Play! Experiment! Discover!
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0:00 - 0:02I'll just start talking about the 17th century.
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0:02 - 0:04I hope nobody finds that offensive.
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0:04 - 0:07I -- you know, when I -- after I had invented PCR,
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0:07 - 0:09I kind of needed a change.
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0:09 - 0:12And I moved down to La Jolla and learned how to surf.
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0:12 - 0:15And I started living down there on the beach for a long time.
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0:15 - 0:17And when surfers are out waiting
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0:17 - 0:19for waves,
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0:19 - 0:21you probably wonder, if you've never been out there, what are they doing?
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0:21 - 0:23You know, sometimes there's a 10-, 15-minute break out there
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0:23 - 0:25when you're waiting for a wave to come in.
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0:25 - 0:27They usually talk about the 17th century.
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0:28 - 0:31You know, they get a real bad rap in the world.
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0:31 - 0:34People think they're sort of lowbrows.
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0:35 - 0:37One day, somebody suggested I read this book.
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0:37 - 0:39It was called --
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0:39 - 0:41it was called "The Air Pump,"
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0:41 - 0:43or something like "The Leviathan and The Air Pump."
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0:43 - 0:46It was a real weird book about the 17th century.
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0:46 - 0:48And I realized, the roots
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0:48 - 0:50of the way I sort of thought
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0:50 - 0:53was just the only natural way to think about things.
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0:53 - 0:56That -- you know, I was born thinking about things that way,
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0:56 - 0:58and I had always been like a little scientist guy.
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0:58 - 1:00And when I went to find out something,
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1:00 - 1:02I used scientific methods. I wasn't real surprised,
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1:02 - 1:04you know, when they first told me how --
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1:04 - 1:06how you were supposed to do science,
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1:06 - 1:09because I'd already been doing it for fun and whatever.
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1:10 - 1:13But it didn't -- it never occurred to me
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1:13 - 1:15that it had to be invented
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1:15 - 1:17and that it had been invented
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1:17 - 1:19only 350 years ago.
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1:19 - 1:21You know, it was --
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1:21 - 1:24like it happened in England, and Germany, and Italy
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1:24 - 1:26sort of all at the same time.
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1:26 - 1:28And the story of that,
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1:28 - 1:30I thought, was really fascinating.
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1:30 - 1:32So I'm going to talk a little bit about that,
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1:32 - 1:35and what exactly is it that scientists are supposed to do.
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1:35 - 1:37And it's, it's a kind of --
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1:37 - 1:41You know, Charles I got beheaded
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1:41 - 1:43somewhere early in the 17th century.
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1:43 - 1:45And the English set up Cromwell
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1:45 - 1:47and a whole bunch of Republicans or whatever,
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1:47 - 1:49and not the kind of Republicans we had.
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1:50 - 1:53They changed the government, and it didn't work.
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1:54 - 1:56And
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1:57 - 1:59Charles II, the son,
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2:01 - 2:03was finally put back on the throne of England.
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2:03 - 2:05He was really nervous, because his dad had been,
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2:06 - 2:08you know, beheaded for being the King of England
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2:08 - 2:10And he was nervous about the fact
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2:11 - 2:13that conversations that got going
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2:13 - 2:15in, like, bars and stuff
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2:15 - 2:17would turn to --
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2:17 - 2:19this is kind of -- it's hard to believe,
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2:19 - 2:21but people in the 17th century in England
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2:21 - 2:23were starting to talk about, you know,
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2:23 - 2:25philosophy and stuff in bars.
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2:25 - 2:27They didn't have TV screens,
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2:27 - 2:29and they didn't have any football games to watch.
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2:29 - 2:31And they would get really pissy,
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2:31 - 2:34and all of a sudden people would spill out into the street and fight
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2:34 - 2:36about issues like whether or not
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2:36 - 2:39it was okay if Robert Boyle
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2:39 - 2:41made a device called the vacuum pump.
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2:41 - 2:44Now, Boyle was a friend of Charles II.
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2:44 - 2:47He was a Christian guy during the weekends,
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2:47 - 2:50but during the week he was a scientist.
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2:50 - 2:51(Laughter)
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2:51 - 2:53Which was -- back then it was
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2:53 - 2:56sort of, you know, well, you know --
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2:56 - 2:58if you made this thing -- he made this little device,
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2:58 - 3:01like kind of like a bicycle pump
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3:01 - 3:04in reverse that could suck all the air out of --
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3:04 - 3:06you know what a bell jar is? One of these things,
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3:06 - 3:08you pick it up, put it down, and it's got a seal,
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3:08 - 3:10and you can see inside of it,
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3:10 - 3:12so you can see what's going on inside this thing.
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3:12 - 3:15But what he was trying to do was to pump all the air out of there,
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3:15 - 3:17and see what would happen inside there.
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3:17 - 3:20I mean, the first -- I think one of the first experiments he did
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3:21 - 3:23was he put a bird in there.
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3:23 - 3:26And people in the 17th century,
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3:26 - 3:29they didn't really understand the same way we do
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3:29 - 3:31about you know, this stuff is
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3:31 - 3:34a bunch of different kinds of molecules,
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3:34 - 3:37and we breathe it in for a purpose and all that.
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3:37 - 3:39I mean, fish don't know much about water,
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3:39 - 3:42and people didn't know much about air.
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3:42 - 3:44But both started exploring it.
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3:44 - 3:46One thing, he put a bird in there, and he pumped all the air out,
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3:46 - 3:48and the bird died. So he said, hmm ...
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3:48 - 3:51He said -- he called what he'd done as making --
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3:51 - 3:53they didn't call it a vacuum pump at the time.
