Humans have always gazed up at the stars and wondered about the cosmos. Have you ever met someone that does not like to talk about space? Lucky for us Joe Rogan has had a variety of experts on his show who have interesting insights into space travel, physics, and astronomy.
In this article, I have detailed the best Joe Rogan episodes about space so that you can skip to the good stuff. I hope you enjoy reading! In it, we have summaries of interviews with famous physicists who have redefined how we think about the universe and more.
Table of Contents
Episode #1216 – Roger Penrose
Roger Penrose is an English mathematician, physicist, and philosopher of science. He obtained his Ph.D. at Saint John’s College in Cambridge.
In this interview with Joe Rogan, Roger Penrose says that he does not believe in the multiverse theory. Or the theory that there are a bunch of parallel universes to ours. According to Penrose, this theory is inadequate in explaining why we only see one version of the World.
Penrose also goes into what a singularity actually is. According to him, there is a place in a black hole where the density becomes infinite, and therefore the curvature of space-time becomes infinite as well.
When Joe Rogan asks Penrose about the theory of whether you could travel to one of the other multiverses by flying into the center of a black hole, Penrose claims that this is a nice thought but not likely.
Penrose also says that what we call “dark energy” or “dark matter” is just an ill-suited term for what Einstein called “the cosmological constant,” which is just a label for the idea that the universe is actually expanding.
If you enjoy space talk, this episode of the Joe Rogan podcast is perfect for you!
Episode #938 – Lawrence Krauss
Lawrence Krauss is a cosmologist and theoretical physicist who specializes in dark energy and zero energy states. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1982.
According to Lawrence Krauss, the most likely picture of our universe is that it is constantly expanding. Contrary to the opinion of some physicists who are still trying to argue that we live in a contracting universe.
Lawrence Krauss is also an advocate for the theory of the multiverse. So, he believes that our universe is not actually unique but that there are many universes. Krauss believes that these multiverses might be past the edge of the universe that we can see.
According to Krauss, there may be many regions of space that we cannot see where other big bangs are happening, leading to universes much like our own. That is riveting stuff!
If you are interested in theoretical physics and how these theories redefine our universe, you cannot miss the Lawrence Krauss episode of the Joe Rogan podcast!
Episode #1352 – Sean Carroll
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist from America who specializes in gravity, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Sean Carroll goes on to talk about his book and makes an interesting point to Joe that we actually use Quantum Mechanics every day. Transistors and lasers depend on quantum mechanics, yet many rightly claim that we still do not understand this subject!
Carroll then gives the analogy of a smartphone and how people use apps. We all use apps on our smartphones every day, but we do not understand how they actually work. This is what physicists are doing with quantum mechanics. They can apply it but do not fully understand it yet.
This is where Carroll sees himself as being different from some of his peers. Some are okay with making predictions using quantum mechanics but not using it to increase our understanding of reality. Carroll is interested in increasing our understanding of reality.
If any of that sounds interesting to you, you would probably get a lot of the Joe Rogan Podcast episode featuring Sean Carroll!
Other episodes with Sean Carrol
Episode #1428 – Brian Greene
Brian Greene is American and is a mathematician and theoretical physicist who specializes in string theory. Greene got his doctorate while attending Magdalen College, Oxford University, in 1987.
Greene thinks that what we call the big bang may not have been the first event in our universe. According to Greene, there may be a grander realm of space in which we sit as a small piece, and that grander realm may have had its own big bang events.
However, Greene also says that figuring out what came before the big bang is hard because the other option is that the question does not make sense. We know what it means to say what happened before your birth or a historical event, but time might have originated with the big bang.
You cannot go further back than the origin of time itself. That makes it really hard to have any reasonable conversation about the moments preceding the big bang. There may have been no moments at all!
If you wonder about the moments that came before the big bang, you will really enjoy this interview with Brian Greene.
Other episodes with Brian Greene
Episode #1233 – Brian Cox
Brian Cox is a British physicist who specializes in particle physics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester.
In this interview, Brian Cox talks about what it would take for humans to actually be able to build a warp drive or wormholes which connect distant regions of the universe. According to Brian, the things needed to accomplish this do not actually exist in nature.
Brian says that we can write down the geometry and the proofs that show how we would do this. However, the actual material needed would have bizarre physical properties like negative pressure. They are good in theory but hard or even impossible to achieve practically.
If you are interested in wormholes, time travel, and warp drives, check out this interview with Cox!
Other Episodes with Brian Cox
