Know weve a younger audience, thats wikipedia without the internet. Thats where he was introduced to Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity. After the short time in the navy, he began his higher educati education, excuse me, earning his bachelors of science in physics and mathematics and a miner chemistry, by the way. A masters degree in physics and ph. D. Would follow from stanford. Summing it up like that makes it sound easy. In interviews he points out the hardships and rewards for his perseverance, fueled by the drive to silence his doubters. Through that perseverance, his resume now includes eight u. S. Patents, a professorship in the physics and Space Sciences at Florida Institute of technology, being named the chief science officer for discovery communications, you might have seen him from a show called outrageous acts of science, a Research Position at mit, and most recently a position at nasa in washington, dc. His research focuses on the development of instrumentation for spacebased astronomical observation. He is most distinguished in the area of expanding and improving Science Education here and abroad. He is an astrophysicist, a tv host, a voice actor, an industry mercenary who is problem solving across many disciplines, and not just astrophysicists and simply an inspiration. Please welcome to the podium dr. Hakeem oluseyi. [ applause ] thank you for that wonderful introduction. It doesnt happen very often that someone properly pronounces my last name. Thats quite an achievement. I would like to thank you all for having me here at westminster college. Its a great honor. I recognize whose footsteps im following in. So i would like to thank your president for having me and his wonderful family for hosting me. From whats in the program. I would also like to thank professor rosen and halsey for hosting me. If you look at your program, you might find that what im going to talk about is a bit different from whats in the program. It depends on which program you have. So there is this nice pretty one here, audacious ingenuity, that describes my abstract and what im going to discuss. And i wanted to talk about innovation, because thats the theme this week. So ive been able to innovate in the sciences and in education. And so whenever im talking to students, right, i want to make it about you, not so much about me, right . And the lessons ive learned and how you can apply them in your own lives. Now, when we think about innovation, there is no shortness of innovation in our country. Were a country that maintains a lead in science as well as in economics because of the richness in innovation that occurs here in america. But theres a particular type of innovation i want to talk about that happens in science. Thats when you have these big paradigm shifts, right, when things just change. And this hit me personally, because apparently people like me becoming a wellknown scientist is a paradigm shift for some people. There were these articles that were written about me several years ago, and the first article was titled, rise of a gangster nerd. The second article was titled, the gangsta physicist. I saw these titles and the first thing i think is, its not like im Walking Around the lab and intimidating people and robbing them. Anymore. [ laughter ] so why are they focused on the past . We dont look at our president ial candidates and call donald trump the wet your diaper president ial candidate, right . We focus on who he is today. And i really didnt understand how this would impact my career either, right . Having the title the gangsta physicist. But one thing happened, someone mentioned i talked to students at lunch and someone mentioned to me that they had saw this ted talk on infinity. Did you know that talk took place in a prison . Yeah. So it turns out that i was invited to go to this prison, youre the only person that the prisoners specifically requested, which was kind of scary. And i didnt understand, why did they want me . And i found out after i gave my talk. I was walking through the prison and on sight, prisoners would recognize me, and the would say, hey, the gangsta physicist. Right . For day in prison i was a shot caller. I was the man in prison, i could order people around. They were using the article to inspire these prisoners, they would say, look at this guy, look at his past, look at his life, you can do this too. The statistics of recidivism in California State Prison is really bad, right . For those people who are released from prison, a very High Percentage return to prison afterwards, somewhere around 90 . But for those prisoners who receive a minimum of an associates degree, the recidivism rate fell to 6 , from 90 to 6. So they were using this article and the Antirecidivism Coalition to help these prisoners with their lives. Thats another paradigm shift. When i think about paradigm shifts in physics, there is something going on in the world of physics thats so amazing, i just have to share it with you. You students are the next generation of thinkers. We look at the way we solve problems in physics, sometimes it takes many generations. There is a saying that goes, the grandparents lay the cornerstone and the grandchildren erect the steeple, right . So here is the foundation that has just been laid. There were a couple of papers published a hundred years ago and they both involve Albert Einstein. Weve come up with this equation, not me. Researchers came up with this equation that goes, er equals epr. Er is the paper by einstein and rosen that predicted the existence of a wormhole. Do you guys know what a wormhole is . A wormhole is when you have a black hole and under certain conditions the black hole can be a portal to another location in time and a space. So you could instantly travel from a location, one location in space to another location thats hundreds or thousands or millions of lightyears away. And it sounds like Science Fiction, and its incorporated in Science Fiction. But the laws of physics say this could actually happen. The problem though is these worm holes are very, very unstable. The