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3:53 - 3:56Now you call it a vacuum pump; he called it a vacuum.
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3:56 - 3:59Right? And immediately,
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3:59 - 4:01he got into trouble with the local clergy
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4:01 - 4:04who said, you can't make a vacuum.
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4:04 - 4:06Ah, uh --
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4:06 - 4:09(Laughter)
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4:09 - 4:11Aristotle said that nature abhors one.
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4:11 - 4:13I think it was a poor translation, probably,
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4:13 - 4:16but people relied on authorities like that.
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4:16 - 4:19And you know, Boyle says, well, shit.
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4:19 - 4:21I make them all the time.
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4:21 - 4:24I mean, whatever that is that kills the bird --
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4:24 - 4:26and I'm calling it a vacuum.
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4:26 - 4:29And the religious people said that
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4:29 - 4:32if God wanted you to make --
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4:32 - 4:34I mean, God is everywhere,
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4:34 - 4:36that was one of their rules, is God is everywhere.
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4:36 - 4:38And a vacuum -- there's nothing in a vacuum,
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4:38 - 4:41so you've -- God couldn't be in there.
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4:41 - 4:44So therefore the church said that you can't make a vacuum, you know.
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4:44 - 4:46And Boyle said, bullshit.
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4:46 - 4:48I mean, you want to call it Godless,
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4:48 - 4:50you know, you call it Godless.
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4:50 - 4:52But that's not my job. I'm not into that.
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4:52 - 4:54I do that on the weekend. And like --
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4:55 - 4:58what I'm trying to do is figure out what happens
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4:58 - 5:01when you suck everything out of a compartment.
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5:01 - 5:03And he did all these cute little experiments.
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5:03 - 5:06Like he did one with -- he had a little wheel,
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5:06 - 5:08like a fan, that was
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5:09 - 5:12sort of loosely attached, so it could spin by itself.
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5:12 - 5:14He had another fan opposed to it
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5:14 - 5:16that he had like a --
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5:16 - 5:18I mean, the way I would have done this would be, like, a rubber band,
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5:18 - 5:20and, you know, around a tinker toy kind of fan.
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5:20 - 5:23I know exactly how he did it; I've seen the drawings.
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5:24 - 5:26It's two fans, one which he could turn from outside
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5:26 - 5:28after he got the vacuum established,
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5:28 - 5:31and he discovered that if he pulled all the air out of it,
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5:31 - 5:34the one fan would no longer turn the other one, right?
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5:34 - 5:37Something was missing, you know. I mean, these are --
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5:37 - 5:39it's kind of weird to think that someone had to do an experiment to show that,
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5:39 - 5:42but that was what was going on at the time.
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5:44 - 5:46And like, there was big arguments about it
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5:46 - 5:49in the -- you know, the gin houses and in the coffee shops and stuff.
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5:50 - 5:52And Charles
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5:52 - 5:54started not liking that.
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5:54 - 5:56Charles II was kind of saying, you know, you should keep that --
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5:57 - 6:00let's make a place where you can do this stuff
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6:00 - 6:02where people don't get so -- you know,
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6:02 - 6:05we don't want the -- we don't want to get the people mad at me again. And so --
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6:05 - 6:08because when they started talking about religion
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6:08 - 6:10and science and stuff like that,
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6:10 - 6:12that's when it had sort of gotten his father in trouble.
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6:12 - 6:14And so,
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6:14 - 6:16Charles said, I'm going to put up the money
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6:16 - 6:18give you guys a building,
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6:18 - 6:20come here and you can meet in the building,
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6:20 - 6:22but just don't talk about religion in there.
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6:22 - 6:24And that was fine with Boyle.
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6:24 - 6:26He said, OK, we're going to start having these meetings.
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6:26 - 6:29And anybody who wants to do science is --
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6:29 - 6:31this is about the time that Isaac Newton was starting to whip out
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6:31 - 6:33a lot of really interesting things.
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6:33 - 6:36And there was all kind of people that would come to the Royal Society,
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6:36 - 6:39they called it. You had to be dressed up pretty well.
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6:39 - 6:41It wasn't like a TED conference.
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6:41 - 6:43That was the only criteria, was that you be --
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6:43 - 6:46you looked like a gentleman, and they'd let anybody could come.
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6:46 - 6:48You didn't have to be a member then.
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6:48 - 6:50And so, they would come in and you would do --
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6:50 - 6:53Anybody that was going to show an experiment,
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6:53 - 6:55which was kind of a new word at the time,
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6:55 - 6:57demonstrate some principle,
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6:57 - 7:00they had to do it on stage, where everybody could see it.
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7:00 - 7:02So they were --
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7:02 - 7:04the really important part of this was,
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7:04 - 7:06you were not supposed to talk
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7:06 - 7:09about final causes, for instance.
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7:09 - 7:11And God was out of the picture.
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7:11 - 7:14The actual nature of reality was not at issue.
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7:15 - 7:18You're not supposed to talk about the absolute nature of anything.
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7:18 - 7:20You were not supposed to talk about anything
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7:20 - 7:22that you couldn't demonstrate.
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7:22 - 7:25So if somebody could see it, you could say, here's how the machine works,
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7:25 - 7:28here's what we do, and then here's what happens.
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7:29 - 7:31And seeing what happens, it was OK
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7:31 - 7:33to generalize,
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7:33 - 7:36and say, I'm sure that this will happen anytime
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7:36 - 7:38we make one of these things.
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7:38 - 7:40And so you can start making up some rules.
