David Kipping is an astronomer at Columbia University, director of the Cool Worlds Lab, and host of the Cool Worlds YouTube channel.
EPISODE LINKS:
David’s X Profile: https://x.com/david_kipping
David’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCGHZpIpAWJQ-Jy_CeCdXhMA
Cool Worlds Lab: https://coolworldslab.com/
0:00 – 1:49 – Intro
1:49 – 8:15 – Science Communication
8:15 – 13:30 – The Downfall of Space Exploration, Fermi Paradox
13:30 – 17:43 – Mining Asteroids, Economic Reward of Space Exploration
17:43 – 23:00 – Are we alone in the universe?
23:00 – 30:32 – Rare Earth Hypothesis
30:32 – 37:32 – How do we search for extraterrestrial life?
37:32 – 43:29 – How would we Terraform Mars? Really good!
43:29 – 50:41 – Ethics of Colonizing Space
50:41 – 52:30 – Antarctica
52:30 – 59:22 – What came before the Big Bang?
59:22 – 1:06:32 – Agrippa’s Trilemma, God, Religion
1:06:32 – 1:11:55 – Alien Gods, Theology
1:11:55 – 1:17:40 – Existential Threats
1:17:40 – 1:24:17 – Increasing Longevity, Short-term thinking
1:24:17 – 1:30:15 – Shape of the Universe (Really interesting)
1:30:15 – 1:35:30 – Singularity, Time relativity (Really good)
1:35:30 – 1:42:00 – Writing Science Fiction
1:42:00 – 1:49:40 – We’re probably not living in a Simulation? (Very Good)
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Thanks for having me on, let’s keep talking!
Here’s a hypothesis for you…. We, as humans, for any number of reasons, lost the ability to habitate Earth. We have yet to achieve FTL travel, but we have identified the planet closest to earth which is capable of supporting life as we know it. And we have perfected targeted cryo-stasis, while integrating VR via a digital neural interface…. We are currently in route to a new planet…
And life as we know it could more accurately be described as an in flight movie…
C’est la vie?
Landing Dr. Kipping for an interview is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. He is our modern day Carl Sagan as far as I'm concerned. His numerous contributions to the science of Astronomy and his style of presenting in his videos, are truly enlightening and entertaining.
Since they affirmed that we moon landed I closed the podcast. From here on all will be bias
39:45
@59min: Yes. Strongly agree.
For me, communication with intelligent civilizations is possible.
Just think about this, we as humans are intelligent if we try to communicate with a dolphin. Yes, we don't understand them, but the question to ask is how intelligent they are in trying to communicate with us to make us understand. Are dolphins trying different ways to make us understand whereas humans would use drawings, language, experiments, machines, etc in trying to understand them.
So if we try to communicate with aliens who are much more intelligent than us, surely they would have to have gone through the various stages of evolution in order to travel etc, so both humans and aliens would use all possible techniques in trying to communicate with each other.
Even if we dont understand the language, we would try to understand body language. Use things in common for communication.
Example take travel for example. We would show how we do it physically and they see what we are trying to show them and they would do the same.
I'm enjoying this conversation very much but the out of sync voices are very distracting.
David's take on simulation makes imho no sense, he makes what looks like silly assumptions to me. We do run simulations, then how is it possible to claim simulation may technologically not be possible? And how do you determine whether you're in a simulation, whether it is realistic or not? Obviously there will be limitations, but how are limitations in a simulation different from the limitations due to the laws of nature we encounter? The way I look at it, our universe is very analogous to the complexity development simulations we run. Start with a few simple rules, let it run and see complexity develop. Big bang = booting program, simple rules = mathematical universe/laws of nature, pixels/bits = quantization, developing complexity = elemental particles interacting and combining to everything we see around us. If you want you may even add that running simulations in parallel (on different machines, different instances on one machine or virtual machines on a hypervisor) equates the different varieties of multiverse we theorize. Don't know whether we're in a simulation, but as far as I can see everything we know about the universe is consistent with a scaled up version of the development simulations we run to study self organization and emerging complexity.
No way! What a duo!!!
You already lost me
Er
JASON BRESHEARS
ARCHAIX
WILL EXPLAIN
AND YOU AIN'T GONNA
LIKE IT
Great work ♥️ Cheers gentlemen 🙏
The Antarctica argument is so weak. The reason it's not developed is because there's an international agreement not to develop Antarctica. The entire continent is basically a protected park.
Explaining how things are done scientifically doesn’t, to me, deny God- but proves his existence even more
You weren't ready for Dr. Kipping, you simply didn't add to the conversation, just repeated whatever he said without any input from your part. You need to keep up..
Ok I watch everything with Dr. Kipping but after reading those comments I've got to see it NOW. Love @coolworlds!
The religion conversation was absolutely top tier stuff. I still believe in God and science. Not anyone else's god. My god. Luke 17:21 – The Kingdom of God is Within You.
That was The most thought inspiring conversation I've had the pleasure of listening to in a long time. Was hoping for a little bit longer take on the singularity and AI bit, however, this was brilliant. That particular theory on simulation was new to me, but if this reality is the sewer, and if you consider each brain a computer, then in theory each human can simulate a reality.. which we essentially do during dreamtime since to the brain it's just as real as when we are awake.. Imagine an astronomer, a neuroscientist and philosopher or a practitioner of lucid dreaming having that discussion?! All the popcorn!! Anyways, that was a great ep!
Thanks for bringing David
Dr. Kipping is one of the best science communicators of our time. So lucky to have this type of platform and being able to hear his explanations. Big fan.
Mark I really liked your idea about the shape of the universe, it makes so much sense. I like to think of it as an organism personally, and I think everybody has their own view of what is the shape of its expanse. I also agree with what you said about time speeding up. I saw somebody say a few days ago it was August 1st 5 minutes ago (and so it'll be Christmas in a few hours), and I was thinking before I saw that how fast this month in particular went by (I hope the next few months don't go by this fast).