All language subtitles for Through the Wormhole s03e05 What is Nothing.eng

Freeman: Nothingness.

It is the beginning

and the end of all creation.

But what is it?

Is empty space really empty?

Or is it filled
with hidden forces...

...forces that exploded
our Universe into existence...

...or forces that could
destroy reality as we know it?

What is nothing?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

The void.

The Bible says it was the place

from which God brought forth
the heavens and the earth.

Scientists now have their
own version of that belief.

They call it the Big Bang.

But how can something come
from what appears to be nothing?

Understanding
the true nature of nothingness

is perhaps the deepest
and most-baffling conundrum

in modern science.

It could explain
where the Universe came from

and whether
everything we know and love

could turn into nothing
once again.

"In the beginning,
the earth was without form."

When you were young,

did you ever close your eyes

and try to imagine
floating in total darkness,

to experience absolute nothing?

I did.

And I always failed.

No matter what,

I could not rid this void
of the pulse of my heartbeat

and the thoughts in my head.

When I imagine,

I can't help
but imagine something,

not nothing.

Slava Turyshev
is a NASA physicist

who has always dreamed
of nothing

and what nothing
might be like to visit.

Turyshev:
The town I was born in

was just under the trajectory
rockets launched from Baikonur.

It's a Russian launch site.

So that actually
made a major impression on me.

Freeman: Slava spent
his childhood building rockets

and yearned to one day ride one

into the emptiness
of outer space.

But fate had other plans.

Turyshev: I wanted
to be on a space flight,

and at one of those times
actually was training

for the Russian space shuttle
back in late '90s,

just before
the program was canceled.

Freeman:
With no Russian shuttle,

Slava lost his ticket
to outer space,

but as a physicist,

he discovered that the same
space that fills the heavens

also exists everywhere on earth.

It's just not empty down here.

And exploring the fundamental
properties of space

does not require
a billion-dollar rocket.

In fact, all you need
is a bucket of water.

This is actually
a very simple experiment.

What I'll do, I'll put
some water in the bucket,

and this experiment actually
was thought by Isaac Newton.

The objective, of course,

to see what's going on with the
water when we spin the bucket.

So, let's spin it
very, very nice.

So, stable.

You can observe that the water
in the bucket is staying flat.

And let's see what happens.

Freeman: Isaac Newton
thought that the water

ought to spin
in lockstep with the bucket,

just as we move
with the spinning earth.

But the water does not move

with the spinning bucket
at first.

Eventually, friction from
the inner wall of the bucket

drags the water upwards.

Turyshev: So, you can see

that the water is slowly
going upwards in the bucket.

Freeman: But in the first moments after
the bucket is set in motion,

the water stays still.

Newton realized there must be
something gluing the water

to the larger world around it.

He thought that glue
must be space itself,

which exists all around
and inside the bucket.

Indeed, we cannot assume
that space is nothing.

There is something,

and that something
influences how matter moves.

Freeman:
Newton could not explain

how the nothingness of space
was somehow something.

But in 1915, Albert Einstein's

revolutionary Theory
of General Relativity

showed that Newton's idea
was fundamentally right.

Space or, as he reformulated it,
Space-Time

is a bendable fabric

into of which all the matter
in the Universe is woven.

The space that fills
every corner of our Universe

plays a constant game of tug of
war with all the things in it,

be they planets, water in
a bucket, or a stack of papers.

So if empty space
is not nothing,

then what is it?

Frank Close
is a particle physicist.

He's learned
that the power of empty space

should never be underestimated.

Hi, Andrew.
Hi, Frank.

So, it's a metal drum,

and you can make it collapse
by doing nothing.

That's rig.

We're gonna use
the power of nothing.

So,
this is pretty dramatic.

I better
put this on, right?

Guess we had, yeah.

Uh-huh.
And what else do I do?

So, if you just switch
on the pump for me.

Okay.

[ Machine whirs ]

[ Metal bangs ]

Whew!

[ Exhales deeply ]

Wow.

The power of nothing.