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7:40 - 7:43You say, anytime you have a vacuum state,
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7:43 - 7:46you will discover that one wheel will not turn another one,
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7:46 - 7:48if the only connection between them
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7:48 - 7:51is whatever was there before the vacuum. That kind of thing.
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7:51 - 7:53Candles can't burn in a vacuum,
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7:53 - 7:56therefore, probably sparklers wouldn't either.
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7:56 - 7:58It's not clear; actually sparklers will,
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7:58 - 8:00but they didn't know that.
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8:00 - 8:02They didn't have sparklers. But, they --
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8:02 - 8:07(Laughter)
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8:07 - 8:09-- you can make up rules, but they have to relate
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8:10 - 8:12only to the things that you've been able to demonstrate.
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8:12 - 8:15And most the demonstrations had to do with visuals.
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8:15 - 8:17Like if you do an experiment on stage,
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8:17 - 8:20and nobody can see it, they can just hear it, they would probably think you were freaky.
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8:20 - 8:23I mean, reality is what you can see.
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8:23 - 8:27That wasn't an explicit rule in the meeting,
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8:27 - 8:29but I'm sure that was part of it, you know. If people hear voices,
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8:29 - 8:32and they can't see and associate it with somebody,
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8:32 - 8:34that person's probably not there.
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8:34 - 8:36But the general idea that you could only --
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8:38 - 8:40you could only really talk about things in that place
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8:40 - 8:43that had some kind of experimental basis.
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8:43 - 8:45It didn't matter what Thomas Hobbes,
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8:45 - 8:47who was a local philosopher,
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8:47 - 8:49said about it, you know,
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8:49 - 8:51because you weren't going to be talking final causes.
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8:51 - 8:53What's happening here,
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8:53 - 8:55in the middle of the 17th century,
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8:55 - 8:57was that what became my field --
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8:57 - 8:59science, experimental science --
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8:59 - 9:01was pulling itself away,
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9:01 - 9:04and it was in a physical way, because we're going to do it in this room over here,
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9:04 - 9:06but it was also what -- it was an amazing thing that happened.
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9:06 - 9:08Science had been all interlocked
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9:08 - 9:10with theology, and philosophy,
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9:10 - 9:13and -- and -- and mathematics,
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9:13 - 9:15which is really not science.
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9:16 - 9:19But experimental science had been tied up with all those things.
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9:19 - 9:22And the mathematics part
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9:22 - 9:24and the experimental science part
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9:24 - 9:26was pulling away from philosophy.
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9:26 - 9:28And -- things --
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9:28 - 9:30we never looked back.
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9:30 - 9:32It's been so cool since then.
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9:33 - 9:38I mean, it just -- it just -- untangled a thing that was really impeding
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9:38 - 9:40technology from being developed.
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9:40 - 9:42And, I mean, everybody in this room --
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9:42 - 9:44now, this is 350 short years ago.
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9:44 - 9:46Remember, that's a short time.
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9:46 - 9:48It was 300,000, probably, years ago
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9:49 - 9:52that most of us, the ancestors of most of us in this room
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9:52 - 9:54came up out of Africa and turned to the left.
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9:55 - 9:57You know, the ones that turned to the right, there are some of those
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9:57 - 9:59in the Japanese translation.
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9:59 - 10:02But that happened very -- a long time ago
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10:02 - 10:04compared to
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10:04 - 10:06350 short years ago.
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10:06 - 10:08But in that 350 years,
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10:08 - 10:11the place has just undergone a lot of changes.
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10:11 - 10:13In fact, everybody in this room probably,
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10:13 - 10:16especially if you picked up your bag --
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10:16 - 10:18some of you, I know, didn't pick up your bags --
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10:18 - 10:20but if you picked up your bag, everybody in this room
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10:20 - 10:22has got in their pocket, or back in their room,
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10:22 - 10:24something
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10:24 - 10:26that 350 years ago,
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10:26 - 10:28kings would have gone to war to have.
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10:29 - 10:31I mean, if you can think how important --
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10:31 - 10:33If you have a GPS system and there are no satellites,
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10:33 - 10:35it's not going to be much use. But, like --
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10:35 - 10:37but, you know, if somebody had a GPS system
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10:37 - 10:40in the 17th century
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10:40 - 10:42some king would have gotten together an army
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10:42 - 10:44and gone to get it, you know. If that person --
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10:44 - 10:46Audience: For the teddy bear? The teddy bear?
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10:46 - 10:48Kary Mullis: They might have done it for the teddy bear, yeah.
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10:49 - 10:51But -- all of us own stuff.
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10:51 - 10:53I mean, individuals own things
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10:53 - 10:55that kings would have definitely gone to war to get.
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10:55 - 10:57And this is just 350 years.
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10:57 - 10:59Not a whole lot of people doing this stuff.
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10:59 - 11:01You know, the important people --
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11:01 - 11:03you can almost read about their lives,
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11:03 - 11:06about all the really important people that made advances, you know.
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11:06 - 11:08And, I mean --
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11:08 - 11:11this kind of stuff, you know, all this stuff
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11:11 - 11:13came from that separation
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11:13 - 11:16of this little sort of thing that we do --
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11:16 - 11:18now I, when I was a boy
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11:18 - 11:20was born sort of with this idea
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11:20 - 11:22that if you want to know something --
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11:22 - 11:24you know, maybe it's because my old man was gone a lot,
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11:24 - 11:26and my mother didn't really know much science,
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11:26 - 11:28but I thought if you want to know something about stuff,
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11:29 - 11:31you do it -- you make an experiment, you know.
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11:31 - 11:33You get -- you get, like --
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11:33 - 11:36I just had a natural feeling for science
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11:36 - 11:38and setting up experiments. I thought that was the way everybody had always thought.
