of her retirement? eastern,ay at 8 p.m. we remember some of the political figures that passed away in 2016, including nancy reagan and antonin scalia. friday night at 8:00, hour in memoriam program continues with shimon peres, mohammed ali, john glenn. this week in prime time on c-span. join us on tuesday, january 3, for live coverage of the opening day of the new congress. watch the official swearing-in of the new and reelected members of the house and senate and the election of the speaker of the house. i were all they live coverage of the day's begins at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org, or you can listen to it on the free c-span radio app. astrophysicist who is also the chief science officer for discovery communications talks about science and innovation. he addressed a student audience recently at westminster college in fulton, missouri. this is one hour. >> i will begin. i will introduce myself. i am chris, a professor at westminster college. it is in fact my great pleasure to introduce our next speaker, dr. hakeem oluseyi. growing up in a tougher parts of in orleans, he has been mississippi. reading specifically the world book encyclopedias, and if you're not familiar with that, i know we have a younger audience, that is wikipedia without the internet. that is what he was introduced to albert einstein in the theory of relativity. after a short time in the navy, he continued his higher education, getting a bachelors in science, physics, and mathematics, and he minor in chemistry by the way. a masters degree and a phd in physics would follow from stanford. he points out the hardships and rewards for his perseverance, he will buy the drive to silence doubters -- byed by the drive -- fueled the drive to silence doubters. named the chief science officer of her discovery communications -- for discovery communications. a research position at m.i.t., and most recently a position at ,nasa in washington d.c. distinguished in the area of expanding and improving science education here and abroad. he is a master physicist, a tv host, voice actor, industry mercenary, who is problem-solving across all disciplines, not just astrophysicists. please welcome dr. hakeem oluseyi. [applause] >> thank you for that wonderful introduction. it does not happen very often that someone properly pronounces my last name, so that is quite an achievement. i would like to thank you all for having me here at westminster college. it is a great honor. i recognize whose footsteps i am following in so i would like to thank your president for having me and his wonderful family for hosting me, but i would also like to thank the professors for hosting me. if you look at your program, you might find that what i am going to talk about is a bit different from what is in the program. it depends on which program you have. there is this nice pretty one here. audacious ingenuity. that describes my abstract and what i will discuss. i will talk about innovation because that is the theme this week. i have been able to innovate in the sciences and education. enever i amam -- whne talking to students, i want to talk about you, not me and the lessons i have learned. when we think about innovation come it is no shortness of innovation in our country. we are a country that maintains a lead in science as well as economic because of the richness of innovation that occurs here in america, but there is a particular type of innovation i want to talk about that happens in science, and that is when you have these big paradigm shifts, when things change. this hit me personally because apparently, people like me becoming a well-known scientist is a paradigm shift for some people. there were these articles that were written about me several years ago. the first article was titled and the a gangster," second article was titled "the gangster physicist." i saw these titles and the first thing i think is it is not like i am walking around the lab intimidating people and robbing them. anymore. why are they focused on the past? we don't look at our presidential candidates and called donald trump the wet your diaper presidential candidate. we focus on who he is today. howally did not understand this would impact my career either. how the title of a gangster physicist. i talked to students at lunch and someone mentioned to me they saw this talk i did on infinity. did any of you see that? yeah. did you know that talk took place in a prison? yeah. it turns out i was invited to go to this prison. i was informed over and over again by the host of the event that hakeem, you are the only person the prisoners specifically requested, which is kind of scary. i did not understand, why do they want me? i found out after i get my talk. on site, visitors would recognize me and say hey, the gangster physicist. for a day in prison, i was a shock collar -- shot caller.i could order people around . they were using this article to inspire these prisoners. they say look at this guy,'s life,his -- his past, his and you can do this, too. recidivism in prisons in california are really bad. a really high percentage of prisoners return to prison. for those prisoners who received a minimum of an associates degree, the recidivism rate fell to 6%. from 90% to 6%. they were using this article to help these prisoners with their lives. that is another paradigm shift. when i think about paradigm shifts in physics, there is something going on right now in the world of physics that is so amazing, i have to share it with you because you students are the next generation of thinkers. we look at the way we saw problems in physics. sometimes it takes