Cosmic Queries – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking with Charles Liu
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Quantum paradoxes. Information and entropy. Spice dust. All of that and more on StarTalk Special Edition Cosmic Queries with our one and only geek-in-chief at the helm, Charles Liu. Coming right up. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. We're doing a Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. Normally, you see these over on our flagship StarTalk show, but we've got with us not only, of course, Gary O'Reilly. Gary. Hey, Neil. And, of course, Chuck Nice. Hey, hey. But the only way this becomes a party is when we bring in our geek in chief, Charles Liu. Charles, how you doing, man? Hey, hey, it is a pleasure to be here.
Thank you so much as always.
All right, all right. Charles is a professor of astronomy. Is that the department? What's the name of the department, Charles? Department is physics and astronomy.
Physics and astronomy.
College of Staten Island. College of Staten Island of the City University System of New York. Longtime friend. Many people don't know that Charles co-wrote the exhibit copy that lives in Negro Center for Earth and Space. He was with us at the birth of the whole facility. That was so much fun. We had a great time, didn't we, Neil? It was. All good. All good. And Gary, former soccer pro. Yes. And I don't think Charles knows this yet. You're a new American citizen as of a few days ago.
All right. Freshly minted. Welcome to the club, Gary. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And the three gentlemen here are part of the reason why being a US citizen for me is fantastic. So thank you.
Oh, wow. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Now we have to live up to that.
No pressure.
We are honored, sir. So we're going to, you know, find topics that really only Charles could give us the best answer on. That's what we put in this show. So let's get this party started. All right. Who's got the first question, Mike?
All right, I'll dive in first. And thank you to all our Patreon members for their questions and their curiosity. If we don't manage to get to your question this time around, apologies. There's only so much time in the universe talking of which. Let's start. Hannah Cantley from Oregon City. And guess where that is? Yes. I'm a big supporter and love the show, so here's my question for Dr. Liu. In a universe where gravity, matter, and information all seem to emerge from the same underlying rules, and observers like us made of that exact same material, what does physics currently think observers are for? Are creatures like us just accidental byproducts of the laws, or does the universe actually need observers in order to manifest or realize its own information?
Oh, straight in the deep end. Here we go.
What does it mean for there to be information anywhere if there's no sentient thing to record it as such?
Yeah. No, this is actually a deep philosophical question right now. Yeah. In physics and the philosophy of physics.
If a Big Bang happens in the multiverse and there's no one there to see it, did it really happen?
Yeah. Right. It's that kind of situation, right? Early on in quantum mechanics, right, there were people like Niels Bohr, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, which basically said that the universe is in a flux state of sort of unknown things. states in the quantum level until you observe it and then the wave function collapses, is what they say, and then reality appears. So in that kind of position, it is absolutely necessary for observers to observe something in order for a wave function to collapse.
Just real quick. So it's called Copenhagen because Niels Bohr was – Danish. Was Danish, A. B, weren't there conferences there where a lot happened so that people associated these new thoughts with that country and that city? That's right. That's right. Okay. And even to this day.
Yeah, Denmark is a hugely important part. They have a cosmology center there. Lots of neat science going on. Yeah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Go on. Yeah. So the question then has since moved on. And clearly, even back then, Niels Bohr wasn't saying that the universe didn't exist if there were no observers.
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