What Don't We Know?

Hello and welcome back to the Infinite Monkey Cage.

I am the interested fool, Robin Ince, and with me as usual is Professor Brian Cox, the one who sometimes brightens up your Sunday evenings by reminding you that whatever you do, our universe will inevitably come to an end.

On his popular series, That's Entropy.

Yes, this is Infinite Monkey Cage, a show that starts off in a very well-ordered state but subsequently descends into chaos.

That's entropy.

We're going to be saying that throughout the show.

That's the only way that we've found to educate people about entropy is to constantly just say, that's entropy, with jazz hands.

And eventually they go, that is entropy, isn't it?

Actually, how about we have the audience do that?

So one, two, three.

That's entropy.

The whole thing is chaos, etc.

So

we do, however, have a constant and clear agenda to promote reason, celebrate the dominant contribution science, engineering, and rational thought have made to our civilisation.

And of course, to quote Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman, and laugh in the face of the absurd prattlings of the spine wizards and amnesiac water fondlers.

Oh, those amnesiac water fondlers.

I got some of their amnesiac water fondling pills.

Sciatica hasn't gone yet.

Oh.

The Feynman quote for today, by the way, is, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it is, so far as I can tell.

The

I should have done that.

The Feynman, I find Feynman very difficult when you actually have to do a quote.

You have to do a wow.

You know, I think that's kind of nutty.

Anyway, so there we are.

Woody Allen is there.

That's not Woody Allen.

It's Alan Alder.

Alan Alder.

Woody is.

Anyway, so the

We've Been Away for six months, which I think hasn't been long enough.

We've been away for six months, which in fact was only 40 minutes for the protons in the Large Hadron Collider, and that's due to the effects of time dilation.

Or as we like to say, time dilation.

Let's hear that from the audience.

No, I didn't think they go with time dilation.

Today we're going to be asking, what don't we know?

I'm wondering if there may be things we can never know.

Brian, do you think there are things that we can ever know?

No.

Actually, when I say no, the factually accurate answer would be yes, but the fact that I know that may suggest that the answer should be no.

So, yeah, you are.

We're going to be going through a minefield of semantics and science today.

It could be quite a tricky one.

To help us consider what unknowns may become known and what unknowns could remain forever unknown, we have a group of known knowers, including an expert on snails and a man dedicated to reducing your fear of quantum theory.

With a first-class degree in physics and a master of science in astrophysics, an over N, best-selling science books to his name, where N is an integer, is the only guest we've ever had whose name is a Unix command.

Marcus Chown.

See, now that is the problem.

Because you said that N, why don't scientists, after all these years, know what N is yet?

I've heard one science say that N was seven, another one said that N was about seven million.

Until we know what N is, we are lost as far as I'm concerned.

This is what happens when you get an English graduate to present a science show.

I never said.

I never said I graduated.

And

since he was asked with us, he was nominated for a Barry Award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but still rejects fans, preferring instead connoisseurs.

It's the only guest we've ever had on the show whose name is an Imperial Unit of Length, maths graduate and comedian Paul Foot.

And we're joined by a geneticist who has rewritten the books of Charles Darwin but has now moved on to rewriting the Bible or at least Genesis from a scientific perspective.

Which I can't imagine is going to be an issue with any fundamentalists at all.

What lovely placards.

Neither a measurement nor a unit's command, although his name sounds a bit like Steve Ohms, but it isn't Steve Ohms and therefore that last sentence was null and void.

It is Professor Steve Jones and this is our panel.

So Marcus, I'm going to start with you.

What do you think is the most pressing in terms of known unknowns?

What do you think are the most important known unknowns?

What should we be seeking out now?

Well, I mean, it has to be the major component of the universe, really.

We know that 98% of the universe is invisible.

About 4% of the universe is made of atoms, the kind of stuff that you and I and the galaxies and stars are made of.

Only half of that have we ever seen with our telescopes.

In addition to the 4%, there's 23% dark matter, which is material that either is invisible or it gives out so little light we can't actually detect it.

