Cosmic Queries – Get Some Space

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer a grab bag of fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on black holes, dark matter, aliens, colonizing planets, Sir Isaac Newton, and a whole lot more!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and for this edition of StarTalk, it will be Cosmic Queries. I think it's a grab-bag edition, but I gotta check with my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, what's up Neil? And you are correct, sir. So the first query has been answered.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First query is what other queries about? So what happens is, we solicit, normally we solicit topics, but others sort of dribble in and they sort of collect. We're housekeeping, really, by getting, tending to the questions that are completely random, coming from every direction, every compass direction of the universe.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Which is good, too, because people get very upset when their questions go unanswered, but they don't realize that when we're soliciting new questions, it's because it's a different topic, like you said.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a different thing.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's not like we can just continue. So yeah, you're right. This is a great way to do some housekeeping and make some people happy.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's do this. Let's do this.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, just before we begin, so what does a comedian do in the shutdown Corona-verse? Do the clubs are closed, right? So you just tell jokes to your wife and your kids?

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  No, they don't want to hear any of my...

• 1:35Chuck Nice?

  They don't even, my kids don't even want, I'll never, the worst day was when I walked in and my wife was like, "Oh, good, you're home. Let's watch." And there was something I had done, some TV shows that she had taped, and she didn't watch it, just so that she could watch it with me. It was like the first episode of something I was on. And both my children, I have three, but two of them were sitting, and they both, like, without cue, they went, "Do we have to?"

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Daddy's on TV again.

• 2:08Chuck Nice?

  Why do we gotta watch this guy? And my son goes, he's right here. So, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm actually just doing the only thing that's available, which is remote voice work.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, you got a good voice for that.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so I, um, I can't say which, but I've booked several commercials. I can't say which ones yet because you're not allowed to say what commercial you're on until it actually airs and they won't.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is just a StarTalk audience, we won't tell anybody.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just between, between you and me and the million listeners.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry about that NDA you signed, Chuck.

• 2:45Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, you know, so just look for my voice on a couple of things, you know, that'll.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, have commercials risen to the point where they have NDAs? I can't know what the hell you're just advertising?

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah, I'm, it's, it's really strange how secretive and like how, um, just overbearing, you might say, uh, but then when I think about it, you're talking about, if you look at the industry as a whole, billions.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billions.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Dollars. So.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billions.

• 3:15Chuck Nice?

  Billions.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's jump right into this, of course.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  Patreon's first, always with Patreon. So let's start with a Patreon patron, this is Abdul Aziz bin Razab. And he says, hey, quick question.

• 3:31Chuck Nice?

  What form or thing can sustain itself and not be destroyed by a black hole? Or what thing can sustain itself the most and to which degree would it be able to hold itself together when entering a black hole? So is there anything that can withstand the, oh, your term I'm about to use, is there anything that isn't spaghettified when it goes into a black hole?

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so what happens, it's a very simple calculation. Normally, when we think of materials, you know, we have eggs that'll break, or steel that's strong, or rubber that's flexible. So we have these sort of macroscopic descriptors for these things in our lives. When you analyze it at a molecular level, because that's all the black hole is going to care about, and then the atomic level, as you fall towards the black hole, what gets you is what are called the tidal forces. These are the forces that will stretch you head to toe. Right. As you fall in, are you sure you want to go? That's the old rhyme I penned 30 years ago.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But anyhow, so what's happening is the part of you that's closer to the black hole singularity feels a stronger gravity than the part of you that's farther. So in a feet-first dive, your feet will start falling towards the black hole, towards the singularity, faster than your head will. That's not a good situation to be in. It initially feels like a stretch. You know, who doesn't like a good stretch? But then you realize that it is unrelenting and growing. And it reaches a point where the tidal forces exceed the molecular bonds that hold your flesh together. Then you snap in two pieces, your upper half and your lower half of your body.

