Speaker 1: Hey, Alry, I've always wondered how did you learn to draw?
Speaker 1: So well? Oh, well, thank you for saying that I
Speaker 1: draw well. But I would attribute to practice. You know,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time doodling on my notebooks
Speaker 1: when I probably should have been paying attention in class. Well,
Speaker 1: did you ever wish you could just like skip all
Speaker 1: that practice, Like if the twenty year old me could
Speaker 1: draw like the forty year old me. Yeah, like accelerate
Speaker 1: your skills. Yeah, but then what would I have done
Speaker 1: in class, like pay attention? Which class are we talking
Speaker 1: about here? Well, A little embarrassed to say, but it
Speaker 1: was mostly physics. Well then I'm glad one of us
Speaker 1: was doodling and one of us was paying attention. Wait,
Speaker 1: you were doodling too. I was paying attention to my
Speaker 1: doodles him or handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I usually paid
Speaker 1: attention in physics class. Paying attention? Now, do you pay
Speaker 1: attention when you teach physics? That's what I want to know?
Speaker 1: Or are you sort of an autopilot at this point? No?
Speaker 1: In fact, when I lecture, I solve problems I haven't
Speaker 1: seen before. I put fresh problems up on the board
Speaker 1: and solve them on the spot, No kidding, what did
Speaker 1: you can't do it? I think that's actually really valuable
Speaker 1: for the students to see me get stuck and then
Speaker 1: have to back up and go in another direction. And also,
Speaker 1: after twenty years, I'm pretty much able to solve any
Speaker 1: freshman level physics problem on the spot. Even how to
Speaker 1: retrieve a homework from a dog's stomach or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's an engineering problem. To buy you engineering, I guess.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of our Heart Radio where
Speaker 1: we like to talk about everything in the universe and
Speaker 1: we try to explain it all in about fifty minutes.
Speaker 1: Everything is fair game to this podcast, from what's going
Speaker 1: on in the inside of black holes to how many
Speaker 1: dimensions there are of space and time to what is
Speaker 1: the smallest, tiniest particle out there and how does it
Speaker 1: all fit together to make this incredible, bonkers, glorious, delicious
Speaker 1: and mysterious universe that we are sharing. Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: are all in the same universe together and we're all
Speaker 1: looking out into the stars, wondering what's it all made of,
Speaker 1: what's going on up there? What is possible in this
Speaker 1: crazy cosmos that we live in. At least we're assuming
Speaker 1: that all of our listeners are in our universe. Maybe
Speaker 1: this podcast leaks out somewhere into the multiverse. What wait,
Speaker 1: you mean we might have listeners from a different universe.
Speaker 1: I check the email adjust if everybody who writes to me,
Speaker 1: but I can't actually trace it. It might come from
Speaker 1: another part of the multiverse, like another part of the
Speaker 1: Internet or the dark Web perhaps, or are you talking
Speaker 1: about like the dark universe? Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?
Speaker 1: What's possible? And that's the subject of this podcast, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's real and what's possible and can
Speaker 1: it all be explained? Yeah, because we like to talk
Speaker 1: about the real science that's out there and all of
Speaker 1: the knowledge we've gotten about the universe and the great
Speaker 1: work that scientists are doing. We also like to talk
Speaker 1: about what's possible and what might happen in the future.
Speaker 1: And I at least like to read science fiction, which
Speaker 1: means I'm always getting my brain deep into some alternate
Speaker 1: fictional universe and trying to figure out what are the
Speaker 1: rules of that universe and could our universe actually have
Speaker 1: those same rules. Yeah. I don't read a lot of
Speaker 1: science fiction, but I do love listening to podcasts that
Speaker 1: talk about science fiction, or hosting them for example, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or listening to them as they're being recorded. That's pretty
Speaker 1: exciting too. Yeah. So sometimes we like to talk to
Speaker 1: science fiction authors out there who are coming up with
Speaker 1: the next great ideas that scientists might pursue in the future.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes it's fun to solve the mystery of this universe,
Speaker 1: but it's also fun to liberate your mind and let
Speaker 1: it play around in other universes and think about what
Speaker 1: the rules could be over there. And that's not just
Speaker 1: playing around intellectually to dip into another pool and figure
Speaker 1: out what it's like to swim over there. But sometimes
Speaker 1: the ideas and science fiction really do leak into our
Speaker 1: universe and help us reveal what's going on over here.
Speaker 1: So I consider science fiction authors to be at the
Speaker 1: extreme edge of theoretical particle physics. Yeah, because that's a
Speaker 1: lot of what you do as a physicist, right, you
Speaker 1: sort of sit around and thinking about what could be
Speaker 1: what kinds of crazy explanations could help us understand what
Speaker 1: we're seeing, the experiments and things like that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the universe is literally stranger than fiction. And sometimes
Speaker 1: to think up the explanations to understand why we're seeing
Speaker 1: this weird stuff we see, we need a lot of creativity, so,
Speaker 1: as usual, we borrow it from other places. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: today we're talking to a science fiction author who has
Speaker 1: one book out. How many books out does she have?
Speaker 1: This is her first book, but she is working on
Speaker 1: the sequel, right, so to be on the program, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about science fiction universe of Essa Hanson. That's right,
Speaker 1: as a. Hanson is the author of the book No
Speaker 1: Feck Gloss, a super fun book that I just finished
Speaker 1: reading and sa, like many of the folks were interviewing,
Speaker 1: is a debut author. So congratulations to her on breaking
Speaker 1: into this field. Oh that's great. How did you hear
Speaker 1: about this book? How did I hear about this book? Man?
Speaker 1: That is a hard question. Do you read every science
Speaker 1: twitching book that comes out? No, don't be ridiculous. Only
Speaker 1: of them, and I'll have time to read all of them.
Speaker 1: You were served one for sleeping, for sleeping, good doodling,
Speaker 1: doodling while you're reading it. May have been an Amazon suggestion,
Speaker 1: or maybe a listener said it to me. I don't
Speaker 1: even remember. But this is her debut novel, and she's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting author because she has another job which
Speaker 1: is also pretty exciting sort of in the world of
Speaker 1: science fiction as well. Yes, she is immersed in science
Speaker 1: fiction because she is the sound designer for movies, and
Speaker 1: she's working on lots of the Marvel movies like The Avengers. Wow.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel like a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: appreciate sound design, but it's so important in movies, Like
Speaker 1: it really makes the world come alive and then feel real. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I talked to her about it's super fun. She has
Speaker 1: to decide, like what does it sound like when Iron
Speaker 1: Man punches Captain America's shield? Or what does it sound
Speaker 1: like when Loki punches Captain America. Like every single combination
Speaker 1: has to sound different to sort of orally supplement the
Speaker 1: story and give the viewer a sense of like what's
Speaker 1: going on. There's a really rich sound texture that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people aren't consciously aware of, but
Speaker 1: it's really enhancing their experience. Right, we need a sound
Speaker 1: designer for our podcast, and like, what does it sound
Speaker 1: like when Jorge makes a bad pun in front of
Speaker 1: thousands of people. That's the podcast. It's already rich in
Speaker 1: awkward perhaps the sound of awkwardness. And she's a really
Speaker 1: interesting person because she has synesthesia, which means that she
Speaker 1: experiences sounds slightly differently from the way we do. She
Speaker 1: told me that she's sort of feels their texture, like
Speaker 1: as she's listening to some things, she can tell whether
Speaker 1: it feels right. So for her, sound is more tactile,
Speaker 1: I think than it is for most people. M M,
Speaker 1: I see. Did you ask her what sound Robert Downey Jr.
Speaker 1: Makes When he rolls his eyes or how often did
Speaker 1: she have to kind of pace? I am grood for
Speaker 1: the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I did, but unfortunately
Speaker 1: there's some ironclad n das there that prevented her from
Speaker 1: spilling any details. Oh man, that's exciting. But she is
Speaker 1: a debut science fiction novel author and her story is
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. You really liked it. I really liked it.
