds of things.
		And if you go back to many very large world events that have occurred, you see similar spikes prior to the event itself.
		Now, what does that suggest might be going on?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It indeed would suggest something very strong, that there might be a world consciousness.
		However, I looked at some earlier data a number of years ago, and I wasn't very impressed with the numbers.
		I would have to take a look at them again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you should.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		With a scientific experiment, you have to be extraordinarily careful with controlling what you define as a hit.
		Yes.
		And in the past experiments, and for the other famous psychic experiments like the Stanford Research Institute experiments of the 70s, part of the problem was a flexible definition of what a hit is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Princeton is so sensitive to what you're talking about that they won't really come out and talk about the program itself for fear of affecting their results.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because the mere knowledge of the existence of the program, they worry, might contaminate the results.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's a big problem because science always relies upon transparency and repeatability.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		If another lab was able to reproduce these results, it would have a lot more credibility.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm sure it'll go to that.
		But I mean, what they have done is absolutely astounding.
		It really is astounding.
		There was another recent one, I believe, just prior to the tsunami.
		And of course, the interesting thing is the time involved.
		The fact that this, if it's real, this seems to be registering prior to the events, which means there's something traveling in the fourth dimension.
		I think.
		Hold on, we're at the bottom of the hour already.
		Charles Scythe is my guest.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		I've been where the eagle flies, rode his wings cross all the skies, kissed the sun, touched the moon, but he left me much too soon.
		His ladybird, he left his ladybird.
		Ladybird, come on down.
		I'm here waiting on the ground.
		Ladybird, I'll treat you good.
		Ladybird, I wish you would you labor Pretty lady bird Lightning flashed across the sky The night he taught me how to fly To
		talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everybody.
		Charles Scythe is my guest.
		And by the way, yes, he has a book.
		Alpha, actually a couple of them.
		Alpha and Omega, The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe, as well as Zero.
		That's a good title for a book, Zero.
		The biography of a dangerous idea.
		Indeed, dangerous.
		We'll be right back.
		I don't know.
		When you start talking about things like quantum entanglement and the fourth dimension perhaps being time, then it seems to me that if there is something to what they appear to be discovering at Princeton, that all fits in quite comfortably.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll confess at the outset that I'm a skeptic when it comes to telepathy and world consciousness.
		Yes, if there is some sort of world consciousness, then obviously, especially if there is something that precedes an event, there could be something that is traveling through time, some sort of signal that is traveling through time.
		In fact, relativity and quantum mechanics do have very strange time effects.
		For example, in quantum mechanics, a particle can sense that it's entangled before it even becomes entangled.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Through time.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Through time, yes.
		However, if you're going to try to explain these things in quantum mechanics and try to get scientists to pay attention, what you're going to have to do is come up with a strong description, a really nice mechanism for how this happens and try to attack and falsify that mechanism.
		It doesn't help to have kind of these vague senses that quantum mechanics has something to do with it.
		You have to say, oh, for this world consciousness to happen, particle X has to travel from the tsunami back through time and affect the counters in this way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And once you're able to do that and able to test that theory, then scientists will actually be able to test it and verify whether or not it's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if just if the Princeton experiments bear out, wouldn't it fit rather nicely into the whole quantum entanglement time, fourth-dimension time thing quite nicely?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It could.
		It could.
		And then again, it might not.
		The ideas of quantum mechanics could well give you a mechanism for how this would happen if it were true.
		Exactly.
		But again, it has to be specific to really understand whether it fits nicely or not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you can answer this.
		You seem to be the answer, man, for all this sort of thing.
		If we look out with our telescopes, I guess getting out toward 15 billion light years, that would be the first particles that exploded from the Big Bang.
		They'd be way out there at the 15 billion year mark, right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There's actually a weird effect that makes it beyond 15 billion years.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But yes, essentially that's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, so can our telescopes, have our telescopes broken the 15 billion year barrier?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if so, what seems to be past the beginning?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, this cosmic background radiation, which comes from all parts of the universe, is like a cage of fire.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It really is the earliest light that we see from the era of the Big Bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, wait a minute.
		I need to understand this.
		You're saying there is something beyond that 15 billion-year mark.
		There is radiation.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There is radiation.
		13.7 billion years ago is when the Big Bang was.
		And about 30400,000 years after that, for those 300 to 400,000 years, the universe was a seething ball of plasma that was just glowing.
		And that glow is what the cosmic background radiation is.
		After about 370,000 years after the Big Bang, the plasma cooled, condensed, and that light flowed free and in all directions of the sky, the entire universe with this ball of glowing plasma.
		And from every point in the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean almost like somebody said, let there be light.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		It really is almost like a creation moment.
		All of a sudden, bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Light flows free.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Pardon me.