We took all of the air out
of the inside of this drum.

The atmosphere
on the outside

was making a
10-tons-every-square-meter force

on that drum -- far too strong
for the metal to resist.

Collapse.

So, nothing on the inside.

10 or 20 tons
on the outside.

Bingo!

[ Metal bangs ]

Freeman:
In his quest to understand

the fundamental
forces of nature,

Frank has discovered
that empty space can do far more

than cause solid matter
to implode.

He thinks it is interfering
with everything matter does.

Close: In the 19th century,

they thought
if you take all the air out,

what you're left with
is a genuinely empty vacuum.

And that is how
it could have stayed

except that we then discovered
the idea of Quantum Theory.

And one of the great mysteries
underlying Quantum Theory

is that at an instant in time,

you cannot be absolutely sure
how much energy there is.

Energy can be borrowed
or exchanged around

on very short time scales.

So, in modern Quantum Theory,

the vacuum
is a very violent place,

even though you and I,

day-to-day,
aren't aware of that fact.

Freeman: Empty space
is a froth of bubbling energy,

like molten metal.

And Frank and his fellow
particle physicists

now have proof that this energy

shields us
from seeing the true strength

of the fundamental forces
of the Universe --

forces like
the electrical repulsion

between charged particles.

So, we imagine
an electron sitting here,

spreading out its electrical
tentacles through space,

and I got another electron here
that I will use

and I'll measure
the force between them,

and the closer it gets,

the force will rise
more and more.

But we now know,
because of the Quantum Theory,

is that that little electron
sitting there

is actually not isolated.

It is surrounded
by the quantum vacuum.

So, it's an electron
in a shroud.

And that shroud reduces the full
impact of its electrical force.

The same thing is true
of this other electron.

Freeman: Frank believes

that all historical measurements
of the electrical force

are inaccurate
because of these energy shrouds.

But now atom smashers,

like the Large Hadron Collider
in Geneva, Switzerland,

can tell the full story.

Here,
subatomic particles collide

at more than
670 million miles per hour.

They get so close to one another

that they finally
pierce the shroud.

But eventually the clouds
get inside each other,

and that's when
it gets interesting,

and the clouds then
are so disbursed around,

we at last see the bare electron

acting on
the other bare electron.

And that's when we discover
that the force

is much more dramatic
than we'd thought before.

Freeman:
Just like protective eyewear

that shields a welder
from dangerously intense light,

Frank believes
that empty space itself

is insulating the Universe

from the true intensity
of the forces of nature.

If it was possible to turn off
that cloak around the electron,

you'd have turned off all
of the effects of the vacuum,

and you would actually,
at the same time,

have destroyed the Universe.

Because all structure --

the existence
of atoms and molecules --

could not be if it wasn't
for the Quantum Theory.

Freeman: Without the dampening energy
buzzing around in the vacuum,

the fundamental forces of nature
would run out of control.

Our entire Universe
would break apart.

But that is only
one side of the story.

Because locked inside
this dampening shroud,

there should be enough energy
to trigger an explosion

deadlier than anything
we have ever known.

Empty space might be
a powder keg waiting to explode.

It might surprise you to know
that our best theory

of how the Universe works
down at the microscopic level --

the Theory
of Quantum Mechanics --

also predicts
empty space has enough energy

to boil the Universe
out of existence.

But it doesn't.

Something must be keeping
nothing in check.

Question is...

what?

Neal Weiner
is a theoretical physicist

at New York University.

He studies the showers
of subatomic particles

produced by atom smashers
like the LHC in Geneva

and the Tevatron in Chicago.

Weiner: So, suppose
that you take these two rocks

and you think of them
as protons.

You collide them together
from opposite directions,

and when you do that,

you have enough energy
in the collision

that you can
actually make particles

that you would never think of

as being part
of the individual protons.

My job is to try to make sense
of what they find

when they've collided
these particles together.

Freeman:
But to understand the shrapnel

flying out of
these subatomic explosions,

Neal must look at the Universe
in a way that seems strange.

