Search
5 interviews · 9 quotes
Conversations
Professor Brian Cox is widely recognized as the foremost communicator for science, cosmology and astronomy in the world, and is Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester, The Royal Society…
What 190 conversations with the world's leading thinkers reveal about the nature of reality
In this interview, I speak to veteran science broadcaster and journalist Jay Ingram, author of twenty popular science titles, including the bestselling Science of Why series. In hiss latest book The Science…
Nitin Sawhney CBE, recipient of the Ivor Novello 2017 Lifetime Achievement award, is one the most distinctive and versatile musical voices around today. Sawhney has recorded multiple albums, film soundtracks and compilations,…
In this interview I speak to Eric Ries — creator of the Lean Startup method and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange — he argues that corporate corruption is structural, not moral.…
From the archive
Einstein famously said time is what a clock measures, which was a half-joke but also the best answer he could give. A clock measures the 'distance' it travels through spacetime between events. That's fascinating, but it still doesn't tell you what time actually is.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
Quantum mechanics is a consistent mathematical structure, not that difficult to understand in itself, which nature has chosen. The confusing thing is that nature chose something that doesn't feel intuitive to us. It has a reputation for being mystifying mainly because of its history rather than what it really is as a theory.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
The paradox is that in the Milky Way galaxy, with something like 400 billion stars and trillions of planets, it's estimated there may be around 10 billion potentially Earth-like worlds. And the galaxy has been around for about 13 billion years. If a civilisation had developed ahead of us and become spacefaring, it's very hard to see why we haven't noticed any evidence of that.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
Many biologists I speak to would say it's almost incomprehensible that something as complex as us has even appeared at all—we might just be very lucky. Or maybe it normally only takes a few hundred million years to go from life to intelligence, and we were just slow. We have a sample size of one.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
Whatever you think it is, it self-evidently exists, because the universe means something to each of us. But I would argue that whatever it is, it's an emergent property. So it exists here on Earth because there are complex biological systems. Without those complex biological systems, it doesn't exist. There is no meaning. We bring meaning to it.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
From cell to civilisation took about 4 billion years, which is a long time—a third of the age of the universe. If it takes billions of years to produce complex living things at our level, maybe there aren't many places that could sustain an unbroken chain of life for that long.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
Most astronomers are surprised, but biologists look at the history of life on Earth. Many biologists I speak to would say it's almost incomprehensible that something as complex as us has even appeared at all—we might just be very lucky.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
If there are no other complex biological systems in a galaxy like the Milky Way, then there's no meaning in that galaxy at all—so the galaxy is meaningless if there are no complex biological systems in it. We bring meaning to it.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
Whatever you think it is, meaning self-evidently exists, because the universe means something to each of us. But I would argue that whatever it is, it's an emergent property. So it exists here on Earth because there are complex biological systems. Without those complex biological systems, it doesn't exist. There is no meaning.
— Brian CoxTheoretical Physicist & TV Science Communicator
More conversations