And we know it's there because it pulls on the stars and galaxies so we see them moving.

And in addition to that, the major mass component of the universe is the dark energy, which accounts for 73% of the mass energy of the universe.

That was discovered in 1998.

It's invisible, it fills all of space, and it's speeding up the expansion of the universe.

So it's an amazing position to be in after 350 years of science to only been studying 2% of the universe.

It's a bit like Steve here, he's an expert on snails.

I I mean, say, Darwin just knew about snails, and he didn't know about elephants, he didn't know about crocodiles, and he didn't know about jellyfish, and he had to come up with a theory of biology.

So we've come up with this great theory of the evolution of the universe in the Big Bang, but we base this on the 2% that we've seen.

So after having insulted one of our panelists already, we're going, well, Steve's no Darwin.

All he knows about is snails.

But Steve, if we put that to one side for a moment, biologically speaking, what are the big questions?

I think the biggest question is, why are there so few genes?

As everybody knows, we've got to sequence the human genome, and we could now do it with extraordinary speed.

I was speaking to somebody the other day who says, but by the end of this year, you'll be able to read off the entire DNA of anybody in this room, not in the 15 years it took to read the first set of DNA, but in 15 minutes.

And that's pretty impressive.

But now that we've read it off, it turns out that there are remarkably few genes.

When I was a student some years ago, I have to say, the origin of the universe, more or less,

we used to believe, and we were told, that there were hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of genes to make anything as beautiful and elegant and generally marvelous as, for example, me.

Okay, and that would seem, that seems reasonable.

It now turns out that there's only about 24,000, perhaps slightly fewer, genes that go to make a human being, and that's less genes than it takes to make a cabbage.

It's about the same number of pieces, 24,000, as go to make a bendy London bus.

There's got about 24,000 pieces in there.

There's screws and washers and relays and that kind of stuff.

And that's the same number of pieces as in you, me, or even David Cameron, I think, taking a wild leap at the imagination.

But that's really quite startling.

I think, and what that tells us is actually we don't understand genetics at all.

We're in a position of somebody, we now realize, who's got a whole pile of buckets in which in some buckets that are relays, and some buckets that there are screws, and other ones that are washers, and we have to make a bus out of it, and we don't know how to do it.

So, I think that in biology, unlike physics, the more you know, the less you understand.

And I think that's the biggest problem we now face in biology.

So, Paul, it turns out we don't know what most of the universe is really made out of.

It turns out genetics may well not be the answer whatsoever, and living things become even more complex by attempting to understand them.

What for you is the most important known unknown?

Well, for me,

something I don't know,

which I find interesting, is when they make shoes,

why can't they just make the shoes like of shoe all the way through?

Why does it have to, when you scuff it, why does it have to be a different colour?

Why can't they just

make the shoe all of the same thing?

So when you scuff it, it still looks like a shoe.

I mean, they've been making shoes for years.

Now, see, Paul, I think you've confused things that you don't know

with things that...

Because I reckon,

I mean, I don't don't know if admittedly I don't know if Marcus, Steve or Brian have the answer.

I mean they're all scientists.

Do you know the nature of the rainbow shoe?

I mean do they make it with scuff stuff first and then cover it with the other stuff?

It's not a problem with clogs though.

Wooden clogs.

Not with well yeah exactly with a wooden clog unless it's got a veneer

unless it's carefully covered wooden clog that can be a problem.

So that's the first answer we've had.

So

no answers really from the scientists until Brian came up with clogs, which was an unexpected first answer today.

I don't know where to go from here.

I don't know how to say let's carry on with clogs.

Or an easy launch pad of where to go.

Anyway, back to the science table.

So Marcus, we're talking about dark energy and dark matter.

There's certainly areas that I think we can conceivably see could be solved, particularly dark matter.

I think the nature of dark matter is something that's very much on the the agenda at the Large Hadron Collider, for example.

Whereas, Steve, is the same true of the limited number of genes?

