Episode 341: 11-05-15
On this week’s show, John C. Lonardo shares how CCIM helped him build his business, Don Weidenfeld and Cindy Blumenfeld show us how to go green and SAVE money, and Dr. Charles Bennett talks about the universe and lots of other really cool stuff!
CCIM Voice
John C. Lonardo, CCIM, is a Senior Advisor with ComReal Miami. Lonardo, CCIM, is a 28-year veteran of the South Florida Real Estate market. Lonardo’s sales, landlord and tenant representation transactions in office, retail, and industrial product types total over 3 million square feet. He is the CCIM Scholarship Chair for the Miami-Dade/Monroe District.
We discuss how CCIM has helped him to build his business. We also get his thoughts on the Coral Gables Commercial Real Estate Market.
Go green and save green
Don Weidenfeld, Managing Member at Magnum Energy Solutions, talks about how to save up to 40% on your commercial real estate operating expenses and take that right to the bottom line.
Cindy Blumenfeld is Director of Business Development of Engineered Tax Services, one of the only qualified professional engineering firms that has a staff comprised of its own licensed engineers, to include LEED Accredited Professionals, and tax experts ranging from CPAs to a former senior IRS executive.
We discuss how to modify your building to save money and pay for it through green energy tax credits.
What is up with the universe?
Dr. Charles Bennett is the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. His major field of research is cosmology – the study of the properties of the universe as a whole. In particular, he contributed to the establishment of a standard model of cosmology and is currently engaged in testing and extending that model.
We discuss how big the universe really is and lots of other really cool stuff!
Episode 341: 11-05-15 (To download, right-click and select “Save Link As”.
Transcription:
Jim Fried: We’ve got a great show for you today. We’ve got the CCIM voice, we’re going to have Magnum Energy Solutions and Engineered Tax Services. We’re going to talk about going green and saving money and then we’re going to end the show with the cool thing. We’re going to have Dr. Charles Bennett. He is from Johns Hopkins University and he is a cosmologist. He works for NASA. We’re going to talk about all kinds of really cool things so stick with us. We’ve got a really terrific show. We’re going to get started right upfront with John Lonardo, CCIM from ComReal. We’ll be back after this. AC!
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: We’re back on Fried On Business, we’ve got John Lonardo. He’s our CCIM voice. He’s a senior advisor at ComReal Miami, he’s going to tell us why he’s joined the CCIM, give us some good market information if we’re lucky we’ll call CCIM present to find, Miller Rodriguez will call in and give you a high five. But since he hasn’t called in John, you’re on.
John Lonardo: Jim, good evening. It’s good to be here and I had to stand in line to get on this voice show. I just watch it with all my CCIM members. Love to get on the program and talk about CCIM and how it benefits us and benefits the clients.
Jim Fried: Thank you for joining us and I think we’re going to benefit a whole lot of people today but first I want to talk about why you got the CCIM and then I want to talk about where you were last week.
John Lonardo: Okay. Way back in 1988 I joined a firm run by senior CCIM very involved gentleman by name RJ Katz and he’s retired now. And I got in there and started learning industrial real estate at the time and I said why do I need the CCIM for. He says ”Here’s what I can tell you. You go take the courses, you do the networking, you do the deals the way the CCIM, you’ll never go to a meeting and not be able to understand what’s going on. You’ll know all the concepts and that’s key. It’s to know the bottom line of how things get done”. And this is what you learn in CCIM.
Jim Fried: You got your CCIM, you’re beyond baseline. The CCIM gets in a baseline and then you start going. You had a great experience last week in Austin. Tell us a little bit about what you did.
John Lonardo: Every year the CCIM has a national conference that’s usually in the fall. This year they chose..they choose a different city every year, this year it was Austin, Texas because Austin is on the rise right now, there’s a lot of attention going on in that community.
Jim Fried: So almost as hot as I am.
John Lonardo: Almost, Jim, almost. But the barbecue was a lot better. The way I looked at, there was at least 400 members from all over the country and I thought of, I go to Italian-American foundation programs with my older brother and it was like going to one of these things. Everybody that had something in common they all had some Italian heritage. At CCIM we all have the CCIM, we took the course, we speak the same language and once we get together we do business.
Jim Fried: That means you do referrals that you help each other share stories and experience. I guess you got people that you can call with more experience, people that you lead that have less experience?
