>> Dan Nebling: Thanks everyone for coming out. I'll be introducing Dave Zobel who is here as
part of the Microsoft Research Visiting Speaker Series. I know Dave through the Caltech alumni
network. I was fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate enough, to sit through a screening of
Sharknado with him as the narrator. I heard that he tried to write a book about the science of
Sharknado but he was going to get paid by the page so he was going to be zero dollars. That's
my attempt at comedy. Dave is a part-time comedian and part-time author. He also was a
software engineer. He worked on things like dBase back in the day. He told me while writing
his book he wrote some shell scripts to make the output into Word documents, so he still has
some technical talent, at least. Finally, he also does things around the Los Angeles area like
Trash for Teaching where he picks up discarded hardware and puts together programs that
helps kids learn how to use hardware and software, so he is really a fascinating person. Today,
he's here to talk about his book, The Science of the Big Bang Theory. Welcome Dave.
[applause].
>> Dave Zobel: Thanks, Dan. Thanks all of you. I will start by making sure you understand not
only who I am, but who I am not. Let's see if I can make this work. I am not Bill Nye The
Science Guy. I am not Steve Carrell. I know you won't believe me but a cop in LA really tried to
convince me I was this gentleman. What I usually get is this, Sam Watterson the guy from Law
and Order, sorry. I'm a science humorist which is basically a scientist, science writer, science -it's got the word science in it somewhere. It's really a science writer who is trying to be funny.
Any of you have perhaps seen or read a book called Longitude about the race to build the first
reliable chronometer for ships, that was written by someone who isn't me either. Her name is
Dava Sobel, which sounds a lot like my name, but it's not exactly the same name and it's not
exactly the same person, and I have spoken with her and it's my opinion that she is in far more
terror of being mistaken for me then I am of being mistaken for her. Also, I'm not a writer for
the Big Bang Theory. These are some of the writers for the Big Bang Theory and it happens
they are seated more or less chronologically according to how long they have been working on
the shows. The two gentleman on the left with the most fear in their eyes have been there the
longest. And the happy people on the right had only been working there a few years when this
photo had been taken. They have a large number of writers and none of them are scientists
and they are not even science writers, but they do write about science topics. Probably some
of you are familiar with the show, so you know what I'm talking about. For the rest of you I will
quickly introduce some of the characters.
>>: Sheldon.
>>: Hi.
>>: Hi.
>>: Hi.
[laughter].
>>: Well, welcome to the building.
>>: Thank you. Maybe we can have coffee sometime.
>>: Oh great.
>>: Great.
>>: Great.
>>: Great.
>>: Great.
[laughter].
>>: Well, bye.
>>: Bye.
>>: Bye.
>>: Bye.
>>: So we have invited her for lunch?
>>: No. We are going to start season two of Battle Star Galactica.
>> Dave Zobel: See you are thinking nothing was going to happen on this show and it's already
into its eighth season, but they were going to go watch Battle Star Galactica, so yay. You're
three main characters here are from left to right Sheldon, Penny and Leonard. Originally, the
show I think was going to be called Lenny, Penny and Kenny. They changed it, which is nice, so
we can maybe try to tell these people part. Sheldon, the gentleman on the left is a theoretical
physicist. Penny, in the center, is an aspiring actor and sometimes waitress and sometimes
sales rep. And Leonard on the right is an experimental physicist who is a specialist with lasers.
If you would like to try to keep Sheldon and Leonard apart in your head, which I recommend,
you can use a mnemonic like Leonard has the lenses and Sheldon has the sharper features or
Leonard is not lanky and Sheldon is not short, or Leonard is a laser head and Sheldon is a
theoretical physicist. I shouldn't be unkind to Sheldon. He is not any weirder than any of his
friends and here are two of his closest ones.
>>: So you guys work with Leonard and Sheldon at the University? [laughter]. I'm sorry, do
you speaking English? [laughter].
>>: Oh, he speaks English. He just can't speak to women.
>>: Really? Why?
>>: He is kind of a nerd. [laughter]. Juice box?
>> Dave Zobel: So that was Rog and Howard. It's not at all about just making fun of nerds on
this show. There is really quite a lot of science.
>>: On the other hand, if things don't work out with Leonard, I end up losing a really good
friend. I mean, I'm guessing he's not looking for a fling. He is the kind of guy that gets into a
relationship for, I don't know. Like you would say light years.
>>: I would not say that. No one would say that. A light year is a unit of distance, not time.
[laughter].
>>: Thank you for the clarification.