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you might say, well, how about a brick of steel? Yeah, steel is held together more strongly than your body is, but there's still a breaking point for the atoms of steel, for the molecules that make up the steel. The carbon, the iron, and all that comprise the alloy that is the steel. They're connected by some force, and you calculate what that force is, and there's a distance from the center of the black hole, where the tidal forces will be so great that it'll rip apart the molecules and the atoms of your solid block of steel. Yes, that'll happen closer in than what would rip you apart? Yes, but it'll still do it. It's still gonna happen. It's still gonna happen. Not only that, it'll rip the atoms themselves apart. Oh, snap. And the nuclei, that's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, that's serious. That's evil, that's evil forces. So this is where gravity wins. Over atoms.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Nice. So now, let me just take Abdul's question and for my own edification, go a little further. So when you're looking at the creation of a supermassive black hole, when you get down to the place where it's the star that's dying is producing iron, and now there's nothing that can happen after that. So it's like, okay, I'm gonna collapse in on myself, right? So now, okay, so now you're, the iron is already there. What happens as these things, or whatever it is, whatever matter it may be, falls towards this singularity?

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  When it gets there, is it, is it, is it infinitely compressed? Does it have like a core? Does it, what is happening at that point, since you have these streams of particles that are now just, they're not even partic, they are just particles.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say, you say, where do they land?

• 7:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, where do they go? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Where do they go?

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the only way to find out, Chuck, is if we send you. Report back, okay? Report back. So, here's, here's the problem. Einstein's general theory of relativity, which gives us the large-scale structure of the universe and the big bang and, and black holes and the like, shows us that at the center of the black hole, the gravitational force exceeds everything molecular and atomic. And in fact, it compresses matter to a point of infinitely small size, which means it has infinite density.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, that's just crazy.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  That is crazy. I mean, that's inconceivable when I'm, I'm trying to think of it, but it can't.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, maybe that doesn't happen. What I'm telling you is, Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that. So that could be the edge of where Einstein's relativity applies accurately to the universe. Maybe before it hits the singularity, some other law of physics needs to be invoked. Right. To extend our understanding of the universe beyond where Einstein then leaves us off. Okay, Newton left us off. Newton's forces operated under relatively low gravity and low speeds. And it failed at high gravity and high speeds. We needed Einstein to go into the into the dark closet. Right.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The unknown, but now we know in advance that general relativity has these limits. And so enter string theorists. Right. They come in and talk about the singularity. They've got a whole mathematical formulism to think about the singularity. And so either it really is infinitely small and infinitely dense. Or there's another branch of physics that still needs work. String theory still needs work to give us an understanding of that particular regime in the cosmos. So, yeah, I can't, so the answer to that question is, I don't have an answer. Right, well, clearly no one does. What we do know, what we do know, he didn't ask this, but I would tell you.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we do know is that the, we used to think or hope that if you went into a black hole, it's a portal to another place, perhaps another dimension, another universe itself. Right. The problem is, it turns out, the information that entered the black hole will ultimately come back out of that same black hole through Hawking radiation. The black hole will basically evaporate. Got you. Given enough time, it'll lose its mass through particles. And the inventory of those particles that came out. Equals the inventory of particles that went in.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which tells us that you can't take stuff, put it through a black hole and have it show up somewhere else.

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that makes perfect sense.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It still remains in this universe. It's a remarkable discovery of modern quantum physics and black holes.

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  That's incredible. Yeah, that is an incre- yeah, so the evaporation of a black hole through Hawking radiation kinda lets you know that it's not going anywhere. It's actually, it's actually coming back out.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming back out. Coming back out.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Coming back out. Wow.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just so people, in case you didn't know what Hawking radiation is, you remember E equals mc squared. You'd learned this in elementary school. It's the equivalence of energy and mass. E equals m, energy and mass, and c squared is a, is a constant.

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Constant.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the speed of light, but it's actually not important about what I'm about to describe. So you can convert energy into mass and mass into energy. They're interchangeable. So it turns out in the vicinity of a black hole, the energy density of the gravitational field is so high that the energy will spontaneously create particle pairs. And it creates a matter and antimatter particle. One particle falls back into the black hole, the other escapes, and that's the slower.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  And that's the evaporation.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you take the inventory of those particles and it is exactly what fell in and got spaghettified in the first place.