likelihood of it was really, small, we thought. Now, if youre a scientist, one way that we innovate is through hate. Did you catch that . Through hate. Here is what i mean. There is an example from history, in the 19th century there was a question of how does the process of defraction work. So we knew how reflection works. We knew how refraction works. What is defraction . The most common instance of defraction is when you see oil on the surface of water, you see this rainbow pattern. What is the light doing to make that happen . The French Academy of sciences held a contest to solve that problem. A gentleman submitted an essay and that essay relied on the fact that light travels as wave. Now, physicists did not think light traveled as a wave. They thought, as isaac newton thought, that light is a series of particles. So he submits his essay, and on this panel as a judge is a mathematician who says, yeah, this looks elegant but i know its wrong. What am i going to do . Im going to take these equations and im going to see if they predict anything that i know cannot be true. And he found something. He found that if you were to take a round object, a circular object, and take it into a dark room and cast a light on it, that in the center of the shadow of that object there would be a spot of light. Now, that is obviously ridiculous. A shadow is darkest at its center. But also on the panel was an experimentalist. And he said, well, you know, i never thought to do that experiment. Let me take a round object into a darkroom, cast a shadow, and see if the spot of light is there. And what do you think he saw . The spot of light was there. So that phenomenon became known as poussaints spot, because he discovered it in the equations, although he was attempting to hate on the theory, right . So Albert Einstein did the same thing. In the early 20th century, Quantum Mechanics came about, which was very different from his general relativity. He thought, let me look at quantum mechanical system of equations and see if it predicts anything i know cannot be true. He found what he called spooky action at a distance that we today call Quantum Entanglement. A paper was written by einstein, and rosen and epr. We have this equation, er equals epr. Let me explain this Quantum Entanglement to you. Suppose i have a twin. When were born, we share an existence. We are entangled. And so due to our state of entanglement, whenever one of us is sitting, the other must be standing. And we sit and stand really fast. It happens in like a trillionth there are people who can measure whether im standing or sitting. Lets say throughout our lives there are three people observing me and three people observing him and they keep records to a millionth of a second to where each of us is sitting and standing. I decide im going to planet earth and going mars. They keep the record. And then i decide id like to go 2 million light years away to the galaxy. And they continue to keeps they records. After maybe 50 years the observers get together and they compare their records. And what they see is down to the million of a second that this is held true. Whenever one of us was sitting, the other was standing. How could that be . Because in order for me to know when my twin is sitting or standing, or my twin to know when im sitting or standing, a signal must traverse between us. So how could it happen instantaneously when we are separated by great distances. Because that is what space is. Space is what separates here from there. The reason youre seeing me right now and im seeing you is because light is traveling between us. Im not seeing you as you are now, but as you were some tiny fraction of a second ago. So how could they be communicating . So in the 90s, Quantum Entanglement was measured for the first time and it is a real phenomenon in our universe. And physicists have been trying to get their mind around how could this communication be taking place. But then not long ago, it was recognized that Quantum Entanglement and worm holes are perhaps the same phenomenon. That is mindboggling, because in order to create a worm hole, it takes an incredible amount of energy and mass to do that. These entangled particles are single elementary particles. Could they possibly be connected by worm holes . That appears to be the case. That appears to be true. So what does that tell us about the space in which we live . What does that tell us about space at all . So this isnt something that was unforeseen, the Science Fiction writers had a problem to solve if you are in the Starship Enterprise on the other side of the galaxy, a thousand light years away or 40,000 light years away, how do you communicate back with earth instantly . And the communication not take 40,000 years, right . Well they invented this concept of sub space. Are you familiar with that . Where are my nerds in here . Could the nerd section raise your hand . All right. There is my nerds over there. So they created sub Space Communication. So what does this have to do with innovation . Well, the theme of the innovation that im looking at and considering is looking at the old, but looking at it anew. So these papers existed for 100 years, we know about these two phenomenon and only recently have they been connected. And now this is about to transform how human kind looks at space. How are we going to take advantage of this in the future, what are going to be the new technologies that will take advantage of perhaps this sub Space Communication. Another example that is really similar, when Albert Einstein came up with his special theory of relativity, we learned that time is not something that is absolute. How time travels how time passes to you in comparison to me depends on our relative motion and difference in gravity between us. For example, when you are in space, versus being on the surface of the earth, time moves more quickly. Now when einstein looked at it that way, einstein looked at it and said, well when things move fast, distances get shorter. When things move fast, time passes more slowly. But in the modern times, we