RUSH: Now, Stephen Hawking has passed away, age 76, the longest surviving human in history with ALS. He had a variation of this disease that was not as deadly as the primary form of the disease is. Living to 76 with ALS is a big deal, and he’s been acknowledged as the smartest, the most intelligent, the brightest, years and years — light years — ahead of everybody in terms of knowledge of the universe and quantum physics and laser physics, astrophysics, all of physics’ fields. He’s just light years ahead of everybody, acknowledged to be smarter than anybody in the world.
Yet this guy said that we’ve got 200 years… Where have we heard this before? “We have 200 years! If we don’t figure out how to colonize someplace else, we’ve got 200 years and we’re toast.” Now, would somebody explain to me where else that we can go? Is there a planet that supports life right now? Would somebody explain this to me? Where is it? What are we gonna colonize? I’m not trying to be disrespectful to Professor Hawking. Folks, I’m just a college dropout radio guy. I just have common sense, everyday questions.
A guy says to me, “We’re toast in 200 years unless we figure out how to colonize X.” What? The moon? Mars? We’re gonna have to create global warming someplace, wherever we go, to be able to live there. You ever stop to think about that? I mean, and everybody swoons and thinks, “Wow, man! He’s so far ahead of all of us.” And I don’t doubt that, in his field, there’s no question he was light years ahead of everybody and there’s no way to prove it. We just all accepted it. But this colonizing someplace else?
It’s not just him. Elon Musk is on this. You know, all of these Silicon Valley brain wizards say, “The earth is gonna destroy us! Global warming, climate change are gonna destroy us. We’re gonna run out of this, run out of that.” We’re not running out of anything. Natural resources are increasing. Life expectancy is increasing. Life on earth has never been better than it is today in any statistical way that you want to measure it, and yet the doom-and-gloom crowd says, “Two hundred years! Two hundred…” That means the people who are gonna eventually colonize have not been born yet.
(interruption) Just did what? (interruption) I know he just… (interruption) This is not the first time I have raised questions… (interruption) Okay. Wait a minute, now. Snerdley and the staff are saying, “I can’t believe you did this. The guy just passed away!” Okay. What am I supposed to do? “Folks, I wish to join Professor Hawking in encouraging you and every one of us to begin immediately working on transferring our entire population to somewhere else. We’ve got 200 years to figure it out, and I today come before you to endorse…”
Is that what I was supposed to do because he passed away? (interruption) I don’t want you to hit the delay button. This is not a sign of disrespect. Is it sounding like a sign of disrespect? You know… (interruption) Of course I know I’m the only one in the world… (interruption) It’s not just on the day of Stephen Hawking passing away. I mean, Elon Musk mentions this, you know, twice a month, and whenever I hear about it, I say the same thing: “Where are we gonna go, and how are we gonna get one billion people there?
“How are we gonna get two billion people there? How are we gonna get 500,000 people there?” You know what Musk said? Musk said he’s gonna have a Mars trip next year, and if you sign up you’re likely to die making the trip. Well, sign me up! Put me on that first vessel. I can’t wait to die in the quest to colonize Mars. People swoon. “Oh, my!” because he can make a rocket land back on earth just as it took off. You know what? I’m going to go on Musk’s first mission to Mars. I will gladly die to facilitate this effort to colonize someplace.
Why would you go on a trip to Mars if you’re likely to die on the trip? Wouldn’t that kind of mean failure if you don’t get there and you’re not able to start…? (interruption) Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but Columbus didn’t know where he was going. We do know where we’re going. That makes us dumber than Columbus. We know we’re going to nothing! We know we’re going to where we can’t live. We know we’re going to where there isn’t a damn thing to keep us alive and we’re gonna do it anyway.
Columbus at least, you know, back then they thought the earth was flat (some idiots still do) and they feared falling off the edge of the earth. That’s the thing he faced. Columbus didn’t even know where he was when he got there, and look what they say about him now. Can you imagine the reports on Mars in 200 years about Elon Musk, what they’re gonna say about him if he does get there and colonize this place? They’re wanting to take down every Columbus statue all over the country now for racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, anti-Italian, whatever it is, prejudice.
I have all kinds of… You know, the Big Bang. Let’s look at the Big Bang. People accept that the Big Bang is how all of this began. Now, again, folks, I have a belief. One of the ways I have proven to myself… ‘Cause I think we’ve all tried to do this. We accept the faith, but then we still test it. As long as there are questions that we can ask… Meaning, we have been created with the intelligence to create or ask these questions, this quest for knowledge.
If there are questions we can ask to which we will never have the answers, then that gives me confidence that there is more than just life on earth. What is the point of creating beings who can ponder such places if they don’t exist? Certainly the Big Bang. Again, I’ll admit I’m just a college dropout radio guy, okay? I’m not a professional physicist. I’m not a professional scientist. I do not own a lab coat, white or light blue. So they tell me that the Big Bang is where everything began. Hawking says it’s the Big Bang and we’re still expanding.