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, don't wait a minute. So it just dawned on me then. So what you just described though, the information, you called it information, that means that there's a change of information then. So.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, just to be clear. What's for me mind blowing is matter enters the black hole.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the black hole has gravity because of that matter. And the gravitational field, when it generates new particles, makes.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Remembers.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remembers the matter inventory of what fell into the black hole in the first place.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, yes. That's amazing.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is some communication in the system where the entire system remembers what matter it had eaten.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  It has to, because otherwise it wouldn't be able to create the

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The same portfolio.

• 12:35Chuck Nice?

  Right, to, to, to put it off, to send it out.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's great. So this, for me, that was the most amazing fact about that discovery. And, and it's, it's upsetting to science fiction folks, because you want to go in a black hole and come out somewhere else.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now we need some other way to go to, to leave the universe.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh wow, okay. Hey man, great question, Abdul.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  Much, alright, let's see. God, okay, here we go, let's, let's do-

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that only one question? We're almost out of time for this first segment.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Ah, who cares? Who cares? It's good stuff!

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, go-

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's just good stuff. Alright, here we go. This is, uh, Giannis

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  Kiosas. Okay, I said your name wrong, man, sorry.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Giannis, you know who I'm talking about from Facebook. He says, "What would be more groundbreaking as a discovery and why? Understanding dark matter or discovering life

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  outside of our solar system?" Or even Earth.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, um, the dark matter question would be amazing. It's the longest unsolved problem, longest standing unsolved problem in astrophysics. It's good, we're going on 90 years not knowing what dark matter is.

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, yeah. So, if we learn what it is, that would be a great day in astrophysics. However, if it's simply another kind of particle that doesn't interact with our own and it's out there- That we're hypothesizing anyway. Mm hmm. That's not as interesting as if dark matter were the gravitational effect of a parallel universe influence. So whatever it is, I'd want it to have far reaching implications for me to get excited about it. Okay. Is it if we know dark matter, then we know dark energy? And is there another thing? Do we now? Can we unpack black holes? Because we know, is there some other thing that it comes with?

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there some package deal with other unsolved problems that get solved with it? If not, I'm going with the discovery of life elsewhere on an exoplanet. Because for two reasons, if it's made of DNA, either we're shared DNA and life got around in the early formations of solar systems, or DNA is an inevitable consequence of complex organic chemistry. Right. So that wherever you find life, it would then be DNA based. Right. Now, think about it, is that so much of a stretch? If you go to Mars, you find rocks that are familiar. Right?

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you go, if you go to Europa, you find ice that you have seen before. So geology and chemistry seem to repeat. You see volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter's moons. So why would biology have to be sort of unique to one place and not be a highly repeatable phenomenon? That's a fair question to ask. But, but I can tell you that, so it would be interesting if it was based on DNA for both of those reasons. It would be even more interesting if it had nothing to do with DNA. Yet it still was life self replicating, thriving. That, that would be like, oh, we got to open up our definition and our understanding and our understanding of what life is.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And then, then the biologist who, you know, they, they celebrate the diversity of life, but behind closed doors, they got to be honest with themselves. You know what they, you know what that honesty is? Oh, look at the diversity of life, plants and animals and fungi. Behind closed doors, it's all.

• 16:21Chuck Nice?

  It's pretty much the same. It's routine.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, it's.

• 16:26Chuck Nice?

  It ain't, it's nothing special, baby.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All life has one common origin.

• 16:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you want is another genesis and then you can compare and contrast. Well, life requires this, but doesn't require that. Well, you know, we used to think life required a 72 degree tide pool. You know, just to, no, no, you have extremophiles doing the backstroke in acid under radiation conditions. So every, every new thing we learn about life on earth tells us how hardy life is and how resilient it is to stress, to assist them. Even if an organism dies, life in general seems to thrive. And so if we find life thriving under conditions undreamt of, with a chemistry unimagined, that would, for me, that would be a far greater discovery than

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  just finding out another particle to add to the particle zoo that we then credit for being dark matter.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  The particle zoo. I think I'm going to take my kids there.

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries. Galactic gumbo. No, you say it, Chuck.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm glad they gumbo. They don't mean by saying they're guaranteed.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we return. That was good.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. Cosmic Queries. Grab bag edition, but Chuck calls it something else.