		And so the best you can do with standard telescopes is see back to about 370,000 years after the Big Bang.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But have we detected any actual physical anythings out there past that 13 billion miles?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No, other than these spots, these overdensities and underdensities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But basically just empty space.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's radiation.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And we can't, because there were no stars or galaxies back then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can we actually not define it as space?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if we cannot see something physical in it, how can we even call it space?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, because we know what temperature it was, roughly, and at that temperature, weird things aren't really going on.
		This is actually in the region of physics that is understood very well.
		That's why these models are so beautifully, that you have this great precision and predictions what this radiation looks like.
		And when you look up in the sky, it's exactly what you'd expect the predictions to say.
		well just so i understand then there's radiation but there are no physical things so that means basically empty space is that But there's no stars, no galaxies, no organized larger structures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that really is, if you were to be able to travel to that, what would happen to you as you entered or left, I guess, the universe of things into the universe of only gases and radiation?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it would be like all of a sudden you walk past a curtain of hot gas, and everything's glowing around you.
		It's, I'm trying to remember, about 3,000 Kelvin, so it's very hot.
		And so you wouldn't survive.
		But the first stars were coming alive in, it took several million years after that.
		You had these lumps of gas would collapse, and where there's the most density, you start having this gas getting tight enough that it heats up and ignites.
		And the first stars are born.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's the part I don't understand.
		You're explaining to me about a place, an area where there is nothing but gases and radiation past what we know to be of solids, 13 billion light years away.
		But we don't really know that because our information is 13 billion years old.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		The information is certainly incomplete, and it's stretched and distorted by time.
		However, there's some really good information out there.
		The cosmic background radiation we've talked about a bit.
		But there's also what you can do is in these voids where there was not enough material to form galaxies, there's still some of that primordial gas floating out there.
		It's no longer hot and no longer ionized, but it's there.
		And by looking at light that's shining through those voids, you can measure the proportions of hydrogen and helium and deuterium.
		And you look at those, and lo and behold, they're exactly what you'd expect given the theories of the Big Bang and inflation and all the evolution of the universe from the first few microseconds to a couple of hundred thousand years.
		It is beautifully predicted by this theory.
		You look at the ratios of hydrogen to helium, helium to deuterium, and it matches your equations almost exactly.
		So again, you can't know for certain that you're right.
		But when your theory makes this prediction and you finally have the equipment to verify that prediction and it comes out just right, that gives you a great deal of confidence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's science, all right.
		I mean, that is science.
		But again, the only thing that worries me is I see all the time these stories of science retracting what previously was, well, careers were staked on it.
		That's the way it is, baby.
		Only it turns out not to be so.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's different levels of science.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you mentioned the Antarctic ice sheet earlier.
unidentified		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That is science that's environmental science, but it's not the fundamental way the universe works.
		Scientists have been exploring this fundamental way the universe works since Newton even before.
		And even though Einstein proved Newton wrong, and Einstein modified Newton's equations, Newton still holds under most circumstances.
		Einstein's equations, even though there were a great philosophical difference between Einstein and Newton, Einstein only is a slight change in certain conditions when things are moving very fast or things have a huge amount of mass.
		That's when Einstein's equations start to modify Newtonian gravity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why was Einstein so different than other scientists?
		And why are there no modern-day Einsteins?
		Or are there?
		In other words, why did we have such a unique individual who came and went, and we've never seen anything like him?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, Einstein was in the right place in the right time with the right mind.
		At the turn of the century, physics was really at a series of crisis points.
		Equations weren't working in several areas.
		The electromagnetic field equations, they worked beautifully.
		These were Maxwell's equations.
		They told you what magnetic field you'd get if you ran what electric current.
		And it worked right, except if you were walking or moving or moving about, and they broke down.
		Similarly, the predictions of how light behaves worked pretty well, but under certain circumstances, they broke down.
		And it turns out that Einstein was able to help solve all of those problems.
		He is the father of relativity theory, as you know, but he's also one of the fathers of quantum theory.
		In 1905, his miraculous year, 100 years ago, he came up with a paper that explained a certain effect called the photoelectric effect that had baffled scientists, and it seemed to contradict all that they knew about light.
		And in so doing, he really gave the impetus to this burgeoning thing that became quantum theory.
		And also in 1905, he came up with a paper that explains the electromagnetic problem, and it became the theory of relativity.
		And so Einstein is special because he was at the heart of the two great intellectual developments in physics in the 20th century.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was Einstein that much smarter than anybody living today?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I don't think so, actually.
		I think there are some absolute geniuses working today.
		I speak to physicists throughout because of my day job all the time, and some of them just are bafflingly smart.
		Ed Witten, for one, is someone that everyone will always say is one of the smartest people you've met.
		He's a string theorist.
		And he has a mind that's just so penetrating.
		but thing is i'm starting was again in in in just the right place just the right time and had you been able to transport written or someone else back in time i think you would still get Not to anyone.