Speaker 1: I also found the writing to be really unusual and
Speaker 1: very creative. The visuals in her book are really incredible.
Speaker 1: They're like cinematic in a way that they create this
Speaker 1: impression in your mind. You can really see this stuff happening.
Speaker 1: It was really different from anything else I've read, and
Speaker 1: I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I wonder if her SyncE
Speaker 1: theseus sort of affects that. You know, that's when sort
Speaker 1: of your different sensations kind of mixed together inside of
Speaker 1: your brain, right, like you hear colors or you feel
Speaker 1: textures and things and things like that exactly. So that's
Speaker 1: sort of mixture of sensations. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: different for every person. But it might be that, or
Speaker 1: might just be that she's immersed in these movies and
Speaker 1: so she has a very like visual sense of how
Speaker 1: the action should play out. But while she describes in
Speaker 1: her book a very alien and weird universe, I had
Speaker 1: no trouble picturing it in my mind, and lots of
Speaker 1: the action scenes were really incredible. I really felt like
Speaker 1: I was watching a movie sort of in my own head.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, All right, Well let's get into what the
Speaker 1: book is about, and then we'll talk about the kind
Speaker 1: of the signs of it, which she said deals in
Speaker 1: the multiverse, this idea that there are more than one
Speaker 1: universe out there and maybe an infinite number of universes,
Speaker 1: and then we'll hear an interview that you had with her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun talking to her. All right,
Speaker 1: I know. So what is the book No Fake Glass about.
Speaker 1: So it takes place in a very different universe from
Speaker 1: our own. It's not like one of these near future
Speaker 1: almost Earth novels. This is a totally alien situation. But
Speaker 1: they are humans. The main characters are humans. But it's
Speaker 1: sort of been a very far future scenario where there
Speaker 1: are civilizations all over the galaxy and on lots of
Speaker 1: different planets, and the story follows the main character who's
Speaker 1: born a slave, lives on a planet, helps sort of
Speaker 1: tend these very dangerous, terrible creatures called the no Feck. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so you don't know if it is the far future
Speaker 1: or not. It's just sort of like this sort of
Speaker 1: like Star Trek. Maybe it's the future, maybe it's an
Speaker 1: alternate universe scenario, or maybe it's the deep past, right,
Speaker 1: you never really know. But we follow a main character
Speaker 1: who seems human and he raises these creatures, these no
Speaker 1: fact and they produce these weird sort of blobs called gloss,
Speaker 1: which like a pearl sort of you can hold in
Speaker 1: your hands. This shimmery substance of great value. Now these
Speaker 1: creatures that spelled n O p h e K no
Speaker 1: fect And what are they like? Are they like the
Speaker 1: worms and dune? Are they sort of like, you know,
Speaker 1: cows or dogs or what do they look like? We
Speaker 1: don't see them for very long because the first scene
Speaker 1: essentially is the entire colony being slaughtered. But my mental
Speaker 1: image of them is sort of like a cow sized
Speaker 1: super spider with an incredible array of sort of slicy
Speaker 1: teeth and little, you know, appendages coming out of its mouth.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they're pretty horrible. Now, it's terrifying. I know.
Speaker 1: He just gave me nightmares for the next couple of months.
Speaker 1: Well you should read her description though she's a better
Speaker 1: writer than I am, Like it makes it go down
Speaker 1: easier or it's more terrifying. Yeah, exactly. It's a crisper image,
Speaker 1: though I don't know either where you like it? Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. So they're dangerous, but they produce something really valuable,
Speaker 1: which is this gloss, and the slaves are the ones
Speaker 1: taking care of them. But in the very first scene,
Speaker 1: the entire colony is sort of liquidated by like a
Speaker 1: spaceship or by death ray from the sky. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't want to reveal too much, but basically everybody
Speaker 1: he knows is killed in front of him, and he
Speaker 1: just barely apes and some band of explorers that happens
Speaker 1: to be coming by scoops him up and whisks him away.
Speaker 1: So he's like the only person from his planet to
Speaker 1: survive this crazy calamity. And then he has to, I guess,
Speaker 1: figure out what was going on and why his colony
Speaker 1: was wiped out, and I imagine that's kind of what
Speaker 1: sets off the plot. Yeah, and then he's on a
Speaker 1: journey of discovery, both self discovery, like to figure out
Speaker 1: who he is in this larger context, and also now
Speaker 1: he's understanding this larger context he was living in but
Speaker 1: was unaware of. So he meets all these crazy aliens
Speaker 1: in this band of explorers, none of whom are human
Speaker 1: of course, and have all sorts of really weird biology.
Speaker 1: They also sort of take him around from planet a
Speaker 1: planet and show him the structure of the multiverse that
Speaker 1: he lived in without realizing it. Oh interesting, like everybody
Speaker 1: knows they live in a multiverse except maybe him because
Speaker 1: he was stuck into planet as a slave. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so these aliens they look humanoid or so. The
Speaker 1: aliens are a sort of human oid right. Mostly they
Speaker 1: have like two arms, two legs, and a head, but
Speaker 1: each of them has a weird characteristic. Some of them
Speaker 1: can change shape. Some of them are literally gender fluid,
Speaker 1: like they go back and forth between different genders. Other
Speaker 1: ones have features of their skin that constantly reveal their
Speaker 1: internal thoughts, like their internal emotions. Each one is really
Speaker 1: very creative and really unusual, like stuff I hadn't imagined before,
Speaker 1: but I could easily picture in my mind as she's
Speaker 1: describing it. So it was super fun to meet all
Speaker 1: these aliens and they all have like, you know, crazy
Speaker 1: personalities and a backstory, and he's sort of thrown into
Speaker 1: this cast of fun characters. Oh interesting, It's like he
Speaker 1: was rescued by Serenity. The ship Serenity was something like
Speaker 1: a rattack crew of explorers exactly, but none of them
Speaker 1: are human. They're all sort of like near human. And
Speaker 1: so he learns sort of the context of his universe,
Speaker 1: meaning that he lives in the multiverse. How do they
Speaker 1: know this? Everybody else seems to be aware that they
Speaker 1: live in a sort of set of universes where each
Speaker 1: universe is not an infinitely large thing. It's like a
Speaker 1: huge bubble. And apparently they used to be just one
Speaker 1: huge bubble, which was the single universe that existed, but
Speaker 1: then other smaller universes started bubbling off of it. So
Speaker 1: each multi versus like a bubble. Some of them are
Speaker 1: really really huge and some of them are much smaller. Interesting,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's get into the signs of multiverses
Speaker 1: a little bit later. But tell me what sort of
Speaker 1: happens then? Then what's the overall plot of the book.
Speaker 1: So he understands finally that he's been a slave, and
Speaker 1: he figures out who was running the slave colony and
Speaker 1: tries to understand why they decided to liquidate it essentially,
Speaker 1: and he discovers this larger socio economic structure that fuels
Speaker 1: the economic incentives for somebody to have, like a planet
Speaker 1: of slaves, raising these no effects, producing these glosses. And
Speaker 1: then he's on a crusade for justice. He wants to
Speaker 1: take those folks down, he wants to expose them, and
Speaker 1: he wants to get revenge. Interesting, he joins Antifa sort of,
Speaker 1: he's like, let's take down the man he does or
Speaker 1: alien I guess alien aliens. They're all aliens, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of young. He's like, you know, in his very
Speaker 1: early teens, so he's not really equipped to take this on.
Speaker 1: So they take him to some nearby space station where
Speaker 1: they have this really cool machine that can accelerate your body.
