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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: A Quantum Life

In this episode of The Curious Cosmos, Derrick is joined by astophysist, inventor, and media personality Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, to discuss everything from cutting edge physics, the future of human spaceflight, and Hakeem’s unique and inspiring path to science.

Transcript
Derrick Pitts:

Hi, I'm Derrick Pitts and welcome to the Curious Cosmos.

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Today, I'm really excited about our guest.

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He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Math and Physics

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from Tougaloo University in 1991.

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His Master's and PhD in Physics are from Stanford University.

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He's the current president of the National Society of Black Physicists, and he's also

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an inventor, with a number of industrial patents for computer processor chips.

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And you may recognize him from his many media appearances as a science content

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expert for Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, Good Morning America,

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National Geographic, and plenty more.

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But on top of all that, he's also an incredible person with an even

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more incredible life story, which he told in his memoir, A Quantum Life:

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My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars, published in 2021.

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A young adult adaptation of the book was released this past year.

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Dr.

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Hakeem Oluseyi, it's really a great pleasure to have you with us today to

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talk about some interesting topics looking forward in physics and astrophysics

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and also, uh, maybe to take a look back at how you came to science.

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So, thanks for joining us today.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Thank you for having me.

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And just so you know, I knew of you long before you knew of me!

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And I hope that's a good thing!

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: I was looking up to you.

Derrick Pitts:

Oh, yeah, absolutely, man.

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I loved you.

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I fell in love with you immediately.

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So I'm honored to be here.

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I really do appreciate that.

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Thank you.

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That means a lot.

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And I you, so we could be each other's heroes now, right?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: That's right.

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Exactly.

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We got a bromance going!

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We got it.

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You got it.

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That is absolutely for sure!

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Let's get started with this, Hakeem.

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I really want to get your perspective on some science stuff first.

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And so I want to start in a region that we rarely hear people talking about in

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physics and astrophysics, and it's about some of the advances that have taken

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place in the last two decades and what's going on in the future in that regard.

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You know, we hear a lot in particle physics, about new particles that are

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being identified and new understandings about how certain particles work.

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I'm thinking in particular right now of the god particle, and how we sort

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of use the god particle as a way to get a better understanding of things like

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gravity and so on and so forth like that.

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But my question around these advances of the last two decades is,

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what do you think is coming next?

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What do you think should be on the agenda for, you know, the next problems

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we ought to be looking at in physics?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Wow, thank you for the softball question.

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I didn't, I didn't want to waste your time here, you know!

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Well, you know, it really depends on what

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area you're looking in, right?

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So there are areas that are brand spanking new, like gravitational wave astronomy.

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So just like astronomers might study radio waves, or study infrared

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radiation to learn something different about astronomical objects, astronomers

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have discovered that gravitational waves can also tell a piece of the story

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about the evolution of the universe.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: What the event horizon telescope is doing.

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Yes.

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Sure.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Imaging black holes at the centers of galaxies

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So those two are huge right because as I see it we've come so far in

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understanding matter Understanding the electromagnetic radiation, but

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as far as understanding space time, you GR general relativity Yeah, yeah,

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and we're kind of stuck in a way.

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We went down a string theory path.

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There's loop quantum gravity, right?

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Black hole thermodynamics.

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But it feels like we've been stuck because there's not any

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experimental evidence, right?

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Observations, measurements that can lead the way.

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I think in the early 20th century, we got spoiled or even late 20th century

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when we go to Maxwell with, you know, how the theorists were just pushing it

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forward before we had observations, right?

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And they can make predictions that we can go and look for and say, "Hey,

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we know what we're talking about."

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Theoretical physics really is nothing more than a set

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of ideas about how something works.

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All the while fitting in with the laws of physics as we already understand them.

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It's almost like saying, okay, we know this works like this.

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I have an idea of how it might work going forward.

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So let me continue to develop and work on this idea and see how far out it

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goes and what it's going to suggest.

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So, you have this theoretical idea.

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Now what you do is you then go see if you can come up with some observations

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that confirm what your idea is about how this is going to play out.

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So this is why astronomers these days keep referring back to Einstein, because

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Einstein, as a theoretical physicist, worked out what could possibly happen

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going forward if you simply extended work on this phenomenon according to

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the laws and principles as we see them.

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And what he discovered was, Oh, well my idea now suggests that

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the universe should be doing this.

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He didn't have the means to prove it, but he said, "My numbers are right.

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I've had my friends check it.

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The numbers are right.

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So that's suggesting the universe is going to do this."

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Now we have the equipment to see whether or not what he was

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suggesting actually would turn up.

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And gravitational waves is one of those.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: We're at a time now where, you know, we understand

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that within these theories is not the full story of the universe.

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And that's what we're trying to get to.

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I think that theoretical, speculative pathways have sort of, you know,

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they've all kind of run dry in terms of looking really like, this is it.

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So experiment is the way forward, I think.

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So that's that side.

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Everything happening in planetary astronomy is new, right?

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That's all new, and solar system exploration, right?

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We're going to these wet worlds now, right?

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We have Dragonfly mission going to Titan.

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We have the Europa Clipper mission.

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Mm hmm.

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And when you say wet worlds, you're talking about going to places

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where we know there's liquid water?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Or liquid something else, right?

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So Titan has...

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Right, that's liquid methane, right, okay.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But abundant liquids.

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Because liquids are a necessity for life, it appears to be.

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And so, you know, here on Earth it's based on water, but the astrobiologists

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who study this stuff say that there's a huge plethora of different liquids

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that could serve as a solvent for life.

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And so let's go look, see what's there.

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That stuff is pretty cool.

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There's other areas that are more obscure, like optics, you

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know, semiconductor physics.

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Sure.

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This is like, and you're talking about applied physics here, right?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, exactly.