generations. the grandparents lay the cornerstone and the grandchildren erect the steeple. here is the foundation has just been laid. there were a couple of papers published about a hundred years ago that involved albert einstein. we have come up with this equation, not me, but researchers. epr. er is that paper by einstein rosen that predicted the existence of a wormhole. do you guys know what a wormhole is? hole,n you have a black and under certain conditions, the black hole can be a portal to another location in time and space. you can instantly travel from a in space to another location that is hundreds or thousands or millions of light-years away. it sounds like science fiction, and it is incorporated in science fiction, but the laws of physics say this can actually happen. the problem is that these wormholes are very unstable so the likelihood of it was really small we thought. if you are a scientist, one lately innovate is through hate. did you catch that? through hate. here is what i mean. here is an example in history where in the 19th century, there was a question of, how does the process of diffraction work? we knew how reflection worked and refraction, but what is diffraction? the most common example where you get to witness it is when you see oil on the surface of water, you see this rainbow pattern. the french academy of sciences held a contest to solve that problem. a gentleman submitted an essay. that essay relied on the fact that light travels as a wave. physicists did not think it traveled as a wave. isaac newton thought life was a series of articles. judge is the as a mathematician. he says, yes, this looks elegant, but i know it is wrong. do?hat am i going to i am going to take these equations and see if they predict anything that i know cannot be true. you found something. he found that if you were to take a route object, a circular object, take it into a dark room, and cast a light on it, the center of the shadow of the object, there would be a spot of light. that is obviously ridiculous. also on the panel was an experimenist. a circulart we take object into a room and cast a shadow of a light is there. what you think he saw? the spot of light was there. that phenomenon became known as his spot because he discovered in the equation although he was attempting to hate on the theory. albert einstein did the same thing. in the early 20th century, quantum mechanics had come about. quantum mechanics was different from general relativity. he thought, let me look at this quantum mechanical system of equations and see if it predicts anything that i know cannot be true. he found what he called a spooky action at a distance that we today call quantum entanglement. a paper was written by einstein, podolski, and rosen. born, we share an existence. we are entangled. due to our state of entanglement, whenever one of us is sitting, the other must be standing. we sit and stand really fast. it happens like a trillionth of a second. there are people who can measure whether or not i am standing or sitting and whether or not my twin is standing or sitting, and they can do the measuring down to a millionth of a second. let's say for example that throughout our lives, i have three people observing me and three people observing him, and they keep records to the millionth of a second when each of us is sitting and standing. i decide i will leave planet earth. i will go to mars. my observers come with me and keep the record. then i decide i hear there is a new planet, so i will go there. they continue to keep the records. then i decided i would like to go to million light-years away to the andromeda galaxy, and they continue to get these records. after maybe 50 years, the observers get together, and they compare the records. what they see is down to the millionth of a second that this has helped through. whenever one of us was sitting, the other was standing. how could that be? in order for me to know when my twin is sitting or standing or my twin to know when i am sitting or standing, a signal must reverse between us. how can it happen instantaneously what we are separated by great distances? because that is what space is. the reason you are seeing me and i have seen you is because light is traveling between us. i am not seeing you as you are now, but as we were a tiny fraction of a second ago, so how could they be communicating? quantum990's, entanglement was measured for the first time. is a real phenomenon in our universe. physicists have been trying to get their mind around, how good this communication be taking place? ago it wast want to go recognized that quantum entanglement and wormholes are perhaps the same phenomenon. that is mind-boggling because in order to create a wormhole, a bridge, it takes an incredible amount of energy and mass to do that. these entangled particles are single elementary particles. could they possibly be connected by wormholes? that appears to be the case. that appears to be true, but what does that tell us about the space in which we live? what does that tell us about space and all? this is not something that was on for seen. the science fiction writers had a problem they had to solve. if you are in the starship enterprise on the other side of the galaxy 1000 light-years away or 40,000 light-years away, how do you communicate back with earth instantly, and communications not take 40,000 years? they invented the concept of subspace. you familiar with that? where are my nerds in here. can a nerds section raise their hands. there are minor. -- my nerds. what does this have to do with innovation? well, the theme of the innovation i am looking at, i am