YouSaid · the spoken record

John Mather

lines on the record: 73
first: 2023-08-18
most recent: 2023-08-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“After the Hubble telescope was And by the way, we still can't tell how the galaxies grew. And it was still one of the great mysteries of science because we thought we would understand. We thought, oh, now we know about the Big Bang and the hot and cold spots and we should be able to simulate and calculate how galaxies would grow. And then we measured with the Hubble telescope, oh we got it wrong. The predictions had been that galaxies would grow slowly, but So the hubble would be able to see the first ones happening. And of course, how do you see that? Well, you see back in time by looking at things that are far away. So you've got your own time machine in your eyeballs every morning, but you don't feel it.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is nice because that meant we could get a Nobel Prize for discovering the thing that turned out to be true. What if it weren't true, then of course you don't get a prize. But now we have much, much more detail to go on.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if it does, then it means that even space and time are randomly fluctuating and weird. And so that was, it's like one of the great mysteries of science, and we think there ought to be something there. Scientists have been working at least fifty, maybe a hundred years trying to figure out how gratified and quantum mechanics should go together. The other thing, of course, is where did we come from? And if those spots weren't there, then we wouldn't be here. So that's pretty cool. And even tells us through detailed analysis that there is something called cosmic dark matter, which we can't see and perhaps never will see. So we've gone all these wonderful mysteries that are all embedded in this map of pink and blue blobs. And so it's totally fascinating and draws in thousands and thousands of scientists since the Kobe satellite was flown two more satellites were built and flown and they confirmed our original measurements”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I first thought, oh, Stephen, you're just exaggerating. But it's very nice. And then I thought, okay, well, in truth, if we could understand where those spots come from, it would tell us perhaps about the unification of the forces of nature. Right now we still have the great mystery of quantum mechanics doesn't seem to describe gravity, but we know it exists. The opinion that it ought to.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, well, Stephen Hawking looked at our map of the pink and blue blobs and he said it was the most important scientific discovery of the century, not of all time.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But nature does have gravity, nature does have the other three forces of physics, and it does have quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, and so it's just designed in some way of, oh, that's not really the right word. It is a universe in which complexity naturally appears.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If gravity could not have acted on those hot and cold spots, those dense and less dense regions, then nothing would have happened. It would have been a completely featureless expanding universe with no stars, no galaxies, no anythings. The same temperature, completely boring as far as we're concerned, we wouldn't be here.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this is pretty deep and fundamental. Gravity is the reason why the universe has heated itself up. Gravity can stop the expansion of the material of the Big Bang and pull it back into make stars. Then when it does that the stars can light up and release nuclear energy. And now we have a state of the universe where it's hot some places and cold other places. So energy flows from place to place. And this is then the basis of the complexity that we now have”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, okay, the universe spontaneously heats up. This is something they don't teach you in school. In school, they say, well, nature does not have two objects, just sit there at the same temperature and one gets hot and one gets cold. That's true in normal life. But gravity is an exception to that.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when you think of nature as just full of atoms and atoms are just little billiard balls and they have no shapes and no properties, then of course it would be extremely unusual for them to stick together and form what they do. But quantum mechanics says no atoms are not little billiard balls. They have shapes, and they're like covered with velcro of different flavors. So atoms stick together in certain patterns because that's how nature is. So, okay, then also in about thermodynamics, which tells us which kinds of reactions are favored by nature. So if energy is released when two atoms come together, then it's likely to happen. So now we say, okay, it's not completely without pattern. Nature gives patterns because of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, so it's just built in that complicated things will occur given a chance.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It used to be people looked at this amazing universe and thought it requires divine intervention because it's too dang complicated. Nobody could possibly see how it could work. We confuse, I don't know how it works. I don't know how to do it with it can't be done or it's impossible. When it comes back to how did we get here, it used to be we couldn't understand how to calculate anything. So we figured it must be impossible. It must require divine intervention. And now I think we have a different picture. Divert into that a little bit because How is it that nature spontaneously produces complicated stuff?”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And our map showed pink and blue blobs across the entire sky, and that what they show is if you could see millimeter waves with your eyes you would see this big fuzzy map. And it's very blurry, but it was enough to say the early universe was not the same everywhere. There were hot and cold spots. And that matters to us because if the universe had been completely exactly uniform, gravity wouldn't know what to do. It would not have any way to pull material back together again. To stop the expansion locally and make galaxies and stars and planets and people. So we're here because of those spots. And so that's pretty revolutionary.