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Applied physics is always doing cool stuff.

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When we're talking about applied physics, what we're

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really saying is that we're taking these ideas that we've extrapolated

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out from someplace else, and we're turning it into practical applications.

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So we're using this physics now.

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to make stuff that does cool things for us.

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So a really good example of this is lasers.

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Lasers started out as this really wild idea that if you manipulated light in

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just the right way, you could make it way more powerful and have it do things

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that you couldn't imagine doing before.

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And now what we've done is, we've applied those ideas about

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lasers in so many different ways.

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In fact, we no longer think about what lasers do for us.

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They're almost ubiquitous.

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But that's an example of applied physics.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: The people that do what we call solid state

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physics, man, matter, just, you know, you put it in a new extreme

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situation, let's make it really cold.

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Let's make it two dimensional.

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Let's make it one dimensional!

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Let's make it, you know, and you get whole new behaviors that you can now

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leverage to create new technologies.

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Quantum computing is one of them.

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Keeps going, right.

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So you think that on the observational side, on the data collection side,

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and exploring the, the universe and trying to push for those outer

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boundaries of understanding more about what happened really early on,

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a telescope like James Webb is right out there on the cutting edge of, you

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know, like knocking on the door of the very earliest periods in our history.

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Is there some other regime that we could be looking in other than IR that

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might open some doors for us out there?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Oh, well, the gravitational wave lens is the main one.

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The cosmic microwave background radiation has paid off so

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hugely for precision cosmology.

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And that next step is a cosmic neutrino background.

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So the microwave background radiation, this is really just a fancy

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term for the residual heat left over from the beginning of the universe.

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Everybody knows about the Big Bang.

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Big explosion, stars, galaxies are formed, all this stuff comes into

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existence, and we have a universe, right?

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Well, it's not exactly like that.

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It's a little trickier than that.

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So the universe starts out an incredibly small, incredibly

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hot, incredibly dense dot.

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Just infinitesimally small.

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But everything that we know of in the universe today, including

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all of the forces, like gravity and electromagnetism and all that

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stuff, that's all packed in there.

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For some reason, that little dot explodes.

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And as it explodes, the temperature begins to go down.

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As the temperature begins to go down, elementary particles can be formed.

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Those elementary particles can get together and create atoms.

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Those atoms can then create molecules.

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Now you have the building blocks for all of the other stuff in

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the universe, like stars and galaxies and all that jazz, right?

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But...

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What people don't realize is that shortly after that explosion

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began, the universe sat essentially dormant for a little bit of time.

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And then, there was a sudden expansion of all of this, and the universe cooled down

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even further, and particles began to get together in a way that allowed radiant

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energy to pass through and start traveling around the now expanding universe.

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Once this inflation began, now electrons could begin to couple with

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protons and neutrons, and that then made the universe transparent to the

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radiation, and radiation could now be able to spread throughout the universe.

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And in figuring out what it might have been like before then, we now develop

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a model for what the universe must have been like in those very early few seconds,

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or even the first billionth of a second.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: And that is a huge technological challenge.

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You know, so neutrinos promise a lot of insight into this subatomic

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world of fields and particles.

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So there are experiments that are going on, looking at

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different aspects of neutrinos.

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Like there's the one where they're shooting into the mine

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from some place in Chicago.

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Neutrinos are really simple too.

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So if we just think about the basic atomic particles like protons,

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neutrons, and electrons, well, neutrinos are actually part of

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that, but they're far, far smaller.

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Not only are they really tiny, but they really have virtually no mass at all.

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And they pass through everything.

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Everything.

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They are so small, they fit through the tiniest little atomic spaces between

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any of the other particles at all.

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If you hold up your hand, there are hundreds of millions of neutrinos

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passing through your hand right now.

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Passing through your entire body.

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Everywhere, these neutrinos exist.

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But, because they are so small, and because they have no mass, they

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hardly interact with anything at all.

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So, One of the great neutrino experiments that has been

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created is what he refers to.

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There's a huge abandoned mine, underground, near Chicago, that is filled,

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essentially, with the fluids that are used by dry cleaners to clean clothes.

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Well, there's an element in that dry cleaning fluid that has a component

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that will react with neutrinos.

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This abandoned mine has the ability to filter out all other

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particles except neutrinos.

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So now what you do is you just set up detectors to detect the

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outcome of a neutrino interaction.

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And this interaction results in a little tiny flash of light.

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There are photomultipliers, photoreceptor tubes lining this mine that's then

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filled with the dry cleaning fluid.

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And they turn these things on and let them sit.

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And they actually have seen flashes that are the indications that a neutrino

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has come through and reacted with the material in the dry cleaning chemical.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But you also have, just like there's a cosmic microwave

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background radiation before photons decoupled from the matter at 380, 000

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years after the Big Bang, there was an earlier period where neutrinos decoupled.

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There's another one.

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There's another signal in the cosmic microwave background radiation

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that's very difficult to detect.

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We thought it was detected in the very early 2000s.

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Turned out they had detected dust in our own galaxy.

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So you have to characterize these so-called foregrounds and backgrounds.

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But these are a particular type of gravitational wave, known as primordial

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gravitational waves, and they actually originate from the very founding moment

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of our universe, what we call inflation.

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And they would leave an imprint and what is known as the B-modes.

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It's complex.

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Let's just put it that way, but there's pretty much three different types of

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spectra that you can get out of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

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One is related to temperature variations in the early universe, and two are

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related to the polarization of the light.

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So the temperature one is called the TT spectrum.

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The polarization one.

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One is called EE for electric fields and the other is

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called BB for magnetic fields.

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So in the very early universe, the event that would have triggered the expansion

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of our universe and the addition of energy into our universe, it would have

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left an imprint In gravitational waves, that would have been imprinted on the

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cosmic microwave background radiation.

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And if we are able to detect them, that would be like having the early

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universe on a petri dish in our lab, and able to like make direct measurements

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of the conditions at that time.

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My head is just exploding here.

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I remember reading about the detection of the BB waves

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- Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But the error bars are as big as the, you

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know, the Empire State Building!

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That's the problem.

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Okay.

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So there's a lot of work that needs to be done in that area because

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the error bars are so big, it's really hard to define anything

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that's happening just yet with that.

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Okay.

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So that's really interesting because the way you say it is

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a really good way to say it.

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If we can figure out how to make use of this, then we can have the universe

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in a Petri dish and we can really study these interesting effects.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah.

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You get out the actual like physical measurements of like, you know,

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the temperature, the density, which typically leads to everything else.

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And you got to collect some stuff and you know, that's just mind blowing to me.

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So basically here's the thing.

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So what these physicists have figured out is as the universe

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evolved through various stages.

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So the universe starts off small, hot, dense, and over time it expands.

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It becomes cooler and less dense.

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And what happens is along that pathway, we can use the laws of physics to

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say, do the conditions at that time create a signal that we can measure

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today to, you know, either confirm or disconfirm this theory, right?

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And so, you know, there's so many that stretch back there.

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The cosmic neutrino background is one that we not yet looked at.

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There's primordial gravitational, B-mode gravitational waves, that's another one.

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And so people in the same way predicted, you know, Gamow, Alfer and Herman

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in the 40s predicted that the cosmic microwave background would be there.

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And so over the 20th century and into the 21st century, we sucked

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all this information out of it!

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Yes, right.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, that's what we've been doing.

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Yeah.

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So now there's two more of those, at least.

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That's really cool.

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We all know that Elon Musk wants humanity to become a spacefaring

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species, starting with colonizing Mars.

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What is your thinking on the viability of long duration space travel for humans?

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You know, it's a big romantic idea that we all have about, let's get out there

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and discover the universe and we'll pile into a spaceship and we'll fly

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out there, and in 48 minutes like they always do on the Star Trek episodes,

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we'll flash from one part of the galaxy to another part of the galaxy.

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You never see any change in an inertial movement inside the spacecraft or anything

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like that when they're zipping along at light speeds and things like that.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: They're accelerating, yeah.

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Yeah, right, right.

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There's no evidence of that at all!

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Warp 9 and we're still looking the same.

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So, what's your take on this stuff here for a long duration, human space travel?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Well, the first thing is, just from an engineering

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and biological perspective and mental perspective, it's very, very, very,

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very difficult, if not impossible.

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But anytime someone says something is impossible, you've taken

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a pretty hard stand there, so I'm not going to be that guy.

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Okay.

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All right.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But it's really, really hard.

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And so, you know, the question is, what do we want to do and why do we want to do it?

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All right.

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So the two things that I've heard is, well, three.

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There's sort of like the Star Trek model.

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I don't really see that happen, not with humans in spacecraft.

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The other is, turn our solar system into our playground.

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Turn near space, the space around the sun, into our tourism.

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That could happen to some degree.

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Mm hmm.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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All right.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Along with that is mining the asteroids

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and this sort of thing.

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So the Earth only has a limited supply of minerals.

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Well, it turns out that asteroids are an excellent source for certain kinds of

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minerals, particularly really rare or what we now refer to as strategic minerals.

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So, for example, think about something like lithium.

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Lithium is an element that makes really good batteries.

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But if we're going to make enough cars with lithium batteries for

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people all over the world, then we have to exhaust probably the supply

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of lithium that our planet has.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: That definitely can happen.

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You know, you could use robots to do that, but we're talking about humans in space.

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And then the other one, the third model is, we think of the planet's

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going to end and we need to be somewhere else, right, to survive that.

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And so, for sure, the planet is going to end, right?

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In a billion years, the Earth is going to be uninhabitable by any sort

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of life that we're aware of, right?

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Because the oceans are going to boil away and, it just has to do

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with the evolution of the sun.

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Right.

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Just to put people at ease, it's not going to happen for a little while.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Billion years!

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A billion years, right?

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No species that we know of has existed for a billion years.

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Multicellular life has not existed for a billion years.

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So we're talking about something that you don't have to worry about.

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But the question is, even if you're not doing that, do you want to plant

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your seeds on other worlds and have them grow your DNA there, right?

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There's some sort of like primal urge to, you know, like the selfish gene, right?

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Spread this gene all throughout the cosmos.

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So you can do that without sending humans into space, right?

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You can send embryos.

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Cause the problem is you're not going to find another planet that is earth.

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Every planet is going to be unique for the most part, right?

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But there are so many planets that have been

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identified as "Earth like"...

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Right, yeah.

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That means they're about the same size.

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Venus is pretty darn earth like, but it ain't earth like!

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But it ain't earth like.

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That is for sure, you bet.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah.

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So it doesn't mean you can survive there just because it's a similar size

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and maybe even similar temperature.

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You know, there's going to be a huge variation in the, the layer of gases

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that surround that rock, whatever it is.

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You know, earth is really special.

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For example, it's not appreciated that most of life on earth has four

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protective layers that protect it from space, which would otherwise kill it.

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The first is the magnetic bubble of the Sun, what we call the heliosphere.

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The next is the magnetic bubble of the Earth, which we call the magnetosphere.

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Then you have this thin layer of gases that we call the atmosphere and then,

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you know, I said most life you're going to be under either water or earth.

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The fact that we have life on the surface is because one type of radiation is

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let through, and that is visible light.

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And so after existing on earth for 4 billion years, roughly, life was able to

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figure out how to use that light to break apart water molecules and get oxygen,

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which led to an oxygenated environment, which led to multicellular life.

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But here's the thing.