>>: You see, people hear the word year and they think duration. A foot pound has the same
problem. That's a unit of work, not of weight.
>>: Right, thanks.
>>: It's a common mistake.
>>: Not the first one I made today. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: So you're wondering, do you learn science from this show? Do you learn to
make fun of science? Are you going to be tested at the end of the show on what a foot pound
is? I actually am very much in awe of this show because they have somehow managed to take
many of the people I grew up with and make them lovable instead of just irritating which is
what they all were back then. So when Sheldon is talking about science, everything he's saying
is correct. It's CBS; it's not PBS. The show is not expecting us to come away from it with a good
knowledge of science, but somehow you do sometimes pick up a little bit. You're wondering
what's going on with Sheldon and why he felt the need to be so precise when Penny was just
asking a more general question. The answer is Sheldon has a condition. Some people have
noticed similarities between that and the autism spectrum, but the creators of the show assure
us that it's just Sheldon being Sheldony.
>>: Now that you and I are friends again, I am at your disposal. Frankly, lending my name and
reputation to it will help because a lot of people think that you're a washed up has-been, or
dead. [laughter].
>>: I should be so lucky. [laughter].
>>: So what do you say?
>>: You know, if it's all the same with you, I think I'll stick with Leonard.
>>: It's because I'm annoying, right? I know it is. Say it. Say it. Say I'm annoying.
>>: Good night.
>>: Say it. Say it. Say I'm annoying. Say it. Say it. I'm annoying. Say it.
>>: You're annoying. [laughter].
>>: Wow! That really hurt. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: And what was your question?
>>: I was going to say Sheldon has been tested.
>> Dave Zobel: Sheldon has been, his mother had him tested. That is correct. That is a
recurring gag. These folks don't just live in a vacuum. They actually live in a real place. They're
address comes up often on the show. Here's an example.
>>: Yes, hello. This is Doctor Sheldon Cooper. I'm at 2311 N. Los Robles Avenue. I'd like to
report a dangerous wild animal, a blue Jay. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Sheldon says Los Robles. The inhabitants of Pasadena California tend to say Los
Robels, but it is really Pasadena California and here is Los Robels or Los Robles. That's the
South section. This is the North section. He lives at 2311. Why do I care so much about this?
Because the creators of the show seem to care so much about it. They care so much about it
they gave him an address that doesn't exist. I went all the way up North Los Robles and I got
two 2061 and then I was in Alhambra, not Alhambra, Altadena and that was the end of the
numbering on Los Robles. But this is some kind of a, it's sort of an apartment building mixed
with a strip mall called Hen's Teeth Square, and I don't know. I like the name. I don't know why
they do that. There is one episode in which they have actually a real address in Pasadena
California.
>>: I've also sent Amy a relationship termination notice and changed my cell phone number
and e-mail address, but she just comes over. She'll get lost. We no longer live at 2311 Los
Robles. We now live at 311 Los Robles. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Of course, like a good fan, I went to 311 Los Robles and it is this imposing
edifice, something straight out of Men in Black, so I stepped back a little bit to take a more
realistic shot of it. That's a little utility box over there, even Leonard couldn't get into it. You're
wondering why I'm talking about their address when this talk is supposed to be about science,
we will get to it. Leave you out their window is actually some buildings in the real Pasadena
California. On the left is the iconic dome of City Hall and on the right is a building that is
actually about a mile away from City Hall, but thanks to the miracle of telephoto lenses, it
appears to be right next to it. Let's get into the science.
>>: It's like some serious stuff. Leonard did you do this?
>>: Actually, that's my work.
>>: Wow!
>>: It's just some quantum mechanics with a little string theory doodling around the edges.
That part there, that's just a joke. It's a spoof Born-Oppenheimer approximation. [laughter].
>>: This is really impressive.
>>: I have a board. If you like boards, this is my board. [laughter].
>>: Holy smokes!
>> Dave Zobel: These guys don't just do this for fun. They actually have jobs doing this. They
work at a place that is in Pasadena California where a lot of smart people work.
>>: I keep thinking about how cool it would be if I called my mom and told her that I got tenure
at Caltech.
>>: She would be proud, huh?