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11:38 - 11:41I thought that anybody with any brains will do it that way.
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11:41 - 11:44It isn't true. I mean, there's a lot of people --
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11:44 - 11:47You know, I was one of those scientists that was --
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11:47 - 11:49got into trouble the other night at dinner
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11:49 - 11:51because of the post-modernism thing.
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11:51 - 11:53And I didn't mean, you know -- where is that lady?
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11:53 - 11:54Audience: Here.
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11:54 - 11:55(Laughter)
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11:55 - 11:57KM: I mean, I didn't really think of that as an argument
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11:57 - 12:00so much as just a lively discussion.
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12:00 - 12:02I didn't take it personally, but --
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12:03 - 12:06I just -- I had -- I naively had thought,
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12:06 - 12:09until this surfing experience started me into the 17th century,
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12:09 - 12:11I'd thought that's just the way people thought,
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12:11 - 12:14and everybody did, and they recognized reality
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12:14 - 12:16by what they could see or touch or feel or hear.
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12:17 - 12:20At any rate, when I was a boy,
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12:22 - 12:24I, like, for instance, I had this --
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12:24 - 12:26I got this little book from Fort Sill, Oklahoma --
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12:26 - 12:28This is about the time that George Dyson's dad
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12:28 - 12:30was starting to blow nuclear --
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12:30 - 12:33thinking about blowing up nuclear rockets and stuff.
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12:33 - 12:36I was thinking about making my own little rockets.
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12:36 - 12:39And I knew that frogs -- little frogs --
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12:39 - 12:41had aspirations of space travel,
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12:41 - 12:43just like people. And I --
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12:43 - 12:46(Laughter)
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12:46 - 12:48I was looking for a --
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12:48 - 12:50a propulsion system
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12:50 - 12:52that would like, make a rocket, like,
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12:52 - 12:54maybe about four feet high go up a couple of miles.
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12:54 - 12:57And, I mean, that was my sort of goal.
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12:57 - 13:00I wanted it to go out of sight and then I wanted this little parachute
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13:00 - 13:03to come back with the frog in it.
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13:03 - 13:05And -- I -- I --
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13:05 - 13:07I got this book from Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
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13:07 - 13:09where there's a missile base.
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13:09 - 13:11They send it out for amateur rocketeers,
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13:12 - 13:14and
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13:14 - 13:16it said in there
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13:16 - 13:19do not ever heat a mixture of potassium perchlorate and sugar.
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13:19 - 13:22(Laughter)
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13:22 - 13:24You know,
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13:24 - 13:26that's what you call a lead.
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13:26 - 13:28(Laughter)
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13:28 - 13:30You sort of -- now you say, well, let's see if I can
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13:30 - 13:33get hold of some potassium chlorate and sugar, perchlorate and sugar,
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13:33 - 13:36and heat it; it would be interesting to see what it is they don't want me to do,
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13:36 - 13:38and what it is going to --
and how is it going to work. -
13:38 - 13:40And we didn't have --
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13:40 - 13:42like, my mother
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13:42 - 13:45presided over the back yard
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13:45 - 13:47from an upstairs window,
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13:47 - 13:49where she would be ironing or something like that.
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13:49 - 13:51And she was usually just sort of keeping an eye on,
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13:51 - 13:53and if there was any puffs of smoke out there,
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13:53 - 13:55she'd lean out and admonish us all
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13:55 - 13:57not to blow our eyes out. That was her --
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14:00 - 14:02You know, that was kind of the worst thing that could happen to us.
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14:02 - 14:03That's why I thought, as long as I don't blow my eyes out ...
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14:04 - 14:07I may not care about the fact
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14:07 - 14:09that it's prohibited from heating this solution.
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14:09 - 14:11I'm going to do it carefully, but I'll do it.
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14:11 - 14:13It's like anything else that's prohibited:
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14:13 - 14:15you do it behind the garage.
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14:15 - 14:17(Laughter)
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14:17 - 14:19So, I went to the drug store
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14:19 - 14:22and I tried to buy some potassium perchlorate
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14:22 - 14:24and it wasn't unreasonable then for a kid
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14:24 - 14:27to walk into a drug store and buy chemicals.
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14:27 - 14:29Nowadays, it's no ma'am,
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14:29 - 14:31check your shoes. And like --
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14:31 - 14:33(Laughter)
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14:33 - 14:35But then it wasn't -- they didn't have any, but the guy had --
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14:35 - 14:38I said, what kind of salts of potassium do you have? You know.
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14:38 - 14:40And he had potassium nitrate.
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14:40 - 14:43And I said, that might do the same thing, whatever it is.
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14:43 - 14:46I'm sure it's got to do with rockets or it wouldn't be in that manual.
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14:46 - 14:48And so I -- I did some experiments.
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14:48 - 14:50You know, I started off with little tiny amounts
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14:50 - 14:52of potassium nitrate and sugar,
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14:52 - 14:54which was readily available,
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14:54 - 14:56and I mixed it in different proportions,
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14:56 - 14:58and I tried to light it on fire.
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14:59 - 15:01Just to see what would happen, if you mixed it together.
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15:01 - 15:03And it -- they burned.
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15:03 - 15:05It burned kind of slow, but it made a nice smell,
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15:05 - 15:07compared to other rocket fuels I had tried,
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15:07 - 15:09that all had sulfur in them.
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15:09 - 15:11And, it smelt like burnt candy.
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15:12 - 15:15And then I tried the melting business, and I melted it.
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15:15 - 15:19And then it melted into a little sort of syrupy liquid, brown.