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Where life is going to come into existence, number one is going to be where

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there are fluids, as we mentioned earlier.

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But the thing is, where do we find fluids?

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In most cases, it's under miles of rock, miles of ice, or miles of atmosphere.

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Earth has a transparent atmosphere only because it has a strong magnetic field.

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And it only has a strong magnetic field because of two coincidences

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that neither Venus nor Mars have.

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It's large enough to still have a partially molten core, right?

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Venus is roughly the same size as Earth.

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But the difference is, Earth rotates fast, to create a strong current that

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could generate that magnetic field.

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Venus rotates slowly, so it has no magnetic field.

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Mars is half the size of Earth, so it does not have the liquid core.

Derrick Pitts:

It's cooled off.

Derrick Pitts:

And so, even though it spins at the same rate, 24 hour a day roughly, right?

Derrick Pitts:

So, we're so lucky to have this magnetic bubble and a super thin atmosphere

Derrick Pitts:

that allows light to the surface.

Derrick Pitts:

And then if you look at what planets we find, most of the terrestrial planets

Derrick Pitts:

we find are what we call Super-Earths.

Derrick Pitts:

A Super-Earth's gonna have a lot stronger gravity.

Derrick Pitts:

Not just because it's more mass, but as you add more mass,

Derrick Pitts:

it packs down more tightly.

Derrick Pitts:

So you're even closer to the core than you otherwise would be if

Derrick Pitts:

you kept the density constant.

Derrick Pitts:

So gravity has increased doubly.

Derrick Pitts:

So you're going to have a bunch of dwarf, Incredible Hulks that look

Derrick Pitts:

like centipedes or millipedes, right?

Derrick Pitts:

That's going to be the life or, you know, you gotta be low to

Derrick Pitts:

the ground and really strong.

Derrick Pitts:

You're going to weigh many times what you'd weigh on earth.

Derrick Pitts:

So now put a human on that environment.

Derrick Pitts:

You're just going to lie down and not be able to get up.

Derrick Pitts:

Right?

Derrick Pitts:

And you know, a small world, Titan is a small world, right?

Derrick Pitts:

The moon of Saturn, Titan.

Derrick Pitts:

But if you lived on Titan, you wouldn't even know that stars exist.

Derrick Pitts:

The atmosphere is so damn thick that light does not get through for the

Derrick Pitts:

most part, like it does here on Earth.

Derrick Pitts:

It's a varied environment out there.

Derrick Pitts:

I was gonna say, this really points to the importance of Earth.

Derrick Pitts:

As being, you know, a unique kind of place for life to have developed.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But here's the thing, what if you send embryos to

Derrick Pitts:

a place like Titan, and then have robots genetically modify it so

Derrick Pitts:

that it can survive on that world?

Derrick Pitts:

Is that still a human?

Derrick Pitts:

Or do you want to do some precursor life form, right?

Derrick Pitts:

You send a spaceship ahead that grows like barbecue ribs, peanut butter,

Derrick Pitts:

vanilla malt, you know, sweet potato pie, and then you send the embryos that

Derrick Pitts:

later come and eat the delicious ribs.

Derrick Pitts:

Because you can't just send yourself, right?

Derrick Pitts:

You need an ecosystem to support life.

Derrick Pitts:

You need a biosphere to support the life unless you're very simple life.

Derrick Pitts:

So that adds to the challenge of putting humans out there to

Derrick Pitts:

do that kind of long duration exploration.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah, so it's hard.

Derrick Pitts:

It's very, very difficult to do.

Derrick Pitts:

And there are tons of examples where, you know, someone

Derrick Pitts:

has stepped forward and said, "It's impossible for that to happen."

Derrick Pitts:

And then ten years later, there you go.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: There it is.

Derrick Pitts:

I think that's an important, sort of, guardrails for

Derrick Pitts:

people to think about when we talk about what kind of exploration humans

Derrick Pitts:

are going to be doing in space.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: The other thing to understand, though, too, is that

Derrick Pitts:

the reason why we knew Oumuamua was from outside of our solar system

Derrick Pitts:

- Derrick Pitts: oumuamua was a gigantic cigar shaped asteroid

Derrick Pitts:

that passed through our section of the solar system a few years ago.

Derrick Pitts:

It turned out that Oumuamua is a visitor from another part of the

Derrick Pitts:

galaxy altogether, not an original part of our solar system at all.

Derrick Pitts:

Speculation has run rampant about the possibility of what Oumuamua actually is.

Derrick Pitts:

We don't really know, because we can't really tell very much about

Derrick Pitts:

it other than it's big, it's dense, it's been traveling for a long time,

Derrick Pitts:

and it's traveling at a very high rate of speed that would be generated

Derrick Pitts:

by its movement through the galaxy.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: It's because the way the laws of physics work, you're

Derrick Pitts:

coming from far away, there's a lot of gravitational potential energy.

Derrick Pitts:

So by the time you arrive, you're moving really fast, faster than if you

Derrick Pitts:

originated within our solar system.

Derrick Pitts:

So if you think you're going to leave here and travel to some other

Derrick Pitts:

star system, how do you slow down and go into orbit around the planet?

Derrick Pitts:

We couldn't even slow down and go into orbit around Pluto!

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah, that's true.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah, that's right.

Derrick Pitts:

Well, these are important things because, you know, the difference between fantasy

Derrick Pitts:

and reality can be really enormous, and it can be terribly misleading.

Derrick Pitts:

And that sort of leads me into the next segment in our discussion, and that is...

Derrick Pitts:

My first visit to Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Southern California a

Derrick Pitts:

number of years ago, I was surprised at the lack of people of color

Derrick Pitts:

that I saw working in engineering positions and things like that.

Derrick Pitts:

That's changed dramatically in the last, you know, 20 years or so.