		And they would come up with quantum mechanics also.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very interesting.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It may not be the same person who did both.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But in fact, there were mathematicians like Point Couray who are poking around the edges of what Einstein finally discovered.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do we have anybody today that you're aware of who is getting close to the theory of everything, that one equation?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		String theory is about as close as it gets in some levels, and there are hundreds of hundreds of mathematicians who are working on it.
		There's no one person who can lay claim to it all.
		But Ed Witten is among them, Juan Malda Cana.
		Juan Malda Cana, for example, I believe, is responsible for realizing that what was a bunch of theories is actually one big theory.
		So he unified a disparate field.
		And if you look back, you can talk about people like John Schwartz or Michael Green, who helped build string theory from its foundations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So do you believe that there could be an equation, perhaps no longer than your thumb, that could end up unifying everything, explaining virtually everything?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Could be.
		Could be.
		It's tantalizingly close in some ways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And should we actually find this equation, should it be produced by one of these great minds, what would it mean for humanity?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, sadly, it really wouldn't mean all that much.
		Oh, no?
		No.
		It would be a profound insight.
		You'd know how all the forces in the universe behave and how they interact with each other and with matter.
		But would it make a better spam filter?
		No.
		I think a better spam filter would have more effect on your everyday life.
		There are some really, really profound things in the 20th century.
		For example, there's this theorem in mathematics called Gödel's incompleteness theorem, Which is one of the most profound things mankind has ever created.
		It says that there are some things which are unknowable.
		And no matter what you do, you cannot prove it and you cannot disprove it.
		It is unknowable.
		It is a yes and no.
		And one of the big things that became a yes and no question had to do with infinities.
		One of the big infinity questions was turned out to be incomplete in this sense.
		But did that really affect the way people thought about the universe?
		Not really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some things that cannot be known.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Period.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It will get a yes and a no or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's just simply unknowable.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That is correct.
		That is correct.
		To give the concrete example, remember I was talking earlier about 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is one level of infinity?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And all the real line pi, 1.1, all the decimals is another level of infinity?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Is there an infinity between them?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And the answer is yes and no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes and no.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes and no.
		You can choose one and it's right and consistent.
		You can choose the other and it's right and consistent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But isn't if this is true, I mean, isn't this going to bring many scientists to draw the gun out of the drawer in their desk and blow their brains out?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It can be, actually.
		There's absolutely no guarantee that there is one equation that will govern all the forces and unify everything, or if there is, that we will ever find it.
		And there's no guarantee even that mathematics is the right tool to use to understand the universe.
		Scientists are going on some level of faith that these questions are knowable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Some level of faith.
		Yes.
		And so if that theorem that some things are ultimately unknowable, I mean, it could definitely cause tilt in a scientist.
		Absolutely.
		just can't be.
		That would be an end to their So that'd be the end of that.
		No more proof, no more problems that are solvable.
		That's it, baby.
		You're up against the wall.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And a couple of years ago, a colleague of mine, John Horgan, wrote a book called The End of Science, where he said, in essence, that science in some ways was butting up against the unknowable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The end of science.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It was a very interesting book.
		I don't agree with all of what he said.
		In fact, I think that the revolution in cosmology is brand new science.
		That this dark energy is something that is way new.
		But he raises some very, very interesting points.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what if dark matter itself is part of that theorem?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, dark matter is going to be part of a unifying theorem.
		And in fact, the candidates, like string theory for the unified theorem, do produce natural candidates for the dark matter that's unknown.
		That's part of what is getting all these people so excited.
		In the next decade, we may actually figure out what particle is responsible for dark matter.
		And if we find out, we can extend what's known as the standard model, which is known to not be sufficient to explain everything.
		And once you extend that model, you might be on the edge of a unified theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold it right there.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		Charles Seyche is my guest.
		And when we come back, it's going to be up to all of you.
		This is the kind of guy who you can look at straight in the eye and ask, how high is this guy?
		And he'll proffer an answer.
		So it should be interesting.
		Lots of questions.
		Lots and lots of questions.
unidentified		I'm sure you've got them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know the numbers.
unidentified		Here we are.
		Right and go.
		Right and go.
		Into this house we're born Into this world we're thrown Like a dog without a bone and actor out of load Riders on the storm There's a killer on the road His brain is squirming like a toad.
		Take a long holiday.
		Let your children play.
		If you give this man a ride, sweet hammer, he will die.
		Killer on the road.
		Yeah.
		Oh, yeah.
		We'll be right back.
		To talk with Art Bell.
		Call the file card line at area code 7757271295.
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		To talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Infinity rocks, and so does Charles Seife.
		and he'll be back in just a moment with all of you in your questions and i'm sure they rock too so Charles, before I forget, you're such a gracious guest.
		Some guests get on here, and all they do is plug their book for three hours.
		Possibly, my book, my book.
unidentified		Consult my book.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You haven't done that.
		That's good.
		But you do have books, and I do want you to plug them.
		So which is the newer of the two?