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15:19 - 15:22And then it cooled down to a brick-hard substance,
-
15:22 - 15:24that when you lit that,
-
15:24 - 15:26it went off like a bat.
-
15:26 - 15:28I mean, the little bowl of that stuff that had cooled down --
-
15:28 - 15:30you'd light it, and it would just start dancing around the yard.
-
15:30 - 15:32And I said, there
-
15:32 - 15:35is a way to get a frog up to where he wants to go.
-
15:35 - 15:36(Laughter)
-
15:36 - 15:39So I started developing --
-
15:39 - 15:41you know, George's dad had a lot of help. I just had my brother.
-
15:42 - 15:45But I -- it took me about -- it took me about,
-
15:45 - 15:47I'd say, six months
-
15:47 - 15:49to finally figure out all the little things.
-
15:49 - 15:51There's a lot of little things involved
-
15:51 - 15:53in making a rocket that it will actually work,
-
15:53 - 15:55even after you have the fuel.
-
15:55 - 15:57But you do it, by -- what I just--
-
15:57 - 15:59you know, you do experiments,
-
15:59 - 16:00and you write down things sometimes,
-
16:00 - 16:02you make observations, you know.
-
16:02 - 16:04And then you slowly build up a theory
-
16:04 - 16:06of how this stuff works.
-
16:06 - 16:08And it was -- I was following all the rules.
-
16:08 - 16:10I didn't know what the rules were,
-
16:10 - 16:12I'm a natural born scientist, I guess,
-
16:12 - 16:15or some kind of a throwback to the 17th century, whatever.
-
16:15 - 16:19But at any rate, we finally did
-
16:19 - 16:21have a device that would reproduceably
-
16:21 - 16:23put a frog out of sight
-
16:23 - 16:25and get him back alive.
-
16:25 - 16:27And we had not --
-
16:27 - 16:30I mean, we weren't frightened by it.
-
16:30 - 16:32We should have been, because it made a lot of smoke
-
16:32 - 16:34and it made a lot of noise,
-
16:34 - 16:36and it was powerful, you know.
-
16:36 - 16:38And once in a while, they would blow up.
-
16:38 - 16:40But I wasn't worried, by the way,
-
16:40 - 16:42about, you know,
-
16:42 - 16:44the explosion causing the destruction of the planet.
-
16:44 - 16:46I hadn't heard about the 10 ways
-
16:46 - 16:48that we should be afraid of the --
-
16:48 - 16:50By the way,
-
16:50 - 16:52I could have thought,
-
16:52 - 16:54I'd better not do this because
-
16:54 - 16:56they say not to, you know.
-
16:56 - 16:58And I'd better get permission
from the government. -
16:58 - 17:00If I'd have waited around for that,
-
17:00 - 17:03I would have never -- the frog would have died, you know.
-
17:04 - 17:07At any rate, I bring it up because it's a good story,
-
17:07 - 17:09and he said, tell personal things, you know, and that's a personal --
-
17:09 - 17:11I was going to tell you about the first night that I met my wife,
-
17:12 - 17:14but that would be too personal, wouldn't it.
-
17:15 - 17:17So, so I've got something else that's not personal.
-
17:17 - 17:20But that ... process is what I think of as science,
-
17:20 - 17:23see, where you start with some idea,
-
17:23 - 17:25and then instead of, like, looking up,
-
17:26 - 17:28every authority that you've ever heard of
-
17:28 - 17:30I -- sometimes you do that,
-
17:30 - 17:32if you're going to write a paper later,
-
17:32 - 17:34you want to figure out who else has worked on it.
-
17:34 - 17:36But in the actual process, you get an idea --
-
17:36 - 17:38like, when I got the idea one night
-
17:38 - 17:41that I could amplify DNA with two oligonucleotides,
-
17:41 - 17:43and I could make lots of copies of some little piece of DNA,
-
17:44 - 17:46you know, the thinking for that
-
17:46 - 17:49was about 20 minutes while I was driving my car,
-
17:50 - 17:53and then instead of going -- I went back and I did talk to people about it,
-
17:53 - 17:55but if I'd listened to what I heard from all my friends who were molecular biologists --
-
17:58 - 18:00I would have abandoned it.
-
18:00 - 18:02You know, if I had gone back looking for an authority figure
-
18:02 - 18:04who could tell me if it would work or not,
-
18:04 - 18:06he would have said, no, it probably won't.
-
18:06 - 18:09Because the results of it were so spectacular
-
18:10 - 18:13that if it worked it was going to change everybody's goddamn way of doing molecular biology.
-
18:13 - 18:15Nobody wants a chemist to come in
-
18:15 - 18:18and poke around in their stuff like that and change things.
-
18:18 - 18:20But if you go to authority, and you always don't --
-
18:20 - 18:22you don't always get the right answer, see.
-
18:22 - 18:24But I knew, you'd go into the lab
-
18:24 - 18:26and you'd try to make it work yourself. And then you're the authority,
-
18:26 - 18:28and you can say, I know it works,
-
18:28 - 18:30because right there in that tube
-
18:30 - 18:32is where it happened,
-
18:32 - 18:34and here, on this gel, there's a little band there
-
18:34 - 18:37that I know that's DNA, and that's the DNA I wanted to amplify,
-
18:37 - 18:39so there!
So it does work. -
18:39 - 18:41You know, that's how you do science.
-
18:41 - 18:43And then you say, well, what can make it work better?
-
18:43 - 18:45And then you figure out better and better ways to do it.
-
18:45 - 18:47But you always work from, from like, facts
-
18:47 - 18:50that you have made available to you
-
18:50 - 18:52by doing experiments: things that you could do on a stage.