Derrick Pitts:

My most recent visit...

Derrick Pitts:

I was really surprised at how many more women I saw, and

Derrick Pitts:

how many more people of color.

Derrick Pitts:

And in recognition that diversity and inclusion is really important, NASA has

Derrick Pitts:

put itself in a position of saying that diversity and inclusion is tremendously

Derrick Pitts:

important to them because the problems they have, they need to get those solved

Derrick Pitts:

and they're going to turn over every rock they can to find people who can help them.

Derrick Pitts:

So do you feel as if there's been progress in diversity and inclusion in physics

Derrick Pitts:

and how important is this in physics?

Derrick Pitts:

Is it the same way in physics as it is for NASA's applied needs?

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: You know, my thinking is a bit divergent here.

Derrick Pitts:

One of the things that has impacted my thinking is the fact that I've now

Derrick Pitts:

visited 42 countries around the world.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, it's sort of like a study in planets, right?

Derrick Pitts:

We now understand, oh, our solar system is kind of unique, right?

Derrick Pitts:

It's not the standard solar system.

Derrick Pitts:

I think that having a perspective of many different societies and understanding

Derrick Pitts:

what is societal in general and what is unique to where I'm from, and also see

Derrick Pitts:

the positives and negatives of my society.

Derrick Pitts:

So the first thing I'll say is that whatever problems we have

Derrick Pitts:

with -isms within science is really reflective of society as a whole.

Derrick Pitts:

But at the same time, physics and astronomy are like a filter.

Derrick Pitts:

For example, sometimes I'm in a discussion about equity and inclusion

Derrick Pitts:

and fairness and all this and someone, you know, from the community will

Derrick Pitts:

say, and I've seen people talk about this, you know, a black person, right?

Derrick Pitts:

Will say, "Oh, you know, our kids aren't interested in that stuff."

Derrick Pitts:

And the black scientists will be aghat like, "wait, no, that's not the story!

Derrick Pitts:

This is a part of their history!"

Derrick Pitts:

And I'm like, no, that ain't the story either.

Derrick Pitts:

The story is, you know, who else ain't interested in this stuff?

Derrick Pitts:

White people, Asian people, Indian people, like, nobody's

Derrick Pitts:

interested in physics and astronomy.

Derrick Pitts:

Let's, let's be real about this!

Derrick Pitts:

When you look at STEM in general, we've been pushing the STEM

Derrick Pitts:

for the last 25 years, hard!

Derrick Pitts:

And there have been changes, but still, what percentage of college

Derrick Pitts:

students graduate with STEM degrees?

Derrick Pitts:

It's only 18%.

Derrick Pitts:

What percentage of those are going to be in physics and astronomy?

Derrick Pitts:

It's a very, very tiny number.

Derrick Pitts:

Now, a part of that filter is a personality filter.

Derrick Pitts:

It's an identity filter.

Derrick Pitts:

When I was a kid, they were calling me Urkel.

Derrick Pitts:

Whenever a kid came on the TV who was a prototypical nerd - now, mind you,

Derrick Pitts:

I'm from the hood, several hoods!

Derrick Pitts:

So Urkel in my hood, like my brother in law told me in grad school, he's

Derrick Pitts:

like, "man, you don't fit in anywhere."

Derrick Pitts:

You know, at home, I'm Urkel, at Stanford, I'm Snoop Dogg.

Derrick Pitts:

You know what I mean?

Derrick Pitts:

It's like, you know, right?

Derrick Pitts:

So, when you get to this community, the other thing is,

Derrick Pitts:

are you prepared for that work?

Derrick Pitts:

And the big filter of preparation, if you ask me, is mathematics.

Derrick Pitts:

And I feel like the evidence tells me this.

Derrick Pitts:

There's only two ways in America, and most of the world, that a person

Derrick Pitts:

becomes well educated in mathematics by the time they're 18 years old.

Derrick Pitts:

One, there's a person well educated in mathematics in your home, to start with.

Derrick Pitts:

Number two, you got lucky.

Derrick Pitts:

If you go to school and learn math, oh are you lucky!

Derrick Pitts:

You know, the basic thoughts of STEM math is algebra, right?

Derrick Pitts:

That's the basic language.

Derrick Pitts:

And the basics of algebra is missing virtually by entire society, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And so you could be interested and you could be motivated.

Derrick Pitts:

You could be loving it!

Derrick Pitts:

You could be a hard working person, but then you get into that classroom in

Derrick Pitts:

your university and it gets real, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And to make matters worse, they give you fake physics in high school, fake physics

Derrick Pitts:

in your freshman and sophomore year.

Derrick Pitts:

So by the time you get real physics in your junior year, you're just

Derrick Pitts:

like, "what the hell is this?"

Derrick Pitts:

You know, "I'm out of here," right?

Derrick Pitts:

The filter barrier of, I don't see myself as Urkel, versus running

Derrick Pitts:

fast as you can to be Urkel.

Derrick Pitts:

And then I'm not even prepared to do this because of my, you know, I

Derrick Pitts:

didn't grow up with it in my house.

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: You know, it's just like the NBA.

Derrick Pitts:

How many - it's like a dozen cats right now who fathers play in the NBA.

Derrick Pitts:

I'm giving a rough number.

Derrick Pitts:

I go to my research group, 50 percent of the guys in my research group,

Derrick Pitts:

their fathers were PhD physicists.

Derrick Pitts:

It's the way the world works, right?

Derrick Pitts:

The parents recreate you.

Derrick Pitts:

So now you're going to say, okay, let me take a people who over a hundred

Derrick Pitts:

years from the birth of the grandparent to the death of the grandchild...

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: So my father was born in 1933.

Derrick Pitts:

My father dropped out of school when he was nine years old.