• 18:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Galactic gumbo.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, gumbo's got a lot of different ingredients. That's why we're saying that, right?

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because gumbo's got what? You got?

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh man, you got everything. You got crab, you got corn, you got craw that adds, you got sauce. Uh, and Dewey's sauce.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Dewey's, yeah. And, and you also have rice.

• 18:25Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh man. I think I told you this. I don't know if we talked about it on the air or privately, but Yvonne Gagné, gosh darn man, gotta get you some Yvonne Gagné gumbo. Uh, that, she's a friend of the family from New Orleans who used to make gumbo that would.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so where is it? So I'm waiting for it.

• 18:49Chuck Nice?

  You're like, don't talk about it. Do, do something.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clearly, you have, you have never mentioned it on or off the air because I haven't had it yet.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna do that. Here we go. Let's go to Riam Samari, who says.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are we done with the Patreon questions?

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  No, this is also, sorry, from Patreon.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still Patreon. People that pay their way to the top of the list.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they do. The American way, as we call it.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Anyway.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're so cynical.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  I know. I can't. It's an occupational hazard. Okay, here we go. Riam wants to know this. He's very poetic. So I'm just gonna read all this, everything here because he's very poetic. He says, "The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, will we one day venture to the stars? It was Carl Sagan's lifetime mission to encourage humanity to explore the universe. And you, Neil, are calling for the same goal and carrying the message to a new generation. Given the recent promising spaceflight developments of SpaceX, do you think that during our lifetime, we will finally see humans colonizing other planets?

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Or at least finding a glimpse of intelligent life on other worlds?"

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's beautiful.

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. This is a guy, this is a guy who spends a lot of time reading your stuff.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the answer is no.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, damn!

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, damn!

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  This hurts.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just being, I mean.

• 20:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that was a hot knife and twisted. Wow.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  He's so eloquently asked this very, like, just super optimistic question. And are you serious? Do you really think no?

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. He said our lifetime? No.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But can I tell you why? Pull that out of my ass. I have reasons for thinking this, okay? It's, think about it.

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What other planet in our own solar system comes closest to anyone possibly living on it? Which which planet? It's none. It well, Mars used to be. Mars, Mars, Mars. Okay, now, because Mars like has polar ice caps, it has seasons. It's it's near us in the habitable zone. It once had liquid running water, does it today, maybe underwater, underground, you know, permafrost, frozen. So, okay, Mars, you ain't going to Venus, it's 900 degrees Fahrenheit, 500 degrees Celsius. It's hotter than a pizza oven. You ain't going to Venus. You're not going to Mercury, it's almost as hot. Okay, so Mars, do you realize that Antarctica

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is wetter and balmer than every location on Mars? Yet I don't see people lining up to buy condos in Antarctica. I colonize. That's because Superman's a lousy neighbor. He's in, excuse me, he's in the North Pole. Oh, is he really in the North Pole? Yeah, yeah, I think I'm pretty sure it's the North Pole. But there they showed land, but there's no land in the North Pole, so they got that wrong. That's right, right. Uh, Santa is on an ice floe. That's right. Whatever's left of it, okay? Santa's in a bathing suit right now, sipping, sipping pina coladas. With a polar bear wearing sunglasses.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what, we're laughing, but it's so sad, but go ahead. That'd be an excuse for Santa to get get buff, right? If he's in a bathing suit on an ice floe. Exactly. Sipping a drink, we'll give Santa with abs, that'd be interesting. Uh, so we don't see that happening. So the urge to live on Mars would be novel initially, I think. But to say, "I want to live here forever," I don't see that happening. As an urge, you'll want to get back to Earth. You'll vacation there briefly, but you'll want to get back to Earth. And so, I'm suspecting. So, for me, what you'd have to do is terraform the planets first. Then they're Earth-like, and then you can go there and pitch tent.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you get off the spaceship and you don't suffocate. When Columbus arrived in the New World, as one of the first Europeans, I guess after the Vikings, when he stepped off his ship, he could breathe the air. He met other people here who greeted him. He could eat the fruit on the vines. He could repair his ship. Why? Because the trees of the New World were made of wood, just like the trees in Europe. So when people speak of the next generation of space exploration, analogizing to that era of explorers, you're missing the point about dying when you step off the ship.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it is supremely hostile to human physiology. That's all I'm saying. And plus, if we do go to another planet and find civilizations, I like to think we've learned something about how to interact with people who are there to greet you.

