Javier Santaolalla in Caja Negra: “I like to understand that in life there is more than just particles”

Get ready for one of the most epic conversations of the entire Black Box cycle from the author of books like “What Does a Boson Like You Do in a Big Bang Like This?” (2022). The Spanish quantum physicist and engineer comes to try to explain some of the mysteries of the universe. And to leave us with more questions! Today, in Caja Negra: Javier Santaolalla.” The God I studied in religious school for me is a fable, it is a very beautiful metaphor for many things. Jesus is an endearing character who represents many things, but as long as one knows how to locate him. At least I, within my philosophy of life, if I go to another definition of God, a little more to Einstein or Spinoza, because for me it represents a meaning of life. I am spiritual and I am religious within that religion that presupposes perhaps a certain cosmic order, but a non-personal cosmic order,” he explained about what God is for him. Regarding the beginnings in the world of science and the frustrations he had to go through to enter the large hadron collider project, he said: “There are 27 kilometers of machine. They are superconducting magnets that make that turn of 27 km up to 100 meters underground. You take protons and accelerate them until they have almost the speed of light. They are crossed so that these collisions recreate the Big Bang. That’s the machine that was being built in Geneva and I had to be there. For that I had to reach certain milestones in my resume and try. The first one I didn’t get, they rejected me. The second also rejected me and in the third I got it. I always got good grades but never really pushed myself. But when I found that, that’s when I started working like crazy to get there.” “Many times we forget how difficult it is to put people from all over the world to work, about 10,000, who have no contractual relationship … There is the researcher from New Delhi, with another from Buenos Aires and Michigan. They have no social, economic or cultural ties. They are understood by passion and vocation. I think it is necessary to tell because we have many examples that do not work. The UN could learn from physics because it seems to me that we understand each other better with equations than with disctados, treaties or conventions. I wish there were more equations because so far it is a mechanism that makes cooperation easier. It is already a milestone that 10,000 concentrate to make it work, but that it works and something is discovered … It is already becoming historic. And that’s what happened on July 4, 2012. It really validates all the path that began more than 100 years ago,” he said about the project. The physicist moved away from the laboratories to spread his love for science and began to be a youtuber: “When I arrived in Geneva I was a very shy person and that’s when I started to let go. I discovered that I had a different personality than my teenage years, that I had certain social skills that I wanted to experience. I was presented with the challenge of going on stage in front of 500 people, I entered a stand up contest and reached the final. I came down with a crazy adrenaline rush and that was the seed of a transition.” Julio Leiva asked about the existence of extraterrestrials: “With Drake’s formula they estimate that there must be something like a thousand civilizations with intelligence in the Milky Way. Notice that they were optimistic, I do not think it corresponds because after 50/60 years sending signals and looking for life thanks to technology, not finding anything … Little by little we are beginning to ask ourselves: ‘Is life a little more special than what we are considering?’ Drake’s formula is based on certain assumptions about how often or how easy it is for life to be generated from certain chemical reactions. There are several phases that make me think that maybe it is not as obvious as it has often been implied.” Another scientific issue that is discussed in certain sectors is flat earthism: “My first phase was to laugh at people who thought that. The second, laugh a little more. The third was a direct mockery. I have tried to understand the psychology, the sociology behind all this phenomenon and it becomes a video where I said that we are all flat earthers, because I understood a little, I read the psychology book and I understood what are the processes that are behind the embankment and they are nothing more than dissonances, cognitive biases, Heuristics, a lot of mental processes that are cognitively cornering you towards certain types of ideas. I mean we are machines that take information from around us and do whatever we want with it. And in that process of managing information we put emotions, we put prejudices, we put motivations, we put many things that make that information mega manipulated, manipulated by our own conscience.” It is obvious that the waste with which we are living was something that had to be reconsidered, so I align myself with the not so catastrophic vision, I do not think it does well. I align myself with a slightly lighter message that there is a situation here that the human being does not know quite well. You have to understand that science is not perfect, it is not exact, we do not know what is going to happen. We do know that we are making a very inefficient use of resources, that it is very little responsible with our environment and that it already harms many species. So, without falling into catastrophism that in two years no one will be able to breathe from the heat… I do believe that we must send a message to the public that for the first time the human being is aware of the impact it has and that he is living beyond the possibilities, “explained the physicist about climate change and its consequences. If we go to the black box of your life, what is the moment that makes you the person you are today?: “I have been very introverted and introspective, but in my close circle I have always been a very funny person and he has liked to laugh, but I only enter my comfort zone when I feel protected. I think the moment that made me who I am was when I broke that barrier and opened up to the world. I suddenly stopped being that quiet guy. And opening up to the world was just breaking that.”Towards the end of the interview the black box opens. An unexpected challenge begins. Week by week a figure will be submitted to the living room to dialogue and reflect. And you, do you dare to remember what moment made a click in your life?

Original source in Spanish