		They never tell me here.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Alpha and Omega.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's the book about cosmology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The search for the beginning and end of the universe, right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and that's actually most of the discussion we've had tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's available, I would assume, on Amazon.com and those kind of places.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And better outlets everywhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Better outlets everywhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was the biography of A Dangerous Idea?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was all about how zero and infinity mess up physics and messed up culture.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And I talk about infinities and the different levels of infinity and how zero traveled from the East, messed up Greek culture, destroyed the church, wandered out, and destroyed physics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy in Indiana says, and I hadn't heard this, what about the recent announcement that there may be something in our solar system absorbing or emitting the background radiation that you've been talking about?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I haven't heard of this research, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I have not either.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if there was something like that, it would be quite interesting.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, it would be.
		Because this radiation is coming from everywhere.
		If there were something absorbing it or altering it in some way, it would change our picture of the early universe.
		But hopefully they would have detected it, because they're looking in all regions of the sky, and it looks pretty much the same in all directions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't the energy be at different levels as you went out in time?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's coming from the same point in time, actually.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's almost as if it's a curtain around the universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I'm asking is, though, as it expanded along with everything else, wouldn't it, with the laws of physics, wouldn't it begin to become less and less?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, actually.
		It becomes colder and colder, longer and longer wavelengths, dimmer and dimmer.
		So yes, as the universe expands, you're exactly right.
		It gets harder and harder to detect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What discoveries, I've got phones here we're about to go to, but in the next, say, decade, what do you think might come along that will really wow people?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, in 2007, a big fat accelerator is coming online in Geneva.
		It's called the LHC.
		And it's going to smash protons into antiprotons with enormous energies.
		And a lot of physicists believe that once that machine turns on, we will create the particles that are responsible for dark matter.
		And if they're right, this will be a revolution.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, we'll be colliding matter with antimatter?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, is that a good idea?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's been done for years.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		In fact, in Chicago right now, the Tevatron has been colliding matter with antimatter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Happily.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		With not as much energy.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But it turns out that nature does the same thing with more energy, and it hasn't destroyed the universe yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what is this likely to mean?
		I mean, they flip it on, and the matter and antimatter begins to collide.
		And what's so special about this one versus any of the others?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, it turns out that this will have enough energy.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		The more energy you have in your collision, the heavier the particles you can create.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		The present accelerators don't have the energy to create what people think the dark matter particle is.
		This one does.
		In fact, this one has so much energy that if they fail to make this dark matter particle, you're going to see a lot of physicists scurrying for cover.
unidentified		Really?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's going to be a big deal if they don't find something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, they were wrong.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Big time wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which might mean what?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Which might mean, I don't know.
		They're going to have to rewrite a lot of what they think about the unifying theories and what's called supersymmetry.
		This idea that there's a set of particles as yet to be discovered.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, we were supposed to build a collider that big or bigger, I believe, in Texas, and the whole idea was defunded.
unidentified		That's correct.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It was called the superconducting supercollider.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And it got killed in 91 or 92.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would it have shaped up in size with the LHC?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It was bigger than the LHC, and in fact, we would have been getting the first results about now.
		We would pretty much know right now the particle for dark matter.
		It's really a shame on some levels.
		I think it came to a vote the same day that the International Space Station came to a vote.
		ISS survived and the SSC died.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		let's assume the experiment goes as it is thought it will, what will that mean?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That will mean that all of a sudden we know pretty much what all of the matter in the universe is.
		Right now, we only have a real clue about 4% of the stuff in the universe, and let's see, about one-sixth of the matter in the universe.
		We know what it's made of.
		And the rest of that, five-sixth, is mystery.
		It's an unknown particle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Might there be any practical applications to the sudden absolute acquisition of this knowledge?
		Or might there be a surprise?
		Who knows what there might be?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Who knows?
		It's hard to say.
		I mean, this is fundamental knowledge.
		If we get really adept and understand the way these particles work, we might be able to use them.
		For example, neutrinos, you've probably heard of neutrinos, which are very light particles that almost never interact with matter.
		They pass right through the earth, and there's hundreds of thousands of them passing through every inch of your body right now.
		If scientists had the ability to make a huge number of neutrinos in a small area, they could shoot a beam right through the earth and zap a piece of toast on the other side.
		I'm sure the military would love that.
		That would take a lot more neutrinos than we can create now, but yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They absolutely would.
		All right, first-time caller line, you're on the air with Charles Seif.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		I have a comment about the infinity, infinity, infinity times 3.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't have your radio on, do you?
unidentified		You know what?
unidentified		I should turn that down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you should turn it off.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You ignored specific instructions.
unidentified		I got it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I was just thinking, is it possible that if a person did believe in God and did believe in that whole thing, the infinity times 3, wouldn't that then make sense that if all of us are supposed to be back up there, we would be there at different levels?
unidentified		And then, and then, to take it further, could this be the thing that ties science and religion together?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a really good one.
		I'm always sort of on that one, Charles, when the metaphysical and science might meet.
