The Infinite Monkey Cage - What Don't We Know?

Episode Date: May 30, 2011

Professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince return for a new series of the witty, irreverent science/comedy show. This week the Infinite Monkeys will be asking what don't we know, do we know what we don't know, does science know what it doesn't know, and are there some things that science will never be able to know? Joining them on stage for this brain twister and to discuss whether any of us actually know anything at all, are the comedian Paul Foot, biologist Professor Steve Jones and cosmologist and science writer Marcus Chown.Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is a download from the BBC. To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio4. 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, et cetera. 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. 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. See, 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... You know, I think that's kind of nutty. Anyway, so there we are. That's Woody Allen, isn't it? That's not Woody Allen. It's Alan Alda. Woody is... Anyway, so... 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'd 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 never 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, a no-but-N best-selling science book 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 there N. Why don't scientists over all these years know what N is yet? I've heard one scientist say that N was 7, 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. 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. He'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! APPLAUSE Steve Jones, and this is our panel. So, Marcus, I will 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 have been studying 2% of the universe it's a bit like Steve here

he's an expert on snails say Darwin just knew about snails and he didn't know about elephants and 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 that we've come up with this great theory of the evolution of the universe in the big bang but we base this on the two percent that we've seen so after having insulted one of our panelists already we're

going to 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 can 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. And 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 about 24,000 pieces in there, the 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 of the imagination. And that's really quite startling. I think 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 some buckets that are relays, some buckets that are

screws and the 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 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 why does it have to when you scuff it why does it have to be a different color why all of the same thing so when you scuff it still to be a different colour? Why couldn'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'd be making shoes for years.

Now, see, Paul, I think you've confused things that you don't know... I don't know...with things that... Cos I reckon... I mean, I don't know if... Admittedly, I don't know if Mark or 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. Well, exactly. With a wooden clog, unless it's got a veneer, unless it's a 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. Oh, come on! Let's carry on with the 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 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 route

to answering that question? I think at the moment it's probably a pretty fundamental problem you know everybody knows about Mendel and his peas and counting one set of peas against another pea, 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.

It 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, I'll ask you the question, why has a cabbage got more genes than the 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 this 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 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 cabbages 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. They use it sometimes in stir-fries.

It's always a bit chewy and you sort of leave it. So there's a whole variety of cabbage, whereas people are all quite similar, aren't they? Sprouts. Aren't they kind of... Oh, don't give him more ammunition! You're giving it sprouts. They're similar. Let's move away from cabbage. Let move away from cabbage to chimpanzees. We've got fewer working genes than chimpanzees have got.

An awful lot of things that chimpanzees can do genetically, we can't do. If anybody in this room wants to try a really weird diet, 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. Stuff yourself with it all day, every day, and you will die within three months. We can't digest raw food as you like. You can have vegetables, fish, meat, whatever you like. 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. 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 and say, 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, OK? You assume that what you have 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 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 very hot, dense state. We think about 14 million years ago and has been expanding and cooling ever since, with all the galaxies, like our Milky Way, congealing out of this stuff. And 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 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 braked 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 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, like, 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 1 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 easily be sorted out, and you can do that in your next series. For your 10 to the 120, can you give us some perspective on how big a number that is? It would be about... Difficult to describe on radio. About that long, wouldn't it? That's roughly how... It's. About that long, wouldn't it? That's roughly how long... 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...? So, you know, Times New Roman, size 10. Actually, we could estimate how accurate that is, couldn't we? Let's say it was one metre, 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? If you... So about 10 to the minus 18. Oh, I can do this. This is brilliant. About 10 to the minus 18 metres. Is that the limit on the size of an electron? We've got 10 to the 120. Talk amongst yourselves. It's a very big discrepancy, isn't it? That's about 10 to the 100. Is that right? It's about 10 to the 100 metres.

10 to the 120 is 1 followed by 120 zeros. Yeah. That makes it a lot easier to visualize doesn't it but steve i suppose that what what we're talking about here things like dark energy they're essentially what you might call fundamental problems that may have a 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 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

will have you, emerges from that. So however many small bits you chop a brain down into, you will not understand consciousness, or so 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 £12.084. Now, if I was to get you £12.084 worth of chemistry and an infinitely large research grant and a team of a million scientists, you'd end up with the same 25 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'd 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. Yeah, 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? It 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 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 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. 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, no, physics is much harder, we hardly know anything. Oh, you biologists and physicists, why will you never get on? But, Marcus, do you think there was... Is there a point in history or prehistory where human 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 tide. You know a lot. I've read all the books. What, all three of them? Yes, I have. Has he kind of had that situation? Well, yeah, I mean, physicists always get an egg on their face and they never learn. I mean... See, now all I see is an egg. Now I see him going, hey, come on, everyone's left CERN now, let's put the eggs in the tube instead.

We never learn. Fast eggs. But lots of physicists, particularly in the late 19th century, thought that they'd 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 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 everything that we knew in physics was wrong and then uh 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 uh 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 should learn really because there's been so many generations that got it wrong not to make these kind of statements is that the problem though it's like anyone who started once you start reading a book at a certain point you think you know a certain amount then you start reading reading books and you go, oh, I know more. But in fact rather than know more, you do know a few more things but 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, 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. Paul, what would you want? If there was one question, a question about the universe that you could have the answer to, one question, what would it be? When the plane lands

and they put the seatbelt sign off, why does everyone jump up? Where are they going? What are they in such a rush for? And where are they now? I would like to know 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 began to be, I want to know what love is, and I want you to show me.

That'd be one of yours, Brian. I don't think that was meant for me. I think we know what love is, and I want you to show me. That'll be one of 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 uh i mean the question is um 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 that's what we call the inheritance of acquired characters there was a professor at the University of Conrad 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 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...? LAUGHTER Yeah, 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? LAUGHTER 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 relative nature of time, time has still run out. Not time, obviously, as a universal concept. There is still some time left, though perhaps for us on Earth, somewhere between 3 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 Foot. We weren't expecting that, were you? But there we go. It's true, isn't it? We're going to have a clash of galaxies in 3 billion years' time, and other of your 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, haven't 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 TheMonkeyCage, but please remember we have a super injunction in force, so do not mention TheMonkeyCage, but please remember we have a super injunction in force, so do not mention TheMonkeyCage. Good night.

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