He must see the smallest
building blocks of solid matter

as not solid at all.

Weiner: In the Quantum realm,
if you create particles,

you're creating them in a state
that looks more like a wave

than it does like a particle.

Just like we have in a fountain,

where you have water coming down

and sourcing waves that then
spread out from a central point,

in Quantum Mechanics,
when you source a particle,

you have a wave that spreads out
from a central point,

rather than
a particular particle

going in any given direction.

Freeman: Just like the ripples
on the surface of a pond,

a particle wave
will spread itself

over the entire ocean of space,

and that means that
at every point in the Universe,

there exists ripples

from trillions upon trillions
of particle waves.

There is no such thing
as empty space.

And the energy contained
in that great rippling ocean

is causing
the Universe to expand.

When you look at
the expansion of the Universe,

you see galaxies, galaxy
clusters, all expanding away --

everything flying away
from each other.

And it turns out that the
Universe is not slowing down.

The Universe is actually
speeding up its expansion.

The Universe is accelerating.

So the only way that we know
how to explain this

is if there's something
like an energy density

that is pervasive
in Space itself.

If you have that,

that's going to cause
the Universe to accelerate.

Freeman: Physicists call this
"dark energy."

From the rate of expansion
of the Universe,

they can measure how much of it
empty space contains.

But when
they tallied that number

against how much energy
empty space ought to have

from all the particle waves
filling the Universe,

there was a staggering mismatch.

When you calculate
the amount of energy

that there should be in empty
space from quantum effects,

you get a number which is
10 to the 120 times larger

than the number
that we actually observe

from the expansion and the
acceleration of the Universe.

And this is an enormous number.

Freeman:
According to their calculations,

there should be enough energy
in space itself

to boil the Universe away.

But we are still here.

Neal and many of his colleagues
think they might know

why such a big mismatch exists
between theory and observation.

It could be
that most particle waves

are canceling each other out.

Weiner:
The cancelation of waves

is a pretty easy phenomenon
to understand.

You just simply imagine
you have one wave,

which has peaks and troughs,

and then you have another wave
that has peaks and troughs,

and when those waves combine,

if the peaks and troughs
are in the same place --

if I have two peaks in the same
place -- they add together.

If I have two troughs
in the same place,

they add together negatively.

But if I have
one peak and one trough,

they cancel out,
and I'm left with nothing.

And so this interference,

this phenomenon
of how waves can cancel,

carries over to particles.

Freeman: Neal thinks
there is a whole other set

of as-yet-undetected particles
out in the Universe,

each creating waves,

which cancel out the waves
from the particles we know.

It's an idea
known as supersymmetry --

every particle
has a mirror-image partner.

The fact that my Universe
allows electrons

means that I should have the
possibility of creating selectrons.

And if I have quarks,
I should have squarks.

Freeman: And Neal's supersymmetric
partner should be...

Sneal.

If you're in New York,
you're either a lawyer,

you're in finance, or you're
an actor, and I can't act.

Freeman: But finding Sneal

or any other supersymmetric
particle wave

is a frustrating task.

Weiner:
You can look for them directly.

You can look for them
indirectly.

I have all sorts of ways
to look for supersymmetry.

But up to this point,

it's done an excellent job
of hiding from us,

so either we're about to find it

or I think a lot of us are
gonna say it's just not there.

Freeman: The LHC has so far seen no sign
of supersymmetric particles.

If they do not exist,

scientists will be left
with a baffling predicament --

explaining why
the energy of empty space

is not tearing
our Universe to shreds.

But other scientists believe

a cataclysmic explosion
of nothing is inevitable.

And one has worked out

when it might happen.

And one has worked out

Empty space fills our cosmos

like a great ocean
of nothingness.

But the still waters
of the Universe

may not be tranquil for long.

As one scientist sees it,

a storm may be brewing.

Max Tegmark
is a cosmologist at M.I.T.

Do not let his relaxed charm
fool you.

He is deeply troubled.

What is on his mind

is nothing other than
the future of empty space.

Space itself seems just
imminently stable and permanent,

just like these golf balls here.

Been hitting these around
for quite a while now,

and they always look the same
afterwards,

but how can I be really, really
sure that stuff is stable?

Just like the golf ball changed
its state into a cloud of dust,

could space itself
somehow change its state

into something else?

Freeman: A rapid decay of space
into a different state

may sound highly unlikely,

but it is not without precedent.

13.7 billion years ago,

the Universe shifted
its fundamental properties

and its temperature plummeted.

Physicists call this
the Big Bang.

And through Max's eyes,

there was something fishy
about it.

[ Laughs ]

I pretend I'm a fish.

I've spent my whole life
in the ocean,

and I think of water
as just empty space,

'cause that's all I know.

And then one day,

I realize that this emptiness
is actually a substance.

And I am an interested
and curious fish,

so I figure out in addition to
the liquid water, which I'm in,

there is this solid phase --
ice -- and there's steam.

And then I would start worrying
about whether one day, you know,

my water might freeze
and I might die.

And in exactly the same way
we've looked at our space,

realized that it, too,
seems to be able to freeze

and kill us all.

Freeman:
Max thinks the Big Bang

was not the last cosmic freeze
our Universe will experience,

and his proof
lies in the mind-bending science

of Quantum Mechanics,

where nothing is fixed
and nothing can last forever.

Quantum Mechanics
tells you that a particle

can never be perfectly still

in a known position.

And Quantum Mechanics
tells you that

not just about little things
like atoms,

but also about big things
that are made of atoms,

like this golf ball.

Which means nothing
is completely stable.

This quantum jiggling of things
will eventually,

if I were to stand here
long enough,

cause the golf ball to just
randomly go up a little bit,

then fall down
into a lower energy state.

Freeman: Left alone on the tee,
there was a very slight chance

this golf ball
will tunnel through space

and materialize
closer to the ground,

where its energy is lower.

When an object
tunnels through space,

it can end up
practically anywhere,

as long as its energy is lower.

It could even tunnel
into the tin cup --

a perfect hole-in-one
without even swinging.

But this phenomenon could be
bad news for the Universe.

We physicists have found pretty
good evidence that space itself

can be in several different
energy states --

lower, medium, higher.

And we also have
good reason to believe

that our space used to be
in a much higher energy state

in the early Universe,

in which even the kinds
of particles that could exist

were different.

Now, this early Universe,
which gave us our Big Bang,

was unstable
and very quickly decayed

into a lower energy state
that we inhabit today,

with this peaceful, very nice,
and inhabitable Space

which contains our kinds of
particles that we're made of.

But we've also measured

that there must be
an even lower state,

because our empty space,
as we call it, isn't empty.

It has mass, and as such,

should be able to decay...

into an even lower energy state,

where our kinds of particles
aren't allowed to exist.

And since I'm made
out of that kind of particles,

that would be a bit of a bummer
for me.

Freeman: When this sudden decay in the
energy of empty space happens,

a blast
of destructive nothingness

will spread through the Universe
at the speed of light.

We will have
no way to see it coming.

It's inevitable.

What's very unclear, though,
is how long it's gonna last.

Some things are a lot more
stable than others, you know?

A uranium atom will last for
billions and billions of years,

whereas, say, a Cesium-137 atom

that leaked
out of a nuclear reactor

is gonna fall apart
much quicker,

making it more dangerous.

And then this Universe
we're in --

you know, we've been here
for almost 14 billion years,

but that doesn't mean
it's gonna be around forever.

Freeman:
On the conservative side,

Max thinks we could have
20 billion years left,

but that depends on
supersymmetry particles

actually existing --

the same particles Neal Weiner
is hoping to see

and the LHC
has so far failed to find.

Without supersymmetry
to stabilize empty space,

it could all end
in just one billion years --

the blink of a cosmic eye.

I'm just laughing because...

...at the end of
"Life of Brian,"

one of my favorite
Monty Python movies, they say,

[British accent] "We come from nothing.
We go back to nothing.

