The Truth Is in the Stars Page #5

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through eleven

dimensional hyperspace.

Wow, that's the theory

and that would go along

with the unifying idea

of everything is unified.

Right. That's right.

And you're looking to

prove what you just said,

- you're looking to prove that?

- That's right.

Oh, my Lord, I never

understood that!

- You got it!

- I got it!

- You got it!

- I got it, by God, I got it.

Star Trek has fundamentally

altered the course of my life

but I could never have guessed

how it could influence

so many other lives

and inspire people to innovate,

to create,

to literally reach

for the stars.

This is the space shuttle.

Enterprise,

with its name inspired

by Star Trek.

It was the prototype for

the shuttles that followed.

A giant step forward

in our ability to

reach for the stars.

But where exactly is

that quest taking us?

We're literally

at the crossroads

of science fiction and science.

Right.

And you are a pure scientist,

and I'm a pure ignoramus.

Nonsense.

So-so, there's,

I'm fictional, in every sense,

and you're pure science.

It's all about dreaming,

and science fiction,

although entertainment

is about dreaming and imagining,

and that is the most

powerful force that we know.

Until this moment I've

never fully understood

that the science you're in

is about dreaming the

possible, the what ifs.

But it's the what ifs

based on the knowledge

of scientific principles,

and science fiction

is also based on that,

- with a more elusive...

- Open minded.

- Open minded.

- Open minded.

Yes!

Where the possibilities

are less likely.

Right.

So science fiction illustrates,

perhaps better than anything,

the extraordinary power

of the human mind to do

much more than it knows

because the human mind dreams

of things before they happen.

Based on all this,

where do you think we'll be

in Star Trek's time,

250 years from now?

Anything-anything I say that

far ahead is bound to be wrong.

Of course.

What I know is that the quantum

technological

revolution is coming.

We know that the

devices we use today,

as awesome as they are,

laptops and cell phones,

will be abacuses ten

or 20 years from now.

We're going to have, I believe,

new sources of energy.

The dark matter in space,

the dark energy in space.

I think one day is

gonna be used-used.

That will allow us

to travel in space.

Where does Dr. Stephen

Hawking and you

as his,

uh, what would we call you?

- Collaborator.

- Collaborator?

Yes.

You, I mean, just be

mentioned in the same breath

is really phenomenal, isn't it?

For him!

But

where do you guys fit into this

phenomenal uh gallery of people?

I am inspired by Stephen.

His main contribution to physics

was to say we can unify

quantum theory with gravity

and let's try and do that,

we have to do that to

describe black holes,

we have to do that to

describe The Big Bang.

We're on the verge

of discovering it.

Is that string theory?

No.

We're on the verge

of discovering it,

it's not string theory.

String theory has become

a nightmare theory.

What we're finding

observationally

is that as we go

to bigger scales,

the universe simplifies,

and in a sense it's finite.

You know, we're taught...

We're used to talking

about an infinite universe,

but the part we will ever

see is actually finite

because of the dark energy.

So the dark energy

is causing the universe

to accelerate

its expansion away from us.

Stuff which is further than

a certain distance today

is going to travel

away from us so fast,

we will never see it.

- So here we are...

- Yes, yes, yes!

Human beings sticking our

fingers out to explore

like children

looking in the dirt.

Absolutely.

We're looking into the sky,

trying to find an answer.

What is the answer?

What is the question?

Why are we doing this?

What will we discover?

Will we discover the beginning?

Or how does this...

What are we doing?

It's who we are.

We are the leading

edge of evolution.

We arose in the...

We are the leading

edge of evolution.

We represent

the self-consciousness

of the universe.

This thing behind us

isn't thinking about

what's out there and

how does it work.

Through us it is.

Through us.

Through us it is.

We are the self-consciousness

of the universe.

Are you the leadings...

Are you the special forces

in the battle

to-for knowledge?

Absolutely, that is

what physics is.

Wow, you're the Green Berets

of-of education.

That's what the-that's

what physics is.

The Perimeter Institute

for Theoretical Physics.

This is where dreamers

like Stephen Hawking

are exploring

mind-bending ideas

about the nature

of our universe,

asking the what ifs.

What if we can bend

space and time?

What if we can control gravity?

What if we can peer

deep into a black hole?

What if we can harness

the power of dark energy?

What if we can travel faster

than the speed of light?

What if?

Mike Lazaridis,

you and your associates

invented the very

first smartphone.

What a thing to be able

to say because of the way

smartphones have

changed the world.

Not just our culture

but every culture.

You sell Blackberry

and you make a lot of money

and you use that money

in a philanthropic way.

You endow an institute

that you call Perimeter

and the object of that

money is pure research.

How do you get to that?

The lenses of our imagination

are the most powerful

optics you could ever imagine.

They're much more

powerful than our eyes,

they're much more powerful

than our instruments

because they allow

us to see things

that our instruments can't see

but can only interpret.

Everything that we

basically take for granted

in our industrial world and

our lives and our society

and our technology,

our industry,

all the wealth

creations come from

theoretical physics discoveries

that have explained

parts of nature.

Let me take you to this

really amazing place.

This is where we're

growing the future.

So this may appear

like science fiction

and in many ways it is.

But this is the kind

of technology you need

in order to invent the future

because you're dealing with

materials that you can't see.

We can grow materials,

keep them completely isolated

from impurities

and contamination,

and we can not

only grow them here

atom by atom,

layer by layer,

we can build completely

imaginative, new substances

that are gonna help us

define the quantum future.

Scientific discovery

and technology industry,

they change everything.

No matter how

wild-eyed we are,

we tend to, um,

underestimate the future

potential of a discovery,

of a physics discovery,

or a-a, you know,

technology discovery.

Physics is magic that works.

The universe

transcends the English language.

We simply don't have the words

to describe its magnitude.

But with mathematics,

scientists are able to

comprehend the universe

to see music in the stars,

and equations in its blackness.

It occurs to me that these

complex scientific theories

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