>>: Oh, very, assuming she takes my call. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: He mentioned Caltech. That is a real place. It is not Caltech the San Antonio
programming house. It is not Caltech the Québec calibration company. It is not Caltech the
auto body repair shop in Milpitas. And I probably don't have to tell you it is not Caltech the
construction company in East Timor. It is actually the California Institute Of Technology in no,
not the Southern California Institute of Technology, which is this building in Anaheim. The real
California Institute of Technology. You may have seen it on movies or TV. You may have seen it
in the opening credits of Legally Blonde, or you may have seen it pretty recently on Modern
Family, where they even called it Caltech, or on Mission Impossible some decades ago. It was
even used very often as a filming location for the show Numbers which was a procedural drama
about an FBI agent and his brother the mathematician who was much smarter than him and did
all of his work for him, basically. And I found out from personal experience that if you hang
around on a street corner long enough, you too can appear in Numbers as splotchy blotch of
pixels number two. Do you see it, now? The Big Bang Theory has been on for eight seasons
and only once have they ever actually filmed a Caltech, which was this scene where Sheldon
presents his work to the legendary Stephen Hawking playing himself. It's not entirely clear
what Sheldon does all the time. If he really was working at Caltech he would be a professor.
You can't just hide himself away in an office and be brilliant. We know he's not a graduate
student, although, he does sort of grad student type hard labor from time to time. Leonard and
Sheldon are lifting a box up their staircase in their building and you can sort of see on the righthand side the stairs, from below. On the left-hand side they go up above and they turn around
behind and continue on up. The elevator has been out of order since the pilot. There are no
plans for it to be in order. They live on the fourth floor so there's quite a lot of walking up and
down the stairs. The stairs are at a 30° angle, which is very nice because it gives them the
opportunity to talk about sines of angles. And their apartment, in this case, it is just off the
screen to the right. Penny's apartment is just off the screen to the left. It down at the bottom
weird things are going on because here we are in the lobby. Stairs are coming down. The stairs
do not go down into the basement on the right, but there is way over, I'll see if my little laser
pointer works. Way over here, this building there is a stairway and apparently by going through
that door you can suddenly drop eight feet and be on the stairs to go down to the basement.
Although, interestingly the episode before this one, that same door said maintenance and there
was a maintenance bucket outside. I'm a little fixated on this apartment building, but I'll tell
you why. It doesn't have anything to do with science, but, you know, they give the address and
it's right there in Pasadena and people weirder than me have actually gone around the streets
of Pasadena trying to find this place. And there's quite a healthy online -- I shouldn't say
healthy, but they are active -- online community talking about I know those guys for I know that
apartment building or I totally used to live there. So I thought it would be helpful if we could
actually figure out where it was. There is one episode where we actually see a bird's eye view
of the apartment building. [applause]. Spoiler, they get married.
[Music]
>> Dave Zobel: Okay. If you missed it we will zoom back in. I don't know how good your
Southern California geography is, but here we go. Incidentally, did you, you may notice, or you
probably already knew, that if you play of all these spring backwards, it sounds like the
beginning of Trumpet Voluntary, which is another popular wedding song. I thought I would just
throw that out there for you.
[Music]
>> Dave Zobel: Well, the first six notes anyway. Here we are. Unfortunately, this is not Los
Robles, Los Robels. This is actually Madison Avenue, and Los Robles is over here. But I'm not
discouraged. I think we still might be able to find it. Here is Leonard talking to his mom.
>>: I think you'll find my work pretty interesting. I'm attempting to replicate the dark matter
signal from sodium iodide crystals by the Italians.
>>: So no original research?
>>: No.
>>: What's the point of my seeing it? I could just read the paper that the Italians wrote.
[laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Hey, that was real science replicating the dark matter signal found in sodium
iodide crystals by the Italians. And I told you before that the writers of the show did not have
science degrees. Here's what that script page actually looks like. I think you'll find this pretty
interesting. I'm attempting to replicate the [bracket science to come.] This happens in every
script and the reason is because we never really know what the science is going to be until a
professional comes in and tells us. Fortunately, the Big Bang Theory has a professional. He got
one cameo.
>>: This is my girlfriend, Bernadette, my girlfriend. [laughter].
>>: Who are all those people?
>>: I have no idea.
>> Dave Zobel: I'll wind it back so you can catch him, because it's a blink and miss it. The
gentleman with the critical look on the right there is David Salzberg. He is actually a particle
astrophysicist at UCLA. His job is to look at every script and fill in something for science to
come and also correct things that look like they are not actually did science, which has
happened occasionally. He's a very busy man. Because of him, there is a book about the
science of the Big Bang Theory. If he wasn't there and the Big Bang Theory were nothing but
dilithium crystals and holodecks and infinite improbabilities drives and sonic screwdrivers, there
really wouldn't be anything to write about. The longest word in Shakespeare, you think I'm
changing gears, is honorificabilitudinitatibus and David Salzberg's personal
honorificabilitudinitatibus, and I just won five dollars for using that twice in the same sentence,
comes in this episode.
