Everything we have discussed in these lectures so far has brought us to this, the first 20th century revolution in physics. And that is the way it should be, but it is most definitely NOT the way it is normally taught in physics classes.

One of my pet peeves about the teaching of physics is how Special Relativity is introduced in introductory physics, as if it is some insight from God that Einstein had. Instead of the Ten Commandments, Einstein was given a tablet that said: “The speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion to the source of the light” and everything followed from that.

No! Maxwell’s unification of electricity and magnetism taught us something fundamental about light, that it is an electromagnetic wave. From that, the equations of electromagnetism allowed Maxwell to derive the speed of light using only measurements of electricity and magnetism.

It was the brilliance of Einstein to realize that this result was inconsistent with the rest of classical physics, in particular the results of Galileo about the nature of motion.

And from there, Einstein was inevitably dragged to equations of special relativity.

And only after he followed through, did someone else, his former math teacher, Minkowski, realize that Einstein had discovered something deep about the connection between space and time, and they symmetries of nature.

That is the actual story I describe here. It is elegant and beautiful, and much more sensible than the “Einstein revelation” fable that is too often used in the teaching of physics.

I hope you enjoy this. The culmination of classical physics, and the beginning of the modern era.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube.

There has been a lot of doom and gloom combined with excitement, if that is possible, about AI in the science news lately. Sabine and I tried to deconstruct the hype associated with the highly touted Open AI solution of one of the Millennium Problems in Mathematics, as well as explore the real concerns and imaginary concerns associated with both the recent Open AI agent hacking of Huggy Face, and the blog post by the CEO of Anthopic arguing for a pause in AI development because of the potential for disaster—a statement endorsed by both Elon Musk and Sam Altman. As usual, things are neither as bad, nor as good as they might seem.

We also tackled two other stories of interest. A single data point might signal the discovery of particle dark matter in an underground detector! Sabine and I come at this from different perspectives—she has always been suspicious of the claimed need for dark matter, and I have not only explored and proposed a number of the prime candidates, but I also helped propose and promote the kind of technologies that led to LZ/LUX, the collaboration making the current announcement. Nevertheless both Sabine and I agree that it is premature to celebrate. And while Sabine won’t bet, I am betting that this single point will not be substantiated when more data comes in. Stay tuned.

Finally we discuss a sad development—Scientific Paper Mills. Apparently you can buy your way to a first authorship, or just an authorship, on a scientific paper that can eventually be published somewhere, even if the results might not be completely kosher. While this is a disturbing new possibility, it seems like it is just affecting science at the margins. We need to try and stamp it out, but it is not undermining the bulk of scientific research.

In any case, as they used to say on a famous TV show, after all the AI world-ending hype, happy to say: See you next time.. if there is a next time!

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube.

John Gertz is a Renaissance Man. One might think that the President of Zorro Productions might be the last person to talk with about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and the last person to chair SETI’s governing board. But as is clear from our discussion, and from the material in his recent book, Reinventing SETI, John has not only mastered all of the relevant technical issues, he has thought deeply about the motivation for SETI, and the likelihood of its success. Treating the issue as a businessman rather than a scientist, he has tried to anticipate what signals other civilizations might send, and what we might listen for. He also takes a realistic view of what we might actually be able to detect. The net result of our conversations is that the prospects are not good for detecting anything out there. Distant aliens are likely not broadcasting in a way we could be sensitive to. And as he points out, we should probably do the same. His great hope is that alien civilizations have instead installed probes in other solar systems, including ours. However, this possibility too, as I emphasized with him, is also rife with difficulties.

I have thought a lot about SETI since I wrote The Physics of Star Trek. I don’t think anyone has affected my thinking on the issue since then more than John. I was pessimistic before. Now I think the whole effort is probably misguided. Though, if someone other than the government is willing to pay for it, what the heck. As I often tell experimentalists. Do what you can do, no matter what us theorists say. We may be wrong.

I hope you find our discussion as informative and provocative as I did. I will be interested to hear if it changes your perspective on SETI as well.

As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube.