Brian Cox Explains What Physics Says About the Afterlife

I mean, what are your thoughts on life after death? Because, again, I'm going to quote you, and I've got to try and find, I've got a whole list of quotes here, but you say, life is a conduit through which energy in the universe passes. So, say a human and animal plant dies, where is that energy going? Yeah, I mean, it's, what is life? I mean, that's a very good question, by the way. The answer is, we don't really know. There are two very famous books on the reading list. The reading list is immense. One is called What is Life by Irving Schrodinger, which was a very famous book in the 40s that sort of predicted the existence of DNA, which we discovered later. A great friend of mine, actually, Paul Nurse, Sir Paul Nurse, who's got a Nobel Prize, who runs the Francis Crick Institute here, or founded it in London, he wrote a book recently called What is Life, which is brilliant, from Nobel Prize winning biologists. And he ultimately says that we don't really know, but you can pin some things down. So, one, as you said, is it's something that happens. It's that there's energy. By energy, I mean, what do we do? We burn food in oxygen. And if we stop burning food in oxygen, then we die. So, there's an energy in the way a steam engine does things. So, there's that part of it. And then there's information, that it processes information as well. So, that's what we do. So, there's an information component and an energy component. But the point is, at a fundamental level, it's no different to something like a computing device, in the sense that it obeys these basic physical laws, which there's got to be a source of energy, and you've got to be able to do things, and your structure remains, and things like that. So, that would imply that it's the same as if your iPhone will stop processing information if you take the battery out. So, it's dead. It's a dead iPhone. Admittedly, you can bring it back to life. So, it's probably not a good energy, because you can recharge it, which we can't do. So, but you get the idea is that we, and this was all the way back in Schrodinger's book, life obeys the laws of physics. So, it is part of the physical universe. And so, therefore, you don't have any, there's no conceivable way that your conscious experience can persist when the thing, the machine stops working. So, and that might sound harsh, but I would flip it around, as we did before, and say, isn't it remarkable that there's this kind of thing? It's just obeying the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are pretty simple. There are only four forces of nature that we know of, and it all started out as hydrogen and helium 13.8 billion years ago. And we managed to get into these patterns that can genuinely, I really mean it, bring meaning to the universe. Yeah. Do you find that that, again, personally enables you to look at your reactions to, I'm talking about everyday stuff here, you know, nothing particularly traumatic or extra stressful, but like the everyday either mundanity or, or maybe it could be the bombardment of like outside news we're receiving daily or stuff you've got going on in the family home. Can you look at everything through the lens of science and go, I'm reacting to this because of, you know, my history and the data and whatever. Can you, can you apply it to your own life in that way? Well, no, obviously I just get pissed off. But I think there is something to be said, like you mentioned data. So it's quite liberating if you say, you know, like, let's say you don't like flying, for example. So some people don't like flying and you get nervous, but you can actually go and look at the data and find out that it's safe compared to other modes of transport. Yeah. So you could just say, okay, I'm not going to be scared of flying then. Yeah. If you really, if you really can trust the data. So it does, it is useful to look at, facts are useful. I agree. Data's useful. I know it's difficult and I know that we all have different, you know, sort of things that worry us for different reasons and that's, you know, that's part of being human, but you can kind of liberate yourself a bit from it. I agree. I think I don't deal with it so much now, but I had like really bad OCD at one point and you have to apply logic and facts to it because it's so illogical. It's so like fantastical and over the top and enlarged at times that you need to have, whether it's like photo evidence, facts, data that you've done this thing before, nothing bad's going to happen. Yeah. And treat yourself like a machine, like a computer. Yeah. Because I mean, it's, I mean, you are basically, I mean, it's a good question. I did talk about the Crick Institute. There's a podcast. I'm not promoting that, but I'll promote it anyway. We're like a very friendly podcast. We'll promote other ones. There's a podcast called the question of science and I love it actually. And it's out at the moment. They're coming out once a week and it's just at the Crick Institute and it's just experts on the panel and I chair it and the audience ask questions. So it's like question time, but with people who know what they're talking about basically is the difference. So we did one on, we did, for example, can we cure cancer, which, because it's mainly a lot of the Crick Institute is cancer research. And it was a tremendously optimistic programme actually, because you realise how rapid the progress is in understanding this disease. And just looking at the statistics, as you said earlier, the survival rates. Anyway, so we did cancer, ageing, dementia, those