>>: You know, I've got to ask. Why didn't you just get a license at 16 like everybody else?
>>: I was otherwise engaged.
>>: Doing what?
>>: Examining perturbative amplitudes in n equals force super-symmetric theories leading to a
re-examination of the ultraviolet properties of multi loop n equals 8 supergravity using modern
twistor theory. [laughter].
>>: Well, how about when you are 17? [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Okay. So that whole paragraph there was originally, of course, science to come
in brackets and David Salzberg took a lot of grief from people because they said you were just
going through your thesaurus throwing in all of these science words. But that actually was the
title of a paper that a friend of his was working on at the time, so he tossed that in there.
Salzberg himself did some research and included it on those whiteboards that you have seen
sort of hovering in the background. In one case he worked on a problem for several months
and then realized to his horror, that he was off by a factor of 10 to the 25th. Oops, but no
sense in wasting the work, so he put that on a whiteboard as well and you have to be quick to
notice the little frowny face.
>>: Rog, have you seen Howard?
>>: I think he's eating lunch. Sheldon, I wanted to meet Neil Degrasse Tyson from the Hayden
Planetarium in New York.
>>: I'm quite familiar with Doctor Tyson. He's responsible for the demotion of Pluto from
planetary status. I liked Pluto. [laughter]. Ergo, I do not like you.
>>: But I actually didn't demote Pluto. That was a vote of the International Astronomical
Union.
>>: If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we would all have a Merry Christmas. [laughter]. Think
about that, Doctor Tyson.
>>: This is the guy you were telling me about?
>>: Oh yeah.
>> Dave Zobel: So that's Neil Degrasse Tyson really playing himself. There have been several
luminaries from the science who have appeared on the show. There have also been people
playing people from other than the science world and Leonard, who as I mentioned, is an
experimental physicist, will now give us a demonstration of how not to talk to an FBI agent.
>>: You've worked with Mr. Wollowitts here at the University, correct?
>>: Yes, of course we are in different departments. He's an engineer and I'm an experimental
physicist. I'm one of those guys who examined the building blocks of creation and says hello,
maker of the universe. I see what you did there. Good one. [laughter].
>>: Right.
>> Dave Zobel: Right. The reason that I bring that up is because experimental physics in many
ways is easier to grasp if you are not an experimental physicist, then theoretical physics is if you
are not a theoretical physicist. To the extent that this show can actually appeal to people who
are not physicist of any kind, Leonard probably has a better shot at it than Sheldon does. Here
is Leonard doing a classic experiment first done by Galileo under slightly different
circumstances.
[laughter].
>>: Thirty feet. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Okay. That's pretty cool. He did that in his head even though he obviously had
other things on his mind. He dropped the bottle and 2.1 seconds later he heard it go smash.
Yes, I timed it, and he did all that in his head and he came up with 30 feet, great. You can use
that to start teaching a kid about D equals one half AT squared. The only problem is that after
2.1 seconds any object starting at rest will fall 70 feet, not 30 feet. You did that in your head,
didn't you? Uh-huh. Actually, I mean I don't want to pick on the sound effects guy, but
Leonard, actually, didn't get it right or, or he lives in an apartment building, stay with me, where
things fall slower in elevator shafts than they do elsewhere. See, this apartment building, I'm
really fixated on. Check out what happens when you throw stuff out the window.
>>: I need to use your window.
>>: Yeah, sure, go ahead.
>>: Hey jerk face, you forgot your iPod. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: It hit the ground after falling 4 feet.
>>: It just won't [indiscernible].
>>: Maybe you need a fresh start.
>>: You're right. [laughter]. That was a great idea, Leonard. Thank you. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: Okay. Even if there weren't any air resistance on that whiteboard, the best
they could do in that short amount of time between when he threw it and when we heard the
smash and the honk is you could fall to about the middle of the third floor if he is living on the
fourth floor. I guess what that means is we're looking for an apartment building where the
traffic runs at the third-floor level, but I'm convinced that we can find this apartment building.
Here's what it looks like from the outside. It's a little bit hard to see here, but here are the main
doors. On the left is a storefront and on the right is another storefront, so this is a very narrow
apartment building. On the ground floor we have 16 mailboxes. Presumably, if we have two
apartments per floor, that means it's an eight story building, which actually is a violation of
zoning ordinances in Pasadena, but maybe they got some kind of a special dispensation. I don't
know. It does have kind of a weird front door because the security system is not really what
you would expect. The door swings both ways.