Speaker 1: You can like grow you up by five years or
Speaker 1: ten years, so you get bigger, stronger, and you accumulate skills. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it's like a shortcut kind of. It's like a shortcut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get in this machine and come out and
Speaker 1: you're five years older as if you've been training, and
Speaker 1: now you have like martial arts skills and you know
Speaker 1: how to fly a spaceship and all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: sort of like in the matrix how you know, they
Speaker 1: could just download skills into your mind, but it's a
Speaker 1: bit more physical. Interesting, but you can choose when you
Speaker 1: learn in that sort of accelerated time, like I want
Speaker 1: to be a koon Fu master, or I want to
Speaker 1: be a competent cartoonist, yeah, or I want to be
Speaker 1: an online doodler or whatever. You can pay for what
Speaker 1: you want, but it doesn't grow up your mind. You
Speaker 1: don't like become more emotionally mature. So then this is
Speaker 1: really interesting conflict within him where he seems older. He
Speaker 1: now has the skills of an older person, but he's
Speaker 1: still twelve years old at heart, and so it doesn't
Speaker 1: make great decisions. I think you're assuming that if he
Speaker 1: had grown up normally, he would have matured, which humans,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's always the case. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: still a twelve year old at heart, right, Well, that
Speaker 1: explains a lot. Maybe somebody accelerated you. But it's really
Speaker 1: fun because it helps you as the reader. You're also
Speaker 1: getting introduced to this world, and he is getting introduced
Speaker 1: to the world, so he's growing up rapidly and trying
Speaker 1: to acclimatize into the world, and you're getting thrown into
Speaker 1: it as a reader and trying to understand how this
Speaker 1: world works. So it sort of makes you feel like
Speaker 1: you're on this journey together a little bit. It makes
Speaker 1: you feel like a twelve year old stuck in the
Speaker 1: body over of a twenty year old. Al Right, well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the science in the book, the multiverse,
Speaker 1: accelerating your body and aliens, and then we'll get to
Speaker 1: your interview with science fiction author is A. Hanson, author
Speaker 1: of no fake clause. But first, let's take a quick break. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the science fiction universe of sa Hanson
Speaker 1: and her debut novel, No Fact Glass. Now, Daniel, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the science in this book. And you said,
Speaker 1: a big part of the plot is the multiverse. But
Speaker 1: it's not sort of like the quantum multiverse that maybe
Speaker 1: we've heard about. It's more like the bubble multiverse. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the bubble multiverse. And as you're referring to,
Speaker 1: in current cosmology, we have several ideas for what we
Speaker 1: mean by multiverse, all of which are totally different, and
Speaker 1: all of which are totally different from the idea she
Speaker 1: has in her book. So I think it's worth sort
Speaker 1: of unpacking. Oh, I see, she has a whole new,
Speaker 1: different idea for the multiverse. She does. She has an
Speaker 1: idea for the multiverse which is not one that cosmologists
Speaker 1: are currently imagining for our universe, though it's you know,
Speaker 1: sort of related maybe to one of them. So the
Speaker 1: simplest idea for the multiverse here in our universe is
Speaker 1: the idea that we can't see everything in the universe.
Speaker 1: There's a limit to like the observable universe. You can't
Speaker 1: see everything just because the speed of light is limited,
Speaker 1: and so it takes time for stuff to get here,
Speaker 1: which means we can't interact or see or observe anything
Speaker 1: past a certain distance. It's more than the age of
Speaker 1: the universe times the speed of light, because the universe
Speaker 1: is also expanding, but there's still this finite sphere around us,
Speaker 1: something like nineties three billion light years across, that we
Speaker 1: can interact with and can influence us. So the idea
Speaker 1: of the multiverse is just that there are multiple observable
Speaker 1: universes sort of like near each other, and if somebody
Speaker 1: is really really far away, a trillion light years away,
Speaker 1: they would have a different observable universe, And so the
Speaker 1: multiverse is then that set of observable universes. Oh, I see. Interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like we're all in the same space, but because
Speaker 1: of the distances, you might as well consider them different
Speaker 1: universes because we're so far away. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like where I am in South Pasadena and you and
Speaker 1: Orange County. We're both sort of in lay, but since
Speaker 1: it takes three hours with traffic, we're basically in different universes.
Speaker 1: And culturally it feels like another universe. You're all aliens.
Speaker 1: I used to feel like an alien when I got
Speaker 1: down here. Now it feels like home. You've been accelerated
Speaker 1: into an assimilated. Now you're slaved. Then maybe I'm the master.
Speaker 1: So that's the idea here of this multiverse is that
Speaker 1: there are sort of like pockets of universes. That's one
Speaker 1: idea of a multiverse. Another idea of the multiverse is
Speaker 1: that we don't know how our universe started. We know
Speaker 1: that it began with some really really rapid expansion of space,
Speaker 1: but we don't know what caused that. What hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that it was caused by the decay of some really
Speaker 1: weird field we call an infloton field, which filled all
Speaker 1: of space and sometimes randomly sort of decays into normal matter,
Speaker 1: which creates a whole universe, and it's like a pocket universe.
Speaker 1: And so then you can imagine that maybe somewhere else,
Speaker 1: far away, in this infloton field, another pocket universe was made,
Speaker 1: and this would be different from the first level multiverse
Speaker 1: because these different multiverses might have different physical laws, like
Speaker 1: they might follow the same fundamental rules. But it might
Speaker 1: be that the Higgs field ended up at a slightly
Speaker 1: different place in our universe and in the other universe,
Speaker 1: which would make particles have different masses and have really
Speaker 1: very different physics and chemistry and biology. Interesting, I see,
Speaker 1: So we're all still in the same kind of you know,
Speaker 1: continuum of this in ploton field, but like our space,
Speaker 1: like what we call space, it's its own little bubble,
Speaker 1: is its own little bubble, and there are different laws
Speaker 1: of physics in that bubble and in our bubble. So
Speaker 1: it might be like really impossible for us to even
Speaker 1: imagine what it's like or to ever communicate because we
Speaker 1: think that this infloton field is also expanding super duper rapidly,
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of light, which would make it
Speaker 1: literally impossible to ever send or receive a message to
Speaker 1: any of these other multiverses in this in slaton field.
Speaker 1: But like if two bubbles, you know, bumped into each other,
Speaker 1: would they connect or there or is there some sort
Speaker 1: of barrier in between? A great question. We think that
Speaker 1: couldn't happen because the infloton field is constantly expanding, and
Speaker 1: so it's creating new space, new infloton field space between
Speaker 1: our universe and the other ones faster than our universe
Speaker 1: could ever move through it. But there are some people
Speaker 1: who think that maybe there are some scenarios in which
Speaker 1: they bump into each other and then you get some clash,
Speaker 1: you know, like space where the Higgs field is this,
Speaker 1: another space with Higgs field is that, And now it
Speaker 1: caused one of the two Higgs field to collapse to
Speaker 1: the lower value. And there are some people who think
Speaker 1: that maybe that could leave like an imprint on the
Speaker 1: very early universe, and so they look for these sort
Speaker 1: of imprints on the early universe by looking for the
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background. Nobody's ever seen anything like that, but
Speaker 1: it's a fun thing to think about. I see, like
Speaker 1: if you look at the cosmic microwave background and notice
Speaker 1: like a big dent in it, it looks like we
Speaker 1: had a little fender bender with another universe there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are these rings in the cosmic Mergaway background radiation
Speaker 1: people look for. All right, So that's another idea for
Speaker 1: the multiverse. What are some of the other ideas and
Speaker 1: what's the idea in the book. Yeah, So the last
Speaker 1: idea for the multiverse that people really do think about
Speaker 1: in terms of current cosmology is the quantum multiverse that
Speaker 1: you mentioned, and this is a way they sort of
Speaker 1: understand why the way function and quantum mechanics, which describes
Speaker 1: what might happen every time a quantum particle is doing something,
Speaker 1: why it seems to pick one thing or another, Like
Speaker 1: if an electron can go left and it can go right,
Speaker 1: why does it seem to go right or why does
Speaker 1: it seem to go left? And the way we answer
Speaker 1: that question, or some people like Sean Carroll and other
Speaker 1: ever endians who proposed this multi world's interpretation of quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: the way they answer it is they say that the
Speaker 1: universe splits at every time a quantum particle can go
Speaker 1: left or right, it goes left, and there's another version
Speaker 1: of the universe created where it goes right. So it
Speaker 1: tries to avoid answering the question of why does the
Speaker 1: electron go left by saying it doesn't just go left,
Speaker 1: it does everything possible. We just happened to be in
Speaker 1: a left branch. And the consequences there are that the
Speaker 1: universe is constantly branching. So you have like an infinite,
Speaker 1: infinite infinite number of these versions of the universe, each
Speaker 1: of which are different by one quantum particle's decision. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty mind blowing. And that's kind of like this
Speaker 1: idea that maybe there's a version of the universe that's
Speaker 1: just like ours, but a little bit different or a
Speaker 1: lot different, you know, one where the dinosaurs didn't get
Speaker 1: it by the asteroid, or one where JFK wasn't assassinated.