Or is that something that you think may be a genuinely fundamental problem and you can't see a root?

I think

at the moment it's probably a pretty fundamental problem.

I mean, you know, everybody knows about Mendel and his peas and counting one set of peas against another peas.

That was right.

But what we've now got is pea soup.

We've basically got something which seemed to be very clear and simple,

actually was at the basis of a lot of mathematics and statistics in the 1920s and 1930s.

It was so elegant it could almost have been physics.

It's turned back into biology again.

And if there's one thing which biology is, I can guarantee you, is a mess.

And that's one of the joys of being a biologist, is that you know you're never going to know everything.

Whereas many of you physicists think you know everything already, of course.

I mean,

could you ask the question, well, I'll ask you the question, why has a cabbage got more genes than a human?

Is there any sense that we could understand that?

Well, the answer is we have not the slightest idea.

I mean, it's even conceivable in some sense that this famous double helix, the DNA, may not, in the end, be the genetic material.

It may just be part of a very complicated interaction between this.

It used to be called, it was called the, before people discovered or thought they discovered that they knew what it did, it was called very dismissively by biochemists the stupid molecule because it was like dark matter.

It was everywhere, it was in every cell, and it didn't seem to do anything.

It just sat there, you know, buzzing away.

Now it's got this godlike figure.

It's a bit like the icon of the 21st century.

But it's quite conceivable that actually,

the process of heredity, DNA may be a small part in an incredibly complicated network.

And we don't even know whether that's true yet.

And I think it'll be a long, long time before we find out.

Yeah, if I may just go back to cabbage.

I'm just thinking, I mean, it's not that surprising that there would be a lot more genes in cabbage, is there?

Because cabbages are much more varied than people, aren't they?

I mean, you get red cabbage, Savoy, and that very long cabbage thing, that Chinese cabbage thing that no one really likes, but

they use it sometimes in stir-fries.

It's always a bit chewy, and you sort of leave it.

I think it's

a whole variety of cabbage, whereas people are all quite similar, aren't they?

Sprouts.

And they're kind of sprouts.

Oh, don't give him more ammunition.

You're giving it sprouts.

Let's move away from cabbage.

Let's go from cabbage to chimpanzees, okay?

We've got fewer working genes than chimpanzees have got.

An awful thing, a lot of things the chimpanzees can do genetically, we can't do.

Um if anybody in this room wants to try a really weird diet, um to lose weight or what have you, just eat raw food.

You can eat as much raw food as you like, you can have vegetables, fish, meat, whatever you like, you can stuff yourself with it all day, every day, and you will die within three months.

We can't digest raw food.

Chimpanzees, every other animal, only get raw food.

And that's because we've lost the genes that allow us to make digestive enzymes to digest these foods.

And why is that?

It's because we've invented an external stomach known as the frying pan, okay?

And now we're slaves to the frying pan.

So actually, we're genetically less complicated than chimpanzees, which is where some people are concerned, I'm not surprised,

but where Brian Cox is concerned, I'm astonished.

Marcus, is that one of the problems there?

Just the fact that sometimes with science, people go, oh, these scientists, they don't have all the answers.

I mean, with something like intelligent design, some people would pick up a media once they've said, see, these scientists are changing their mind already.

And people want certainty, so this can be a problem with advance.

But science is about uncertainty, isn't it?

It's about accepting that we don't know everything, and it's about doubting things.

I mean, that's fundamental to science, isn't it?

So it's a misunderstanding of what science is all about.

I mean, science to me, you can define science in one word, which is pessimism.

Okay.

You assume that what you've found is wrong, and you keep testing it until finally it looks as if it might be right.

And one of the things which people not in science maybe don't realize is that the commonest phrase which scientists use is, I don't know.

We don't know, we don't understand that.

And then slowly you move onwards and you know a little bit more.

I have to say, I would be quite surprised if we end up, even if Brian Cox ends up, saying, I do know, and I cover everything, because then you wouldn't be doing science, you'd be doing its opposite, which is perhaps religion.