[Music]
>>: To have you hanging off my ankle like some kind of ball and chain.
>> Dave Zobel: I'm not sure there is any point in locking it if you can just push it. Penny coming
through the other door actually demonstrates one of the weirdest features, which is that she
will come through this door, go up the stairs and then go into her apartment by going directly in
the opposite direction of the way she is going now, which means that all of the apartments on
her side of the building hang out over the street. I guess that's possible. I don't know. When
you look through, you can't really tell what's happening here, but Sheldon is standing in his
kitchen and we are looking through his kitchen window and we see a brick building behind him.
That brick, if you actually do make a blueprint, yes I did, of the apartment, you see that that is
actually the back of Leonard's closet. So this apartment has a little outside space somehow
built into it. At this point I didn't know what to do, so I wrote to City Hall and I actually heard
back from the mayor himself. Bill Bogarde, the mayor of Pasadena explain to me what I had
been missing, and I will quote him. He said Pasadena is home to some of the most brilliant
people in the world, and then he listed several of them and several of the institutions including
JPL and Idea Lab, the Planetary Society. And also he mentions some of the architects who have
left their imprint, such as Green and Green, and Myron Hunt. Then he said, with this much
scientific and architectural talent in the most economically and ethnically diverse city in the
state, it is not surprising to me to find an apartment building that is bigger on the inside. So the
mayor, obviously, a Doctor Who fan and that's all. We just need to be looking for a TARDIS.
Changing subjects for a moment…
>>: What are you watching?
>>: I don't know. Rog sent me some video of Buzz Aldrin.
>>: There you go. It's a Milky Way. The Milky Way is a galaxy in space. I've been in space.
[laughter]. There's a Mars bar. I'm an astronaut. [laughter]. This one is a Moon Pie. I walked
on the moon. What have you done?
>>: Okay. I get it.
>> Dave Zobel: It's always sad when your heroes turn out to be jerks, but that really was Buzz
Aldrin playing himself as a jerk which was very sweet of him. This is Buzz Aldrin actually doing
his job. Back during the Apollo 11 mission he walked on the moon and he placed this object
here, which in high-resolution looks like that. That's a retro reflector array. Each of those little
cells is actually three mirrors at 90° angles to each other and has the property that any light
going into it comes back out in the exact opposite direction. This is useful if you want to say
bounce a light off of the moon from the earth and time it's flight and then divide by two and
figure out how far away the moon is, because the moon is not a single distance away. It is
always changing. And they do that very experiment in one episode of the Big Bang Theory. An
experiment that they don't do is this where Leonard is upset with Sheldon who is in the back of
his car. I happen to notice that this crane thing here and the stairs and this stuff here that you
see out of Leonard's window, you also see in his rearview mirror in exactly the same formation,
not even reversed. That's not a better reflector. I think that's probably a rushed
postproduction supervisor, but I'll just call that to your attention in case you were wondering
about it. There's a lot about science that is hard to understand and a lot that is hard to explain
even if you do understand it. One of the things that comes up a lot on the Big Bang Theory is
this one.
>>: All right. What response on my part would bring this conversation to a speedy conclusion?
>>: Tell me whether or not to go through with the date.
>>: Schrödinger's cat.
>> Wow! That's brilliant. [laughter].
>>: You sound surprised. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: I think most people have the conception that Schrödinger's cat is something
about you put a cat in a box and you threaten its life and you go away and then until you open
the box you don't know whether the cat died are not, which is a bit of a simplification, because
you kind of learned that at your first birthday. Until you open the box, you don't know what's
in it. It's actually more subtle than that. I will not do justice to it, but I will just say that if you
could somehow isolate the contents of the box from everything in the universe, then you can't
really say what's in the box. It's not a question of is the cat alive or dead. I just don't know. It's
there's no thing in there to talk about. It's kind of like what cat? It's kind of like…
>>: It depends upon what the meaning of the word is.
>> Dave Zobel: And I'm not taking a cheap shot there. Like, what is in the box? Not only don't
we know, but it has no meaning. You could say there is a live cat. You could say there is a dead
cat. You could say there is a cat wearing a gas mask that it will go for itself out of hairballs. You
could say that there are two cats discussing politics with an iguana in Esperanto. You don't
know. It's not a thing that you could know if only you knew there isn't any way to know it. I
didn't do a very good job of that. Perhaps Sheldon can do it better.
>>: Sheldon, can you grab me a water?
>>: Possibly. [laughter].
