Why Do We Exist with Hakeem Oluseyi

About This Episode

What is fundamental in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice welcome back Hakeem Oluseyi to dive deep into cosmology, plasma physics, the origins of life, and some of the most provocative ideas in modern astrophysics.

Learn about Hakeem’s new book, Why Do We Exist: The Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible, walking through the cosmological framework he has built to understand the universe as a single unfolding story. What is a plasma? We break down what plasma is and how to use magnetism to contain it. We discuss emergence and its connection to life and abiogenesis, from the energy ladder that leads to a brain like ours to the superhorizon and inflation field at the edge of what we can observe. He also introduces the Oluseyi Equation, his own take on the Drake Equation, differently motivated and built around a broader hypothesis he decided to put into the world rather than keep to himself.

Could we move the Earth to another star system instead of building ships to carry humanity there? Is there something beneath energy and spacetime something more fundamental than fields and geometry? We discuss how spacetime, energy, and geometry all interact at the fundamental level.

What would two astronauts at opposite ends of a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar actually see when they looked at each other? Could the earliest black holes leave behind a topological remnant, a kind of Cheshire cat smile in spacetime, after they evaporate? And which came first, the supermassive black hole or the galaxy around it? The answer may surprise you. The episode closes on Earth’s liquid metal outer core, the little red dots JWST discovered at the edge of the observable universe, and what an indestructible bowling ball on a pulsar would actually do. Keep Looking Up!

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