And religion, people do know because it's all written down in a good book, and it's got to be true.

Now, once you do know, you've abandoned all interest and curiosity in life.

So I don't know, and it's for idiots.

That's why I like science.

Marcus,

you mentioned dark energy and dark matter.

Now dark energy is one of those profoundly puzzling phenomena.

It was essentially the discovery itself was essentially unexpected, wasn't it?

Although Einstein had pointed out that it's allowed in his equations.

Can you describe what the surprise was and what is the big problem with it?

Well the standard Big Bang model tells us that the universe began in a a very hot, dense state, we think about

14 billion years ago, and has been expanding and cooling ever since, you know, with all the galaxies, like our Milky Way, congealing out of this stuff.

And I mean, an obvious prediction of that Big Bang model is that because the only force that's operating is gravity, which is gravity between all the galaxies, that as they fly apart like bits of cosmic shrapnel, they should slow down because gravity is pulling them back.

So, contrary to all expectations, in 1998, two teams in America found that the galaxies, far from actually being breaked as we'd expect, they were actually speeding up.

They were flying away from each other faster and faster.

So, what physicists have postulated is that empty space is filled with kind of springy space, you know, that's pushing the galaxies apart, and that's that's dark energy.

And I think you're being a bit over-optimistic when you said that, oh, it's only a matter of time before we figure it out.

If you take that quantum theory, which is our very, very best description of reality, it's given us computers and lasers and nuclear reactors.

It explains why this table here is solid, why the sun shines.

When we use that to predict the energy of empty space, that's the dark energy, we get a number which is one followed by 120 zeros bigger than what we observe.

And that's the biggest discrepancy between a prediction and an observation in the history of science.

So I think there might be something wrong there.

Mere trifle, isn't it, Paul?

Absolutely, absolutely.

It can can easily be sorted out, and you can do that in your next series.

10 to the 120.

Can you give us some perspective on how big a number that is?

It'd be about

difficult to describe on radio.

About that long, wouldn't it?

That's roughly how it's about three feet long, that number.

Could you also give the font size as well to give the people at home some sense of

Times New Roman

size 10?

We could estimate how accurate that is, couldn't we?

Let's say it was one meter, three feet, and we've got 10 to the 120.

So we want the constituent parts to be one over one to the 120.

So

that would be far smaller than an electron, just to give some example for the size of this number.

10 to the 120 electrons.

How long would that be?

So

about

10 to the minus 18, I can do this.

This is brilliant.

About 10 to the minus 18 meters.

Is that the limit on the size of an electron?

10 to the 120?

Talk amongst yourselves.

It's very big discrepancy.

That's about 10 to the 100.

Is that right?

It's about 10 to the 100 meters.

10 to the 120 is 1 followed by 120 zeros.

Yeah.

That makes it a lot easier to visualise, doesn't it?

Everybody's gravity.

But Steve, I suppose

what we're talking about here, things like dark energy, they're essentially what you might call fundamental problems that

may have a simple answer.

I mean, you may say, for example, if we had a quantum theory of gravity, if we understood string theory, then we could understand why dark energy is non-zero but

very small.

However, biology, it seems to me that the problems are problems of complexity and not necessarily in principle problems, or would that be unfair?

Well, I'll tell you the answer when

we find it out, of course.

But

there is a horrible philosophical term which is called emergent properties.

I mean, the brain consists of an awful lot of neurons and an awful lot of synapses, which are gaps between neurons and lots of biochemistry and lots of electrical impulses, but actually, it's much more than that.

Something the consciousness, consciousness, what have you, emerges from that.

So, however many small bits you chop a brain down into, you will not understand consciousness, or so it seems at the moment.

I mean, somebody once costed up how much it would cost in terms of pound shillings and pounds to buy the chemicals necessary to make a human being.

And I think the answer was,

I display my age here, I think the answer was twelve pounds eight and four pence.