Speaker 1: That's where this idea of like the multiple versions of
Speaker 1: the universe comes from. Yeah, where you became a professor
Speaker 1: of physics and I became a cartoon you know, crazy
Speaker 1: things like that, and where that's right, the podcast will
Speaker 1: be called John Daniel Explained the Universe. Yeah. And for
Speaker 1: some people this isn't a metaphor, this isn't like a
Speaker 1: hypothetical thought experiment. They believe that this is real, that
Speaker 1: those universes actually exist and they are out there. I
Speaker 1: personally find it ridiculous. I don't think it actually answers
Speaker 1: the question of the collapse of the way of function,
Speaker 1: because we still have to answer like why are we
Speaker 1: on this branch? You know. It tries to avoid answering
Speaker 1: the question of why one branch feels special by saying
Speaker 1: there are all these other branches, but one branch still
Speaker 1: feels special because I'm in that branch and I'm not
Speaker 1: in the other branches. Well, the other Daniel things he
Speaker 1: is special, but also, yeah, well I didn't know that
Speaker 1: the other Daniel exists, though I can't take his data
Speaker 1: seriously anyway. Those are the ideas of the multiverse that
Speaker 1: are sort of existent in current cosmology. Says, a multiverse
Speaker 1: is quite different. She imagined, first of all, that the
Speaker 1: multiverse started as a single bubble universe, and then new
Speaker 1: universes were created like sort of nucleated off of it,
Speaker 1: like at the edges of our universe, or like in
Speaker 1: the middle of our universe is a bubble or what
Speaker 1: does that mean both? She imagines these bubble universes created
Speaker 1: at the edge, and so there's this transition between the universes.
Speaker 1: She calls it the rind, like you know the peel
Speaker 1: of an orange, where you go from one universe to
Speaker 1: the other. But you can also have a new universe created,
Speaker 1: like as a sub universe within your universe. This ragtag
Speaker 1: group of explorers, for example, has a spaceship that's capable
Speaker 1: of creating its own sub universe to wrap around itself,
Speaker 1: and it can use that as a sort of like
Speaker 1: method of propulsion and also protection. There's this awesome scene
Speaker 1: where it wraps itself in this new universe and then
Speaker 1: it dives into the heart of a star and they
Speaker 1: literally fly right through a star and it's sort of
Speaker 1: like going underwater, but they're like understar. They're flying through it,
Speaker 1: looking at the interior of a star. Super awesome. Wow.
Speaker 1: And so you can create universes too, like you can
Speaker 1: some of manipulate this inflocon field and like create a
Speaker 1: layer of universe between you and other stuff. As we're
Speaker 1: all about it in the interview, you can hear it.
Speaker 1: She doesn't go as deep as like understanding how you
Speaker 1: could possibly influence the infloton field. She totally admits to
Speaker 1: handwaving her way around that. But in her universe, yes,
Speaker 1: you can create new universes, and new universes are being
Speaker 1: created all the time. And the cool thing is that
Speaker 1: you have different laws of physics in each of these
Speaker 1: sort of bubble universes, and when you transition from one
Speaker 1: to the other, things get like translated. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like do you go to another country and suddenly become
Speaker 1: you know, like French Orge or something that is George. Cool.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. And so then I guess one cushion
Speaker 1: is how do they get around so well in this universe?
Speaker 1: Do they have like faster than light travel? They have
Speaker 1: spaceships that can essentially propel themselves using these like relative
Speaker 1: universe laws of physics. So you like wrap yourself in
Speaker 1: this bubble and then you can move through this other
Speaker 1: universe and sort of pop back out. Oh, I see,
Speaker 1: like you take shortcuts through other universes. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: take advantage of the fact that different universes have different laws.
Speaker 1: So then that's the universe In her sci fi universe,
Speaker 1: it's like a universe with little neighborhoods here and there.
Speaker 1: And how does that affect I guess the you know,
Speaker 1: cosmo politics of how people treat each other. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it means that there's a lot to explore because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different universes out there for people
Speaker 1: to discover. And she's thought a lot about the economics
Speaker 1: of this situation, like how would a huge, diverse, interplanetary,
Speaker 1: multi species civilization actually work, Who would want to go
Speaker 1: and explore, who would pay them to do that? And
Speaker 1: she very specifically chosen to be sort of like a
Speaker 1: little bit of an anarchy, you know, no tight central
Speaker 1: government with a single set of laws, because she thought
Speaker 1: that was going to be unrealistic. So there's this whole
Speaker 1: collection of folks called cartographers that essentially incentivize exploration, pay
Speaker 1: people to bring back information about what's going on in
Speaker 1: this other multiverse were more created, and this this whole
Speaker 1: layer of mystery because they don't really fully understand the
Speaker 1: physics of it. Some of the technology needed to create
Speaker 1: and traverse these multiverses is left over from an ancient
Speaker 1: now past civilization that seemed to have a better handle
Speaker 1: on the physics than the current set of aliens. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like magic to them. Kind of yeah, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like magic, or at least it's like treasure.
Speaker 1: When you find a little piece of this leftover technology
Speaker 1: from that law civilization, they can do things you can't
Speaker 1: understand and couldn't reproduce. And now, as a physicist, how
Speaker 1: does this idea of the multiverse soundy? Does it sound plausible?
Speaker 1: Does it fit within some of the theories that you have.