considering is looking at the old, but looking at it anew. these papers existed 100 years, we knew about these phenomena, and only recently have they been connected. this is about to transform how humankind looks at space. how are we going to take advantage of this in the future? what are going to be the new technologies that will take advantage of this communication. another example that is really similar, when albert einstein came up with his special theory of relativity, we learned that time is not something that is absolute. passes to you in comparison to me depends on our relative motion and the differences in gravity between us. for example, when you are in space versus being on the surface of the earth, time moves more quickly. when einstein looked at it that way, einstein looked at it and said when things move fast, distances get shorter. when things move fast, time passes more slowly. in the modern times, we have a new interpretation of it. the new interpretation of it is this. at all times, everything in the universe moves at the speed of light. right now, you are moving at the speed of light, and i am moving at the speed of light. do you feel it? no, you don't feel it? here is why you don't feel it. because we are at rest relative to each other in space. we are together moving through space, moving through time at the speed of light. if one of us was to take off going really fast through space, then because you must move at the speed of light at all times, you must move more slowly through time compared to the rest of us so the exact equation is that the speed of light squared is equal to your speed through space squared plus your speed through time square. here is some consequences of that. how can i take advantage of that? let's do an experiment. have you heard of the twin paradox? the twin paradox is exactly what i said. i have a twin and one of us leaves earth moving at very high speed. time passes more slowly for the traveling twin. , they travel for some time come back to earth,. for them, maybe 10 years have passed, but on earth, maybe 1000 years have passed. this is a real phenomenon we measure all the time in the laboratory. there is one measurement that we wish to make. you heard the universe is expanding, correct? there is many evidences that point to this, but the we have not been able to observe is the universe expanding in real time. can we see the expansion change? can i observe the shift of a galaxy change? what we call z-dot. imagine the twin experiment done in a different way. suppose there is this light that fills all universe. because the universe is expanding, as the universe expands, that light gets fleshed out by the exact same amount the universe expands. that action exists. we call that the cosmic microwave background radiation. ok. my twin and i measure the microwave of this background radiation. then, the twin goes and travels at a very high speed relative to me and comes back. we both measure the wavelength again. we get what a scientist will call delta lambda, the change in the wavelength, but we can also measure the change in time between those two measurements. for the twin who stayed home on earth, that time is big. for the twin who was traveling in space, that time is small. obviously, we measured very different results for how fast that light was changing its wavelength. are you with me? yes. so, what does this tell me? this tells me that if i want to do this observation that physicists are trying to do right now every day of observing the changing of this light that fills the universe or the measurement of a galaxy moving away, that all i have to do is move at a very high speed, and then i can observe that perhaps in a human lifetime, whereas our current ideas would take much longer. these are deep, very abstract ideas of how we can use innovation. but in my work as a professor, i judge these student competitions. helped discovery, i judge three young science challenges. what i see is students like yourselves are looking at the technology that has been around you and saying, how can i reproduce this technology to solve a problem that exists today? it really depends critically on defining the correct problem. buddy give you an example. one problem -- let may give you one example. one problem is safety. supposed to have to work late and a lousy or parking lot to get in your car at night. if you talk to a police officer, they will tell you parking lots are very dangerous places. how do you know you will be safe going to your car? now, cars are equipped with cameras to help you back up. the students said, what if i build an app will allow you to turn on the cameras run your car to determine if you are safe at night? that is a wonderful innovation. exists,es what already and less repurpose it for something to solve the current problem of today. another way that we can innovate, when i look at my life of innovation, as a scientist, as a student, you become an expert in a particular field. you are studying some phenomenon and become really intimate with it. when you become a phd student for example, your first job is to become current in your field. that means that you take everything on your topic that has ever existed, and you read every paper you can, especially from all the top scientists. now they know what everyone else has said about it, it is time for you to add, to contribute to this knowledge. it is time for you to give something new. that is when you receive your phd when you make that in contribution. we have a saying that goes like this. becoming an expert means knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. right? it