Professor Brian Cox has divided people after 'ruling out' a common belief while discussing the possibility of life after death.
The former musician turned physicist is largely known for his views on modern science through his various documentaries and books.
Born in Oldham, the 56-year-old was once the keyboardist for the 1990s rock band D:Ream, known for their hit song 'Things Can Only Get Better'.
Advert
Though after earning a PhD in particle physics from the University of Manchester, he gained global recognition and worked on the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
Cox became a household name in the field of physics and was invited to go on The Joe Rogan Experience back in 2019.
During the interview, he dismissed the idea of a soul being trapped inside our bodies and viewers were left stunned.
He said: "So, here is my arm. It is made of electrons and protons and neutrons.
"If I have a soul in there, something we don't understand but it's a different kind of energy or whatever it is we don't have in physics at the moment, it interacts with matter because I'm moving my hand around.
"So whatever it is, it is something that interacts very strongly with matter."
The professor explained that scientists have never detected the fifth force of nature, despite having high-precision tools at their disposal.
The four forces we know about are gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism.
"If you want to suggest there's something else that interacts with matter strongly, then I would say that it's ruled out," Cox added.
"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."
Commenting on what he had to say, one viewer thought: "What a mindblowing and touching explanation… we exist in this brief window in temporary complex formed structures to observe the universe…"
A second added: "The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody is rushing around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
However, others were not buying it, as a third penned: "I love physics, and love the sciences, but I'm always perplexed and humoured when science thinks it created our existence and forgets the science is merely a tool of observation and therefore is limited only to what it can observe."
Anish Vij