Speaker 1: It's a little hard to imagine how it's plausible. I mean,
Speaker 1: having different laws of physics in these bubbles, and then
Speaker 1: the transitions between them. It's pretty hard to get your
Speaker 1: mind around. You know. People wonder like, how could you
Speaker 1: have different laws of physics in different places? And it
Speaker 1: depends a little bit on the semantics. You know, we
Speaker 1: talk about different laws of physics, we mean the rules
Speaker 1: by which the things around us operate under. You know,
Speaker 1: like what happens to an electron when it flies through
Speaker 1: a magnetic field, or you know, how does the Higgs
Speaker 1: boson decay? Those aren't actually what we think are the
Speaker 1: most fundamental laws of physics. Those are the laws of
Speaker 1: physics that we have here today, in our current temperature
Speaker 1: and our current time. After the birth of the universe.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the real fundamental laws of the
Speaker 1: universe are. We're trying to figure that out, right. We
Speaker 1: don't know how the universe works when it's hot and dead,
Speaker 1: it's like in the original Big Bang. But we think
Speaker 1: that what we're looking at is what we call an
Speaker 1: effective theory, so as things cool down, they sort of
Speaker 1: crystallize into the laws that we have now. But we
Speaker 1: think it might have gone differently. We think that like
Speaker 1: some random fluctuations in the early universe might have led
Speaker 1: the same fundamental laws of physics to turn into different
Speaker 1: effective laws of physics we have today. So it's possible
Speaker 1: to imagine different parts of space or different parts of
Speaker 1: the multiverse having different effective laws of physics, But it
Speaker 1: seems like the fundamental rules really have to be the same,
Speaker 1: because in the end, the source code for the universe
Speaker 1: has to just be one thing. It can't like change
Speaker 1: from here to there. Right, Well, it could have the
Speaker 1: same source code, but as you said, it could have
Speaker 1: maybe like different initial conditions, right Like maybe you know,
Speaker 1: you could have a black hole with a universe in
Speaker 1: the side of it, and somehow, you know, the value
Speaker 1: of the mass of the electron is a little bit
Speaker 1: different inside of it. Yeah, that's totally possible, And then
Speaker 1: you have to worry about these transitions, Like at the transitions,
Speaker 1: what happens. You know, we know that if the the
Speaker 1: Higgs field is different in one place and another, that
Speaker 1: it will cause the place with the higher field value
Speaker 1: to collapse to the lower field value, and so that
Speaker 1: kind of thing will spread, Like if you had created
Speaker 1: a machine which collapsed the Higgs field value locally to zero,
Speaker 1: that would spread throughout the universe and basically change the
Speaker 1: universe's effective laws of physics. To something else, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, not recommended, although it sounds that you consider
Speaker 1: it sounds like you thought about what happens. I keep
Speaker 1: an open mind, you know, yeah, exactly, try not to
Speaker 1: just reject things out of hand. And I think about
Speaker 1: it's sort of like analogous to phases. Imagine that the
Speaker 1: universe was like a huge pool of water and some
Speaker 1: parts of it had gotten cold and some parts of
Speaker 1: it had gotten hot. Then aliens or humans who had
Speaker 1: evolved under those circumstances would imagine that those were the
Speaker 1: fundamental constraints of the universe and would understand the way
Speaker 1: things work in that phase or in this phase, and
Speaker 1: wouldn't understand like the fundamental over all rules. So we
Speaker 1: just think that we're sort of stuck in one phase
Speaker 1: of the universe this temperature or this pressure, this age,
Speaker 1: and we've learned the rules of this universe. But you
Speaker 1: could have different you know, phases of space in other
Speaker 1: parts of the universe and still follow the same fundamental rules.
Speaker 1: But what would happen to the transitions. That would be
Speaker 1: pretty tricky. I mean, sometimes transitions are stable, right. You
Speaker 1: can have like a frozen lake and it doesn't all
Speaker 1: sublimate into the air. Depends a little bit on the details,
Speaker 1: but sometimes you have transitions that are unstable, where things
Speaker 1: do sublimate and there's attention there because of the conflict
Speaker 1: and that that can't survive. So he asked, like, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the universe. You could just say, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: just going through a phase. Don't worry. It'll go through
Speaker 1: puberty soon and then things will get really crazy unless
Speaker 1: it just accelerates its way through puberty. Right there you go.
Speaker 1: I feel like that happened to my son a little
Speaker 1: bit because he spent all of his middle school in
Speaker 1: the pandemic, so he just sort of like skipped middle school,
Speaker 1: which is either like wonderful because middle school wasn't my
Speaker 1: favorite time of universe or terrible because you had to
Speaker 1: spend a year and a half inside. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's two ways to look at accelerating pastive life events, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: middle school is its own pocket universe of formal terture
Speaker 1: for everyone. Really. All right, well, let's get into your
Speaker 1: interview with science fiction author Sa Hanson, author of the
Speaker 1: book No Fat Claws. I think you asked her about
Speaker 1: this idea of the multiverse. Where she got that idea
Speaker 1: this idea for aliens being interesting, and this idea of
Speaker 1: accelerating your growth and your cognitive development. So she had
Speaker 1: answers for all of these questions, right, Daniel, she did,
Speaker 1: Indeed she did. Indeed, I'm always amazing grateful when an
Speaker 1: author is willing to talk to a busist about how
Speaker 1: they built their universe. Right, that must be a little terrifying,
Speaker 1: like running into a no effect book. Perhaps I try
Speaker 1: to be friendly. Yeah, you could try pulling all your
Speaker 1: mindibles and spider like appendages before you shred her science
Speaker 1: to bits. It's like that scene when the monster smiles.
Speaker 1: All right. Here is Daniel's interview with sign switching author
Speaker 1: as a handsOn. So it's my great pleasure to welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcasts A Hanson, the author of the book
Speaker 1: No Fact Loss Asa. Thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for inviting me on the show. Wonderful. Well, before
Speaker 1: we dig into your book, we'd love to hear a
Speaker 1: little bit about your background. How you ended up being
Speaker 1: a science fiction author. Yeah, I've been reading and writing
Speaker 1: since I can remember, which is a really boring origin story.
Speaker 1: But there there wasn't really one experience or piece of
Speaker 1: media that kicked me into it. You know. I grew
Speaker 1: up with a lot of the popular sci fi shows
Speaker 1: and movies from the eighties and nineties like Star Trek,
Speaker 1: Star Wars, Stargate when so many seemed to have Star
Speaker 1: in the name. I also devoured nature shows like National
Speaker 1: Geographic and spend most of my time outdoors exploring nature
Speaker 1: since I've lived in or very close to backcountry areas
Speaker 1: in national parks in the Western US and Canada. So
Speaker 1: combined with studying science, math, acts, and philosophy for pleasure,
Speaker 1: everything started to kind of come together in writing science
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy, which is such a great playground for
Speaker 1: an overactive imagination concepts and explore fun what if questions.
Speaker 1: And you use your imagination a lot in your other job,
Speaker 1: don't you. I do. I'm a sound designer for science
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy films from like Marvel and Disney and Pixar,
Speaker 1: so I definitely spend a lot of time in other
Speaker 1: worlds wonderful. Well. We have a series of questions we
Speaker 1: ask all of our science fiction author gifts so we
Speaker 1: can compare and contrast them. The first one is about
Speaker 1: Star Trek transporters. Is it your opinion that these devices
Speaker 1: kill you and recreate you somewhere else, or that they
Speaker 1: actually transport you from one place to another. I love
Speaker 1: this question because to me, it's asking about the nature
Speaker 1: of consciousness, Like, are we assuming that consciousness is an
Speaker 1: emergent phenomenon from the structure of the physical system, and
Speaker 1: that recreating it exactly from the quantum level up in
Speaker 1: some new location will generate that same consciousness with out interruption.
Speaker 1: I personally think there's something more fundamental going on with
Speaker 1: conscious beings, so I'm more likely to believe that the
Speaker 1: atoms are transported instead and the consciousness gets transported with it.
Speaker 1: As a unified system. You think that an exact copy
Speaker 1: of you wouldn't be you. Yeah, I would actually love
Speaker 1: to see an episode where they explore, you know, they're
Speaker 1: early testing and theories of the transporters. What working didn't work?
Speaker 1: You know, does the clone appear but it's not the
Speaker 1: same person, or you know, doesn't have any brain inflection.
Speaker 1: Star Trek Research Division. I definitely want to see that
Speaker 1: whole episode. So then it sounds like you would be
Speaker 1: willing to get into a Star Trek transporter because you
Speaker 1: think that they actually somehow move your same atoms from
Speaker 1: one place to another. Yeah, I think so. Well, if
Speaker 1: something went wrong, would my consciousness be stranded in some
Speaker 1: other dimensions? It's another question. So then, what technology in
Speaker 1: science fiction would you most like to see become reality
Speaker 1: in our universe? What would you like scientists to make real.
Speaker 1: That's tough, since there's so many mind blowing pieces of
Speaker 1: technology that could just change our understanding of the universe.
Speaker 1: But actually my mind goes right away to the really
Speaker 1: practical things, since they could change so many aspects of
Speaker 1: life and the environment. So I would probably pick a
Speaker 1: replicator from Star Trek, you know, to be able to
Speaker 1: synthesize food and drinking objects without needing the material to
Speaker 1: print them. And I think it recycles too, doesn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: environmentally be fantastic. It would change a lot of our infrastructure.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, then let me pivot and ask you
Speaker 1: about aliens. I'm sure you're familiar with the Fermi paradox.
