November 6, 2004: Philosophical Physics - Dr. Anthony Rizzi
Podcast: The Art Bell ArchivePublished On: Thu Oct 02 2025
Description: Art Bell interviews Dr. Anthony Rizzi, a theoretical physicist who earned degrees from MIT, the University of Colorado, and Princeton, and who served as the first scientist at Caltech's LIGO gravitational wave observatory. Rizzi explains his discovery of the first definition for angular momentum in general relativity, describing how gravity waves rippling through space make it nearly impossible to find a stable reference point for measurement.The conversation turns to time travel, where Rizzi takes a notably conservative position. He argues that time is fundamentally the measure of motion rather than a spatial dimension, making backward time travel logically impossible since the past no longer exists. Forward time travel, he explains, amounts to decoupling oneself from the motions of the universe, something already achieved in primitive form through frozen embryos and the time dilation experienced by orbiting astronauts.In a surprising philosophical turn, Rizzi builds a careful argument for the existence of the human soul and its immortality. He reasons that ideas lack the defining property of material things, having parts outside each other, and therefore cannot be physically destroyed. This non-material aspect of human nature, he contends, necessarily persists after bodily death, though separated from the senses it would be unable to acquire new knowledge on its own.
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