-
18:52 - 18:55And no tricky shit behind the thing. I mean, it's all --
-
18:55 - 18:57you've got to be very honest
-
18:57 - 18:59with what you're doing if it really is going to work.
-
18:59 - 19:01I mean, you can't make up results,
-
19:01 - 19:03and then do another experiment based on that one.
-
19:03 - 19:05So you have to be honest.
-
19:05 - 19:07And I'm basically honest.
-
19:07 - 19:10I have a fairly bad memory, and dishonesty would always get me in trouble,
-
19:10 - 19:12if I, like -- so I've just sort of been naturally honest
-
19:12 - 19:14and naturally inquisitive,
-
19:15 - 19:17and that sort of leads to that kind of science.
-
19:17 - 19:19Now, let's see ...
-
19:19 - 19:22I've got another five minutes, right?
-
19:22 - 19:25OK. All scientists aren't like that.
-
19:26 - 19:28You know -- and there is a lot --
-
19:28 - 19:30(Laughter)
-
19:30 - 19:32There is a lot -- a lot has been going on since
-
19:32 - 19:35Isaac Newton and all that stuff happened.
-
19:35 - 19:37One of the things that happened right around World War II
-
19:37 - 19:39in that same time period before,
-
19:39 - 19:41and as sure as hell afterwards,
-
19:41 - 19:44government got -- realized that scientists aren't strange dudes
-
19:44 - 19:47that, you know, hide in ivory towers
-
19:47 - 19:50and do ridiculous things with test tube.
-
19:50 - 19:52Scientists, you know, made World War II
-
19:52 - 19:54as we know it quite possible.
-
19:54 - 19:56They made faster things.
-
19:57 - 20:00They made bigger guns to shoot them down with.
-
20:00 - 20:03You know, they made drugs to give the pilots
-
20:03 - 20:06if they were broken up in the process.
-
20:06 - 20:09They made all kinds of -- and then finally one giant bomb
-
20:09 - 20:11to end the whole thing, right?
-
20:11 - 20:13And everybody stepped back a little and said, you know,
-
20:13 - 20:15we ought to invest in this shit,
-
20:15 - 20:18because whoever has got the most of these people
-
20:18 - 20:21working in the places is going to have a dominant position,
-
20:21 - 20:24at least in the military, and probably in all kind of economic ways.
-
20:24 - 20:26And they got involved in it, and the scientific
-
20:26 - 20:28and industrial establishment was born,
-
20:28 - 20:30and out of that came a lot of scientists
-
20:30 - 20:33who were in there for the money, you know,
-
20:33 - 20:35because it was suddenly available.
-
20:35 - 20:37And they weren't the curious little boys
-
20:37 - 20:39that liked to put frogs up in the air.
-
20:39 - 20:42They were the same people that later went in to medical school, you know,
-
20:42 - 20:45because there was money in it, you know. I mean, later, then they all got into business --
-
20:45 - 20:48I mean, there are waves of -- going into your high school,
-
20:48 - 20:51person saying, you want to be rich, you know, be a scientist. You know, not anymore.
-
20:51 - 20:53You want to be rich, you be a businessman.
-
20:53 - 20:56But a lot of people got in it for the money and the power and the travel.
-
20:56 - 20:59That's back when travel was easy.
-
21:00 - 21:02And those people don't think --
-
21:02 - 21:04they don't --
-
21:04 - 21:06they don't always tell you the truth, you know.
-
21:06 - 21:08There is nothing in their contract, in fact,
-
21:08 - 21:10that makes it to their advantage always,
-
21:10 - 21:12to tell you the truth.
-
21:12 - 21:15And the people I'm talking about are people that like --
-
21:15 - 21:18they say that they're a member of the committee
-
21:18 - 21:22called, say, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.
-
21:22 - 21:25And they -- and they have these big meetings where they try to figure out
-
21:26 - 21:28how we're going to -- how we're going to continually prove
-
21:28 - 21:31that the planet is getting warmer,
-
21:31 - 21:34when that's actually contrary to most people's sensations.
-
21:34 - 21:36I mean, if you actually measure
-
21:36 - 21:38the temperature over a period --
-
21:38 - 21:40I mean, the temperature has been measured now
-
21:40 - 21:43pretty carefully for about 50, 60 years --
-
21:43 - 21:45longer than that it's been measured,
-
21:45 - 21:47but in really nice, precise ways,
-
21:47 - 21:50and records have been kept for 50 or 60 years,
-
21:50 - 21:52and in fact, the temperature hadn't really gone up.
-
21:52 - 21:54It's like, the average temperature
-
21:54 - 21:56has gone up a tiny little bit,
-
21:56 - 21:59because the nighttime temperatures
-
21:59 - 22:01at the weather stations have come up just a little bit.
-
22:01 - 22:03But there's a good explanation for that.
-
22:03 - 22:06And it's that the weather stations are all built outside of town,
-
22:06 - 22:08where the airport was, and now
-
22:08 - 22:10the town's moved out there, there's concrete all around
-
22:10 - 22:12and they call it the skyline effect.
-
22:12 - 22:14And most responsible people
-
22:14 - 22:16that measure temperatures realize
-
22:16 - 22:18you have to shield your measuring device from that.
-
22:18 - 22:21And even then, you know,
-
22:21 - 22:22because the buildings get warm in the daytime,
-
22:22 - 22:24and they keep it a little warmer at night.
-
22:24 - 22:26So the temperature has been, sort of, inching up.