John Lonardo: That’s correct. One thing I can tell you about the CCIM group is that everybody has one thing in common. How can I help you? How can we do a deal? How can I make you understand my area of expertise? And this is what you get all the time.
Jim Fried: That’s just amazing. I know that you play a special role here in Florida, John for the CCIM Miami-Dade/Monroe District. You’re the scholarship chair. What does that really mean?
John Lonardo: The Scholarship Chair as a position is to promote scholarships to commercial real estate practitioners that want to get the CCIM designation and the courses are not inexpensive. So giving a scholarship for $1000 or $500 they can go towards taking these courses is a big lift and it helps us renew our membership. It helps bring people into the organization. So education is I think the key at solving most problems and that’s why I’ve always taken at this one of my favorite positions in the CCIM chapter is to be the Scholarship Chair.
Jim Fried: If somebody wants to get a CCIM and they want a scholarship, how do they find out about that?
John Lonardo: CCIM has a tremendous site called ccim.com and once you go there you’ll find a number of subjects that you can cover in that site.
Jim Fried: And our radio show.
John Lonardo: And the radio show, the voice. Once you go there you can see all the courses that are being offered, what cities they’re being offered because they’re offered all over the United States. We are all over United States and in the world, in China, in South Korea, in Europe. So these courses are given on international basis. So it doesn’t matter where you’re from, you can have an opportunity to attend a CCIM course and with the scholarship, it’s just going to be that much more beneficial.
Jim Fried: Sounds really great. That sounds to me like you got like education tourism that somebody can do.
John Lonardo: This could be education tourism because usually the cities are major markets. When we have the courses, this year we’re offering three courses in Miami, people love to come to Miami in the winter and get education.
Jim Fried: And everything else that comes along with that.
John Lonardo: We traditionally sell out our courses here in Miami because everybody wants to see what’s happening here.
Jim Fried: Your firm ComReal real estate service has just opened up an office in Coral Gables. What’s going on with that?
John Lonardo: ComReal has been around for almost 40 years, founded by Steve Smith. And we had been working on some transactions in the Coconut Grove area and he said ”I’d really like to open this office in the Gables but I need someone with your background, your experience”. I’ve been in the Gables market 15 years, done a lot of leases, done a lot of sales and he made it an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Jim Fried: Sounds like an Italian thing somebody would do.
John Lonardo: Yes. We have to do it that way. It’s the only thing we understand. So we closed down an office at the beginning of October, we’re going through some renovations in the metal of the CBD and it’s going to be very exciting. Steve is the creative and he basically wants to create the kind of 21st century real estate office. He calls it a ”meet-me place”. And as we’ve seen there’s a whole new trend in office space, in work space and we’re going to follow that lead and create this for real estate professionals.
Jim Fried: What’s going to be unique about the space?
John Lonardo: As I said, we call it a meet-me space so you’re not going to have these traditional little offices in the building. We’re going to have computer stations, collaborative work spaces, a tremendous technology platform plugged into this space and it’ll basically welcome your clients and welcome people to come there because it’ll be a place to get together and talk about real estate and do deals.
Jim Fried: Let’s talk about real estate right now for a second and maybe we can do a deal afterwards. What’s the market like in Coral Gables? And you can’t say that it’s on fire because I already played ”Fireball”.
John Lonardo: We never described the Gables as being on fire because that would be a little bit too high but what’s happening in the Gables is quite interesting. It’s going to the next level. Things that are happening downtown are discreet scape which is going to change the viability of doing business in young Miracle Mile and Gerald Avenue. And that’s a couple of the things. Merrick Park has exploded. There are several major residential mixed use commercial projects being built on the boards right now. That area has really taken off. There is new development downtown and this is what we’re seeing so the Gables has become in that the urban core type of place that the people want to go to, they want to live there, they want to work there and we’re seeing overall that the vacancy rates of office space, retail space are some of the lowest in the last few years.
Jim Fried: But you said they want to work there. I think they also want to live there which creates a whole thing coming together with all the shopping and livability and close to the airport and close to downtown, I think that the Gables is very well positioned in the central place in the whole city.
John Lonardo: It is very central there in the city and that’s why I love to work there and that’s why I live in the Gables and it’s become a walking place. This is the big thing. What’s your walk score? We recently listed a property. It has a 99 walk score because it’s in all the cultural areas and right near restaurants and they’re where the action is and this is what people want to do.