The Big Bang was the size of what’s in a thimble. Massive energy we can’t even comprehend. Boom! Still expanding. But gravity and other stellar forces are going to cause the universe to contract. Once it expands, it’s gonna reach its max size and come back down to earth, so to speak, and we’re all gonna end up back in a thimble. Except you and I won’t be alive when that happens, and our sun will burn out. Now, I have what I think are common-sense questions. Okay, the Big Bang. There was this whatever-size — call it a golf ball-, tennis ball-size — piece of matter that big banged and we’re all here.
Where was it?
Where was this glob of matter that banged that created the universe?
Where was it?
(interruption)
No, no, no. You can’t say, “It was in the void.” You can’t say it was in another dimension, parallel or otherwise, astral plane. It had to be somewhere. Where was it? What was around it? Could you see it? Could somebody see this golf-ball-size bit of energy if they were not part of that? Could you be somewhere and see it? Could you be somewhere and witness this Big Bang instead of being a part of it? If so, where were you? Well, since nobody could see it, how the hell do they know it really happened?
But I’m not supposed to ask that. Another question. I ask scientists these questions. They cannot answer them for me. Another question I have: The universe. Well, definition of the universe is everything that is, but it has to be somewhere. Where is it? Can you get outside the universe and look at the universe as a non-part of it? If you can’t, then where is it? Space-time? What is space-time? Is that the speed the USS Enterprise moves through the galaxies with? What is space…?
My question is, “Where is it? Where is the universe?”
“Rush, you can’t ask that question. It’s a stupid question because the universe is everything that is!” (interruption) You might want to say it’s philosophical. It’s more like metaphysical. But, nevertheless, it’s also scientific: Where is it? It has to be somewhere! Everybody has to be somewhere. Everything has to be somewhere. Where was that little mass of energy before it blew up? Where are we now? Where is the universe? And how did it…? Where did that little golf ball, thimble…? Who put it there? Where…? (interruption) No, no, no, no, no. No, no.
There is no God in scientific… There is no God. (interruption) Huh-uh. No, God didn’t put it there, ’cause if God put it there then it’s somewhere other than the universe, and since God is not scientific — that’s religious — the scientific community does not go there. Professor Hawking didn’t. Professor Hawking said the notion of an afterlife is a fairy tale. Professor Hawking said that the notion of a heaven or an afterlife is… He said the human brain is nothing but a computer, and it’s gonna fail and shut down when its components cease to exist.
There’s no afterlife for broken-down computers, for failed computers. This is what Professor Hawking said. So this is it. This… Do you think Stephen Hawking had every question he had answered? I guarantee you he didn’t. He died still thirsting and questing for knowledge. We all do and we all will. And remaining, there will always be questions that we can’t answer. Not on earth, anyway. Not as we exist today. We’ll never be able to ever to answer them.
There are questions we can conjure that you could ask me today. I bet you in this audience could conjure any number of questions to which there are no answers, that we can find, that we can prove, such as, “Where’s the universe?” “Rush, it’s a stupid question because it isn’t anywhere. It’s everything.” It still has to be somewhere. Well, how do you get there? ‘Cause we’re there! It’s how do you get where we are from where we’re not; can you find it on Google Maps? Can you find it on Apple Maps? Waze will probably, just as a trick, come out and try to answer my question.
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RUSH: No human being will ever visit another galaxy. We’re stuck in the Milky Way, but it’s okay, because it’s so massive, we cannot even comprehend its size. Life on earth has never been better. We just had the story yesterday and the day before. Life on earth has never been better in terms of poverty, in terms of war, in terms of violence, in terms of wealth and life expectancy. The only reason you don’t know it is you watch the media every day.
If you spend time watching the media, news, you’re gonna end up bombarded with nothing but negativity, doom, gloom, pessimism. By definition, that’s all you’re gonna get. And it can affect you. You know, I’ve often said, “We need to redefine smart.” The people that we are told are brilliant really say and do and believe some crazy stuff. Some really silly, inexplicable stuff. Such as, “We’ve only got 200 years because the earth is going to cease to be able to support life!” Well, the earth is supporting life in record numbers with record wealth.
Disease, pestilence, poverty are all declining. There have been doom-and-gloom liberals starting in the seventies with Dr. Paul Ehrlich and The Population Bomb book predicting the end of life on earth because of the end of earth because humanity is exploiting resources and deleting them but nothing could be further from the truth. And you’ll note it’s climate change advocates who are also aboard this, “We gotta get outta here and colonize something else!” Well, there’s no place else we can live, folks.