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I showed a graph to the astronomy society, and we got a standing ovation for a graph. And so they knew what it meant. They knew basically that not only was the equipment working, but the story of the hot Big Bang was basically right. People don't remember now that there used to be alternate theories that said, well, maybe it wasn't so. A couple of years after that first announcement, we were able to say we made a map of this cosmic heat.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And within weeks, we had measured the spectrum, the mythsis project that had failed as a ballooned payload now worked beautifully in outer space.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, okay, 1974, I met NASA Laboratory in New York City. And okay, so NASA puts out this announcement of opportunity calling for new satellite missions for science. Because what are we going to do after the moon landings are done? Maybe do something else because we can't keep on going to the moon all the time. So, okay, boss, my thesis project failed. We should try it in outer space. So I had no idea how much nerve was required to do this, but we just did it. We wrote a little thin proposal. We said we have an idea. So after a couple of years, NASA said, well, we think it's a good idea, and I got a job at the Big NASA Laboratory in Greenbelt, Maryland, just outside Washington. And they gave us some engineering time to work with people who knew how to build stuff in space. And well, in nineteen eighty nine it went up. And it worked.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my thesis advisor said, okay, well, you did good work. You can write this up, you can make a thesis out of it. They've already published some other papers. So I said, okay, I'll get a job. I got a job for.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your partner So back in nineteen seventy I was in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, looking for a thesis project because I was tired of studying in the library. And maybe I better build something. So the people had just discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation. It is thought to be the remnant of the early universe, the hot Big Bang still fills the universe, and so can a graduate student do something to go measure it better? So the answer is yes, we'll try something. So, okay, well, I've worked on a project which was an instrument to measure the spectrum, which is to say how bright is this radiation at each different wavelength. And we built it and we sent it up attached to a high altitude balloon, and it went up and it did not work. Oh man, what do I do now”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And where do we come from? So, you see, the bones arranged in showing evolutionary order in the museum. Oh my golly, what a fascinating story. I want to know everything about this.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got interested pretty young. I think I was about six years old. I've heard for my dad at bedtime story time that living things are made out of cells with chromosomes, and this was before we even knew about the double helix. That got my attention. My friends and neighbors were farmers. My dad was studying dairy cows. For his research for Recruit University. And so that was where I got started. Living out on the farm thinking about deep things like that, the origin of everything. If you know about cells and chromosomes, then immediately you understand evolution. And the huge changes that can happen through time. I think I was about eight, we went to see the Museum of Natural History in New York and the Planetarium Show and the giant meteorite sitting there as big as a small apartment, just sitting there and say, where does that come from”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I played Jack Kennedy's talk announcing that we were going to go to the moon, not because it's easy but because it was hard, and he also promised that we would do the other things too, and what he had in mind I'm not sure exactly, but we were clearly up against medical issues and cultural issues. And we still had the remnants of slavery very strongly in our country, there was segregation and legalized mistreatment of a good portion of our country, and so he knew that that was a big set of things to work on too, and he's promised we would do them all. So that was pretty brave, and we're still working on a lot of them. We are, because some things are harder even than space engineering.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my goodness, while you're asking me to jump back when I was born, which is 76 years ago And in 1946, hardly anything was known about what we currently can tell you. We had just finished up a war. We had learned a lot about physics because we invented all kinds of new weapons, including radar and atomic weapons and things like that. So we had realized that rocketry was possible. So then we signed us got busy and we discovered the most astonishing things. We found out the physics of the universe a lot. I've uncovered the nature of the particles. We've learned about quantum mechanics. Then the Space Age came along, partly because it was tied to weaponry. So we invented space travel in nineteen fifty seven of the Soviet Union launched a little Sputnik. Suddenly the government realized we better invest in science and engineering.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Artificial limbs, precision GPS, Insulim pumps, emergency Blankets, air purifiers, even the dust. Now, what do all of these Have in Well, these were actually all innovations developed through the And I think Something really profound there. Through our collective deep desire to understand our past and all that we came from, we've created technologies that enhance. Our future. I think it's also an important reminder that history is riddled with people we think they know what is best to build. Without realizing that there are so many great things that have sprouted from That didn't seem immediately useful at the time That's why today I am so excited About”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, we still have the great mystery of quantum mechanics doesn't seem to describe gravity. Can we find places that are like home, little Earth's orbiting stars like the sun? When you look at the history of Earth, you see the history of the different forms of life growing, it's taken all of the entire history of the universe for us to turn up. Start off with that can't be done, that's impossible. Then somebody invents something and then somebody wants some more. And gradually we invest our billions or trillions as it takes because there's a demand for it. Please build us another telescope to look farther back because we've got a big mystery here.”
2023-08-18 · a16z Podcast · From Big Bang to James Webb: Exploring Space with Nobel Laureate John Mather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source