Jim Fried: I know what people want to do. People want to stay out of their cars and so they can come in, they can live in Coral Gables, they can work in one of the buildings, in one of the retail centers and then live right there, work right there, play right there, it’s a whole vertically integrated life style.
John Lonardo: That’s correct.
Jim Fried: Yes, you save on guest too. You can eat here and get guest, depends on where you go.
John Lonardo: Well, we do have the free trolley so you definitely can stay off the gas.
Jim Fried: Olly the Trolley, that’s my favorite part of Coral Gables. Did I say that? John, I know you’ve got a couple of good listings, why don’t you tell us about maybe one or two of them?
John Lonardo: I think the most exciting one right now is I just got an assignment to sell a commercial parcel in the Merrick Park area, it’s a 30,000 square foot commercial site with 380 feet on US 1 and it has the MXD zoning which means you can do retail, office, apartments, you can do auto dealership which of course we have in Coral Gables. So it’s very exciting and that’s something that we’ve just brought to market.
Jim Fried: You and I have to talk because I do all this urban land, I’m working with Jeff Berkowitz on his site at the Gable station so we need to compare those because I know who wants to do what.
John Lonardo: Well then we need to talk.
Jim Fried: Yes, but not on radio because the radio is not a place where we share all of our deepest and darkest secrets usually. Now, John, just a couple of minutes left, if the people want to find you at ComReal, I know that they can go to Coral Gables then in the middle of the town, you’ll just be right there because you make the market in Coral Gables. But if they wanted to call or look for you online, how do they do that?
John Lonardo: jlonardo@comreal.com and we are located at 51 Merrick Way at the street level. It’s right across from Fritz & Franz Bierhaus because everybody seem to know where that is and about a dozen other restaurants and so where you find us. 305 213 4050 if you want to dial it up.
Jim Fried: You got a great Twitter handle. It’s real short @comreal. It’s just amazing. Well done to Steve for that.
John Lonardo: In our market sometimes we call it ComReal.
Jim Fried: You’re too funny, John. We have Jets fans that listen. Why don’t you give the phone number just one more time?
John Lonardo: 305 213 4050. You can talk to me or Stella Vidal who is my partner and who has about 12 years behind her in commercial landing and real estate. We’re leading the charge now there in the Gables and we look forward to seeing everybody there.
Jim Fried: It’s a terrific team. John, thank you so much for finally climb your way to the top of the line and getting on the CCIM voice. You must have to push Frank away because-
John Lonardo: Yes, Frank likes to get into everything. He and I spend some nice time at the conference and really enjoyed it and went through all the food events and the inaugural and it was great.
Jim Fried: Listen, I had a great time too. It was a terrific conference, I can’t wait to go back next year. But now I have to say, we’ll be back after this. AC, it is yours.
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: We’re back, we’re here with Don Weidenfeld, he’s the managing member of Magnum Energy Solutions. We’re going to talk about how going green can save your money. Donny, you’re revved up, man?
Don Weidenfeld: I’m always revved up, Jim. I appreciate it and thank you very much again for inviting us on the show.
Jim Fried: It’s my pleasure. We’re trying to get you some good music there to crank it up and get you going. We’re also going to have Julio Gonzalez. He’s the CEO of Engineered Tax Services. Julio may not be able to join us, if not, he promises us that we will have his number one person Cindy Blumenfeld, Director of Business Development at ETS. One of the two will be on. But Don, let’s talk for just a minute. I got all these buildings going up in Miami and across country because everywhere it’s going vertical these days. And when they go vertical, they’re more expensive to build, run and operate. What do you think about that?
Don Weidenfeld: I’m sure that’s the case and when you’re going vertical, your construction costs accelerate pretty extensively and that’s why our products in a lot of cases keep some of those costs down.
Jim Fried: I know your products are great for retrofit that they don’t require wiring, they don’t require installation really, heavy installation but on deals, what’s the benefit to the new people? You have a new product out even, the routering stuff, tell us a little bit about that stuff.
Don Weidenfeld: That’s very interesting you should bring it up, we had a conference call to this afternoon with one of the larger multifamily builders in the country and they’re out of Texas and we’re discussing now with them. They’re new construction builders. First and foremost, as you mentioned, our products are much easy, are making retrofits unbelievably easy because we are wireless and battery-less. So with all the sensors that we put out but on the new construction and our new product which is the root which comes out next month, this is a product that will replace your wi-fi routers and it plugs right into the infrastructure through your thermostat. The thermostat will control all of your lighting and all of your HVAC as well as notifications, package delivery notifications, vents at the pool, the restaurants, whatever, you would like to use it for as an owner.