have a new interpretation of it. And the new interpretation of it is this at all times, everything in the universe moves at the speed of light. So right now, youre moving at the speed of light and im moving at the speed of light. Do you feel it . No, you dont feel it . Here is why you dont feel it. Because we are at rest relative to each other in space, we are together moving through space, moving through time at the speed of light. But if one of us was to take off going really fast through space, then because you must move at the speed of light at all times, you must move more slowly through time compared to the rest of us. So the exact equation is, is that the speed of light squared is equal to your speed through space squared plus your speed through time squared. Now here is some consequences of that. How could i take advantage of that . Lets do an experiment. Have you heard of the twin paradox . So in a twin paradox, it is exactly as i said. I have a twin and one of us leaves earth moving at very high speed, time passes more slowly for the traveling twin, they travel for some time, come back to earth, for them maybe ten years have passed, but on earth maybe a thousand years have passed. And this is a real phenomenon that we measure all of the time in a laboratory. So how could we take advantage of that today . There is one measurement that we wish to make. Youve heard that the university is expanding, correct . And so there is many evidences that point to this. But the thing that we have not been able to observe is the universe expanding in realtime. Can we see the expansion change . Can i observe the red shift of a galaxy change . What we call zdot, for example. So imagine the twin experiment done in a different way. So suppose there is is this light that filled all of the universe. And because the universe is expanding, as the universe expands, that light gets stretched out by the exact same amount that the universe expands. Well it turns out that exists. We call that light, the cosmic microwave background radiation. So my twin and i measure the wave length, some characteristic wave length of this microwave background radiation. And then the twin goes and travels at a very high speed relative to me. And comes back. And we both measure the wave length again. And so we get what scientists would call delta lambda, the change in the wave length. But we could also both measure the change in time between those two measurements. So for the twin who stayed home on earth, the time is big. And so for the twin who was traveling in space, the time is small. Right . So obviously we measured very different results for how fast that light was changing its wave length. Are you with me . Yeah. So what does this tell me . This tells me that if i want to do this observation, that physicists are trying to do right now, every day, of observing the changing of this light that fills the universe, or the measurement of a galaxy moving away, then all i have to do is move at a very, very high speed and then i can observe that perhaps in the human lifetime. Whereas our current ideas would take much, much longer. So these are deep, very abstract ideas of how we can use innovation. But in my work, as a professor, i judge these student competitions. And i with my role with discovery, i help to judge the discovery 3m young scientist challenge and what i see happening now is students just like yourselves are looking at the technology that has been around you, and saying, how can i repurpose this technology to solve a problem that exists today . But it really depends critically on defining the correct problem. Right. So let me give you an example. One problem that people have is safety. So suppose you work late and you have to go out to your parking lot, go out to the parking lot to get in your car at night. Right. So if you talk to a police officer, they will tell you that parking lots are very dangerous places. So how do you know that youre going to be safe going to your car . Well now cars are equipped with cameras. Right, to help you back up. So this student said to me, what if i build an app that will allow you to use your phone to turn on the cameras around your car to determine if you are safe going to your car at night. Right. That is a wonderful innovation. Lets take what already exists and lets repurpose it for something to solve a current problem of today. Now, another way that we can innovate, when i look at my old life of innovation, as a scientist, as a student, you become an expert in a particular field. Youre studying some phenomenon and you become intimate with it. When you become a ph. D student, your first job is to become current in your field. That means that you take everything on your topic that has ever existed and you read every paper you can. Especially from all of the top scientists. And now that you know what everyone else has said about it, now it is time for you to to add, to contribute to this knowledge, right. It is time for to you give something new. And that is when you receive your ph. D, when you make that new contribution. And so we have a saying that goes like this. Becoming an expert means knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. Right. And it is kind of close to true. But here is something i found. When i was a graduate student, i was studying solar physics. I was studying processes that occur on the surface of the sun. Youve seen the pictures of the sun with the plasma loops and the hot xray gas and i was on team that took that technology and applied it to observing the sun for the first time. And here i am studying the sun and what is happening there, but when i go to get a job, i dont go to academia, i go to Silicon Valley. And i go in Silicon Valley and im working on solving this problem of efficiency in making computer chips. So here is what happens. When you make a computer chip, there is many steps. Some steps deposit material on a silicone wafer, some remove material on a silicone wafer and every step you need to know how well it works. Because if i had a big giant silicon disk of expensive computer