>>: Can you or can't you?
>>: It's not that simple, Leonard.
>>: It never is; is it? [laughter].
>>: At this moment, our relationship exists in two contradictory states. Until you either do not
go or go to Wil Wheaton's party you are simultaneously my friend and not my friend.
[laughter]. I am characterizing this phenomenon as Schrödinger's friendship. [laughter].
>>: Got it. Can I have my water?
>>: Yeah, of course. Get it yourself, you traitor. [laughter].
>>: What is going on?
>>: In case you have forgotten, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment.
>>: I didn't forget. There's this cat in the box and until you open it it's either dead or alive or
both. Although, back in Nebraska our cat got stuck in my brother's camp trunk and we did not
need to open it to know there was all kinds of dead cat in there. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: I don't want to gross everybody out by continuing this discussion of cats, warm
and cold, but believe it or not, it's possible to take something as cold and difficult to wrap your
head around as Schrödinger's cat and turn it into a beautiful statement on personal
relationships. So if you will indulge me we will let Sheldon take one more crack at it in a way
that, although, it still doesn't get any closer to the science, it does perhaps get closer to the
heart.
>>: Sheldon, do you have anything to say that has anything to do with what I'm talking about?
>>: Let's see. We might consider Schrödinger's cat.
>>: Schrödinger, is that the woman in 2A.
>>: No. That's Mrs. Grossinger and she doesn't have a cat. She has a Mexican hairless, and
annoying little animal, yip, yip.
>>: Sheldon.
>>: Sorry, you diverted me. Anyway, in 1935, Erwin Schrödinger, in an attempt to explain the
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, proposed an experiment where a cat is placed
in a box with a sealed vial of poison that will break open at a random time. Since no one knows
when or if the poison has been released until the box is opened, the cat can be thought of as
both alive and dead. [laughter].
>>: I'm sorry. I don't get the point.
>>: Well of course you don't get it. I haven't made it yet. [laughter]. You have to be psychic to
get it and there is no such thing as psychic.
>>: Sheldon, what's the point?
>>: Just like Schrödinger's cat, your potential relationship with Leonard right now can be
thought of as both good and bad. It is only by opening the box that you'll find out which it is.
>>: Okay. You're saying I should go out with Leonard.
>>: No, no. Let me start again. In 1935…
>> Dave Zobel: This could go on forever, so we will move along.
>>: This is kind of a big thing. The keynote address is being delivered by George Smoot.
>>: Oh my God, the George Smoot.
>>: You've heard of him?
>>: Of course I haven't. [laughter].
>>: George Smoot is a prize-winning physicist, one of the great minds of our time. His work in
blackbody form and anisotropy of the background microwave radiation cemented our
understanding of the origin of the universe.
>>: It's kind of a funny name, though, Smoot. [laughter].
>>: It's like talking to a chimp.
>> Dave Zobel: And just in case you were wondering, they didn't just use Smoot's name. They
used Smoot.
>>: I'm thinking you won the Nobel Prize, what, three years ago? You must deal with a whole
lot of what has Smoot done lately. My thought is we can continue my research as a team,
Cooper Smoot, alphabetical, and when we win the Nobel Prize you'll be back on top.
>>: With all due respect, Doctor Cooper, are you on crack? [laughter].
>>: Fine, Smoot Cooper, wow, what a diva.
>> Dave Zobel: And the history of it is George Smoot is a fan of the show, called them up and
said can you work me in? Sure you can. And they said okay. Can we make fun of your name?
And I think he was used to that, so he said sure. It's a little bit funny that Penny is the character
making fun of Smoot's name because diehard fans of the show may know this, Penny is the only
character whose name has never been revealed. It's Penny something. We don't know her last
name. It may never be revealed. Here's another famous person who called up the show and
said you can make room for me. Can't you?
>>: It just so happens, I'm also spending the day with a beloved children's television science
personality. Isn't that right new friend and colleague Bill Nye, The Science Guy? [applause].
Sorry. I replaced you with a newer model.
>>: Wow! Arthur Jeffreys. It's an honor to meet you. My show never would have happened
without yours.
>>: That's what I told my lawyers. [laughter].
>>: Mr. Nye, hello. I'm sorry he got you involved in this nonsense.
>>: He said I would be speaking to a class.
>>: No. I said you were teaching someone a lesson. Now let's go. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: I personally can't imagine spending more than a couple of minutes with
Sheldon, but I have met people who would love to meet him if only he were a real person. I
don't follow that. Sheldon at one point is fixated on Halley Berry and some of the other people
who have played Catwoman.