Jim Fried: Don, it sounds to me like you got to get into my contacts here. I got a few dozen developers that I think need to find out about that because they’re all trying to get the leg up and technology is where it starts because everybody is building a building, everybody is building the same basic building, concrete, steel, glass. Okay, what color of glass, what do you paint the building, who’s the architect? Beautiful. But once I get inside, it’s what’s important inside. And it sounds to me like you’re brining these places into the 21st century.
Don Weidenfeld: Yes, 100%. We’ve been in development with the route in conjunction with Verizon in four cities, probably going on a year and a half now. And we are launching the product in January. It is a wi-fi controlled thermostat which communicates with all the occupancy centers in the house and will reduce your energy consumption by communicating with those devices and reduce the energy consumption between 25-40% which is pretty significant. I installed it in my house, my electric bill literally went down almost just shy at 30%.
Jim Fried: I’m going to go back to something you just mentioned sort of off hand, but it sounded to me like you developed this product in conjunction with a real estate company. So it sounds to me like somebody has really been here engineering this specifically so it can work well with the variety of different structures.
Don Weidenfeld: Jim, you are 100% accurate. In our development it was specifically developed for the multi-family, the condo, the apartment usage where you can have video cameras wirelessly at the front gate, at the entrance doors that will literally put the video right on your thermostat. So that will be the central hub of your apartment and in addition to that, it controls your lighting and it controls all your HVAC and communicates back to your iPhone. Similar to what Nest does but Nest is a one dimensional product where our product is, it can load apps onto the thermostat and control everything through your iPhone because your thermostat now becomes your router.
Jim Fried: Don, I watched, we had guys on here talking about cyber security and stuff like that. Is this secure?
Don Weidenfeld: Yes, 100%. Our director of software development comes from Siemens over in Germany, built amidst defense system so we put 256-Bit encryption in the each one of our devices so we’re able to sit on a GSA network, we’ve done the first platinum GSA building in Duane Junction, Colorado where we control all the controls in the building that house the IRS and the FBI. So we are secure to sit on the government’s network so therefore we’re going to be more than adequately secure to sit on the networks of the hotels, condos and the other real estate buildings that are out there.
Jim Fried: I think we need to get together so that you can pirate all of my contacts because I got at least 10 or 15 people that are going to need to know about this right away and then there’re 20 or 30 that are going to get to after that. Between my apartment guys, my condo guys, wait a minute now, Don, how about shopping centers? How would this work in a shopping center?
Don Weidenfeld: Yes, 100%, but Jim, when you weren’t paying attention I actually went after your goal with that. I’m meeting with one of your biggest clients on Sunday actually. And they want the largest student housing builders in the country and we’re going to be discussing our new controls and thermostat controls and energy reduction products because you know students in universities as well as hotels, everybody pushes the air conditioning down as low as they can because they’re not paying the bill.
Jim Fried: They like to be chilling.
Don Weidenfeld: Exactly. But yes, our products work fantastic in shopping centers as well and strip centers, strip malls you can control your space. You’re obviously paying your electric bill and you’ve got employees in there that are pushing the air down or they leave at the end of the day and nobody shut the lights so the air conditioning is off and you can control that through our systems whether it’s a passive control device where we put in the occupancy sensors so when anybody leaves the facility it automatically adjusts your HVAC or your lights off or you can have it as an active system where you can control it through your iPhone.
Jim Fried: Don, we’ve only got about a minute left. So I’m not going to get into what you can do for an office building. Now we’ll keep everybody in suspense and talk about that on the other side. But Don, if people who want to get some of your products are getting home, they’re going to get out of their car, they’re not going to hear us later, how do they find Magnum Energy Solutions?
Don Weidenfeld: The website for Magnum Energy Solutions is www.magnumenergysolutions.com. Again, for those Jets fans www.magnumenergysolutions.com. That’s the website. My email address is d as in David d.weidenfeld@magnumenergysolutions.com.
Jim Fried: Don, I think you repeated it enough for all of the ASC East teams that we will be playing. So if you can just do me a favor, can you hang out another couple of minutes, we’ll get back on the other side and we’ll talk about office building, some of the other really cool stuff you guys are doing?
Don Weidenfeld: 100%, I look forward to it, Jim, thank you very much.