		I mean, there are signs right now that some of that could be underway.
		I know that you're a skeptic, and that's fine, but there really are some signs that some of that might be ahead of us.
		Science and the metaphysical colliding.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, and infinity is actually a place where they collide the most.
		In fact, not to plug the book, but zero gets into a lot of that.
		In fact, part of the reason that zero took so long to get into the West, it was 1200 really before it came, before Italy and the rest of the West accepted zero, was because with zero came infinity.
		And infinity collided with the Christian view of the world.
		Yes, indeed.
		So Eastern religions, Hinduism in particular, and Buddhism, don't have the same problem with infinity and with nothingness.
		And so I believe that those cultures were able to embrace zero and use it considerably earlier than the West did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating.
		It really is fascinating, folks.
		Listen to what he just said.
		That the Eastern religions had much less difficulty with the concept of zero, with the concept of infinity.
		And so they moved forward while we hit sort of a wall in many cases.
		Is that about right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And until that wall broke down, our mathematics and science was pretty much stuck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Charles Seif.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, this is Joe in Michigan.
unidentified		I'm listening to you on AM800 CKLW out of Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Okay, my question involves infinity, and I want to see if I kind of am grasping the concept correctly.
		If he said there's different levels of infinity, all right, so we have numerical infinities that pi and our basic number chart would be a part of.
		But if I kind of understand him correctly, say for example, we had a parallel universe with infinite universes, and our universe has infinite universes.
		Could this just be like one infinity or just a series of infinities?
		Is that what he's talking about?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Charles?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's actually a slightly different concept, but it leads to some paradoxes.
		For example, imagine our unnumbered line as a universe, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
		Now imagine that each of those numbers has an infinity of numbers in them.
		0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, infinite times.
		That infinity of infinities is still the first level of infinity.
unidentified		That's kind of what I was thinking.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Thanks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're most welcome.
		You mentioned paradox.
		And when I talk to Dr. Kaku about time travel and about the paradox problem, he quickly tells me that, well, maybe the paradox is not a problem.
		Maybe if you were to go back and kill your grandfather, there would not be a problem because at that instant, another bubble, another universe, would form in which a logical extension of that action took place.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That is very possible.
		In fact, some variants of what we referred to earlier as the many-world theory will allow that to happen.
		Every time an action happens, the universe splits in some sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, isn't that interesting?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, there are so many people out there who would say something about his many houses.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Ah.
unidentified		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's an infinity of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Charles Haif.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Ari.
unidentified		are you Tim in St. Louis?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		I have a comment about Einstein.
unidentified		When they did his autopsy, they discovered he didn't have the convolution between the hemispheres of his brain, which all the rest of us have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that true, Charles?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I think that there was something about, there was a book recently called Einstein's Brain, which talked about how some guy managed to get his hands on Einstein's brain in a jar and drove it around cross-country.
		And I remember that something mentioned about that, but it may have been an artifact of the fact that this thing has been sitting in a jar of fluid for so long.
		I tend to doubt that he really did have an anatomical difference.
unidentified		Well, I think I read this in Sky and Telescope or the British Astronomy Now.
		And then I had a, I think Archimedes would be a good topic for a show, but then I had a question, if I might.
		What was the original wavelength of the cosmic background radiation at the time of the Big Bang?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember the exact wavelength, but I think it corresponded to about 3,000 Kelvin, which I think is ultraviolet.
		And ultraviolet is a very energetic form of light, and as the universe cooled and stretched, that radiation got longer and longer and cooler and cooler.
		And it went from ultraviolet through blue, then to green, then to red, and to infrared, and now it's in the microwave region of the spectrum.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating.
		All right.
		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Charles Scythe.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, this is Sanda out of California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Now, he doesn't believe, he thinks there's a big bang.
		Well, explain co-creation.
		I believe there's a God.
		I had a near-death experience.
		I went through the light.
		I felt the love and the joy.
		I saw Jesus, who, by the way, does not look like those pictures that they show in churches.
		He looked more Middle Eastern, beautiful eyes.
		So that means he doesn't believe that, like Jesus said, that, you know, God, you know, back in the biblical times?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I think that's a no.
unidentified		No?
unidentified		And he doesn't believe in...
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I do not believe.
unidentified		And you don't believe in past lives?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No, I do not.
unidentified		So explain why there's all these different nationalities.
unidentified		If it's a Big Bang, wouldn't we just be all one type of person?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Not necessarily.
		It's just as every galaxy is different.
		As the Big Bang happened, the quantum fluctuations caused very minute differences in different places.
		And as the universe expanded, those differences caused great differences in galaxies and galaxy clusters.
		And that's why the Milky Way galaxy doesn't look like a galaxy many billions of years away.
		So if there's differences on that level, there can certainly be differences on levels of organisms and peoples and nations and languages.
		As the Earth evolves, those differences can evolve also.