What have we lost?
Nothing!"

[ Laughs ]

Nothing could be the beginning
and the end of the Universe,

but there's another way
of looking at nothing.

The Universe
could be a giant bubble.

Everything that is...something

fits on the surface.

And the inside
is just a waste of space.

When we look at the twinkling
starlight in the night sky,

it's hard to understand
the vast distances

that separate us
from those stars --

the trillions upon trillions
of miles of emptiness.

But that's not the way
the ancients saw it.

To them, the stars
were just points of light

on a black shell
that surrounded the Earth.

Outer space did not exist.

Now some bold thinkers

are embracing this period
of this idea again --

a thousand years
after the idea was abandoned.

Gerard 't Hooft won the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1999

for his work in establishing
the standard model --

the basic foundation
of particle physics today.

You could call him one
of the kings of modern physics.

But you could also call him
high lord of nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

Because this barren rock
is his own private asteroid

floating 100 million miles
from Earth.

The international
astronomical union

had decided to name the asteroid
"9491 't Hooft."

I was, of course, very flattered
and honored by the event,

but one little thing struck me,

and it was that they changed
the spelling of my last name.

It now became "Thooft,"
with a capital "T"

and then "hooft"
just spelled right after it,

without apostrophe.

Freeman:
Gerard planned revenge --

a poetic revenge.

I decided that the asteroid
would require a constitution,

and one of the first items
in the constitution

is that all future inhabitants
of this asteroid

would have to live
without apostrophes.

Anyone entering the territorial
zone of the asteroid

with a laptop, for instance,

that carries a key
with an apostrophe in it,

that key of the laptop
would have to be removed.

Freeman:
As King of his asteroid,

Gerard is free
to ban apostrophes.

But as a Nobel laureate,
he knows they still exist.

In fact, Gerard believes
that anything that is something

can never truly
be removed from the Universe.

It's a principle called
the conservation of information.

You might think

that the information
people put in documents

is completely lost
once it's like this,

but actually that's not true.

I could dig it up and I can try
to put all the pieces together.

The information is still in it.

Freeman: Physicists like Gerard
believe anything in the Universe

can be described
by a series of bits,

or ones and zeros,

whether it is a piece of paper,
a planet, or a star.

But there is one place
in the cosmos

where this theory
seems to fall apart --

black holes --

rapacious voids that pull in
everything that gets too close.

't Hooft:
The black hole is much better

than any of these shredders
here.

In a black hole,

the information
is not only shredded,

it completely disappears.

Freeman: In the 1970s,

legendary cosmologist
Stephen Hawking

argued that black holes
entirely remove objects

from our visible Universe,

and the information they swallow
is gone forever.

It was a notion
that deeply troubled Gerard.

't Hooft: And I said,

"that doesn't fit with the view
we have about physics."

From the point of view
of what we know about the atoms

and what's inside an atom,
information doesn't go away.

It can't.

It would be against the laws
of physics that we know.

Freeman:
Hawking stood his ground,

and the two debated for years,

until a brilliant insight
turned the tide.

Gerard realized
that if 9491 Thooft

ever fell into a black hole,

it would not disappear
without a trace.

It would ever so slightly
change the black hole.

't Hooft: The black hole
would go into a different state,

so the black hole
would not be the same black hole

as it was before
it ate my asteroid.

It would be
a different black hole.

Freeman: When a black hole
feeds on its prey, it grows,

and so its surface area
gets slightly larger.

And when Gerard calculated
exactly how much

extra information could fit
onto this larger surface,

he discovered
it was just enough to fit

all the information contained
in the black hole's dinner.

The amount of information
you could put in a black hole

is very precisely fine

and is proportional
to its surface area.

It's not
what's inside the surface.

It simply doesn't count.

It's the surface area
that counts, not the volume.

Freeman: This means that
the entire information content

of Gerard's doomed asteroid

and everything else
devoured by the black hole

is imprinted
across its surface area.