Now if I was to get you twelve pounds eight and four pence worth of chemistry and an infinitely large research grant and a team of a million scientists, you'd end up with the same twenty-five bottles with chemicals in them.

You wouldn't know where to start.

But this is a bit disturbing though, isn't it?

Because it almost sounds like it's a door for mysticism in a way.

I mean how would you defend yourself?

I assume you would like to defend yourself against that charge.

Well, it's a danger.

I mean, the problem is the philosophers get in and ruin it all.

I once came up with a phrase which annoys philosophers, which is actually appropriate here.

You know, philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex.

It's cheaper, easier, and some people seem to prefer it.

And

what that tells me is that the philosophy of science is a contradiction in terms.

You ask any scientist about philosophy, they'll say, what?

What's that?

I never crossed my mind.

And you ask a philosopher about science, they know everything about it.

So there's a big disconnect there.

And I think the answer is that these big questions of biology have not been very helpful.

I think physicists might be under an illusion, really, because I think physics may turn out to be as complex as biology.

I think that we're just looking at the simple bits of the universe, and we're kind of like a drunk, you know, looking for his keys at night, looks under a streetlight, you know, doesn't look at all the other, everything else in the city.

So I think we might be just looking at the simple simple bits and that physics in the last 350 years has just been quite successful at explaining the simple bits.

But we don't understand any of the complexity.

We don't understand turbulence.

We don't understand how galaxies form.

And we could be hoodwinking ourselves by thinking that we've got any more understanding than biologists have.

See, by the way, I do like the fact that the battle has started again, which is, oh, biology is easy.

Physics is really hard.

Actually, physics might be getting near its end and really nothing.

Oh, actually, you know, physics is much harder.

We hardly know anything.

Oh, you biologists and physicists, why will you never get on?

Marcus, do you think

there's a point in history or prehistory where human beings, beings might have actually believed that maybe they did know everything?

And then you start to examine things.

It's like if you look, often people say, in ancient times, people were very wise.

They knew everything.

And of course, the point was there wasn't as much they didn't know they didn't know.

So they go, that's the moon.

That controls the tides.

You know a lot.

I've read all the books.

What, all three of them?

Yes, I have.

So you kind of had that situation.

Well, yeah.

i mean physicists are always getting egg on their face and they never learn i mean uh

you see now all i see is an egg

now i see going hey come on everyone's left to certain now let's put the eggs in the tube instead we never learn fast eggs

but lots of physicists particularly in the in the late 19th century thought that they got everything solved lord kelvin famously said in about 1900 that you know physics was pretty much over and we just had to dot a few i's and cross the t's and that that was, of course, on the eve of the quantum revolution.

You know, I mean, 1900, Max Planck discovers the quantum, and then there's a revolution, and we discover that everything that we knew in physics was wrong.

And then,

in more recent times, I can remember just before the discovery of the dark energy, Stephen Hawking saying that we were very close to a theory of everything.

You know, and then completely out of left field, we discover this stuff, as I say, you know, where our best theory predicts its energy and it is out by a factor of one followed by 120 zeros.

So I think physicists should learn, really, because there have been so many generations that have got it wrong, not to make these kind of statements.

Is that the problem, though?

It's like anyone who's started, once you start reading a book,

at a certain point you think you know a certain amount.

Then you start reading books, you go, oh, I know more.

But in fact, rather than know more, you do know a few more things, you also find out how much you didn't know.

So in fact, by the end of your life, if you've done well and you've read well and done your research, the actual pie chart of what you know is a smaller piece of pie than it was when you were three years old.

Definitely, yeah.

I mean, Newton famously, I can't remember the quote, but he said something like, you know, the greater the continent of knowledge, the greater the coastline of the unknown, something like that.

And that's certainly true.

But the great thing is, although we know, well, we find out about so many more things that we don't know, at least we can actually pose precise questions.

So, you know, now, because we have the Big Bang theory, we can say, well, what was the Big Bang?

What drove the Big Bang?

What happened before the Big Bang?

And these are precise questions, and we have a good chance of answering them in maybe the next 10 years.