		Things might start off from one organism and branch out into many different types.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Charles, what do you say to those people who say, well, the proof is all around me, the proof of God, that is, Charles.
		My gosh, look at it.
		Everything on this earth is exactly the way it needs to be for man to flourish.
		And much of it on very tiny margins indeed of, you know, different temperatures, for example, and why certain species will just die and go away.
		And so everything has to be just so exactly perfect for man to be here.
		And it is exactly perfect.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly right.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And it's something that bothers scientists a heck of a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does it.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It does.
		It does.
		Because if things are too perfect, then you have to ask why did it happen that way?
		Yes, you do.
		And the mechanism that many scientists have used to explain this is something called the anthropic principle.
		It's not entirely satisfying.
		But it basically says that things are the way they are.
		The universe can sustain life.
		Because if they weren't that way, we wouldn't be here to wonder about it.
		In the same way, like, the very fact of your creation is billions and billions of ones against.
		Just looking back to your procreation, there were 100 million possible sperm that could reach the egg that created you.
		Yes, but it was a real warrior that was me that just that one of 100 million reached that egg.
		It just did, and it happened to be you, Art Bell.
		And had that not been that one sperm that hits that egg, I wouldn't be sitting here chatting with Art Bell, and I might be chatting with another talk host wondering about similar things and wondering why it's not Artina Bellina somewhere.
		So you always have to condition your thoughts upon the precondition that you're already here wondering about these things.
		Again, it's not necessarily satisfying.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, it's not satisfying at all.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But it's a handle.
		And there are other ways of attacking it.
		The many worlds universe does kind of explain that in some ways.
		Because if all the universes are there kind of tied together, we have to live in one where we are.
		That sounds kind of silly on the phone, obviously.
		But there are mechanisms for explaining it, but none of them really work all that well.
		And it is one of the big unanswered questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the other possibility, isn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That could end up being one of those unanswerable questions.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it could.
		Absolutely.
		It could just be a monumental coincidence.
		And that would just leave scientists scratching their heads to the end of time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating stuff.
		All right.
		What I want you to do is hold tight.
		We're once again at the bottom of the hour.
		Charles Seife is my guest, and he wrote Alpha and Omega, the Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe, Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.
		And I knew it.
		Boy, I knew it.
		Me as a sperm, I was like a Navy SEAL.
		I stormed ashore and I created.
		That was me.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Abumba, abumba, abumba, abumba.
		I'm in the middle of the night.
		Abumba, abumba.
		Can you hear my heartbeat in this?
		Do you know that behind us?
		Music
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		Good morning, everybody.
		And while all lines ring off the hook here for Charles Seife, I want to remind you tomorrow night we have four open air hours.
		And what I'm suggesting this night is that those of you who have something that you absolutely, positively must get on the air, because your story is so provocative, so dramatic, so engrossing, that it just has to make it onto air.
		Then you can email me with a short, very short little sort of encapsulation of what you're going to say or want to say, and include your phone number.
		Send that to artbell at aol.com or artbell, that's a R-T-B-E-L-L at mindspring.com.
		And if you have intrigued me, then in all likelihood, you will be on the air tomorrow night.
		Once again, here's Charles Seif.
		Welcome back, Charles.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's been certainly a lot of fun having you here tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These are really the biggest, baddest questions, aren't they?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		They're what keep physicists up at night screaming.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned somebody wrote a book called The End of Science.
		I guess that would be a point where what?
		Where we have learned literally everything there is to learn?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Not so much that as there might be points which we can't probe.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		For example, string theory posits that the fundamental particles, electrons, neutrinos, quarks, are all vibrating strings in 10 or 11 dimensions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Could be, maybe that theory works, but it could be that we will never be able to tell.
		If we were to use a particle accelerator to look for strings, it would have to be as big as the solar system.
		And that obviously is not going to happen, at least any time in our lifetime.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So LHC isn't going to do that trick.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No.
		No, it is not.
		So it could be that we have a consistent theory but are unable to test it.
		And that would be an end of science in some sense, because if you have this theory and you can't test it, it becomes philosophy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Charles Seif.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello, or hello, Charles.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		I actually asked this question from a website called Ask a High Energy Astronomer and got a pretty elusive answer.
unidentified		And I was hoping it can probably get a little more satisfying answer from you, Charles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Run it up the flagpole, sir.
unidentified		Okay, it's about the Big Bang.
		I asked the question if the Big Bang, I mean, everything in our universe is traveling away from each other and in a certain direction.
		Couldn't we follow these things by calculations back to where the Big Bang happened?
		And my answer that I got was no, because when the Big Bang happened, it was a single point.
		So the whole universe, there's not any place in the universe.
		But I assumed that we could find a spot by following everything back to where it happened, even if it wasn't within our universe.
		Is that possible?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you have this God's eye view and were able to stand outside the universe, it may be that in higher dimensions you'd be able to see a place from which the universe expanded.
		But we are embedded in our universe.