And Gerard discovered
that this principle

applies to more
than just black holes.

In fact,
the information contained

inside any three-dimensional
volume of space

must fit onto
that volume's surface area.

You see that the box
is covered by a grid,

and the amount of information
no longer can be counted

while looking
at the volume of the box,

but by looking
at the surface of the box.

On every side of this grid,
there's one bit of information.

Freeman: Think of a box
the size of the entire Universe.

All of the information
contained inside

fits neatly on a grid
on the surface.

The total information content
of everything that ever was

can be counted there.

Compared with
how much space for information

exists inside the box,

it is practically
nothing at all.

In principle, yes, you can --

it should be possible

to describe everything
happening in the Universe

by concentrating
on a surface surrounding it.

Freeman: If he is correct -- and most
physicists now think he is --

the Universe
is mostly a waste of space.

Because where there is
no information,

there is really...nothing.

But this woman has taken
the concept of nothing

one step further.

In fact, she may have found
another Universe inside our own,

made of absolutely nothing.

If I close my eyes
and nothing makes a sound,

how can I be sure
the world is really there?

Or...if you can't see
or hear me, how --

how do you know I really exist?

The difference
between something and nothing

could be a matter of perception.

Katie Freese
is an astrophysicist

with a competitive spirit.

I think this stems
from my childhood,

because we lived
on the corner of two blocks,

and all the kids
came over to my house

to play baseball and basketball
or whatever,

except it was all boys,

so I was always
playing with the boys.

And as a physicist,
I'm still doing that.

And [laughs] so I think
that's where I developed

this sense of competition
and thinking that it's fun.

Freeman:
When she's not on the courts,

Katie peers
into the heart of matter

and tries to understand
what makes it solid.

When we look at the world around
us, it seems to be really solid.

It looks solid, it feels solid,
but it's not.

This tennis ball feels solid,

but when I cut it open...

...it's empty --

just like most of matter.

So, if we think about
one grain of the sugar

that's on my fingertip,

and if that were equivalent
to the nucleus,

then it would take
this entire big tennis court

to make up the atom,

and in between the sugar,

the single grain
that makes the nucleus

and this entire tennis court,

there's absolutely nothing.

It's empty.

Freeman: The solid world
around us is merely an illusion.

What makes things feel solid

is nothing more
than the repulsion of electrons

that exist
on the outer shells of atoms.

And if you
did not feel this force,

you could pass
right through solid matter.

In the past two decades,

astronomers
have discovered light

bending around
gargantuan invisible masses

surrounding every galaxy.

They believe these masses
are made of dark matter.

They call it dark

because we cannot see it,
feel it, or touch it.

It passes right through
our solid world

as if it was not there at all.

As far as dark matter goes,

we know that it does not have
electric charge.

We would know.

I mean, these things would be
bombarding you, and you'd know.

There are probably billions
of dark-matter particles

passing through
our bodies every second.

Freeman:
Katie believes that dark matter

is made up of particles
just as heavy as regular matter,

but they are only affected

by what scientists call
the weak force --

a force so puny,
its effect is barely detectable

by our most sophisticated
equipment.

In my right hand,
I have a tennis racket,

and in my left hand,
I have a glass of sugar,

and we're gonna use these
as props

to explain weak interactions.

The strings are representing
regular matter

with a lot of space
in between them,

so when the grains of sugar
go through,

most of them just pass
right on by

without having
any interaction whatsoever.

Freeman:
Katie believes that in one day,

of the few billion particles
of dark matter

that pass through your body,

only two or three of them

will ever interact
with the atoms inside you.

And when they do,

it is only through
the weak force.

Highly sensitive experiments
around the world

have been trying to detect
these rare interactions

for over a decade,

but the experiments
do not agree with one another.

Freese: One of the experiments has been
seeing a signal for 10 years,

and it's a statistically
very significant result.

But the problem is that
some of the other experiments

are in disagreement because
they're not seeing anything.

The question is,
what's going on?