Speaker 1: Why haven't we been visited yet? If the universe is
Speaker 1: so filled with wonderful planets? What's your personal thought on
Speaker 1: that question? Why do you think we haven't yet been
Speaker 1: visited by aliens? I like the theory that intelligent life
Speaker 1: will or may have interacted with Earth's life forms in
Speaker 1: ways we cannot detect. Most people's default thinking when they
Speaker 1: hear aliens is, you know, intelligent biological life that's using
Speaker 1: spacecraft comparable to something humans might do with more advanced technology.
Speaker 1: I think it may be more likely that conscious beings
Speaker 1: exist in domain means are on a scale that we
Speaker 1: still struggle to measure or perceive with our current technology
Speaker 1: and science. So I feel like a non physical alternative
Speaker 1: is feasible, which means perhaps they have visited us or
Speaker 1: are constantly in communication range waiting for us to catch up.
Speaker 1: So you're imagining that consciousness and intelligence might be broader
Speaker 1: than our particular imaginations have considered. That it could be
Speaker 1: just something we can't even imagine or understand or interact with. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I think a lot about how limited the you know,
Speaker 1: humans in two organs actually are compared to other animals,
Speaker 1: and compared to the instruments that we've created to measure,
Speaker 1: like the quantum world and things that we can't actually perceive,
Speaker 1: even ranges of light that are outside of our natural spectrum.
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's too much of a stretch
Speaker 1: to think that there may even be more beyond that
Speaker 1: that we do not have instruments for yet. No, I'm
Speaker 1: with you. I'm a big believer in the idea that
Speaker 1: we've only begun to explore the universe, that we're seeing
Speaker 1: a narrow and probably unrepresentative slice of what's out there.
Speaker 1: And we know from history that the discoveries revealed the
Speaker 1: universe to be a very different place from the way
Speaker 1: we imagined it. It would be shocking if intelligence was
Speaker 1: exactly the way we expected it to be, which is
Speaker 1: why I love reading creative science fiction and seeing people
Speaker 1: explore these ideas and other concepts. But it's hard. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you compare what we understand now he explain that
Speaker 1: to someone as historical scientists, they might think just sounds
Speaker 1: too bonkers. I would totally believe that there's things in
Speaker 1: the future that will understand that now just seem inconceivable. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems bonkers to me today, and so I'm getting
Speaker 1: forward to future bonkers discoveries. That's the whole motivating premise
Speaker 1: of my research. All right, But let's talk about your book,
Speaker 1: which is super fun and congratulations on it, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I really like the questions that your book raised, you know,
Speaker 1: about like how a young person navigates through life and
Speaker 1: grows up, how he finds his place in the world,
Speaker 1: how he finds his justice, And you know, the world
Speaker 1: that he grows up in, the universe that he grows
Speaker 1: up into, the multiverse that he grows up and seems
Speaker 1: to be very different from our own. But the themes,
Speaker 1: you know, are familiar. You know, these questions of how
Speaker 1: you find your place? What drew you to these questions,
Speaker 1: these themes, what made you want them to be sort
Speaker 1: of at the heart of the journey of your character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so science fiction is so fun because you know, we're
Speaker 1: taking a human angle on it and often telling very
Speaker 1: human stories. But you know, something else is very inhuman,
Speaker 1: whether it's the setting or the aliens or worlds are
Speaker 1: interacting with. And I tend to write about outcasts like me,
Speaker 1: protagonists who feel uprooted and struggle with belonging in identity,
Speaker 1: people that don't have a culture, community, who are too
Speaker 1: mixed to have roots or were cut off from them
Speaker 1: by loss, and people who think are perceived a typically
Speaker 1: who might feel like they're on the wrong planet, being
Speaker 1: outcast or and more to such a relatable struggle for
Speaker 1: so many different sectionalities. Of people. It's a story that
Speaker 1: I feel can be told a lot in different ways,
Speaker 1: and there will always be something to take from it.
Speaker 1: You know, no matter how wild the sci fi setting,
Speaker 1: our situation is, it always sort of that human heart
Speaker 1: to it that readers find relatable. I think it's really
Speaker 1: interesting to see what's a common what's human in these stories,
Speaker 1: you know, what we can identify with, and it tells
Speaker 1: me something about what you think is sort of going
Speaker 1: to be constant in the human experience even if the
Speaker 1: world is very different, and you have built a very
Speaker 1: very different world from the one that we experience, but
Speaker 1: there are also like a lot of similarities, and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you built those in to be the same
Speaker 1: as the world we experience, because you think that they're
Speaker 1: going to be persistent. For example, in your book, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of economic disparity and a lot of political maneuvering.
Speaker 1: You know, other novels like Ian Banks culture novels, there's
Speaker 1: no more scarcity and everybody has exactly what they want.
Speaker 1: Do you think that these sort of like economic power
Speaker 1: struggles will always be with us? Are there always going
Speaker 1: to be the super rich and the poor? I think
Speaker 1: creatively I'm not so much assuming that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: these worlds will be just like what we understand from
Speaker 1: our human perspective, but more that if I'm gonna present
Speaker 1: the reader with a bunch of feelings through wild ideas,
Speaker 1: I do need some things that are familiar and relatable
Speaker 1: so that they feel grounded. You know, if you make
Speaker 1: absolutely everything in the world new and weird, the reader
Speaker 1: will just feel unsteady. And in the case of my multiverse,
Speaker 1: I feel the sheer volume of planets, species, cultures, and
Speaker 1: resources is too unwieldy to have a perfectly peaceful and
Speaker 1: balanced multiverse will society. You know, everything is going to
Speaker 1: have a different material and moral value depending on a perspective.
Speaker 1: So with trillions of unique planets, all with their own
Speaker 1: variety of cultures and governments, it didn't seem feasible that
Speaker 1: one set of needs, laws or rights could apply equally
Speaker 1: to every potential species and belief system. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the nature of a complex, diverse, and poorly interconnected multiverse
Speaker 1: will be an ecosystem that involves power struggles and mismatch
Speaker 1: value systems. I think my nature, so there's always going
Speaker 1: to be struggle, even in the future. That's what you're
Speaker 1: telling me. There's no federation or like unifying organization in
Speaker 1: this multiverse besides the Cartographers, which is a neutral group
Speaker 1: that maintains a database of knowledge and unifies much of
Speaker 1: the multiverse with a goal of exploration and of safety
Speaker 1: through shared knowledge. But they also provide free basic needs
Speaker 1: to anyone without discrimination, the food, shelter, education, health care,
Speaker 1: and so on, which I think is far more useful
Speaker 1: than a space police or multiverse laws trying trying to
Speaker 1: mesh together so many civilizations, you know, right, right, But
Speaker 1: then you also have populations that are like raised in
Speaker 1: slavery and then mistreated basically for economic gain. And it's
Speaker 1: not explored in this first book, but the central and
Speaker 1: largest universe unity is a utopian world, more along the
Speaker 1: lines of Banks culture novels, and so a later theme
Speaker 1: in the trilogy will be the pros and cons of
Speaker 1: a utopian world where potential has been limited for safety
Speaker 1: versus this chaotic multiplicity of worlds with a lot of
Speaker 1: variety of experience, but with the overarching sort of pirate
Speaker 1: culture where everyone takes response ability for themselves. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to hear that there are more books coming
Speaker 1: in the same universe. Can't wait to dig into those.