Jim Fried: We’ll be right back after this. AC, it is yours.
[commercial break]
Jim Fried: That’s my cue, when he talks about ”I feel nice like sugar and spice” I come back because I’m nice like sugar and spice. We’ve got one of the nicest guys on the other line too, Don Weidenfeld. Before we go any further, Don, I want to tell you, happy big 50 buddy.
Don Weidenfeld: Thank you very much, Jim, I appreciate that.
Jim Fried: I was not feeling my best then but I didn’t want to go out, you know the person that I can’t stand is the person that I’m at the party or out in business and the person, and then they shake my hand. I was sick, Don, I just didn’t want to get anybody else sick. I’m really sorry I missed it but me, you, Fobie and Viv, we’re going to go to dinner, we’re going to have a great time. Hold on, we’ve got Cindy online. Cindy, how are you doing?
Cindy Blumenfeld: Hi, I’m doing good, thanks. How are you?
Jim Fried: I am doing fine, I am doing fine, I am doing fine. We’ve got Cindy Blumenfeld. She’s the Director of Business Development for Engineered Tax Services. Cindy, thanks for coming in and pitch hitting for Julio today.
Cindy Blumenfeld: My pleasure.
Jim Fried: We were talking about Don and some of the things that Don does to improve energy efficiency. Now let’s say somebody is going out and they’ve contracted with Don, Don is going in and he’s putting in some energy solutions. How do you guys figure into the picture?
Cindy Blumenfeld: We work on the incentive tax side.
Jim Fried: Wait a minute, you help to pay for it?
Cindy Blumenfeld: It’s definitely how, I set the cost, that’s for sure.
Jim Fried: Tell us more.
Cindy Blumenfeld: Not to go too technical, but lighting is a 39 year old asset, as for IRS guidelines and as you know lights don’t last 39 years so whatever we’re replacing and upgrading and being more energy efficient, all that has to get written off and then there’s some other incentives like 179D which is a 60 cents per square foot tax reduction for energy efficiency. And there’s some repair and maintenance guidelines and in fact, to help right off some of these renovations as well so that’s where we come in.
Jim Fried: That sounds terrific. Now, Don, I know that you and Cindy have been talking about how do two groups can work together and I know that you guys did an install over at Julio’s office building. Why don’t you talk a little bit about how you added value to Julio’s deal?
Don Weidenfeld: Thank you Jim. Again, their office building is roughly, it’s a smaller office 10,000 square feet and we install our equipment which, it was a small installation but it was about $1.20 a square foot fully installed and Engineered Tax Services went ahead and used the 179D and in addition to that used the disposal credit and if I’m not mistaken in speaking to Julio, there’s a total of about $1.80 a square foot in tax of set. It was all combined.
Jim Fried: So it sounds like they did more than break even just on the install.
Don Weidenfeld: Correct. And not to mention their electric bill, if you look at the electric bill it was roughly $90,000 a year, let’s round it off to a hundred, if you save 25% on that, you’re talking about saving $25,000 a year in your energy, actually over 100% on the saving side too.
Jim Fried: So I’m saving $25,000 on energy, I’ve got a gorgeous building in downtown West Palms, I’m going to cap it at 0.6, that means I just created $400,000 in value. My goodness, when are we doing a new loan for Julio? This is great stuff. Now, Cindy, when Don came in and he installed all this stuff, was there any real disruption, was there any real difference that you felt with the guys walking around or was it just real easy, you never even noticed the difference?
Cindy Blumenfeld: Real easy. It was just done.
Don Weidenfeld: We came in. Their building was actually three floors and is has retail on the bottom floor and their offices are on the third floor. And we were in and out in on day with all of the install products and then we did all testing and hooking up everybody’s iPhones.
Jim Fried: Is there a historic building done?
Don Weidenfeld: Yes, it is. It’s in downtown Palm Beach.
Jim Fried: So you can even retrofit historic building and that’s amazing. Cindy, you have all kinds of clients all across the county, different industries. Who are usually the clients that you guys work with to help with these tax-
Cindy Blumenfeld: Tax incentives.
Jim Fried: Thank you.
Cindy Blumenfeld: It’s pretty vast. It’s basically anybody who cares about themselves and their clients or their friends saving money. Typically because we’re an engineering firm that the tax actually feed for. Most of the time it’s back off as with TPA firms. TPAs don’t know that there’s certain tax incentives, so TPA as our engineers actually do the engineering study so we work with TPA firms of all sizes across the nation, architects, lighting designers, HVAC designers, commercial property owners, property managers. We’re that missing link, that puzzle piece to help offset across and RIY and in compliance with the IRS.