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, lessons from the Columbus chapter of colonization is if you do find other life forms, what's the playbook for how we're going to interact with those life forms? Be they what we designate as intelligent or not. By the way, NASA has an entire branch of itself called planetary protection, which is if you're going to visit a place that might have life and send a probe there, you have to sterilize the probe completely. So that if you sneezed on it before it was launched, you don't get rhinovirus on the planet that you're going to be exploring for life itself. And for any samples that get returned to Earth, they have to be quarantined to make sure that nothing then contaminates Earth.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's my longer answer, but the answer is still no.

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow. I mean.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To visit, yeah, but not to call. I don't see colonization.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense. Sorry, Riam. Sorry, buddy. Sorry, buddy. There we go. Uh, this is Brett Marshall from Facebook, and I just have to read this because I, you know, it's, I don't know why. He goes, "Hey, I'm still here, and I'm still too stupid to come up with a good question."

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  "But I listen to every show."

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it said. Yes. That's great. That's not the whole, the whole thing?

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's it. That's all he said.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Say it again. Read it again. I gotta hear it again.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  He goes, "Hey, still here. Still too stupid to come up with a good question. Listen to every show. Peace."

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he a Patreon member, too?

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he's not a Patreon?

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  He's coming from, uh, he might be, but he's on Facebook. He's still on Facebook.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I appreciate the sentiment, but by the way, uh, uh, it's, I don't judge whether a question's good or not. In the end, is my answer good? You should be judging my answer, not whether you think your question is good. Ask anything, ask anything you feel. That's what matters here.

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, here we go. Uh, this is Dwanali, Dwan only, uh, from Instagram. "Hello, Dr. Tyson. How far do you think our advancements in science, uh, would be if the United States budget used for the military was actually used towards science and technology?"

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 26:38Chuck Nice?

  What a question.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the budget, I haven't looked at the very latest budget, but last time I looked, the budget for the National Science Foundation was about $30 billion. Uh, NASA's budget's about $20 billion. So you put them together, you get about $50 billion. There are other ways we spend money on science. For example, the National Institutes of Health does medical research, this sort of thing. So if you add up all the portfolios in all disciplines.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of science research in America, you get up maybe seventy billion, maybe a hundred billion dollars. That's a lot of money. The military spends six hundred billion every year.

• 27:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the military. Now, a lot of that is standing armies, literally and figuratively. It's like, you know, pay or play. It's like, what? Oh, you want to fight a war? That's on top.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, a war? I didn't know you want to fight a war. We need more money for that. Okay. So, so.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not always true that throwing money at something at that high rate leads to a discovery. Sometimes you have to move through a place where new ideas percolate, germinate, and maybe those new ideas come from the, from a wrong result. It could be a, a, a, a wrong result says, wait a minute. No, we were doing it wrong the whole time. It's really this. And you couldn't have had that thought unless you landed in a place where you had done it wrong in the first place. Some of this takes time. So, I, I would say, the way to think about this is, uh, they have peer review, uh, uh, research grants. And so I write a grant. I say, I want to do this research and it can take me this long. It's going to take me this much money. I want to hire this many people.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to do it in this location. And they approve. Okay. So here's what happens. Depending on how much money there is and how many people are applying, you get to grant ten percent of applications, sometimes fifty. Well, how about the other eighty-five percent? Well, you can say, well, these are just not worth funding. But these others were on the border and they should be funded, but we can't fund everything. You want money for those. Okay? That would, I think, double the, what we're currently spending. So I would say, if you want as healthy a science budget as you have, given the number of scientists in the country, if you doubled all the science budgets, that would get us pretty far, pretty quickly. Now, how, now, how advanced would we be? Again, it's a matter of time.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if civilization didn't spend so much time in the Dark Ages, or rejecting what science could have been, if scientists weren't sorcerers, or people who had some knowledge of the natural world, if we weren't crediting oceans to Zeus, or to the wrath of God, or to other supernatural forces, and we said, "No, wait a minute, maybe they're natural forces." Had that begun earlier? It's possible we might have been on the moon in the 19th century, rather than in the 20th century. But again, it takes developments, right? You have to figure out, "Oh, we need this new material." "Where are you gonna get the way have to dig for it?" "Well, where are we gonna dig?" "Is the geology up to... matched with that?" And we have to understand the human physiology.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's medicine at that place. So, it's very complicated. In a good way, it's complicated. I mean, you want a lot of different things happening, but you also need bridges and tunnels connecting these discoveries, so that the next innovation can exploit what had come before in any discipline that it needs to make that happen. So, I would say, to punch science along at the rate it should, you'd have to double all budgets. And otherwise, yeah, we probably lost a few centuries in the history of civilization.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because of people standing in denial of the role of natural forces relative to supernatural.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, yeah. And we're headed back there, so, yeah.