is kind of close to true, but here is something i found. when i was a graduate student, i was studying solar physics, processes that occur on the surface of the sun. you see pictures of the sun with the hot gas. i was on a team that took that technology and applied it to observing the sun for the first time. sun andm studying the what is happening there, but when i go to get a job, i cannot go to academia. i go to silicon valley. i go to silicon valley and i am working on solving this problem of efficiency in making computer chips. when you make a computer chip, that is many steps. substeps deposit material on a silicon wafer, substeps remove some steps to remove material, and every step you need to know how it works. i better make sure i got these processes right or i just lost a ton of money. what they do is, they put in these waivers, so you do the process on that and then take it out and measure to see if the process happen as it was supposed to. if it did not, you throw away the waivers. at the end of the processing, you test certain chips. every time you test a chip, you destroy that chip. it cannot be sold. there is a lot of waste going on, and it is no way to make sure in real-time that, you know, you make the process happen properly. you can only tell after the fact whether or not it did. i step into silicon valley, and i work on a team that wants to address this problem. how can we get rid of these silicon wafers? -we make sure the process works as it is supposed to in real time? i say in astrophysics, we have a way of measuring light that comes from object and being able to tell all of these physical characteristics of what is going on inside that star. if you look at a start through a telescope, exactly as it does to the naked eye, a dot of light. if you ask an astrophysicist about that, it has good chemical composition, how do you know all that from a spot of light? whatwere to ask you guys is matter made up, with everyone what would everyone say? atoms. exactly. everyone knows that. if i were to ask you, where does like come from? what would you say? speak up where everyone gets an f. the sun. i hear that all the time. there is no sun in this room, but i see a lot of light. where it is light come from -- where does light come from? that we give you the simplest answer. it comes from one place. matter makes it. matter makes it. every example you think of, matter makes the light. the signature and the identity of that matter is encoded in the line. ght. ist that matter is doing encoded in the light as it travels through space, the dynamics of space, weather space is expanding or contracting is encoded in that light. ofwhen i had this problem trying to figure out what was going on inside of these ofmbers, i thought many these processes that deposit material and remove material, that use plasma. plasmas emits light. all we have to do is monitor this life and we can see everything going on in real time . we can make corrections in a real-time, and problem solved. you know what happened? guess what my bosses said. that would not work. is, i went ahead and develop the technology anyway. we had a performance review at the end of the year. my manager gave me a less than favorable review. because i did not do as i was told. instead, i developed this new technology. that he technology resulted in a completely new division of the company. very profitable for the company. i got several patents out of that. i have an argument with my manager in the parking lot about this and i said look, you are comparing results with activities and results matter more than activities. he changed migrate to a very high rating. the second point of innovation is this. you will come across naysayers. you're going to come across haters. hate can be a crucible for creating and innovating, or it can stifle it in his tracks. -- its tracks. we are all humans in this tapestry and we play different roles. sometimes you are in the lab intimate with the work, and you can make the connection between astrophysics and semi conductor manufacturing. i have a graduate student. he was working on this problem, how does the sun create solar wind? particles at up to 800 kilometers per second. sometimes even 3000 kilometers per second. that?e could do that would give us an in posted technology that is almost 100 times faster than anything we perceived today. always paylisten, attention to what is going on in areas of science that are related to what you are doing but not what you are doing. he paid attention to plasma experiments in the lab. he realized that there is this one configuration that the sun uses to create these high-speed plasmas. physicists who do this stuff in the lab have created a technology that will allow us to build what the sun does in a tiny chamber. we can make it really small, really great. that has become a new patented technique for in space propulsion. that is from seeing these relationships. here is the thing. one day, he came to me. he said, i had this idea. i noticed that the plasma physicists have done this. do you think that maybe we can combine these two ideas and create an in ocean technology -- in space proposing technology? at that point, i was in the position of my manager in silicon valley. i could say go for it or you're out of your mind. being the open-minded guy that i am, i said go for it. what if i had not said that? what i told him not to? thedon't know th is person you are talking to will be someone who will say i show i guess i you or really am dumb like i thought i was. you guys don't ever let at my jokes. i am never coming back. i will come back, but i will be sure