I mean, I hate to throw cold water on this, but there’s not. No. 1, there’s nowhere else we can get to! We can’t get to Mars. We can get to the Moon, but we’ve only been there, you know, a few times back in the late sixties, early seventies. The whole idea that we’ve gotta find some other place to live because earth is dying out? There isn’t another planet within proximity to us that has anywhere near the life-support systems of earth. This is it!
Yet some really smart people are scaring people to death. “We only got 200 years or we’ve gotta colonize Mars.” And it’s all predicated on the earth is dying and that we are killing it. I’m sorry, my friends, but I just don’t buy it, I don’t accept it, and I don’t think people that believe that are particularly smart. Or they may be very smart, and they might be brilliant manipulators, and they might be experts at manipulating public opinion to the negative, to the pessimistic, in order to control them.
It just depends on how you want to define it all.
But, if common sense is allowed to enter this idea, discussion, in any way, then the colonize some other planet or asteroid or moon or what have you crowd can be exposed as a bunch of frauds inside of five to 10 minutes.
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RUSH: I want to grab a call here before we get too far beyond the subject. We have a scientist who has called in from Corvallis, Oregon. That’s John, and I’m glad you got through. Welcome to the program, sir.
CALLER: Rush, what an honor.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Unbelievable. Yeah, I was really enjoying your science discussion this morning. I’m a scientist by training, and to add to your question of, “Where was this tennis ball-sized object?” I would add, “And how did it get there?” (chuckles)
RUSH: Yeah. Now, in what field of science do you work?
CALLER: Well, I no longer work as a scientist. I guess I call myself “a reformed scientist,” but I was an entomologist, which is the study of insects.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I had a career in that for a while. You know, the scientific training — the background you get as a true scientist — it never leaves you, the thinking. But you do it naturally (laughing) without training. You’re a college-dropout scientist, I guess.
RUSH: I come by it naturally?
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: To me, it’s just common sense. I’m not —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Okay. Somebody tells me that there was a tennis ball-size or whatever-size of compacted matter that just blew up and it became this massive universe that is incomprehensible to us in size, my first question is: Where was it?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And then yours: “Who put it there?” (laughing)
CALLER: Yeah. (laughing)
RUSH: Those are questions you’re not supposed to ask, you see.
CALLER: Right. So here’s a follow-up to that. I have many friends who are college professors here in this college town, Oregon State University, and we discuss climate change all the time, and it’s always me alone against five or six. But I often bring up this simple point which is — and you see this in nature programs all the time. It’s always the coral reefs — you know, Australia, Hawaii, all around the world, beautiful places — and how the world could not possibly function without them.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: They’re so critical.
RUSH: And the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is on its last legs because of climate change. Yeah, I’m up on speed on all of that.
CALLER: Right. But a mere 10,000 years ago, when the ice age was still full swing and just beginning to recede, sea level was almost 500 feet below what it is today, which means all of those reefs — virtually all of them — were high and dry. And the oceans were much cooler, which means wherever they were were completely different locations and probably much smaller or just didn’t even exist at all.
RUSH: Right. Now, here’s what you’re pointing out. What you’re… He’s giving an accurate history lesson of 10,000 years ago, the condition of the earth coming out of an ice age. Now, I have a question for you, John. ‘Cause what he’s really saying is a question I constantly ask climate change people: “How do you know that the climate conditions — the weather, the climate, whatever you consider it to be.
“How do you know that what it is now is perfection or the norm and that any variation from what it is now is bad? How do you know that? In the timeline of humanity, the timeline of existence of the earth, how is it that the pristine normal happens to be when all of these scientists are alive?” How would you answer that?
CALLER: Yeah, that the climate is always changing, and there have been times in the past, like this period called the Carboniferous Period when the earth was very hot, there was no snow, no glaciers anywhere, and there was more light then there has ever been. That’s when all the coal layers were laid down. You know, this moment in time is just the moment in time we’re in, and our best option (crosstalk).
RUSH: No, but this is how it gets politicized. The moment in timeline on this gigantic time of which we are not even the size of a speck of sand… To put this in perspective, the timeline of earth from beginning to present, it’s either billions and billions or it’s 10,000 years. That’s the argument. Let’s say billions and billions. If it’s billions and billions or even if it’s 10,000, our time here — given life expectancy, 83, whatever it is — is a speck of sand. Who are we? What kind of audacious arrogance do we have to say that the way things are now is the way they were at the birth or creation or the so-called norm? We don’t even know that!
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RUSH: Martin in Gainesville, Florida, you’re next. It’s great to have you, sir.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I wanted to touch on a couple of points you made regarding Stephen Hawking and the Big Bang Theory. For all of his intellect and all of his intelligence and knowledge, his premise about the spontaneous self-assembly of matter steps on the a priori laws — not theories, laws — of physics that says that matter and energy don’t spontaneously come from nowhere; magically, they’re there.