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  So, way to go, way to go, world, way to go.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen, I tweeted recently, I said, "Every disaster movie begins by people ignoring the warnings of a scientist."

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay. This is N. Jonesy19 from Instagram. He says, "Can you please explain the horizon problem? It would seem that no matter where you are, you are in the center of the universe, which means all locations are the center of the universe."

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  That really begs another question, is there a center of the universe? And how many licks does it take to get to the center of that universe?

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're over sixty, you'll remember that TV commercial.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the Tootsie Pop.

• 31:30Chuck Nice?

  No, they bought that back.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did they?

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  They bought that, yes, I'm serious. Yes, they did. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop or something like that?

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it depends on how slobbery you are. I mean, I knew that I was a kid when I first, I was nine, I said, it depends on how wet your tongue is. What are we even doing here? You know?

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, oh, no, I know what it was. It's because you'll bite it before you lick all the way. That was the.

• 31:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's the, yeah, that's the catch, yeah.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because you get the candy in the middle. So.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  So what is the horizon problem?

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, there are other, there's some, what he's citing is not entirely the horizon problem. So, but let me just explain horizons, right? When you're a ship at sea, and if you just look around, the distance from you to the last bit of water that you can detect is the same in every direction. And that distance is farther the higher up you are in the ship. So the quote crow's nest, the highest point on a ship, is where the lookout person stood to see, to look for icebergs, to look for land. They would be the first to see this because they have the farthest view over the curvature of the earth.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  Land ho.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. It's that person who sighted it, not someone looking over the railing. So, uh, so, so it's clear and understandable that if you're at sea, the horizon is the same distance to you in each direction. Okay? Now, another ship, also in the middle of the ocean, has the same, sees their own horizon. Everybody is the middle of their own horizon ocean. And what we don't know in our own universe is whether, is there a point you can stand where your horizon doesn't go the same distance out? Does it end? And in principle, yes.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle, but what I can tell you is that every direction we look, when we look 14 billion light years distant, we see the origin of the universe just now reaching us. So that means everybody at that distance, okay, at that time distance away from us, is experiencing the beginning of the universe. If in this direction they were not, and I saw a regular galaxy there, and in this direction I see them being born, whoa, that would mean I'm, I, I, I've land ho, okay? This direction is different from this direction.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're out at sea, if there's land that way but sea in every other direction, water in every other direction, something different just happened. And so that becomes a more intriguing part of the universe. We'd all be focused that way if that were in fact the case. Now, the horizon problem as stated, just the horizon problem, means something different from what he asked. And it has to do with, if this horizon is very different from that horizon, uh, uh, there's, there's several manifestations of this, but one of them is, how can that part of the universe be at exactly the same temperature as this part of the universe? Hmm. How would it know to be the same temperature?

