Brian Cox Blows Ruth's Mind With Black Hole 'Hologram' Theory | This Morning

[Music] okay time now to ask the big questions how did we get here why do we exist are we alone well ruth and i can't help you there but our next guest can is professor brian cox and fingers crossed he's inviting you along to find the answers in a brand new tour professor good morning morning good when are you when are you expecting to be on the road back on the road again well we're hoping that it will be october we would plan this about two years ago um in in a very different world and and actually it's an optimistic show which i think will fit i mean hopefully we'll be able to all get together and go to shows by the autumn and it was you know it was based on a piece of music actually i asked a friend of mine who's a classical music conductor about that what's the most wonderful celebration of nature and the universe and our place within it that you know in all of music and he said there's this piece by a composer sibelius finnish composer um it's the fifth symphony third movement i listened to it and it's utterly magnificent beautiful piece of music and at one level it's about swans taking off from the surface of the lake but at another level it's it's a celebration of the beauty and majesty of nature but the thing it really relates to the time we're in i think because it was written in about 1914 1915 so in the midst of the first world war finland was about to embark on a civil war so a tremendous period of strife and uncertainty and out of that period of strife came this magnificent celebration of our place in the universe and so that was two years ago when i started building the show but i think it feels even more relevant now yeah and what about the whole thing of transportation because what you do through your lectures um through through your teaching of people but also the visual effects you do transport people i hope so i mean i i want um to ask questions you said these the biggest questions we can ask how did the universe begin why is there anything at all why do we exist how do we exist and also what the fundamental nature of reality is i think we've all asked these questions at some level and using some language and then i think the remarkable thing is we're beginning to get some answers we don't have all the answers um that the answer to some of those questions like why is there a universe at all is we don't know but um one of the things i'll do in the show which is it's just one of the most fascinating things i've found over the last two or three years is i look at black holes and black holes are the most you know you think what have they got to do with the universe and nature these completely collapsed stars these weird things that we hear about in science fiction but i'll just say the answer i'll say what we're beginning to suspect that's an image of one by the way in a galaxy 50 million light years away that thing is 6 billion times the mass of our sun imagine that a black hole six billion times the mass of our sun and by studying those and answering some questions that stephen hall king asked actually over 50 years ago we've come to the conclusion and i'll just say it out loud and i'll stop that we might be holograms that the universe might not be at all the way that we perceive it blowing my mind now you see because it's so strange i was never good at science at school anyway and i'm trying really hard to follow you and keep up here but that is mind-blowing but then but then your but but then kind of space and science and things that is mind-blowing and you do you do transport people with effects as well you know it's very visual your show and tell us about this massive screen that you've got yeah it's um i mean you're seeing some film there from the last tour we've got an even bigger one now so it's about 30 meters across so think of your tv your led tv in your room your living room but 30 meters wide and eight meters high these are state-of-the-art displays and what you find is that the images we have from telescopes up in space now in space probes are so high resolution and so beautiful that just looking them on a computer screen as we all do really doesn't do them justice and so one of the things i've done is i've sort of tried to display these images of the cosmos and the black hole that you showed there in this enormous setting of an arena and i think it it works because we you know as you said in your introduction where we're asking questions that none of us can answer and that we have to be in awe of i mean it's impossible isn't it to comprehend but is it good but is it good brian for us to be in awe you know because i said that you're blowing my mind you know do you want our minds to be boggled do you think it's good that we don't know our order or place in the universe do you think that's exciting i think it's tremendously important for us to ask those questions and to know a bit i mean for example there's there's two ideas that i think seem completely incompatible and are really important to know one is that yeah yeah we are physically insignificant there's nothing you can say i mean we're one we're on one planet around one star amongst 200 billion stars in the milky way galaxy which itself is one galaxy amongst two trillion galaxies that we can see in the observable universe i mean you know nobody can listen to that and get a picture of it in their mind or feel anything other than insignificant but and this is the point of the show if you ask the question on how many of those worlds those almost infinite number of worlds out there in the cosmos did atoms come together uh in in the shape of a form that we are now we are just collections of atoms the building blocks have been around since the beginning of time that they're spending a temporary amount of time in you and me at the moment but those atoms have got together in a pattern that can think and can feel and can write beautiful music and literature and art and poetry and wonder about their place in the universe and i don't think knowing what i know that there are many places out there where that has happened so that makes us indescribably valuable notwithstanding our physical insignificance and fragility and and i think that so that is important i think that should inform the way we behave shouldn't it if we just think for a moment about how fortunate and fragile we are on these planets i think we might behave better well you can hypothesize about many many things and we can guess and we can project and whatever and what's your best thesis as regards being on tour being in an arena come october time i i mean i hope so i mean i think we've all been surprised about the the success of the vaccine rollout so i know no more than everybody who's listening i'm not an expert in this field but i've had my first vaccination now and it was the the zenika jab a few weeks ago um and uh so i think we all have to proceed on the basis that we're gonna beat this if we don't then what will i do well we'll just move we'll move the tour a little bit later on and everybody can come when it's safe to do so but i like everybody else i'm just hoping that this continues and and we we're we're out of it by the autumn so too we hope you don't have to postpone it um it's the horizons tour and a tickets on sale night brian always fascinated to talk to you mind boggling i'm now thinking of myself am i actually a hologram i'm not yeah you probably are just a hologram thanks brad appreciate it thank you very much indeed you

Channel: This Morning

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Length: 7min 52sec (472 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021