Jim Fried: My good friend from many years Roger runs one of the big real estate apartments at one of the biggest accounting firms and I go ”Roger, have you ever heard of these guys?”, he goes ”Jimmy, come on, man. We’ve been using these guys for years”. And they’re one of the most conservative accounting firms I know. So great endorsement on that.
Cindy Blumenfeld: And to answer your question who are clients are, I can name drop a little bit who our clients are, Telikin, Ikea, Ford, Outback, Toyota, Nissan, Marriott, McDonald’s. We’ve just been in Dolphin Stadium on their major renovation. The owners of all sizes.
Jim Fried: That’s great. I mean, the whole alphabet.
Don Weidenfeld: It sounds to me like I need an opening to her Rolodex.
Jim Fried: Listen, Don, I think that that probably makes sense because it sounds to me like the two firms who are extraordinarily complementary. Now Don, let’s take in one step further. Sounded like her Rolodex has a bunch of clients for you. Let’s say that you’re talking to the Hilton hotels. What would you tell them?
Don Weidenfeld: If we’re going in before the Engineered Tax Services comes in and we’re going to the hotel and they are 25-40% energy saving and we price it out roughly, I would say you’re roughly looking at $400 a hotel room and we go in and do a survey or we bring in Engineered Tax Services and they come and do the engineering report and we can just work off of that engineering report and calculate out exactly what it’s going to cost to retrofit the entire hotel.
Jim Fried: That’s absolutely amazing. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. Since Don, you gave your information in the last segment, we’re going to let Cindy go and Cindy wasn’t on with us. So Cindy, we’ve got a tradition here on Fried On Business. If you’re going to give your information. You’ve got to go really slow because we have a whole bunch of Jets fans down here. And sometimes they’re listening and it takes them a little longer. So Cindy, if we want to get together with you at Engineered Tax Services, how do we do that?
Cindy Blumenfeld: You can contact me directly and phone number is 954 439 1671. You can hit me on email and that’s cblumenfeld@engineeredtaxservices.com and our website is engineeredtaxservices.com. You can call the main number and be sure to ask for me.
Jim Fried: Yes, they better ask for you because I’ll tell you, you’re the best, Cindy. I can’t thank you enough for coming on today. And Don, I’m letting you clean up here. I’m not going to give you the line about the Jets fans because we’re playing with the Bills this week. So we’ll talk about the Bills fans too. So go slow for them.
Don Weidenfeld: I didn’t give my phone number on the first segment so I’ll start out with my phone number. The direct number is 561 702 9000. Again, 561 702 9000. And my email address is d.weidenfeld@magnumenergysolutions.com.
Jim Fried: That was absolutely excellent. Don and Cindy, what a great segment. I want to thank you both for joining the show today. And everybody, stick with us because we’re going to have Dr. Charles Bennett. This guy is an astrophysicist. He’s from MIT and now he got his education at MIT, now he’s at Johns Hopkins. We’re going to go to the starts back after this. Don and Cindy, thank you so much.
Cindy Blumenfeld: Thank you.
Don Weidenfeld: Thank you very much.
Jim Fried: My pleasure, gang. Let’s rock.
[commercial break]
AC: Hey Jim, before we officially begin, I’m just hearing those bad news but you know what? We’re going to turn that into good news because we will find another donor.
Jim Fried: God bless you, God bless you, God bless you. Now I want to welcome everybody back. We’ve got Dr. Chuck Bennett. Dr. Bennett is from Johns Hopkins University. He is the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins. He’s got about 25,000 lines of accomplishments but he was at NASA I just want to get right to it. Doctor, welcome to the show.
Charles Bennett: Thank you very much. Good to be here, Jim.
Jim Fried: I’m just going to start right at it. What do we know about the universe? Because, I mean I’m a little kid, I look up I see a sky, you go to the planetarium, you now hear it’s expanding. What’s up with the sky?
Charles Bennett: It turns out we’ve learned often lot more about the universe in the last few years that we’ve known for all of previous human history. I led a NASA satellite that we call WMAP and it took consent of the universe to see what it’s made up of. And it was a little surprising to most people how it turned out. You and I and the Earth are made of atoms, everything we encounter is made of atoms. Yet atoms only make up 4.6% of the universe, almost none of it.