Freeman:
As a scientist competing

in one of the biggest
theoretical games in physics,

Katie is beginning to worry
about an emerging possibility.

Dark matter may not
even feel the weak force.

Freese:
What a horrible thought.

Nobody said the dark matter
had to weakly interact,

so then we really
have a problem.

Then I don't know
how we're ever gonna detect it.

How can we discover it?

That would be
really discouraging.

[ Chuckles ]
So let's hope not.

Freeman:
If this is the case,

our Universe is divided
into two worlds --

one of matter
and one of dark matter.

And they will always
be nothing to each other.

Like a tennis game where
the rackets have no strings.

The most important contribution
to the mass in the Universe

could really
basically be nothingness.

So nothingness would rule.
[ Laughs ]

Freeman:
But is there or was there

ever such a thing
as absolute nothing?

No energy, no matter,
no time or space.

The answer to this question

might reveal the ultimate origin
of our cosmos,

and this scientific pioneer
thinks he has found it.

Only a decade ago,

astronomers confirmed what to
many seemed utterly impossible.

Go back 13.7 billion years,

and there was only darkness.

Then our Universe
exploded into existence.

How could everything
come from nothing?

Gabriele Veneziano
is the father of String Theory,

which has become one of the most
important scientific ideas

in modern physics.

But his latest big idea
challenges the mainstream.

He believes the Big Bang

could not have been
the beginning of everything.

The conclusion
that there was nothing --

I think it was too fast
a conclusion,

so I don't want
to repeat the same mistake.

Freeman: Gabriele believes
that there was something

before the Big Bang.

But, like a city at daybreak,

most of this pre-Universe
was fast asleep.

Veneziano: There were things
propagating in space,

like waves, particles,

but the energy was very diluted,

and furthermore,

this wave or this particle
interacted very, very weakly.

That would be like having very
few people walking in the street

and, furthermore,
not interacting with each other.

They may not talk to each other.

They may not feel each other.

Freeman: Gabriele believes

that the same fundamental
forces of nature we know today

existed in the pre-Universe,

but their strengths
were much lower.

Veneziano:
The strength of all these forces

was given in terms
of what we call a dilaton field.

Freeman: This dilaton field
filled the entire pre-Universe

and controlled
the strength of all the forces.

As it gradually
dialed them all up,

things started to happen.

As time goes on, the density
of people is increasing.

As a result,

the interactions are getting
stronger and stronger.

So, you see people getting
together, talking together,

making clusters of people
together.

Freeman: The ever-growing
pressure increases

and the interactions
intensify until...

Things blow up.

Freeman: For Gabriele,

the Big Bang
was not a sudden beginning,

but rather a tipping point.

If he is right,

he will have dispensed
its most puzzling paradox --

getting something from nothing.

Proving there was never
nothing in the Universe

may not be as difficult
as you think.

Because if space and matter
have always existed,

the Big Bang should have sent
colossal gravitational waves

rippling through them,

and the aftershock
of those waves

may still be detectable today.

If we could see
gravitational waves,

we could go back much,
much earlier,

ideally very, very close
with the Big Bang.

Or if there was something
before the Big Bang,

we can even go back
to looking at the Universe

before the Big Bang.

Freeman: If gravitational waves left over
from the pre-Universe exist,

they should be ever so slightly

stretching and squashing
the spaces around us.

Engineers from around the world

are submitting designs
for a new spacecraft

sensitive enough
to detect these distortions.

Veneziano: The important thing is that
there are experimental ways

to talk about these things.

I mean, they're not
just pure science fiction.

I mean, you can put this model
to a test.

Freeman:
Gabriele's mission

to prove that nothing
does not exist and never did

may be on the verge of success.

The ancient Greeks
thought of nothing

as a logical impossibility.

The moment you think about
nothing, it becomes something.

Modern scientists
have spent centuries

thinking about nothing,

and what they've learned
proved the greeks were right.

There may be enough energy

rippling through nothingness
to destroy us,

entire Universes
may be made of it,

And it is most definitely
not nothing.

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

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