Derrick Pitts:

His father, I'm guessing early - I don't know exactly when he was

Derrick Pitts:

born, but early 20th century.

Derrick Pitts:

Then we go into a dude in the 19th century, right?

Derrick Pitts:

So how I ended up educated is by pure luck.

Derrick Pitts:

Pure luck and pure will to say "this is what I'm going after.

Derrick Pitts:

I'm really into it and I'm not stopping no matter what, no

Derrick Pitts:

matter how hard it is," right?

Derrick Pitts:

Taking a lot of slaps in the face on the way.

Derrick Pitts:

It's a hard thing to do.

Derrick Pitts:

One of the biggest problems with that education side is that we go to the kids

Derrick Pitts:

and not anybody else in the community.

Derrick Pitts:

You can't educate the kids without educating the adults.

Derrick Pitts:

An example is, my son, who's now 17, when he was like 4 or 5, my mother says

Derrick Pitts:

to me, "I think he's smarter than you."

Derrick Pitts:

And I'm like, "no the hell he ain't."

Derrick Pitts:

His daddy got a PhD in physics.

Derrick Pitts:

My daddy and my mother both dropped out of school.

Derrick Pitts:

Right?

Derrick Pitts:

You know?

Derrick Pitts:

That's the difference, but don't get me wrong, I wasn't an idiot

Derrick Pitts:

just because I was undereducated.

Derrick Pitts:

My parents weren't idiots because they're undereducated.

Derrick Pitts:

They just knew different things.

Derrick Pitts:

When I got to Stanford, there was a hella people better than me at mathematics,

Derrick Pitts:

but I doubt there were many who were better than me at cleaning the squirrel.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, I could slaughter a squirrel, a pig, a possum, a raccoon, an armadillo!

Derrick Pitts:

Right, the aptitude is just someplace else.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: It's someplace else.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

I talk about that same thing all the time, Hakeem.

Derrick Pitts:

I say, it's a question of where your aptitude is, you know, not a question

Derrick Pitts:

of a raw number of how smart you are, but it's where your aptitude is.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: And where you've been trained!

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah, sure.

Derrick Pitts:

And I can see your argument about what those gates are to physics.

Derrick Pitts:

And you're right.

Derrick Pitts:

Those gates are the same.

Derrick Pitts:

That mathematics gate is the same for everyone, it doesn't

Derrick Pitts:

matter what your ethnicity is.

Derrick Pitts:

It's the same thing.

Derrick Pitts:

Can you do the math or not?

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But they don't really measure can you do the math,

Derrick Pitts:

what they measure is can you persevere to learn the math if you have it?

Derrick Pitts:

And, or, have you been trained up to this day to just know it, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And so most of us coming in not trained up to this day.

Derrick Pitts:

Those are the lucky few who have it in their house, in

Derrick Pitts:

their community, they got lucky.

Derrick Pitts:

But then that whole perseverance thing, all the studies show, what

Derrick Pitts:

determines whether or not you succeed?

Derrick Pitts:

Grit.

Derrick Pitts:

Right?

Derrick Pitts:

Because you're not prepared for it.

Derrick Pitts:

That's why it requires grit.

Derrick Pitts:

And, the filter of personalities is that you get nerds.

Derrick Pitts:

What's his name from The Big Bang?

Derrick Pitts:

Uh, Sheldon Cooper.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Sheldon Cooper.

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

You get Sheldon Cooper.

Derrick Pitts:

You're not going to physics school and hanging out with Snoop

Derrick Pitts:

Dogg, unless you met me, right?

Derrick Pitts:

Then you're like, "oh, I got a lucky I got Snoop Dogg."

Derrick Pitts:

And that's an unusual combination of skills and talents, right!

Derrick Pitts:

So that actually brings me now to the next question I have for you, which is your

Derrick Pitts:

personal story to me is one that every middle school, high school student in

Derrick Pitts:

any underserved community in almost any community anyway, should hear once a year.

Derrick Pitts:

And it's because you made a conscious decision at a point

Derrick Pitts:

to do something different.

Derrick Pitts:

Your book, that came out in '21, you talk about how you originally

Derrick Pitts:

lived the life of the street.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Oh yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

And that's part and parcel of who you are.

Derrick Pitts:

So, can you talk a little bit about what that was like, but really

Derrick Pitts:

importantly in this is, how did you make that transition to science?

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

So the science was always there.

Derrick Pitts:

So what happened with me is being left alone a lot allows you to be

Derrick Pitts:

alone with yourself and your mind.

Derrick Pitts:

And so I started devouring books, but the books I started devouring,

Derrick Pitts:

I remember the very first book that just captured my imagination

Derrick Pitts:

was Edith Hamilton's Mythology.

Derrick Pitts:

Oh, okay.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: I just love fantastical stories.

Derrick Pitts:

Sure, right.

Derrick Pitts:

Mm-hmm.

Derrick Pitts:

. Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: You know, and, so, you know, I had a mother who made

Derrick Pitts:

sure I was in church every Sunday.

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

I know that trip.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: You know the Bible stories, right.

Derrick Pitts:

They're also fantastical, but of course the Bible was not written

Derrick Pitts:

in everyday English, so it took me a while to get to reading that!

Derrick Pitts:

But then I next discovered comics from my cousins, Marvel comics, DC comics.

Derrick Pitts:

Thought it was amazing.

Derrick Pitts:

And then when I was nine years old in the country, nothing to do in the wintertime,

Derrick Pitts:

I read my first novel, my first adult book, and that was Roots by Alex Haley.

Derrick Pitts:

And that really just, you know, the fact of how reading sucked me into the

Derrick Pitts:

story in a way that watching and picture books didn't, just really blew my mind.

Derrick Pitts:

And it was like, "Oh my God, this is a treasure trove!

Derrick Pitts:

Where are these book things?

