Brian Keating: I’m Spending $200 Million To Explore Existence! How God Fits Into Science Explained!

Brian Keating walks Steven Bartlett through humanity's quest to understand the origin of the universe and whether it had a singular Big Bang beginning. He recounts the BICEP experiment at the South Pole that appeared to detect the signature of cosmic inflation, only to be retracted when the signal turned out to be galactic dust, and the new $200M Simons Observatory built to finally answer the question. The conversation ranges widely across the existence and nature of God, faith versus evidence, simulation theory, astrology, and the probability of alien life. Keating argues we are likely alone given how many improbable events had to align for Earth to host life, and closes on meaning, mortality, impostor syndrome among Nobel laureates, and the lasting impact of creative work.

• Keating's team announced detecting the 'baby picture' of the Big Bang and was heralded worldwide as the greatest discovery in science.
  00:16:33
• The signal turned out to be galactic cosmic dust, forcing a public retraction in early 2015 that he calls the most crushing experience a scientist can have.
  00:17:34
• Mathematician Jim Simons funded the dream-team follow-up; the new Chile observatory got first light a month before Simons died.
  00:18:05
• Bartlett reveals he was religious until 18, then fell down a Richard Dawkins rabbit hole and became agnostic.
  00:23:52
• Keating concedes you cannot test God with the laws of physics and therefore cannot prove God exists, despite wanting to.
  01:17:27
• Keating states he believes it is very high probability that we are alone in the universe.
  01:23:38
• Keating gets emotional about death and friends impacted by October 7th, saying he has cried more in the past year than ever.
  01:32:28
• Reveals Isaac Newton had impostor syndrome over Jesus and tried to die a virgin as Jesus did.
  01:36:37

• The iron in your blood's hemoglobin was forged in a supernova; we are literally 'star stuff'.
  00:11:23
• Hemoglobin is nearly identical to chlorophyll, except chlorophyll has magnesium at its center and hemoglobin has iron.
  00:14:31
• Almost every star has roughly 10 planets; the observable universe holds about a 1 followed by 24 zeros worth of planets.
  01:02:48
• The farthest probe (launched 1977) is only one light-day away; the nearest star is 1,200 times farther.
  01:04:21
• If the Milky Way were a 2.5m table, our entire solar system would be about half a grain of sand, and there are ~100 billion such 'tables'.
  01:09:34
• There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
  01:10:38
• The word 'podcast' traces back to the iPod, whose name came from the 'pod' in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  01:15:22
• An asteroid about an inch across (in his model) hit the Yucatan ~65M years ago, killing the dinosaurs and clearing the way for mammals.
  01:21:04
• Keating was born September 9th, statistically the most common birthday, roughly nine months after the holiday season.
  01:27:16
• The Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet called Theia smashed into the early Earth.
  01:18:29

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