that everybody's name and bring the fun students into the top. alk. listen guys can we have to identify that and let them. tha-- laugh at them. there are many past innovations, many roles and innovation. when you are a leader, how do you bring innovation out of the people working with you and for you. and you are in a lower role know you are onto something with the people above you did not support it, what do you do then? my answer is you believe in yourself, you do it anyway. my other answer is you have to also believe in others and see it in them. one othat brings me back to another point. this is a warning. a joke is coming up. ok. but it is not really a joke. is a true story. a couple weeks ago i was talking to my mother. she was telling me, you know what? there is something weird happening now. whenever i talk to some of my old friends that you you when you were young and tell them what you are doing now, not a tv stuff but the scientists of s tuff, they go him? really? because you were joking all the time, not serious. people do not think someone who jokes around a lot can be serious. when that reminds me of, what that is me think of is how we judge each other as human beings . as i come around this country, as i go around this world, there is one thing that stands out to me, and that is how we are definitely not taking advantage of what we have as human beings, our human capital. there are so many people that can be contributed to this enterprise that just are not. i have narrowed it down to a couple of things i think are key. the first one is identity. as an example, when i was a young man, at that time, i was a young black man. that was a joke. i thought the world told me, here is you you are and what you are. for me, i had to be intimidating. i had to be great at basketball. i have to be a ladies man. i was all those things. hey, you can't win without a warning. caught that one without a warning. i did not see myself as a master of mathematics, and i wasn't. even as a professor, i have been guilty of this. i had a student named patrick. he was a big guy, had a scar across his face, had his intimidating demeanor, and he was like professor, i want to work with you. i would say something like i do not have any openings. in my mind, i have thinking you look scary -- i am thinking, man, you look scary. he was a c student. he pursued me and pursued me and pursued me. i have allowed him to join my research group. that undergraduate turned out to be one of the greatest leaders i ever had in my research group. he taught me a lesson about judging people and what they are capable of. now, he is in huntsville, alabama, building rockets. as a graduate student, he is working as a leader as if he already has a phd. i have gone all across the continent of africa, into slums, see everywhere there are people like me without who thought of themselves, i am a female, i am from the slums, and because of that, they do not see themselves in the role of scientists or a person who can do that science. that is one of the most amazing things about going on television that has happened to my life. now, i go around the country, and every day i didn't recognized by people, and there isolated people who are from backgrounds like my own that say seeing you on television, when i hear you talk, i get it. i see it as cool, and i realize i can do it, too. so many people have told me because of you, i am going back to school now. that is a type of social innovation. you see all these people who at one time, they were living in a paradigm of who is supposed to do this and who cannot do this, what i'm supposed to do and what i cannot do. students used to joke at florida tech. it is very good when it comes to space, sea, and sky. when it comes to the oceans why do soondered, many people go into studying dolphins? what is it about that what is it that makes us think that here is my place and here is this other person's place? i was talking to my mother. again, i was in silicon valley. you work in these groups. there was one time i was the only non-korean member of the group. non-chinesely member of my crew, the only non-indian member of my group. i was talking to my mother and she said something like you are working with those smart people. it was the stereotype of asians being scientifically smarter and mathematically smarter. have you guys heard that stereotype? do you think it is true? no. it would be yes it is. the truth is because i worked with so many people, i forgot that stereotype even existed because it is definitely not true. everybody has the same capabilities. identity is one element, but the other element is hierarchy. of humanity. that is something our generation needs to get rid of. you people think i am a nice guy? i have the nicest guy in the world. you think i am dangerous? on the fastball court, but otherwise i am ok. i cannot tell you how many times i am in an elevator, the elevator door opens, and it is a single lady with her kids, the kids get on the elevator, and the lady stops them. we will get the next one. the sorts of things happen to me all the time. line is that -- why is that? there is this hierarchy and we know who is who and who is into, but it is completely bogus, and correct. incorrect. the chances of me not stating here today are ridiculous. you know why i am standing here today? because i could not be a bellhop. does that surprise you? i wanted to be a bellhop. i was in college, and i thought i was not smart enough for college. i dropped out of college. i was working as a janitor at the ramada renaissance hotel. i was making four dollars in our and barely making $100 a