So yeah, yeah,

we are learning things that we don't know, but we're able to phrase more and more questions and have a good chance of answering them.

Steve.

Oscar Wilde came up with another quote.

I always like quotes.

He said,

I'm no longer young enough to know everything.

And

that's actually a very useful thing, because the average five-year-old knows everything.

But he knows, or he or she knows, everything they need to know.

And it's the discovery that you don't know anything which is the frightening moment, I think, in your education.

I know we've got to wrap up in a moment.

There's just one more.

Paul, what would you want?

If there was one question, a question about the universe that you could have the answer to, just one question, what would it be?

When the plane lands and they put the seat pot sign off, why does everyone jump up?

Where are they going?

Where are they in such a rush for?

And where are they now?

I would like to know that.

Okay, any plan at that.

We can look into that.

The BBC have got a unit.

We've got a load of audience questions.

When they were coming in, we asked the audience, what don't you know that you'd like to know?

So these just begin to be.

I want to know what love is, and I want you to show me.

Yours, Brian.

I don't think that was meant for me.

I think we know the answer to that.

Who wrote this?

Sorry about that, Penny.

We'll do that again.

Brian, if you could read it out.

Oh, no, you've started blushing.

Don't blush.

It ruins the allure.

So, where actually is Harold Camping, Paul?

Who is Harold Camping?

That's fine, that will do as an answer.

It shows exactly how quickly in show business and religious fundamentalism you go up and down.

Here's a question from Kira for Steve.

Kids nowadays, it's not a daily mail thing, this is kids nowadays push doorbells with their thumbs because they're so used to using thumbs to operate the mobile phone.

Is this an evolutionary progression?

Well, that's.

I mean, the question is: are their kids going to be more prone to use their thumbs because their parents use the thumbs?

And the answer is no.

That's what we call the inheritance of acquired characters.

There was a professor at University of College London, where I work, in the early 20th century, about 1915, who was convinced that if you took mice and you cut their tails off for generation after generation after generation, after 50, 60, 100 generations, you'd get mice without tails.

And he went on for year after year after year.

And then somebody pointed, with no success, and somebody pointed out to him that people of the Jewish persuasion had been doing the experiment for thousands of years

with no success that I'm aware of.

So I think the answer is no.

So what's the conclusion, anyway?

We've come to the conclusion that physicists may well learn everything, but biologists have no chance.

Was that the

Yep, that's true.

I think, you know, physicists have got penis envy, and biologists have got physics envy.

What have comedians got?

What kind of envy have comedians got?

Oh, God, don't even start on that one.

How did he get that butter advert?

So, that's all we've got time for.

Why is that all we've got time for?

Because it doesn't matter what speed you've been travelling due to the relativity nature of time, time has still run out.

Not time, obviously, as a universal universal concept.

There is still some time left, though, perhaps for us on Earth, somewhere between three billion years and 4.6 billion years, depending on whether we get caught up in clashing with another galaxy or we wait until the sun engulfs us.

So, thank you to Professor Steve Jones, Marcus Chown, and Paul Foote.

We weren't expecting that, were you?

But there we go.

So,

it's true, isn't it?

We're going to have a clash of galaxies in three billion years' time.

Another gloomy predictions.

That's why I prefer astrology sometimes.

I was going to meet a man in a hat.

We've got about minus three days left after we according to Harold.

Anyway, next week we'll be looking at connectivity, and so not six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but we may be looking at six degrees of Francis Bacon.

That's obviously the philosopher and scientist, not the painter.

And we'll be joined by Simon Singh and Stephen Fry.

So remember, if there's a known unknown you want to become known, why not get the answer by becoming a scientist?

If you're lazy like me, why not just hang around some scientists and hope they're telling the truth?

Lying about Roswell.

Lying about Roswell, Brian Cox.

So there we are.

Follow us on Twitter at TheMonkey Cage, but please remember we have a super injunction in force, so do not mention the monkey cage.

Good night.