Speaker 1: One thing I really liked about your book is that
Speaker 1: I had a concept I hadn't seen in other science
Speaker 1: fiction novels, which is always exciting for me. And those
Speaker 1: are these bubbled multiverses where they have this like distinct
Speaker 1: transition between one universe and another that you call them rhymes.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about the nature
Speaker 1: of the idea here, What was going on in your
Speaker 1: mind why you decided to build these into your story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the bubble multiverse concept was what kicked off this
Speaker 1: whole story, and I don't think I've read it or
Speaker 1: seen anything exactly like it in sci fi before. Most
Speaker 1: multiverses involved a shift in dimension or time, whereas my
Speaker 1: multiverse is a bunch of spherical universes like soap bubbles,
Speaker 1: all on the same timeline, each with unique physical laws inside,
Speaker 1: and all stuck together like a huge film cluster. And
Speaker 1: they can range in sizes be so smallly fit in
Speaker 1: the palm your hand, where they can contain entire galaxies,
Speaker 1: with some universes nested inside other ones. And said, the
Speaker 1: walls meet in energetic membranes called Ryan's that are in
Speaker 1: a physical barrier, but whatever passes through is translated from
Speaker 1: one set of loss to another and maybe almost unchanged
Speaker 1: or might be destroyed or transformed in the process. I
Speaker 1: got the idea initially while looking at macro photography of
Speaker 1: bubbles and mentally extrapolating that out to massive scale, you know,
Speaker 1: containing galaxies, the sort of world you could fly a
Speaker 1: star shipped through. And the fact that physics itself might
Speaker 1: be different from one universe to another has a lot
Speaker 1: of fun implications to think about, like what it might
Speaker 1: mean for trade and economy. An element that it's inaccessible
Speaker 1: in one universe might become usable or malleable in another.
Speaker 1: All right, so this is a lot of fun and
Speaker 1: I got lots more questions for ASA. But first, un
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, we're back in
Speaker 1: interview with science fiction author As A handsOn, author of
Speaker 1: the debut novel no fack Gloss. I was really interested
Speaker 1: in exploring an economy that operates on information is currency,
Speaker 1: you know, where exploration is incentivized and maps and knowledge
Speaker 1: hold the most value. In order to be able to
Speaker 1: explore more world, do you need a ship with technology
Speaker 1: that's able to withstand different ryns, meaning you can make
Speaker 1: more profit, to photo ship that can go even more
Speaker 1: places to be more profit, and so on. You know,
Speaker 1: exploration and curiosity is such a stable motivator, and science
Speaker 1: fiction from a human perspective, like star treks to bully
Speaker 1: go where no one has gone before. So I think
Speaker 1: this the whole multiverse allows for that, but with some
Speaker 1: new elements, while also feeling different from so much science
Speaker 1: fiction that focuses on war between factions and planets. Well,
Speaker 1: you've basically written the first paper on multiverse economics. That's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It's really cool, and it's really interesting to visualize.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I was definitely sort of imagining a
Speaker 1: series of soap bubbles. But one question I had, which
Speaker 1: it probably doesn't have an answer, is you you have
Speaker 1: all these bubbles and they're connected to each other. Are
Speaker 1: they all sitting in some larger sort of super space
Speaker 1: in which they're embedded? Is there anything outside of these universes?
Speaker 1: Does that not have any meaning? And I thought about
Speaker 1: this because you know, if you think about an outer
Speaker 1: edge and what's beyond that outer edge, and I know
Speaker 1: a lot of similar theories have actual content if it's
Speaker 1: a bubble universe to have the content of the universe
Speaker 1: on the surface area of it, whereas mine the content
Speaker 1: is all inside. And my idea is sort of more
Speaker 1: like the rind contains sort of holographically stores the information
Speaker 1: of all the content. But as for the edge, I
Speaker 1: haven't thought deeply about what is beyond it, because that's
Speaker 1: the well that's really chewy the lure. The lure is
Speaker 1: that there's originally one singular universe with stable physical laws
Speaker 1: like our own, inhabited by, among others, an advanced civilization
Speaker 1: called the Graven, and an unknown event caused daughter universe
Speaker 1: is to start to bubble off of the outer border
Speaker 1: of this one universe, inflating and continuing to bubble off
Speaker 1: new universe as at the outer edges, the entire mask
Speaker 1: Etine's expanding. Very cool. I love the idea that there
Speaker 1: are different physical laws inside each universe and the concept
Speaker 1: of how you translate an object from one to the
Speaker 1: other is super cool. So is it explored in the book,
Speaker 1: like how these new universes are created? Because I know this,
Speaker 1: For example, one particular ship that's capable of creating its
Speaker 1: own universe as it flies. Yeah, the protagonist Cadent ship
Speaker 1: has weird craven technology in it, with the power to
Speaker 1: expand and collapse a brand new universe of its own
Speaker 1: out of nothing, which allows it to travel on harm
Speaker 1: in places and situations it would be too destructive otherwise,
Speaker 1: and the next books in the trilogy will explore more
Speaker 1: of what that technology actually is and what the formation
Speaker 1: of the multi Verse could have been and why it happened. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the real strengths of your novel
Speaker 1: are the incredible visuals. You know, it seems to me
Speaker 1: like maybe not a surprise that you've worked on a
Speaker 1: lot of movies, because I felt like I could I
Speaker 1: was almost watching a movie in my mind with these
Speaker 1: incredible visual descriptions, and one of them was when this
Speaker 1: ship dies into the heart of a star, protected by
Speaker 1: its own little universe, just imagining like what it's like
Speaker 1: to fly through the heart of the star. Really fantastic stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what I love to like trying to describe
Speaker 1: the impossible in a way, like we know a lot
Speaker 1: about the insides of stars, but you know, we can't
Speaker 1: actually go in and experience it. So I love, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of researching what's involved in like a situation like that,
Speaker 1: and then how am I going to try to convey
Speaker 1: what the experience might be like if it were safe to,
Speaker 1: you know, fly, Well, I wish it were. I'd love
Speaker 1: to take that trip, but I feel like I already
Speaker 1: have a little bit in your book. Another thing that
Speaker 1: was really richly imagined were all the aliens. There's so
Speaker 1: many really interesting creatures with weird behaviors and capabilities that
Speaker 1: I've never heard of before, But one thing they seem
Speaker 1: to have in common is that most of them were
Speaker 1: a humanoid. In your book, do they have like a
Speaker 1: single origin where they've all branched off evolutionarily or they
Speaker 1: evolved in parallel or is that not something you worried
Speaker 1: about too much in detail? I actually love non humanoid
Speaker 1: aliens the most, but this is one of those one
Speaker 1: of those things where I knew I needed to balance
Speaker 1: the story with familiarity and grounding for the reader, especially
Speaker 1: since there's not just one first contact with one species,
Speaker 1: but so many different species of aliens, along with other
Speaker 1: concepts and technology to wrap our hand around, and flying
Speaker 1: into stars and creating universes and whatnotum I figured some
Speaker 1: humanoid aliens would help the reader connects to look better.
Speaker 1: So the actual humans in the story, of which there
Speaker 1: is a broad variety, had a single origin in the
Speaker 1: central universe. And for the other aliens, I did struggle with,
Speaker 1: you know, whether to assume there's something fundamentally superior about
Speaker 1: the general design of the human body. I'm not convinced
Speaker 1: there is. Plus, the evolution of that design is inextricable
Speaker 1: from the features of Earth. So if we assume humanoid
Speaker 1: aliens evolving on other planets were assuming some earthlike features
Speaker 1: of those planets, right, which is definitely true and feasible
Speaker 1: in this multiverse. So I think the answer is a
Speaker 1: mixed humans have a single origin and would have colonized
Speaker 1: outward and differentiated as a multiverse inflated. But there are
Speaker 1: also earthlike planets where humanoid design or similar will have
Speaker 1: evolved on its own. Wow, A right cool. So tell me,
Speaker 1: did you come up with this world first, this idea
Speaker 1: that multiverses and these aliens and then sort of find
Speaker 1: a story to tell that takes us through that world,
Speaker 1: or do you want to tell this story about this
Speaker 1: young man and his journey through life and the search
Speaker 1: for justice, and then you build a world around that story.
Speaker 1: The world definitely came first, but the main character in
Speaker 1: his ship came closely after, and they developed in parallel
Speaker 1: from there. And at that time I did a lot
Speaker 1: of my world building as I was drafting, rather than
Speaker 1: developing all the features of the world up front and
Speaker 1: then riding within that framework. So like I would find
Speaker 1: I needed a technology or a new species and would
Speaker 1: pause to create it on the fly and fitted logically
Speaker 1: in the world, which I think the author creates a
Speaker 1: greater sense of wonder from discovering things on the go
Speaker 1: like this, because you know, the act of discovering excitement
Speaker 1: gets put right on the page, but you're way more
Speaker 1: likely to having consistencies and elements that don't quite hold together.