-
22:26 - 22:29It should have been. But not a lot. Not like, you know --
-
22:29 - 22:31the first guy -- the first guy that got the idea
-
22:31 - 22:33that we're going to fry ourselves here,
-
22:33 - 22:35actually, he didn't think of it that way.
-
22:35 - 22:38His name was Sven Arrhenius. He was Swedish, and he said,
-
22:38 - 22:41if you double the CO2 level in the atmosphere,
-
22:41 - 22:43which he thought might -- this is in 1900 --
-
22:44 - 22:47the temperature ought to go up about 5.5 degrees, he calculated.
-
22:47 - 22:49He was thinking of the earth as, kind of like,
-
22:49 - 22:52you know, like a completely insulated thing
-
22:52 - 22:54with no stuff in it, really,
-
22:54 - 22:56just energy coming down, energy leaving.
-
22:56 - 22:58And so he came up with this theory,
-
22:58 - 23:00and he said, this will be cool,
-
23:00 - 23:03because it'll be a longer growing season in Sweden,
-
23:03 - 23:05you know, and the surfers liked it,
-
23:05 - 23:07the surfers thought, that's a cool idea,
-
23:07 - 23:10because it's pretty cold in the ocean sometimes, and --
-
23:10 - 23:12but a lot of other people later on
-
23:12 - 23:14started thinking it would be bad, you know.
-
23:15 - 23:17But nobody actually demonstrated it, right?
-
23:17 - 23:19I mean, the temperature as measured --
-
23:19 - 23:21and you can find this on our wonderful Internet,
-
23:21 - 23:24you just go and look for all NASAs records,
-
23:24 - 23:26and all the Weather Bureau's records,
-
23:26 - 23:29and you'll look at it yourself, and you'll see, the temperature has just --
-
23:29 - 23:32the nighttime temperature measured on the surface of the planet
-
23:32 - 23:34has gone up a tiny little bit.
-
23:34 - 23:36So if you just average that and the daytime temperature, it looks like it went up
-
23:36 - 23:39about .7 degrees in this century.
-
23:39 - 23:41But in fact, it was just coming up --
-
23:41 - 23:43it was the nighttime; the daytime temperatures didn't go up.
-
23:43 - 23:46So -- and Arrhenius' theory --
-
23:46 - 23:48and all the global warmers think --
-
23:48 - 23:50they would say, yeah, it should go up in the daytime, too,
-
23:50 - 23:52if it's the greenhouse effect.
-
23:52 - 23:55Now, people like things that have, like, names like that,
-
23:55 - 23:58that they can envision it, right? I mean --
-
23:58 - 24:00but people don't like things like this, so -- most -- I mean,
-
24:00 - 24:02you don't get all excited about things
-
24:03 - 24:05like the actual evidence, you know,
-
24:05 - 24:07which would be evidence for strengthening
-
24:07 - 24:10of the tropical circulation in the 1990s.
-
24:10 - 24:12It's a paper that came out in February,
-
24:12 - 24:15and most of you probably hadn't heard about it.
-
24:15 - 24:17"Evidence for Large Decadal Variability
-
24:17 - 24:20in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget."
-
24:21 - 24:24Excuse me. Those papers were published by NASA,
-
24:24 - 24:26and some scientists at Columbia, and Viliki
-
24:26 - 24:29and a whole bunch of people, Princeton.
-
24:29 - 24:32And those two papers came out in Science Magazine,
-
24:32 - 24:34February the first,
-
24:34 - 24:37and these -- the conclusion in both of these papers,
-
24:37 - 24:40and in also the Science editor's, like,
-
24:40 - 24:42descriptions of these papers, for, you know,
-
24:42 - 24:44for the quickie,
-
24:44 - 24:46is that our theories about global warming
-
24:46 - 24:48are completely wrong. I mean,
-
24:48 - 24:50what these guys were doing,
-
24:50 - 24:53and this is what -- the NASA people have been saying this for a long time.
-
24:53 - 24:56They say, if you measure the temperature of the atmosphere, it isn't going up --
-
24:56 - 24:59it's not going up at all. We've doing it very carefully now for 20 years,
-
24:59 - 25:02from satellites, and it isn't going up.
-
25:02 - 25:05And in this paper, they show something much more striking,
-
25:05 - 25:08and that was that they did what they call a radiation --
-
25:08 - 25:11and I'm not going to go into the details of it, actually it's quite complicated,
-
25:11 - 25:14but it isn't as complicated as they might make you think it is
-
25:14 - 25:17by the words they use in those papers. If you really get down to it, they say,
-
25:17 - 25:19the sun puts out a certain amount of energy --
-
25:19 - 25:21we know how much that is --
-
25:21 - 25:23it falls on the earth, the earth gives back a certain amount.
-
25:23 - 25:26When it gets warm it generates --
-
25:26 - 25:29it makes redder energy -- I mean, like infra-red,
-
25:29 - 25:32like something that's warm gives off infra-red.
-
25:32 - 25:34The whole business of the global warming --
-
25:34 - 25:36trash, really,
-
25:36 - 25:39is that -- if the -- if there's too much CO2 in the atmosphere,
-
25:39 - 25:41the heat that's trying to escape
-
25:41 - 25:44won't be able to get out. But the heat coming from the sun,
-
25:44 - 25:47which is mostly down in the -- it's like 350 nanometers,
-
25:47 - 25:50which is where it's centered -- that goes right through CO2.
-
25:50 - 25:52So you still get heated, but you don't dissipate any.
-
25:52 - 25:54Well, these guys measured all of those things.