Derrick Pitts:

You know, let me get more of them!"

Derrick Pitts:

I didn't have access to more, but my mother had purchased

Derrick Pitts:

a set of encyclopedias.

Derrick Pitts:

And so I decided when I was 10 the next year, I'm going to read them from A to Z.

Derrick Pitts:

Let me start at A.

Derrick Pitts:

I get to E, and I discover Albert Einstein.

Derrick Pitts:

And man, it was like, fantastical, but true!

Derrick Pitts:

This is not the comics.

Derrick Pitts:

This is not mythology.

Derrick Pitts:

This is true.

Derrick Pitts:

My mom would work shift work, right?

Derrick Pitts:

3-11, 11-7, she'd do double shifts.

Derrick Pitts:

So, you know, there was times where I didn't see her for a week or whatever.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, I come home and she's got two or three books from the library on Einstein,

Derrick Pitts:

left them on the kitchen table for me.

Derrick Pitts:

And I decided to teach myself relativity.

Derrick Pitts:

Uh, but at the same time, you know, I was going through these hoods.

Derrick Pitts:

Like I moved every year for a decade, and sometimes multiple times per year.

Derrick Pitts:

And it was either, you know, South Central LA or Houston Third

Derrick Pitts:

Ward, Houston South Park area.

Derrick Pitts:

New Orleans Ninth Ward, New Orleans East, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And then there's rural Mississippi.

Derrick Pitts:

It was tough!

Derrick Pitts:

You know, it was the seventies and the eighties.

Derrick Pitts:

Gang life was a thing.

Derrick Pitts:

And I was not trying to be in a gang.

Derrick Pitts:

The story I hear on the media is always like, "oh, they

Derrick Pitts:

joined the gang for protection."

Derrick Pitts:

I looked at it the exact opposite.

Derrick Pitts:

I was like, "these are very fools I'm trying to avoid!"

Derrick Pitts:

Why am I going to join them?

Derrick Pitts:

I'm better off by myself and my wits!

Derrick Pitts:

You know, it felt like every day was like running a gauntlet, man.

Derrick Pitts:

I know that.

Derrick Pitts:

I know that experience.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: And it was many types of bad, actors, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And some of them were adults, right?

Derrick Pitts:

And you're a kid out there.

Derrick Pitts:

So man, my mom, seeing the writing on the wall because my older first

Derrick Pitts:

cousins, you know, these dudes were crips from the early seventies and

Derrick Pitts:

you know, by the late seventies and eighties, they're robbing banks.

Derrick Pitts:

And two of the three go to prison.

Derrick Pitts:

That's really close to you.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Oh man, my whole family, my father, when I moved

Derrick Pitts:

to the South, you know, I started dealing with my dad at nine years old.

Derrick Pitts:

By the time I go to college at Tougaloo, my dad's my plug, right?

Derrick Pitts:

I'm driving down New Orleans, picking up packages, coming

Derrick Pitts:

back to Jackson, Mississippi.

Derrick Pitts:

And ultimately, by the time I'm 21.

Derrick Pitts:

I'm addicted.

Derrick Pitts:

My roommate who was my business partner is addicted.

Derrick Pitts:

My father's addicted.

Derrick Pitts:

My brother's addicted.

Derrick Pitts:

And man, the life of the street got really dark and really dangerous.

Derrick Pitts:

And I find myself literally at gunpoint on a number of occasions.

Derrick Pitts:

And the scariest thing to me, which made me pull out of it the first time,

Derrick Pitts:

was when I found myselfnabout to pull a gun and kill a guy, shoot a guy.

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

And my roommate who was really, you know, he was like, "dude, this is not you.

Derrick Pitts:

What is going on?"

Derrick Pitts:

And so I pulled back, and I was able to stay clean for like a year.

Derrick Pitts:

And then I went back in right, right?

Derrick Pitts:

At the end of the summer before my last year at Tougaloo.

Derrick Pitts:

And my first day of my last year at undergraduate, I'm in a drug bust

Derrick Pitts:

that morning, and that night I find myself literally at gunpoint kidnapped.

Derrick Pitts:

What?

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Horrific.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

I didn't put this in a book.

Derrick Pitts:

The publisher was like, "it's too much!"

Derrick Pitts:

That's crazy!

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Totally crazy, man.

Derrick Pitts:

But when you're out there in the streets from midnight to 6am, all bets are off.

Derrick Pitts:

Forget about civilization.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, it's a, it's a whole other world.

Derrick Pitts:

It's rough.

Derrick Pitts:

What was it that triggered you out of that?

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Man, you just get tired of it, man.

Derrick Pitts:

You just get tired of it.

Derrick Pitts:

It happened when I was at Stanford.

Derrick Pitts:

I found myself at gunpoint yet again, and I'm just like, man, I

Derrick Pitts:

just can't take this another day.

Derrick Pitts:

And you know, and there was something in me that kind of made

Derrick Pitts:

me want to destroy myself as well.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, my childhood trauma.

Derrick Pitts:

I was such a, like, double spirited person, like you have the angel on one

Derrick Pitts:

shoulder and the devil on the other.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, on the one hand, I believed in myself, I believed I could do

Derrick Pitts:

everything, but on the other hand, I felt like, oh, you know, you're

Derrick Pitts:

a piece of trash, destroy yourself.

Derrick Pitts:

Right.

Derrick Pitts:

Because that's how I was treated.

Derrick Pitts:

I always say, you know, as a dude, it takes like 26 to get some sense.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah.

Derrick Pitts:

Right!

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: And that's what kind of happened, that was around the age.

Derrick Pitts:

Then I had an example.

Derrick Pitts:

I had a mentor, right?

Derrick Pitts:

Art Walker was an example for me.

Derrick Pitts:

Oh, he was awesome!