things, but also we did one on AI, which was really interesting to me, because the question is, you know, is there any difference between us and a computer, let's say. So, so could you imagine it? They call it AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, that's like us, rather than just a thing that does one thing at a time, which is what we have now. And there was some debate, actually, and the more neuroscience-y people felt, no, that it's really very difficult, that the human brain is much, not that there's anything mystical going on, but it's so complicated. And it's all to do with our experience of the world, it's connected to our bodies. So you can't have a brain in a jar, you know, that thing that you could just imagine just having it taking your brain out and putting it in a thing and just leave it. But yeah, so it's like, so I think the jury's still out on, on whether we're just, whether you could, whether we now, in our conversation, whether we could be having this in a big computer. It's kind of the, are we living in a simulation kind of question. Yeah. And I think the jury seems to be still out amongst the experts on that, whether biology is really difficult to simulate. I mean, our brains are not that different to space in terms of the fact that there's so little we know still, there's so much more to be learned about how it works. And yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. I'll probably get it wrong now, but someone was telling me at the Crick about some work they've done on, on mice, and they're working on how they smell your olfactory sort of system. And they have these sort of, they just begin to see that, that there's, there's little co-processes in the brain. So, so a smell will come in and this thing will kind of take that data, which is just some, it's the same data that comes from your eyes or your ears, right? They're all just neurons going in there. So your brain sort of figures out what is it? It's a smell thing. It's not a sight thing. And then what is it? And then what would that do? Where is it? So it sends some data to a spatial bit of the brain that is dealing with where it is and how far away it is. And then another bit, is it something you should not like, or like, like a reflex sort of thing, or is it something that you use to build your model of the world? So is it telling you there's some, a forest around the corner or something like that? And it's so remarkable that they're just beginning to map out which bits of the brain do this and how they get the data and where they distribute it to. And it was amazing to me because you're right, we don't know, we know a lot about it, but we don't know as much as we would like to know about it. It's like the universe, as you said And we're living amongst, you know, there's been bad, poor mental health forever, but it seems like, and that's the sort of thing that I'm deeply interested in is people's mental health and how we can help ourselves better it. And, you know, we're still yet to crack that one because we're in, you know, we're up Schitt's Creek with that one at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. I think it all comes back to what we were talking about earlier that we've not figured out how to run a world, definitely. And we've sort of figured out how to run societies, but maybe we're not doing a very good job at the moment. And I would guess it's something to do with the rate of change and, you know, I suppose social media and things have fed into that and we're having to live in a different way and interact with people in a different way. And we've not adapted to it. No, no. But I think it's the number one challenge that we face for all the reasons we've spoken about how valuable this society is. But, you know, one of the possible explanations for why we don't see any other civilizations out there is because they don't get very far. So if you think about at the moment, it's only in the last century, half a century, that we've had the power to destroy ourselves. And we've managed to avoid it. It's remarkable, probably, that for 70 years or so since the invention of the atomic bomb, we haven't used them again after we used the 200,000. But we might do. And maybe there's a theory that essentially says it's too difficult to manage a planet. So when you have so many billion living things, people in this case on the planet, you just can't get along. It's too many. Yeah. So I would hate that to be the case, because I think that we're so valuable and so rare. Yeah. But we don't really, you know, the progress we've made seems to be unravelling somewhat at the moment. Yeah. I mean, as we are running out of time really quickly, there's so many different tangents again. Literally running out of time. We are like, ah, the world's going to end. The whole civilisation. But I think one burning question I have, and this is more from talking to my kids. So my son, who is 12, is bang into science. Like, it's his whole world. He loves it. And I'm constantly trying to learn from him and go back to the drawing board with my lack of scientific knowledge. And my daughter, who's 10, she's, you know, I spoke to her in the car yesterday about this and what would you ask Professor Brian Cox? And it was all around aliens, obviously. But there seems to be a point in the education system where girls are, whether it's discouraged or feel like they don't have so much of a place in the science world. And we can see that reflected throughout history with the few scientific women that are, you know, historically held up and shown as an example of someone