Brian Cox explains what he thinks happens after we die
Professor Brian Cox has shared what he really thinks happens once we die, using an interesting analogy.
It's not the first time the physicist and musician has commented on the topic, previously taking to Joe Rogan's podcast to speak about the 'four forces' that are gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism.
He's never been shy to share his expertise on science-related topics, recently debunking any suggestions of incoming terrestrial object 3I/ATLAS with the use of 'reliable' sources after a Harvard astrophysicist claimed it could be an alien spaceship.
Cox is also known for his strong stance against the Flat Earth theory (as most would be), often taking to social media to give fans his take on certain viral topics in the industry.
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Speaking previously about what may happen after death on the Joe Rogan Experience, Cox said that scientists still haven't detected what the fifth force of nature is, saying: "If you want to suggest there's something else that interacts with matter strongly, then I would say that it's ruled out, I would go as far as to say it is ruled out by experiments.
"Or at least it is extremely subtle and you would have to jump through a lot of hoops to come up with a theory of some stuff - that we wouldn't have seen when we've observed how matter interacts - that is present in our bodies," he said at the time.
But while appearing as a guest on Fearne Cotton's Happy Place podcast, he gave us an updated take on what we may experience after we pass on.
The host asks Cox what happens after we die, and specifically, where does our energy go?
He answered: "I mean, what is life? The answer is we don't really know," the scientist admitted.
Cox went on to explain that 'What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell', a 1944 book by Erwin Schrödinger predicted the existence of DNA before it was officially recognised and that his friend Paul Nurse, a geneticist who runs the Francis Crick Institute, recently wrote a book called 'What is Life?' which also comes to no conclusion.
But this didn't stop the physicist from outlining that 'you can pin some things down', explaining: "It's that there's energy - a flow, by energy I mean what do we do? We burn food in oxygen and if we stop burning food in oxygen, then we die.
"There's an energy in the way a steam engine does things. So there's that part of it and then there's information that it processes information as well. So there's an information component and an energy component," he went on.
Cox then compared us to 'a computing device in a sense' as we 'obey three basic physical laws': "There's got to be a source of energy, you've got to be able to do things and your structure remains and things like that, which implies that it's the same as your iPhone, which stops processing information when you take the battery out."
Apart from the fact that you can recharge an iPhone, Cox stated that 'life obeys the laws of physics, so it is part of the physical universe', meaning that there is no real way our spirits can stick around.
"There's no conceivable way that your conscious experience can persist when the machine stops working," he highlighted, calling it 'remarkable'.
Joshua Nair