Dr. Brian Keating

Boys can be competitive with their dads, right? You know that. And I wanted to compete with him, but he was an athlete. I was an athlete. I can compete with him and do what he could not do, which was win a Nobel Prize. And I was estranged from him. And I was like, I'm going to win a Nobel Prize, and I'll show him, and he'll regret that he abandoned me and gave me up for adoption.

This is my thought. I'm not saying it's like the most elevated way to be, but that's the way I thought of it. So I said, I have to invent something, discover something that's worthy of a Nobel Prize. That's all I have to do, quote unquote. How hard can it be? There's been hundreds of Nobel Prizes given out. That's the way you thought about it? I was at Stanford and you're surrounded by Nobel.

This is my thought. I'm not saying it's like the most elevated way to be, but that's the way I thought of it. So I said, I have to invent something, discover something that's worthy of a Nobel Prize. That's all I have to do, quote unquote. How hard can it be? There's been hundreds of Nobel Prizes given out. That's the way you thought about it? I was at Stanford and you're surrounded by Nobel.

This is my thought. I'm not saying it's like the most elevated way to be, but that's the way I thought of it. So I said, I have to invent something, discover something that's worthy of a Nobel Prize. That's all I have to do, quote unquote. How hard can it be? There's been hundreds of Nobel Prizes given out. That's the way you thought about it? I was at Stanford and you're surrounded by Nobel.

You know what it's like. I was a postdoc at Stanford for a short time. We can get into that. And the point was I was obsessed with discovering or inventing an experiment that could take us back to the primordial universe before what we call the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not the origin of time and space. It's the origin of the first elements in the periodic table of the elements.

You know what it's like. I was a postdoc at Stanford for a short time. We can get into that. And the point was I was obsessed with discovering or inventing an experiment that could take us back to the primordial universe before what we call the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not the origin of time and space. It's the origin of the first elements in the periodic table of the elements.

You know what it's like. I was a postdoc at Stanford for a short time. We can get into that. And the point was I was obsessed with discovering or inventing an experiment that could take us back to the primordial universe before what we call the Big Bang. The Big Bang is not the origin of time and space. It's the origin of the first elements in the periodic table of the elements.

We still don't know what caused that event to occur. And I realized that if we discovered what caused that event to occur, which is hypothesized to be a phenomenon called inflation, which was co-created by at least three scientists, but two of whom were at Stanford, associate with Stanford, Alan Guth, who's now at MIT. He was a postdoc at Slack.

We still don't know what caused that event to occur. And I realized that if we discovered what caused that event to occur, which is hypothesized to be a phenomenon called inflation, which was co-created by at least three scientists, but two of whom were at Stanford, associate with Stanford, Alan Guth, who's now at MIT. He was a postdoc at Slack.

We still don't know what caused that event to occur. And I realized that if we discovered what caused that event to occur, which is hypothesized to be a phenomenon called inflation, which was co-created by at least three scientists, but two of whom were at Stanford, associate with Stanford, Alan Guth, who's now at MIT. He was a postdoc at Slack.

And Andre Linde, who's a renowned professor at Stanford to this day. So they predicted that there was this mysterious substance called a quantum field and that the fluctuations in this quantum field existing in the four-dimensional infinite space, the random fluctuations of a quantum field, what's called vacuum energy, is unstable.

And Andre Linde, who's a renowned professor at Stanford to this day. So they predicted that there was this mysterious substance called a quantum field and that the fluctuations in this quantum field existing in the four-dimensional infinite space, the random fluctuations of a quantum field, what's called vacuum energy, is unstable.

And Andre Linde, who's a renowned professor at Stanford to this day. So they predicted that there was this mysterious substance called a quantum field and that the fluctuations in this quantum field existing in the four-dimensional infinite space, the random fluctuations of a quantum field, what's called vacuum energy, is unstable.

You can't have what's called vacuum or negative energy and have it just sit there permanently. It eventually inexorably must fluctuate, and the fluctuations can actually spawn an expansion of that four-dimensional space locally. And that occurred at a specific time.

You can't have what's called vacuum or negative energy and have it just sit there permanently. It eventually inexorably must fluctuate, and the fluctuations can actually spawn an expansion of that four-dimensional space locally. And that occurred at a specific time.

You can't have what's called vacuum or negative energy and have it just sit there permanently. It eventually inexorably must fluctuate, and the fluctuations can actually spawn an expansion of that four-dimensional space locally. And that occurred at a specific time.

So you can think of it as just ordinary three-dimensional space. But imagine x, y, and z extend to infinity in all directions. And we're sitting at our local, what we perceive as the center of our universe. It's just our observable universe. We can look out 90 billion light years in any direction, which is longer than the age of the universe times the speed of light.

So you can think of it as just ordinary three-dimensional space. But imagine x, y, and z extend to infinity in all directions. And we're sitting at our local, what we perceive as the center of our universe. It's just our observable universe. We can look out 90 billion light years in any direction, which is longer than the age of the universe times the speed of light.

So you can think of it as just ordinary three-dimensional space. But imagine x, y, and z extend to infinity in all directions. And we're sitting at our local, what we perceive as the center of our universe. It's just our observable universe. We can look out 90 billion light years in any direction, which is longer than the age of the universe times the speed of light.

That's because the universe has been expanding. In addition to having existed for 14 billion years, it's been expanding for an additional power of three times that. And then imagine time. So time is a fourth component, and we have to weave those together in order to understand how objects behave in this landscape of what we call the cosmos.