Jim Fried: What’s the rest of it?
Charles Bennett: So what is out there, right? It turned out that 24% is something that we call dark matter. And we don’t know exactly what it is but it has gravity, that’s all we know it’s there but doesn’t emit any light at all. So that’s a weird thing. And then we still haven’t counted for most of it, 71.4% of the universe is something that we call dark energy and we also don’t know what that is except we know how it acts. It acts something like an anti-gravity. It pushes things apart and as effect it’s causing the universe which is expanding, it’s causing that expansion to accelerate. So it’s speeding up faster and faster. So we have a very odd universe in many ways. WMAP also determined the age of the universe at 13.77 billion years. And we’ve learned a lot but we still have lots of questions to answer.
Jim Fried: Did you get a look at the big bang when you’re out there?
Charles Bennett: In a way we did. The big bang theory is a theory that the universe has been expanding and cooling and I was careful the way I said that because it’s not really as most people may think of theory about the beginning of the universe but more about its evolution. And so we do see the universe expanding and cooling. In fact, that means when we look back in earlier and earlier times it’s more and more dense and hotter and hotter so there was just a very high energy radiation that is now cool that the universe has expanded and we see it now as a microwave signal, like a radio signal that’s static, that fills the universe and most of everything that we’ve learned that I’ve talked about has come from studying that microwave signal.
Jim Fried: So is that what you’re studying is the microwave signal and that’s sort of the pulse of the beginning?
Charles Bennett: The light comes from 13.8 billion years ago. And by studying that light we’re getting a direct view of what things used to be like. When we look at the Sun, we think about light going really fast. We turn a light switch and we see light. But when we look at the Sun, it actually takes eight minutes to get from the Sun to us so that means when we’re looking at it we’re not seeing Sun as it is now, we’re seeing Sun as it was eight minutes ago. And when look at the next narrow star which is Proximus Centuri, we see that star as it was four years ago, as it takes the light four years to get to us. By the same logic, the microwaves that we’re looking at have been traveling across space for 13.8 billion years and carry with an image of what the universe used to be like 13.8 billion years ago.
Jim Fried: Let me ask you this, Doctor. So it works both ways. So we’ve only got two minutes left on the whole show? Oh my God. I want to ask you this real quick question. So that means that somebody out there can hear us?
Charles Bennett: They can hear our radio signals and your show but it takes a long time for the signal to travel.
Jim Fried: Doctor, this was just not enough time. Is there a website or place where people can go see this? And you’ve got to promise me to come back.
Charles Bennett: We have a website, it’s Johns Hopkins that’s name for the new experiment I’m working on. It’s called Class The Cosmology Large And The Other Scales Surveyor so you can search for that at Johns Hopkins and there’s a website that we’ve developed at NASA for the WMAP satellite if people want to read about that ground.
Jim Fried: Doctor Charles Bennett from Johns Hopkins. I pray to you that you’ll please come back, this is just amazing stuff. I was just getting into it and I’ve gotten a finger that I have to go.
AC: Not that finger.
Jim Fried: One finger. Okay we’re going to come back and we’re going to do this again. I’ll be back and we’ll communicate via satellite and our communicators and we will get back and talk about more space. I hope you’ll be regular on the show.
Charles Bennett: Thanks a lot, Jim. It was my pleasure.
Jim Fried: Chuck, you’re the best. Thanks also the Mr. Cook for putting us together. I really appreciate that. All right. I want to thank everybody. I’ve got a real thank you. I’ve got to go through here fast so I’m going get to it. I want to thank Magnum Energy Solutions, Engineered Tax Services, UHealth, KIND Snacks, CCIM, Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, Warren Henry, I want to thank Miami Marlins, I want to thank the South Florida Business and Wealth Magazine, EarlyShares, Xpresso Marketing, SocialMedia305, the NFL Alumni, Lauren’s Kids, The Bergstorm Center, I want to thank you the listeners. If you want to join our community, go to @JimFried, @FriedOnBusiness, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, website. If you missed today’s show, it will be on our website www.friedonbusiness.com. This is Jim Fried for Fried on Business. Look for us on 880 AM next Thursday at 6:00. Why? Because I love doing this. Remember, this is not a rehearsal, this is your life. The person that wants to do something finds a way, the other finds an excuse. Now go out there and make it happen. Thank you everybody. Thank you so much. God bless and good night.