>>: She is like my fourth favorite Catwoman.
>> No kidding?
>> Yeah. Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eartha Kitt and then her.
>>: What about Lee Meriwether.
>>: Oh. I forgot about Lee Meriwether.
>>: I'm glad that's settled.
>>: That makes Halley Berry my fifth favorite Catwoman. Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer,
Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether…
>>: Please, I'm begging you go to sleep.
>>: I'm trying. I'm counting cat women. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: I contacted Julie Newmar who hadn't been aware of that particular scene and
while I was researching that I discovered that her older brother had gone to Caltech in the early
1960s, her younger brother, when she was already an actress. She had gone to visit him one
time in his dorm room and I'm not making this up. You'll see why I said that in a moment.
There is a photo of her in the 1962 volume of the California Tech which is the student
newspaper. Here is Julie Newmar, her brother and three would be swains and I just found the
parallels between that and season three of the Big Bang Theory's official photo to be a little
creepy. I've asked her about that and she has not responded. The most famous science
experiment even the on Schrödinger's cat is probably the double slit experiment and that is the
one where you have two slits in a board and you pass light through it and the light acts like a
wave unless you are trying to catch it being a particle and then it acts like a particle. And the
same thing happens when you try to pass particles through and whenever you are not trying to
catch the particles being particles, they act like waves and it makes everybody scratch their
heads and I'm not going to begin to try to explain it now, because I still don't understand it. But
I can tell you that the readers of Physics World Magazine voted it the most beautiful
experiment of all time. So if you thought the words beautiful and experiment could not appear
together in a sentence, the readers of Physics World would disagree with you. It gives me a
little bit of a flutter to realize that the very first words in the first episode of the first season of
the Big Bang Theory were on this exact topic. Here is the opening shot from the pilot.
>>: If a photon is directed through a plane with two slits in it and either slit is observed will not
go through both slits. If it is unobserved it will. However, if it is observed after its left the plane
but before it hits its target, it will not have gone through both slits.
>>: Agreed. What's your point?
>>: There's no point. I just think it's a good idea for a T-shirt. [laughter].
>> Dave Zobel: I applaud the creators of the show for opening with something that abstruse. I
would love to direct you to a resource where you can read more about this. This resource
doesn't yet physically exist, however, but it's coming out in June. If you are curious about other
aspects of science on the show and if you would like to find out where exactly that apartment
building really turns out to be, you may find that in there. Thank you all so much for your
attention, and I would love to take questions. [applause]. Or not. I will point something out to
the diehards. The forward is by Howard Wollowitts. Wollowitts is the name of the character
you saw handing a juice box to Penny early on. Howard Wollowitts is also a real person. He is a
friend of one of the creators of the show and when they were putting the show together, Bill
Prady the pro-creator wrote to him and said can we please use your name? It's the perfect
name for a nerd. And Wollowitts, bless him, said sure; why not? So I got in touch with him and
said can you write something funny about what it's like to have a nerdy character named after
you. And he happily did that. Yes? Oh, you get a prize for asking a question. I can't give you a
book, but I can give you a bookmark. You could have had that. Yes?
>>: There was a tale I remember hearing about the problems on the different whiteboards
throughout the show that the professor who supplied those actually used them in his exams
and he made the comments that if his students had just watched the show they would pass the
tests. Can you put any validity to that?
>> Dave Zobel: Even if it's not true, it should be. But that's absolutely right. That professor is
allowed to bring one guest to each taping and that particular time he brought his entire
introductory physics class and they all sat there and gradually realized with some amount of
horror, that what he had put on the whiteboards was the answers to the physics test. That is
absolutely right. Yes?
>>: As somebody that watches the show very frequently, it surprises me the number of real-life
scientists or people involved in science that are on it. What do you think the interest is for
other people unrelated to the show to appear?
>> Dave Zobel: The question is what do I think is the reason that scientists are so interested in
the show and try to be on it. Stephen Hawking, for instance, has played himself about six times,
sometimes just in voiceovers, but also actually on the show. Hawking gave me a quote to use in
the book and it was so simple and so elegant and so impossible for me to pick apart, that I can
actually use your help figuring it out. I wrote to him and I said dear Doctor Hawking, I'm just a
science humorist and in this book about this show, would you care to maybe say something
about it. He wrote back, and you know it's hard for Stephen Hawking to write, so I was grateful
to get anything from him. He wrote, at last, a show that makes physics cool. I don't see cool
physicists on this show. I see kind of freaky physicists on this show, but they are struggling to
be cool and so maybe it's more about the struggle than about the actual accomplishment. I
don't know that kids watching this show, or maybe teenagers, are thinking that's what I want to
be. I want to be Sheldon and annoy everybody and then put my consciousness into some
orbiting satellite and then just be the ruler of the world. But for whatever reason it touches
that human nerve and hey, scientists are humans to. And scientists do not walk around with all
of the answers. You all know this. They walk around with lots of great questions. Yes?