week. the bellhop got fired. a bellhop can make $100 a day in tips. i apply for the bellhop decision. the managers looked at me and janitor, youthe are not bellhop material. i cannot to myself, move up from gender development? bellhop?r to ivanka back to college. one o-- i better go back to college. one of my students said whatever that integer was, they did not realize that steady in front of them was really a stanford phd physicist. the way they looked at you and away they judged you -- the way they judged you, you were not good enough to be a bellhop in their eyes. yet, look at where you are and who you are today. i say this because we are all a part of this human tapestry, especially professors. there are people that come to our offices. they are students that you might think this person does not happen, but that is not our job. we are in this thing together. when you become an astronomer, astrophysicists, you look at our species an as one whole. you begin to realize how perilous the universe we live in and how we need to be ourselves off of this planet. we need to develop technologies, and the only way we will be successful is if we bring everybody on board. right now, there are whole confidence of people being left behind, and that is completely unacceptable. we have to do better. i don't around working with students and one thing i have just done is i have been looking at ways of educating people. science has been wonderful because in my classrooms i always use humor. because the students sit closer to me, they get my jokes only unlikein this room -- people in this room. also, i have learned about experiential learning. learning by doing. taking the old and looking at it anew. for centuries upon centuries, humans learned by doing. now, we have come to the point where you sit in a room and get lectured to, or we give you a piece of technology. go with this technology and do that. through games, i am learning that you can really educate stealthily just like with outrageous act of science. you are having fun, laughing, but you are learning at the same time. i had a young son. -- i have a young son. he is doing excellent in math bowl and thing that is tough to teach is chemical reactions. they are kind of weird, right? generalre taking chemistry or organic chemistry, even worse, you know what i am talking about. i work with this company to create this game where we created a really fun scenario where you'll go to an excellent planet in order to save -- exoplanet to save humanity. along the way, the kids have to solve these games. $5.99. the game allows the students to learn through experience. i want to say this one last thing you has to do with this hierarchy. there is this one controversial book called the lucifer principle. he starts with the question of, what humans do this really awful thing called war? that is a horrible thing. he says he goes down to characteristics humans share with species, and one is called kinship selection and the other is pecking order, hierarchy. everybody wants to be the top of whatever it is in classes, groups, larger groups, between groups. there is this hierarchical fight. to be the top, we will kill each other. in the social sciences, when we look at the prevalence of hierarchies in society, they talk about what is called last place a version. society, and it is a hierarchy that preexists. you are doing to the society.what do you do ? you hate on the bottom of the hierarchy so that you yourself are not at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that is a dangerous thing. these hierarchies are different everywhere. i remember when i first left mississippi after being there for middle school, high school, college, and i was at northern arizona university, and it was the sugar ray leonard and tommy hearns fight. his room, thein west, and i was looking around the room going, wow, look at this. the reason i felt that way is because it was the united nations in that room. there were people of all races in that room hanging out as if it was nothing, something that never happened in mississippi. i did not even know that was possible. yet,. was right for me. was right before me. it blew my mind. youked this girl, i said, guys would date a black guy? she is like yes, but i would not date and indian. talking about the local navajo indian tribe. as i go around the world, i see that in different societies, there are different hierarchies. different groups of people at the top and the bottom. sometimes it is based on race, religion, ethnicity. one social innovation the i don't know how to answer is how to get rid of the human hierarchies and it is not until we are able to do that and all the problems we are seeing in our country right now, and his problem has that. people are not part of the enterprise. people with identities do not fit into the enterprise. we will not solve those problems until we solve that problem. as i said before, there is no shortage of innovation. the real problem is identifying the right problem. when you identify the right problem and when humans set their mind to solving problems, we typically find an answer. that is it. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you very much. time for questions. plenty of time for questions so please step to the mic. all at once. >> remember, you can ask me anything about the universe. >> hi. leticia.s metici last week, we discussed in the class and read about articles, and i saw your name. i am very curious about the project in africa. the first time i read that, the question that came to my mind put ahy you want to telescope in each country in africa? >> it addresses many things. there is a scientific need. the science of astronomy has recently undergone a revolution. what we used to do is we take a telescope, point it at an object you are interested taking data on, any test snapshots of that. now, we have opened the time domain so instead of looking at individual objects, you have a telescope that looks at a region of a sky, and it takes an image th of a region there. and over years, you get a movie of that region of the sky. , in that movie, you can identify objects that change brightness, objects that move and 80 chase kalisz get a different type of incredibly valuable data, but because this is a new science, the top leading edge projects that did discovering planet array of telescopes, they are tiny. they had this big. anybody now can do this science. you don't have to have a giant telescope. that is the technical feasibility. i decided to ask myself, i was working for over a decade and partnered with various institutions, the government of the netherlands, kenya, south africa, the south african astronomical observatory, to helpties, and ngo's develop science education and science research in developing nations. when you have people engaging in science that did not previously engage in science, it changes their identity. it now becomes something that they own. for example, when you go into a classroom and your professor naches you new to his laws -- ewton's laws, using a person is newton himself because that person owns the knowledge. they did not invent the knowledge, but they own the knowledge, and when anybody owns the knowledge, they become that knowledge. there is so much that that does within a society, so why is it that if you are in kenya, you are by a cell phone from someone in norway? why does it not go the other way around? we talk about the scientific opportunity. most of our resources are in the northern hemisphere. the northern hemisphere sky compared to the southern hemisphere sky is like comparing a lightning bolt to lightning -- bug to lightning. in the northern hemisphere, the center of the galaxy is never very high above the horizon. in the southern hemisphere, the center of the galaxy is directly overhead. two largethat, galaxies are high in the sky, and they are a treasure trove of scientific data. planet, as a as a planetary family, we need many more telescopes in the southern hemisphere region where there are darker skies and there are greater scientific opportunity. at the same time, we can transform society. colleague at florida institute of technology just want a book -- wrote a book entitled "astronomy saves the world," and it addresses this idea that astronomy transforms people and society when they participate. >> thank you for your answer. >> thank you for your wonderful question. yes sir. >> hi. i am majoring in computer science. , sorry,you think about i am sorry. i have not slept in a while. >> i always meet people shy. we will ever be able to come up with a device that is capable of doing something as ridiculous as sending messages back in time? >> that is a good one. sending messages forward in time is easy. sending messages back in time, so here's the thing about this wormhole phenomenon. this idea of quantum entanglement involves this subspacesh communication opens up a possibility because when we talk about a wormhole, you can go in and go out anywhere -- come out anywhere, but you can also come out anywhen, so there is a possibility that these things that were completely ridiculous, the possibility has not been opened that maybe it is not so ridiculous. one of the greatest lessons i learned in my education was the difference between when you know something and when you do not know it, and i can say that to you, and i have never talked to a person to whom i say that and they did not instantly put themselves in iona the wifference, of course -- i kno the difference, of course, but it is a difficult thing to grasp. even though we write these things down and there is nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it, there is a principle called the principle of totalitarianism that states that any process that is not struggling for britain to occur in nature must occur. perhaps this could occur. we do not know if it will occur. people who say something is impossible and it has not been proven to be impossible and ability like idiots in the future, so i will not say it is impossible righ. ofht now, i'm skeptical sending messages into the past, but i do not know. i know that i do not know, which makes me know that i do not know if you know what i am saying. yes or. sir. thank you. >> my name is khaled. i am a psychology major. the second one would be sending 10 years while the first one would he sending 1000 years. i was wondering, is this process reversible? when the second one comes back it has been 1000 years, can he go back in time? >> you can. what you can do is if they change positions, when the second one gets back, they will be in the same frame. they could be the same age. anyone come uprt with that -- heard anyone come up with that. that is good. catching up with the traveling twins. you know where i thought you were going? what is it that makes the one traveling the one that is not a very much this is the one that stays here. which determines which is which? the answer is a celebration. >-- is acceleration. see, psychology. he twisted my mind. >> hello. my name is isaac newberry. my major is environmental studies, and iowa from st. louis. >> high isaac newton. >> i got a lot. >> i am sure. >> i wondering what exactly are your thoughts on the validity of the nemesis theory? >> interesting