Speaker 1: Hopefully there's time during edits to shore that stuff up,
Speaker 1: but a spontaneous story will definitely have a different feel
Speaker 1: to it, I think than a book that was developed
Speaker 1: over many years. Well, I'm a pretty close reader, and
Speaker 1: I didn't find any big logical clause, So congrats to
Speaker 1: you and your I'm careful, I think to hand away
Speaker 1: of when I need to instead of not mention something
Speaker 1: that might be a stitch to pull up. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: how important to you then in your sort of final
Speaker 1: story in Final Universe that the science is plausible. Are
Speaker 1: you imagining that this is something that could happen in
Speaker 1: our universe, or are you creating another universe with its
Speaker 1: own laws and then trying to follow those strictly, or
Speaker 1: you just sort of like navigating your way through the
Speaker 1: story and making it up as you go. For this trilogy,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely focused more on creative ideas and interesting implications
Speaker 1: than on presenting a world that's plausible compared to our
Speaker 1: own universe or current scientific understanding. There's already so much
Speaker 1: well done plausible science fiction and hard sci fi, but
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a lot less blue sky thinking
Speaker 1: science fiction that plays with things like massive cosmological scale,
Speaker 1: or the implications of quantum mechanics on reality, or metaphysics
Speaker 1: in the nature of consciousness as it relates the fabric
Speaker 1: of spacetime. Not all those ideas are in this particular book,
Speaker 1: but those are the areas of science that I love
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, the science that is still theoretical
Speaker 1: or cutting edge, where all the creative thinking is happening
Speaker 1: to try and solve the problems and unknowns we still face.
Speaker 1: But one thing that was really fun. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't research the bubble multiverse kind of idea because I
Speaker 1: thought it was so unplausible that there probably wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: real physics that would describe this. But then afterwards I
Speaker 1: stumbled on I think the World Science Festival videos were
Speaker 1: all online, and I went into a rabbit hole of
Speaker 1: black hole research and the information paradox and all these
Speaker 1: different multiverse theories and you know, holographic principle and inflationary
Speaker 1: multiverse theory, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this
Speaker 1: actually does sound maybe plausible that we could be in
Speaker 1: a bubble multiverse. And you know, the edge of our
Speaker 1: one universe is so far away that will never prove
Speaker 1: or disproved because we can't measure out there. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: more plausible than I thought when I came up. We
Speaker 1: will see in the future. Yeah, And I actually think
Speaker 1: that science fiction plays an important role in the development
Speaker 1: of those theories because a big part of the development
Speaker 1: of the theories is just having the idea of what
Speaker 1: to consider what could be real about our universe. And
Speaker 1: since we know that the universe is probably very different
Speaker 1: from the one we imagined, we have to stretch our
Speaker 1: creative minds and consider these other alternatives, and reading science
Speaker 1: fiction is a critical element of that. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's more than just you're exploring this universe
Speaker 1: you or I think you're helping push forward the ideas
Speaker 1: that scientists themselves should be thinking about. Yeah. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: that's and of what I love. Like there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun to play with the science we already have,
Speaker 1: but you know, we may not learn new things because
Speaker 1: we're only working within the constraints of what we know now,
Speaker 1: Whereas you know, stretching imagination and creativity is think what
Speaker 1: about this, what about this? Or you know, picking all
Speaker 1: often you know, here a theory and it will inspire
Speaker 1: me to like, oh, what if that means this? Or
Speaker 1: like what if you know we expand that a bit.
Speaker 1: I think that kind of thinking is really inspiring for
Speaker 1: not just the reader. But you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I like to think that it can go beyond the
Speaker 1: book what we understand right now. Absolutely, it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me to see how you walk the line though of
Speaker 1: like letting your imagination unspool into crazy other ideas of universes,
Speaker 1: but then still grounding in a way that we can
Speaker 1: identify with some of the characters, and we can follow
Speaker 1: the story. Because as much as I'd like to believe
Speaker 1: that there are crazy aliens out there following rules we
Speaker 1: can't even imagine and weird societies, I probably have a
Speaker 1: hard time following that book. Yeah, it's a tough balance.
Speaker 1: Although actually I'm not sure. We just will kind of
Speaker 1: know what concepts are ones that I've pulled from actual
Speaker 1: science and which ones I just came up with out
Speaker 1: of the theoretical science. Right now is so exciting that
Speaker 1: you know the two are kind of the same, the
Speaker 1: bonker's ideas and the actual possibly plausible. Welcome to our
Speaker 1: bonkers reality exactly. I love it all right. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: very much for channing with us about your book, and again, congratulations.
Speaker 1: We look forward to reading the next novels. When are
Speaker 1: they coming out? Thank you. The sequel As Our Ghost
Speaker 1: is out December seven of this year. Does that mean
Speaker 1: that it's all written and in the hands of the
Speaker 1: publisher and the editors. It's very close. We're putting on
Speaker 1: the final polish and I'm already starting on book three. Wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: we look forward to that and maybe we can have
Speaker 1: you back on to talk about the crazy bonkers ideas
Speaker 1: in the next book that you're right, there will be
Speaker 1: some more dimensions than a lot of bonkers ideas. Wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks again for joining us. Thanks, this is so much fun,
Speaker 1: all right? Pretty cool. She sounds for really amazing and
Speaker 1: so multi talented, being a sound designer for big movies
Speaker 1: and also a science fiction author. Yeah, she's super creative.
Speaker 1: One thing I really loved about her book that I
Speaker 1: forgot to ask her about was how every scene in
Speaker 1: her book, which is like really diverse locations, really feels different.
Speaker 1: She's done this great job of like giving each location
Speaker 1: its own texture, its own sort of like feeling, so
Speaker 1: you can keep track of where you are in the book.
Speaker 1: I'm not a sinis fit in any sense, but I
Speaker 1: feel like I was there, Like I could touch these
Speaker 1: places and hear what they sounded like. Interesting. Now, just
Speaker 1: reading her book make you excited to kind of meet
Speaker 1: other aliens and discover more of other universes perhaps, or
Speaker 1: does it make you happy to just have a couch
Speaker 1: at the end of the day in Orange County. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's a positive experience, mostly because when you
Speaker 1: meet aliens, they're like a fun rag tag bunt to
Speaker 1: educate him about the universe. And boy, I would love
Speaker 1: for that to happen to me. A bunch aliens come
Speaker 1: down to Earth and tell me all about the larger
Speaker 1: context of our lives, how things actually work. It'd be
Speaker 1: great if that didn't mean that everybody else on Earth
Speaker 1: had to die. But you know, don't make me make
Speaker 1: that choice, You're like, that would be great, But if
Speaker 1: it had to happen in order for me to gain
Speaker 1: knowledge about the universe, you know, too bad. If it
Speaker 1: has to happen, it has to happen, right, Wait, no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily. According to the quantum multiverse that she's one possibility, Daniel.
Speaker 1: There you go. So I don't have to feel bad
Speaker 1: because in another multiverse, the Earth survives. In an infinite
Speaker 1: number of universes, we all die, and in an infinite
Speaker 1: number of universe we all survive, so it all washes
Speaker 1: out in the end. So therefore there is no morality,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, thank you to author sa Hansen again.
Speaker 1: Her novel is called No Fag Class. That's n O
Speaker 1: P h e K Class and it's out now. You
Speaker 1: can get it wherever you get your regular books. You can.
Speaker 1: And she's just turned in the sequel and working on
Speaker 1: the next book. So everybody out there who enjoys this
Speaker 1: book and look forward to even more zipping around the
Speaker 1: multiverse a right, Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcast for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.