-
25:54 - 25:56I mean, you can talk about that stuff,
-
25:56 - 25:59and you can write these large reports, and you can get government money to do it,
-
25:59 - 26:02but these -- they actually measured it,
-
26:02 - 26:04and it turns out that in the last 10 years --
-
26:04 - 26:06that's why they say "decadal" there --
-
26:06 - 26:09that the energy -- that the level
-
26:09 - 26:11of what they call "imbalance"
-
26:11 - 26:14has been way the hell over what was expected.
-
26:14 - 26:17Like, the amount of imbalance --
-
26:17 - 26:20meaning, heat's coming in and it's not going out
-
26:20 - 26:22that you would get from having double the CO2,
-
26:22 - 26:25which we're not anywhere near that, by the way.
-
26:25 - 26:27But if we did, in 2025 or something,
-
26:27 - 26:30have double the CO2 as we had in 1900,
-
26:30 - 26:32they say it would be increase the energy budget
-
26:32 - 26:35by about -- in other words,
-
26:35 - 26:37one watt per square centimeter more
-
26:37 - 26:39would be coming in than going out.
-
26:39 - 26:42So the planet should get warmer.
-
26:42 - 26:44Well, they found out in this study -- these two studies
-
26:44 - 26:46by two different teams --
-
26:46 - 26:48that five and a half watts
-
26:48 - 26:50per square meter
-
26:50 - 26:53had been coming in from 1998, 1999,
-
26:53 - 26:55and the place didn't get warmer.
-
26:55 - 26:57So the theory's kaput -- it's nothing.
-
26:57 - 26:59These papers should have been called,
-
26:59 - 27:02"The End to the Global Warming Fiasco," you know.
-
27:02 - 27:04They're concerned,
-
27:04 - 27:07and you can tell they have very guarded conclusions in these papers,
-
27:07 - 27:09because they're talking about big laboratories
-
27:09 - 27:11that are funded by lots of money
-
27:11 - 27:13and by scared people.
-
27:13 - 27:15You know, if they said, you know what?
-
27:15 - 27:17There isn't a problem with global warming any longer,
-
27:17 - 27:19so we can -- you know, they're funding.
-
27:19 - 27:21And if you start a grant request with something like that,
-
27:22 - 27:24and say, global warming obviously hadn't happened ...
-
27:24 - 27:26if they -- if they -- if they actually -- if they actually said that,
-
27:26 - 27:28I'm getting out.
-
27:28 - 27:31(Laughter)
-
27:31 - 27:33I'll stand up too, and --
-
27:33 - 27:35(Laughter)
-
27:35 - 27:38(Applause)
-
27:38 - 27:40They have to say that.
-
27:40 - 27:42They had to be very cautious.
-
27:42 - 27:44But what I'm saying is, you can be delighted,
-
27:44 - 27:47because the editor of Science, who is no dummy,
-
27:47 - 27:50and both of these fairly professional --
-
27:50 - 27:53really professional teams, have really come to the same conclusion
-
27:53 - 27:55and in the bottom lines in their papers
-
27:55 - 27:57they have to say, what this means is, that what we've been thinking,
-
27:58 - 28:00was the global circulation model that we predict
-
28:00 - 28:02that the earth is going to get overheated
-
28:02 - 28:05that it's all wrong. It's wrong by a large factor.
-
28:05 - 28:08It's not by a small one. They just --
-
28:08 - 28:11they just misinterpreted the fact that the earth --
-
28:11 - 28:13there's obviously some mechanisms going on
-
28:13 - 28:15that nobody knew about,
-
28:15 - 28:17because the heat's coming in and it isn't getting warmer.
-
28:17 - 28:20So the planet is a pretty amazing thing, you know,
-
28:20 - 28:22it's big and horrible -- and big and wonderful,
-
28:22 - 28:25and it does all kinds of things we don't know anything about.
-
28:25 - 28:27So I mean, the reason I put those things all together,
-
28:27 - 28:29OK, here's the way you're supposed to do science --
-
28:29 - 28:32some science is done for other reasons, and just curiosity.
-
28:32 - 28:34And there's a lot of things like global warming,
-
28:34 - 28:36and ozone hole and you know,
-
28:36 - 28:38a whole bunch of scientific public issues,
-
28:38 - 28:40that if you're interested in them,
-
28:40 - 28:43then you have to get down the details, and read the papers called,
-
28:43 - 28:45"Large Decadal Variability in the ... "
-
28:45 - 28:47You have to figure out what all those words mean.
-
28:47 - 28:49And if you just listen to the guys
-
28:49 - 28:52who are hyping those issues, and making a lot of money out of it,
-
28:52 - 28:55you'll be misinformed, and you'll be worrying about the wrong things.
-
28:55 - 28:58Remember the 10 things that are going to get you. The -- one of them --
-
28:58 - 29:00(Laughter)
-
29:00 - 29:03And the asteroids is the one I really agree with there.
-
29:03 - 29:06I mean, you've got to watch out for asteroids. OK, thank you for having me here.
-
29:06 - 29:09(Applause)
- Title:
- Play! Experiment! Discover!
- Speaker:
- Kary Mullis
- Description:
-
Biochemist Kary Mullis talks about the basis of modern science: the experiment. Sharing tales from the 17th century and from his own backyard-rocketry days, Mullis celebrates the curiosity, inspiration and rigor of good science in all its forms.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 29:09
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Play! Experiment! Discover! | ||
Helene Batt edited English subtitles for Play! Experiment! Discover! | ||
TED edited English subtitles for Play! Experiment! Discover! | ||
TED edited English subtitles for Play! Experiment! Discover! | ||
TED edited English subtitles for Play! Experiment! Discover! | ||
TED added a translation |