thing. i noted i know the guy well who came up with the nemesis theory. now butis kind of dead there is something that replaced it. if you do not know what the nemesis theory is, rich lller, his mentor was alvarez, a nobel prize winner. a strong piece of evidence that the dinosaurs were wiped out by the asterisk. his sons of that if you look at the extinctions honored, there is a periodic cycle of extensions every 26 million years. the last one was 30 million 13 million years ago and a 26 million years before that and then 26 million years before that. the idea was, how could something white outline on earth are you agree that way? what if the sun is part of a binary star system and the other tar. is a very small, dim s every so often, it would pass through this cloud of co mets and disturb the orbit of the comets. sum would get expelled from the solar system, or someone gets sent to the inner solar system. some of those with strike earth and white out all life. nemesis is now dead, but people have been studying this cloud and adult before the crowd, and objects are now being discovered that are kind of large. so there was an object discovered that we thought was larger than pluto until we actually went to pluto and actually measured its radius of close. it turns out that pluto is actually a bit bigger. also in its order -- orbit is an object called biden. not named after our vice president. why are these objects in the same orbit? other objects were discovered with similar orbital characteristics. the idea is that there is a large object which was many times more massive than the earth that we now call planet nine. planet nine has not been confirmed. but there is evidence that suggests it may be there. just as we thought we had recently discovered a new -- with more data the signal may disappear. and we don't know. the idea of having large objects in the outer solar system that are undiscovered is a valid idea. >> thank you. >> great question. >> this is the final question. >> seriously? [laughter] >> hello. i plan on studying both physics and philosophy. i have a question about quantum entanglement. wondering for a while now since the theory of relativity states that data cannot move faster than the speed of light. ok -- i am misunderstanding. something along those lines. >> something subtle. let's go ahead. >> your answer was a wormhole. >> right. how does a particle go about that? >> the speed of light limitation is -- here's what we have in our universe. if you possess mass you can never move at the speed of light. if you have no mass then you must move at the speed of light. spaceg can move through has mass at the speed of light. particlestheoretical which jump over the speed of light and move super liminality faster than the speed of light. there are tricks to get around the speed of light. take warp drive. you don't actually move through space. you change the shape of space to make it appear you are moving through space at faster than the speed of light. warp drive is now a serious concept. a scientist came up with a metric where you can have a station, you can contract space in front of you, expand space behind you and move at 10 times the speed of light through space. it was modified by someone named white so it doesn't take as much energy. they are actually testing this concept. when we talk about quantum entanglements and wormholes you are not moving through space. we think of it not as a 3-d volume but as a 3-d hyper surface. .he surface can be bent the classic example is this surfaceand the five full now instead of having to travel this great distance to go from here to there a fivefold space -- if fold space. andine you are in a room want to get to the other side of the room and there's a carpet. you bring the carpet toward you and you crumple it. step over the crumpled carpet and allow it to expand out a hind you. -- behind you. i took one step and i was on the other side of the room because i compressed space. when i was doing i studied there was another guy who was a philosophy and physics major and he was from a wealthy family and he never intended to work as a physicist. philosophy wasth a wonderful excellent idea. i look forward to hear what you are going to be thinking about. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] join us tonight on the candidates to be the next democratic national committee chairman outline their plans at a forum hosted by the association of state democratic chairs. speakers include jamie harrison, new hampshire party chair ray buckley and minnesota congressman keith ellison. here's a preview. my district is the fifth congressional district of minnesota and when i first got there in 2000 x my district was the lowest turnout district in the state. today it's the highest. because we have invested in turnout 365 days a year all over everybody. young people, new americans. all over the place. if electoral success is a qualification for this job i fulfill the criteria. i hope you all will take that into consideration. who has actually produced electoral success and helped other democrats win. mark dayton won by less than 2000 votes in 2010 but more than 100,000 in 2013 because we turned out the vote. won by more than 200,000 in 2014 because we turned out the vote. i am an organizer at heart. i broke picket lines with my brothers and sisters in labor. i am out there with you. postal workers. verizon workers. we are there. i have been arrested for standing up for immigration reform. nearly 30 states fighting for candidates at all levels. >> that's a short portion of tonight's program featuring the candidates to be the dnc's