		And from anyone's point of view, everywhere in the universe was where the Big Bang happened.
		That's the reason the cosmic background radiation is everywhere.
		You look in any direction, it's there.
		The Big Bang was happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but not at equal amounts, right?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
		I mean, it's more or less.
		There's clumps and dots and stuff like that.
		But from every direction, it's there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But not in equal strength.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Very close to equal strength.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		we are that will see that would seem not And if it's not much weaker, then something's wrong.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's much weaker now than it was then.
		Absolutely.
		But don't forget the stuff that is stronger passed by us many years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but it was stronger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		then it either way you look at it the opposite way that out at the edge it's stronger or has it all uh...
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		And you can think of these photons, these light particles, as wiggles on the balloon.
		And as the balloon expands, those wiggles stretch out.
		That stretching out is the cooling of those photons.
		These photons are moving around on the surface of this balloon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		These scientists are always making us ants on balloons or something.
		So I'm an ant on a balloon.
		I take a little piece of sand and I rub it back and forth until the balloon blows.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you were a godlike ant who could stand outside, you'd say, oh, there's the center of the balloon.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		But if you're stuck on the balloon surface, you can never see where that center is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's right.
		Unless you blow up the balloon.
		That's right.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Charles Scythe.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi there.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Robert in London, Ontario.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Robert.
unidentified		CJBK, great show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Sorry, the doctor, I missed the name.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Charles, well, not Dr. Sythe.
		Just Charles Scythe.
		How about that?
unidentified		Okay, great.
		You mentioned something about the theory of incompleteness.
		And it sounded familiar to something I read about, maybe I'm getting my theories mixed up.
		I thought it was called the theory of falsifiability.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Ah, yes.
		The two interact with each other in some ways.
		But the falsifiability is a concept which has to do with the philosophy of science.
		Incompleteness has to do with mathematics.
		Falsifiability is the idea that if you're to do something in science, you have to be able, if you have an idea that is testable in science, you have to be able to prove it wrong.
		Otherwise, it's not really science.
		You have to be able to try to disprove this theorem.
		And if you can't disprove this theorem, at least in theory, if you can't do an experiment that would test it and possibly prove it wrong, it's really not science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		There you have it.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Charles Seif.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Gentle people.
		You are cordially invited to read WAP Speed A Plus, the book.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we would learn what.
unidentified		I have a question about the speed of light.
		Yes.
		Isn't it true that the only thing we know about the speed of light is that it's 299,792,458 meters per Earth ship second?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
unidentified		Ship second only.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, the second, part of the thing about the relativity is that it doesn't matter which second you're using.
		If you're using a second on Earth, or you're using a second on a spaceship, or you're a second completely stationary, it doesn't matter.
		You measure the speed of light.
		It will come out exactly the same.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think his point was, as measured from Earth only?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or would the measurements as made on Jupiter be different?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It would be exactly the same.
		That's what's so interesting about the speed of light in relativity.
		No matter how you're moving, no matter what you're doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a constant.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		It's a constant.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you, toward the end of the show, is always a place where you ask something like this, Charles.
		And, you know, this show deals a lot with ufology and with things that are pretty far out there a lot of times.
		And many of them involve the probability, if not certainty, that there is life elsewhere.
		And I wonder how you settle in on that question.
		I mean, we do know now, modern science has shown us, astronomy has shown us, that there are planets probably around most suns, or a whole lot of suns, and that would certainly increase the probability of life, wouldn't it?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I would think so, yes.
		And I do suspect, I mean, this is pretty much faith also.
		It's not all that informed by data, since we're the only life we know of.
		I suspect there is life beyond Earth.
		I'm much more agnostic about intelligent life.
		Why?
		Why?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure that intelligent life is a necessary product of evolution.
		If you think about it, it took 4 billion years for the Earth, a very fertile ground for life, to produce intelligent life, life that is able to communicate and travel out in space.
		We only have about a billion years of life left on Earth.
		So it took us 80% of lifetime of Earth to produce intelligent life.
		Could it be that intelligent life is a fluke?
		Maybe.
		I don't know.
		I think intelligent life is obviously harder to produce than just life.
		And intelligent life that can actually communicate or travel with another civilization is harder still.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you're a numbers guy.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		But the thing is, you can't extrapolate with no data.
		People have tried.
		There's the famous Drake equation I'm sure you've encountered.
		Yes, what about that?
		What it does is you take all these probabilities and multiply them together.
		And we have some of those numbers, but for other of those numbers, we have no idea.
		So if we have no idea, the whole equation doesn't really make sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you tend to believe there's probably not other intelligent life out there.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I think there might be.
		I suspect that the probability of our ever encountering one of these intelligent civilizations is pretty slim, but I'm agnostic about it.
		I mean, I'd love to see it.