that's done, I think of like Marie Curie, and then I'm sort of out of ideas. How can we encourage women to get more into science or for young, I think this starts at the school, doesn't it? How can we, how can we really focus on that and ensure that we're creating space and room for young women to really find their place in this conversation? I think, as you said, we have to, and this applies to all fields, actually, you have to, when a child shows interest in something, you've got to really make sure that you don't snuff out that curiosity, that you encourage it. And also, you're right, that there's, what could it be that's preventing girls going into science? That is quite complicated. And I, the only bit I know is I was involved a few years ago now in a prize, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which looked at this, because engineering, there's an equal problem, if not a larger problem. And one of the things that was found is that there are unconscious biases from parents. If you think of engineering, your view of what engineering is, might be building a road with a hard hat on. Now, that's actually quite high tech now and really interesting. But you might think, I don't want my daughter digging up roads, you know, with all these big blokes or something. So you have preconceptions. And so in engineering, that is the case. And so it wouldn't be that, it's very rare that parents would try and put their daughter off for going into something. But your reaction might not quite be, might not be quite as encouraging as it should be, because you might be on there. And so science maybe has that image that maybe, you know, like being a rocket engineer, for example. And we have a shortage of spacecraft builders in the UK. We're very good at it. It's one of our great industries that we're world leading in. And we don't have enough people going into the industry. So it could be that if your daughter, you say, which rocket building, you might have this unconscious image of a load of geeky blokes in a room, you know, playing with computers or something. So we have to make sure that teachers and parents don't transfer any lack of understanding of the career to their daughters, in this case. But it applies to sons as well. We try and let them do what they want to do and encourage them whichever way that they want to go. And then you're right. And then you get into more complicated issues about career structures, which many industries have that. And that's true in academia as well. And people try to do that. So yeah, it's a very good question. But in terms of youngsters, I really believe that it's, it's making sure that if you're like, if your daughter says, I'm interested in astronomy, you go, right. So you take them outside and you start to know what the stars are. If you could, you buy them some binoculars, maybe, and which you can get, you know, and you can start, you encourage it. I think it's all about encouragement and not putting barriers in the way. The one thing I would say also is that it's really important as parents that you can, if let's say you haven't been to university, let's say university, you haven't been to university, and your son or daughter says, I'd like to do that, then you can go to the universities as a parent, and you can find out what it's like, because you might not know people who've been to university. And that's one of the big blocks, actually. And so the universities are really happy if you say, what would happen to my child if they came to, where would they stay? Where would they live? Because you might be anxious about that, and you can transfer that to your child as well. But all the universities and higher education colleges, all this, are really happy if you come and say, I don't understand this myself, can you show me? And then you can provide encouragement, and you can begin to remove the blocks that might be there. I think there's just some brilliant young women out there who are ready to change the world, and it's exciting. They're right. I mean, you said about the scientists, I mean, so one of the questions I get asked a lot is, how do we know how far away the stars are? I got asked that in a school the other week. How do we know how far away the stars are? One of the most important measurements, it was a great astronomer called Henrietta Leavitt, who was the first to work out that there are some stars, they're called Cepheid variable stars, but it allows you to work out how bright they actually are by looking at them. And she noticed that in the early part of the 20th century. That's the foundation. That work was used to prove that the Andromeda Galaxy, which is our nearest neighbouring galaxy, is far outside the Milky Way. But it was her work. So there are actually quite a lot of famous women in the history of astronomy, but also science. But as you said, it's usually Marie Curie. I felt embarrassed that I couldn't think of any more earlier. I was like, I'm going to have to ask chap GPT because I need to know about more of them. The men you can list off, but the women, they're maybe harder to find. Maybe that's a slight block for young girls too. They're seeing it in history. But there are increasing numbers now of role models. But you're right, it's just, you know, the history of science. I said that it really did start modern science in like 1600. So those names like Newton and Einstein and, you know, Galileo, they're men. But of course, we're talking about a society in 1600. So there's part of that, I think, just historically, until you get to the 20th century, it was extremely difficult to be a woman.