So your notion that this tennis ball-sized bit of matter that represents all of the universe just came from nowhere — magically, it was there (nothing put it there; it wasn’t created) and then it just all of a sudden it just exploded with no external source of energy) — defies the laws of physics. Not the theories of physics, the basic laws. When you base your premise by trampling on the underpinnings of the laws of physics, what you say holds no water. It’s a theory based on a fallacy that the basic laws are not true.
RUSH: Now, you realize, Martin, what the…? By the way, are you a scientist by trade? Are you in the scientific endeavor?
CALLER: I’m a botanist and a high school science teacher. I’ve got several degrees in botany. I love science and I read and pay attention to a lot of things that go on in the scientific community.
RUSH: All right. Great. Well, I just wanted to warn you that on the day here of Stephen Hawking’s death, on Comedy Central they will likely single you out as an example of people who have no soul.
CALLER: (chuckling)
RUSH: “How dare you criticize anything Professor Hawking said on the day he died, when he was only trying to save humanity? He was only trying… He was better than us! He was so much better than us. He was doing everything he could to enlighten us, and if we don’t listen, it’s not his fault — and you come along and throw water all of it.” They’re gonna get you.
CALLER: Let me throw one more comment out for you, and I’ll let it go.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Similar to Stephen Hawking basing his premise on a fallacy is Pencil Neck basing his witch-hunt —
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: — on absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Very similar. When you’re a self-selecting fraternity of people whose existence going forward depends on trampling on fallacies, you’re not to be trusted.
RUSH: Well, amen to that. “Pencil Neck.” (chuckles) “Self-selecting fraternity of people” is a great way to describe these people. Pencil Neck has no evidence. He has hope, he has dreams, but he’s got no evidence. Now, for those of you just joining and trying to figure out, “What is this Hawking stuff?” This is the danger of a monologue in the first hour and taking a call about it an hour and 45 minutes later. But we don’t structure anything here. This program is total improv. So Martin here has been on hold for an hour waiting for the opportunity here to contribute, and I simply…
You know, folks, I’m not a conformist, and I don’t get sucked in by conventional wisdom. In fact, conventional wisdom repels me. Conventional wisdom actually pushes back at me. I don’t think I’m constitutionally capable of joining conventional wisdom, because it’s groupthink. And you have to set aside your own brain, you have to set aside your curiosity, you have to disregard your own common sense, and you have to subscribe to the groupthink. And I’ve never… I have just never been able to do it, and it’s not a conscious thing.
It’s not that I study and try to determine what is the conventional wisdom on any given issue and then make a conscious decision to avoid it. I just never find myself in that group of people. You could call it a clique. You could call it the cool club or whatever. But I have never been in the conventional wisdom club, and I hear what people say. I’m the mayor of Realville, and I’ve always believed that words mean things. And I’ve heard this explanation of the origins of the universe with the Big Bang, and like I say:
I’m just an average person out here. I’m not a scientist. But some of this, it doesn’t make sense. It defies what I’ve always thought was possible. It’s not like Star Trek where we will blindly accept a method of propulsion that will never exist. I mean, warp speed for the USS Enterprise? We accept it because we’re already living in a fictional, alternative reality by watching the show. So we set it aside and we accept it, and we don’t demand reality from those shows. It would destroy the reason for watching them. It’s escapism.
It’s fun to dream about being able to tell somebody on the bridge, “Warp speed in three, two, one,” and bammo! You’re there. It would be really cool to be able to do that. (chuckling) But we don’t have propulsion anything like that, and we never will. But we don’t apply that kind of doubtfulness and smirk because these shows are escapist and we know it. But when somebody comes along and tells us that everything that “is,” which is bigger than any human being can possibly visualize or imagine…
The size of the universe… By definition, the universe is everything that is, and we’re told that it came from a tennis ball, golf ball, baseball, football, basketball, I don’t care. It’s small, very small, just compressed matter that just couldn’t contain itself and blew up one day, massively and created the universe, and it is still expanding. And so, to me, it’s perfect common sense to ask, “Well, where was that? Where was this…?”
Imagine it’s a tennis ball. “Where was this tennis ball-size matter? Where was it?” It had to be somewhere because everything has to be somewhere. So how did this massive universe get created? These are the answers that these people cannot provide. They don’t have these answers. Nobody will. It’s impossible to answer. But we’re gonna be asking them for the rest of our lives and all kinds of questions like it.
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RUSH: Okay. Try this headline. You ready for this? “Oklahoma Mom Who Once Married Her Son Will Now Go to Jail for Marrying Her Daughter.” (chuckling) We sit here and we’re talking about quantum physics and where the Big Bang was, and in Oklahoma… (laughing) You just have to laugh.