		I would absolutely love to see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would it surprise you?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you'd be much more likely to believe that not only is there not a God, but there's not other life, intelligent life, that we would ever encounter.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a pretty lonely, dark place to be in.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		No afterlife, nothing.
unidentified		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty lonely and dark.
		All right.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Charles Seif.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		I just had a little comment to make.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		I'm not, I guess, the best person religiously, but I do have a strong belief in God.
		In fact, I served a two-year mission for my church, and I've kind of come to the conclusion that religion cannot be proven scientifically, that it needs to be proven spiritually.
		And I think spirituality is a deeper sense that's inside of your heart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't think that spirituality might eventually be proven scientifically, sir?
unidentified		Well, it could.
		But I think that too often, I think that people, like some of the things that are going on in the world, I think that people are trying to play God instead of just believing in him and trusting in him and trying to eventually get back to him.
		And I think that's why we're here on this earth is to test ourselves, you know, to prove that we are going to be 100% committed to him and what he wanted us to do in the first place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so your question is?
unidentified		It's just a comment that I think that too often we just hear too many people saying there is no God because he can't be proven scientifically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, and your response to that is?
unidentified		Ask him, go to the sword.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, I appreciate it, and I certainly get the idea, and it comes down to one word: faith, of course.
		Faith is what?
		Faith is a belief in something that you can't prove, right, Charles?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's absolutely right.
		And in fact, I don't think that science and faith are incompatible.
		They just don't seem to move in the same spheres.
		Stephen Jay Gould called them non-overlapping magisteria, that faith and religion worked and explained certain things, and science explains others.
		My sphere is science, and I just never was able to move to the other sphere for better or for worse.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's got it.
		Good.
		International Line, you're on the air with Charles Sci-Fi.
unidentified		Yeah, I come in here from the Franciscan Coast in British Columbia.
		British Columbia.
		Now, given the background radiation as a point source, and let's say that somebody in Paramp being the other side of it, how fast, what velocity would somebody in Peramp, let's say, have going through the universe?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Let's see.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		I'm not quite sure I understand the question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think I do.
		What velocity would anybody have?
		You, Charles, wherever you are, and me in Peramp.
		What velocity are we actually moving through the universe?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
		Part of what Einstein says is that there is no stationary signpost to tell you when you're at rest with respect to the universe.
		It's hard to say what velocity we're moving.
		We on Earth are spinning around at 1,000 miles an hour plus, and then we're moving around the Sun.
		I don't even know the velocity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't matter, but it can be easily calculated and proven, and all the rest of it.
		That's science.
		We know because we have two objects, one measured against the speed of the other.
		But in terms of the larger movement, we have no reference.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		Although you can use the cosmic background radiation to look at it, and you will see a red shift or a blue shift if you're moving with respect to it.
		But I don't have the actual numbers with respect to that.
		But Einstein says that doesn't really matter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that what he finally said?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't matter.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, all velocities are created equal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Charles Scyth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, how you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sir.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		I just had a question about the speed of light and science fiction, that type of stuff.
		As far as here on Earth, we have no means to travel at the speed of light.
		That is correct, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		So, I mean, do they have ideas on how they could accomplish this sort of thing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's go with that.
		In other words, could man ever, in your opinion, travel at or greater than the speed of light?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		There is a theoretical possibility that it could happen.
		You might have heard of things called wormholes.
		These are the based upon actual scientific ideas.
		People like Kip Thorne at Caltech have investigated the properties of these things.
		It's like a rip in the fabric of time.
		And if you travel through that rip, it could be as if you traveled faster than light.
		But you can't achieve light speeds or faster than light speeds by conventional means, by putting a big engine behind you and pushing, because that would be a violation of relativity.
		But there might be theoretical ways around it, which is well beyond our technology at the moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then wasn't that motion picture contact really at least a scenario that is possible in terms of contact, more likely, say, than something traveling across light years and light years and light years to physically reach us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that a scenario more probable?
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or maybe that makes the whole thing so improbable that nothing will happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, if this is possible, no one really knows whether it's possible or just a theoretical construct.
		But yes, that could well be a means of contact.
		Who knows?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Once again, your books, which are available, with the newest one being Alpha and Omega, The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe.
		And is your other book still available?
unidentified		Yes, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And that would be Zero, The Biography of a Dangerous Idea.
		I can't tell you how I appreciate your being here this night.
		It's brave, I think, to come on the air and talk of these things and probably put your head in the chopping block a little bit along the way.
		And you did very well.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, I had a blast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, then we will do it again, my friend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And good night.
charles seife ▲ ● ▼		You too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is Charles Seife, ladies and gentlemen.
		That was an awful lot of fun.
		Remember, if you have something So if you have something incredibly dramatic to discuss, what you want to do is fire me off an email.
		Between now and tomorrow night, in other words, you've got a little less than 24 hours to think about it now.
		Send me an email with your phone number, and we will call you.
		Send that email to artbell at AOL.com or artbell at mindspring.com as we approach some like 2 a.m. in the morning.

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