>>: An online question saying is the biology on the serial, Amy and Bernadette, real as well, or
do they make it up?
>> Dave Zobel: The biology, oh that Amy and Bernadette pursue, is a real? The characters of
Amy and Bernadette, you saw Bernadette briefly. You saw Amy even more briefly. The actor
who plays Amy has a PhD in neurobiology in real life from UCLA. Her name is my Myam Biolick.
When she is doing research they often show scenes where she is sectioning a brain or probing a
starfish. She is able to use her experience to, for instance, not cut her finger off, which is good.
I believe they also take some liberties. I know for a fact they take some liberties because there
is one scene where she is poking a starfish and going I'm stimulating it's pleasure centers. And
for an animal that doesn't even have a brain, it's sort of impossible to find any kind of pleasure
centers, so that's me editorializing. She doesn't say that apart. The other character,
Bernadette, we never actually see her research. We just know that she works in pharmaceutics
making scary things or possibly isolating scary things, and yes, there are scary bugs out here in
the real world, so that's as true as it can be. Yes?
>>: It says the unauthorized guide. Did you reach out to the creators and if so were they
helpful in researching this?
>> Dave Zobel: The reason it says unauthorized guide is because in order for this to be an
authorized guide, and I don't want my mom to see this it's kind of like a smudge. For it to be an
authorized guide it would have to be basically written by people under contract to Warner
Brothers and Chuck Lori productions. They are not at this time interested in coming out with a
book like this, so the only alternative is to do it as unauthorized. They have not sent me a
cease-and-desist, so I'm happy. You know what? You can have a bookmark for that question.
There is nobody to pass it back to you. You will have to get it from one of your neighbors. Yes,
back there?
>>: Are there any plans to write a book on the science of the other highest-rated scripted
show, The Walking Dead?
>> Dave Zobel: Do I want to write about The Walking Dead? I hope I won't offend anybody.
There is Schrödinger and there are zombies. I don't know that zombies don't exist, but I did so
much research on real science here, it would really be hard to do research on sort of the other
side. I need -- no. [laughter]. Yes?
>>: You have never been in contact with an actual operators of the show, their producers or
anything, right?
>> Dave Zobel: I have been to a taping. I made friends with a crew member and got into a
taping, sat up in the stratosphere with the guy who runs the lights and learned a lot about show
that way. I'll just jump in and say several people criticize shows like this because of the laugh
track. I can assure you that they do not use a laugh track on the Big Bang Theory. Those sorts
of shows are always taped in front of an audience of approximately the size of this room,
crowded together for five hours, freezing in the air-conditioning because the lights are so hot.
And I know this because, I know they don't sweeten it because I deliberately laughed at the
wrong time at one point and then I heard it in my episode. So it's not a laugh track. There is no
need for a laugh track. It's much better to give real-life people.
>>: The reason I asked is there are oddities and I am just curious of the explanation. For
example, the now late Mrs. Wollowitts was never actually shown on the screen except briefly,
very briefly where you couldn't even see her in that wedding scene. I'm just wondering what
the deal is.
>> Dave Zobel: Howard's mother never appears on the screen. The character just recently
passed, so you're asking about why does she never appear on screen. Why did Hitchcock
appear in every one of his movies, just do a little cameo? Because it's fun. I think it was fun for
them to have Mrs. Wollowitts not ever be quite there. Why was the neighbor in Home
Improvement never seen below the eyes? I went to a taping of that, as well, and you know
what? He's a little short guy. He is like this tall and then he has feet on the bottom. Anyway,
it's what TV people do. I make no apologies for them. Yes? One more question.
>>: [indiscernible] secrets of the Simpsons show. I just wondered if there are any parallels you
can draw from it.
>> Dave Zobel: Parallels, wow. Simon Singh's book that came out on the mathematics of the
Simpsons, he did that in collaboration with the crew that makes the Simpsons. Simpsons has
many more episodes than Big Bang Theory. Simon Singh is much more prolific and much
smarter than I am. He's a much better writer. All you're doing is finding differences. Thanks
for your question. Thank you all for your questions and your attention. [applause].