Derrick Pitts:

Art Walker was an astronomy professor, a physics professor at Stanford University.

Derrick Pitts:

And he was one of the first black astrophysicists on the faculty.

Derrick Pitts:

And Art Walker was an incredible individual because he really

Derrick Pitts:

worked hard to act as a mentor to physics students of color.

Derrick Pitts:

He really made sure that he shepherded along as many physics

Derrick Pitts:

students from underrepresented populations as he possibly could.

Derrick Pitts:

In fact, one of his first graduate students was Sally Ride.

Derrick Pitts:

Not only was his work groundbreaking in X-ray astronomy, but he really was

Derrick Pitts:

that mentor for African Americans in astronomy, well before there were many

Derrick Pitts:

physicists of color in faculty positions,

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: He was awsome.

Derrick Pitts:

But at the same time, you got to look at the filters that exist.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, there's a trauma in the community that I'm from,

Derrick Pitts:

the African American community.

Derrick Pitts:

And so if you look at the idea of a black man who behaves like a white man,

Derrick Pitts:

as we would look at it back then, right?

Derrick Pitts:

We had to work for that - whitewashed.

Derrick Pitts:

So when I first met Art, I was attracted to him, but at the same

Derrick Pitts:

time, he wasn't my kind of Black guy, if you know what I mean, right!

Derrick Pitts:

Yeah, of course.

Derrick Pitts:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: But now, you know, I was ignorant.

Derrick Pitts:

And that's what you learn, right?

Derrick Pitts:

You learn that there is no group of people for whom all good is

Derrick Pitts:

in them or all bad is in them.

Derrick Pitts:

It's an individual culture.

Derrick Pitts:

And so take any group of people, whatever, however you want to classify them.

Derrick Pitts:

Physicists, a race, a religion, an ethnicity, and you plot them on some

Derrick Pitts:

goodness, against some goodness, it's going to be a bell curve every time.

Derrick Pitts:

It's an individual by individual thing.

Derrick Pitts:

You learn.

Derrick Pitts:

You mature.

Derrick Pitts:

Education, travel, interacting with people of all ilks.

Derrick Pitts:

You get a lot of that BS out of your mind.

Derrick Pitts:

Now the very last thing for you, why are you so dedicated to this?

Derrick Pitts:

You do a lot of media stuff, Hakeem.

Derrick Pitts:

You know, you're on a lot of programming here.

Derrick Pitts:

You serve on a lot of different panels, both nationally

Derrick Pitts:

recognized and small scale.

Derrick Pitts:

You're the president of NSBP and all of these other things that

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convey a sense that you have some responsibility for helping people

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understand the world of science.

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Why is that important to you?

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Why are you so dedicated to that?

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: I have no idea, man.

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I've always been down with that for some reason, and I feel like it's

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almost a responsibility and a duty.

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You know, I really think about the people from similar backgrounds

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to me, the people that are in the out, you know, I've always had the

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personality of pulling for the underdog.

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And then the other part of it is, you know, it's sort of ingrained in

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me in my community of be useful, you know, be useful to your community, be

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useful to your society, you know, and this is kind of what I have to offer.

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Listen, I could be a supermodel.

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You know what?

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I'm not going to go along with that, but I'll let you say that.

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That's fine.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: You've not seen my ab!

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You gotta believe in yourself, brother.

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Go ahead.

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I got it.

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I got it.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Listen, I'm still convinced I'm going to go to the

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NBA and be the greatest player ever!

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Good.

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Good.

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That's great.

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I love that.

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I love that self confidence.

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Well, look, you're killing it.

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You're absolutely killing it in that regard of serving that audience.

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From an old head, you are doing exactly the kind of thing that we

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would want our younger brothers to do.

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And you are putting up that example that we think is really important.

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But you're also introducing people to science in a real, tangible manner that's

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not bullshit in any way, but honors what science really is and what it does.

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And you apply that across different disciplines in your life.

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And at the same time, you've been able to show people that you can make a

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decision about what you want to do.

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And you can change and go in a direction you want to go, whatever that is.

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And so, I want to just applaud you for doing all that stuff.

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And, I want to thank you again for being willing to do this.

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Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi: Anytime.

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Thank you so much.

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I always love the opportunities I have to talk with Hakeem.

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I love how vibrant and alive he is when he's speaking about all of

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these things that he's interested in.

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While he's telling stories or if he's talking about astrophysics

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or presenting just his perspective on so many interesting things.

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And indeed he has a really unique perspective that I deeply appreciate and

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I also really appreciate it that he's not afraid to present his perspective, and he

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seems to come from the school that every perspective is worth examining, because

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you don't know what nuggets are there.

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And he does a really great job of allowing room for that and

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presenting his own perspective and I think that's really great.

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I think we need to see more examples of that, of having an open mind,

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to listen to other people to see what their point of view is.

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Because you never know what we might learn from that.

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Every time I talk with Hakeem, I always learn something new.

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So I really do appreciate that.

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And I always look forward to the next opportunity I have to listen to him.

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So, if you have a chance to pick up Hakeem's book, or catch him on

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one of the programs he so often appears on, I think you'll really

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enjoy learning more about him.

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And learning to view the universe a little bit through his eyes as well.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Curious Cosmos today.

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We'll see you next time.

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This podcast is made in partnership with RADIOKISMET, Philadelphia's

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premier podcast production studio.

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This podcast is produced by Amy Carson.

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The Franklin Institute's director of digital editorial is Joy Montefusco.

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And Erin Armstrong runs marketing, communications, and digital media.

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Head of operations is Christopher Plant.

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Our mix engineer is Justin Berger.

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And I'm Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer and director of the Fels

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Planetarium at the Franklin Institute, and your host for this podcast.

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Thanks so much for listening.

The Franklin Institute

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