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless the whole universe was somehow connected to itself um, in a very small place, alright? And it had to be really connected because the difference in temperature in every direction is like a hundredth of a degree Kelvin. Wow. You, you don't have that consistency of temperature from one side of your room to the other. Wow. Much less one side of the universe to the other. And so this is part of what we think of as the horizon problem. And this is where we got to inflationary cosmologies. So these are the details. That's in the, what do you call it? In the, in the weeds of the Big Bang. Uh, when they say the Big Bang is having problems, there's just challenges within the weeds, but the broader picture that we began as an explosion 14 billion years ago, that's intact.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, what's going on in the weeds that we have to try to understand? Interesting. Wow. Alright, well, cool, cool, cool. We gotta end there. We've got one more segment left of Cosmic Queries. Uh, pop your e. Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. Cosmic Queries.

• 35:53Chuck Nice?

  Galactic Gumbo.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. When we return.

• 36:06Chuck Nice?

  It's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Nigel Adams and Caleb Salibi. Hey, guys, thanks so much for all of your support because we could not do this show without you. And for those of you wondering how you might get your own Patreon shout out, well, go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Startalk Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition. Let's do it.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is PN Wonders, who wants to know this. With Earth gathering mass from space material all the time, when will the mass increase to have an effect on Earth's orbit? And what would that effect be?

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a great question. So Earth plows through in our orbit. Earth plows through several hundred tons of meteor dust a day. Hundreds of tons. Okay, so write down that number, several hundred tons in a day, times 365 days, times four billion years, and figure out how much mass that is. And then compare that to the actual mass of the Earth. That's like a gnat flying full speed ahead into an elephant, and the elephant says, hey, quit the shoving. It's not gonna happen. It is, it is, it is uninterestingly small relative to the total mass of the Earth. So, no, not, not to worry.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  So, nothing to worry about there. Negligible, as they say.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sleep, sleep, sleep.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Sleep well tonight.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  PN Wonders.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there's something else happening. The Sun is slowly losing mass through solar wind. You've heard about solar wind? These are particles. Have you, where's your concern about the Sun's mass? Well, the Sun is actually getting lighter. And as it gets lighter, the speed with which we are in our orbit. is too fast to maintain that orbit and it goes to a higher orbit. Okay, so in fact, the fact that the sun is losing mass is making Earth slowly spiral away from it. And the sun will lose mass at an ever faster rate as the billions of years unfold. And we'll end up, all the planets will end up orbiting farther and farther away.

• 38:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fates, fates of the solar system.

• 38:34Chuck Nice?

  The solar system is a cruel, cruel mistress.

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, yes, it's crazy.

• 38:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, God. All right, here we go. Bagger Dude from Instagram. Bagger Dude says this. How did astronomers find out that the edge of the observable universe is 43 billion light years away?

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's, let's resolve this. So, most of us, we astrophysicists, when we think of the edge of the universe, we say it's 14 billion, uh, light years away.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not really true. Okay? The part of the universe we can see,

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the light that was sent by that has been traveling for 14 billion years. But that thing that emitted the light, that's not 14 billion light years away right now. It has been part of the expanding universe and is now 40, low, 40, 43, 45 billion light years away. In that direction, and 45 billion light years away in that direction. So when I speak of the diameter of the universe, you're talking 90 billion light years. You just don't observe that. And so, so much of my field tries to anchor itself in what you can see, rather than what you calculate to be true.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yes, we can calculate how far away that galaxy is that we're watching right now being born 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang. Where is it today? It's a full grown galaxy. It's fully, it's full red blooded galaxy, and there it is, or green blooded if it's got copper for its hemoglobin. And there it is, 45 billion light years away, and you don't see it there.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's how that works. So you have to calculate based on the known expansion rate of the universe where that is today.

• 40:25Chuck Nice?

  Right. So basically, the cosmos is an annoying grandmother that pulled out an album of baby pictures.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess a little bit.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who pulls out albums of anything? Yeah, Chuck, how old are you?

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I still know. I still keep. Um, I print out my photos and I, and I put them in.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hence, my question, how old are you?

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's the same as scrapbooking as far as I'm concerned. It's like, you know, because you know why.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Chuck is 75 years old. It's just that black, black don't crack, so he looks good.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? I need some tea. I'm, I'm cold and I need some tea.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your rheumatism is acting up. It's gonna rain tomorrow.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's gonna rain tomorrow, my. Yeah. Uh, yeah. No, okay, so here we go. This is, uh, Ashkot and his last name. Yeah, I'm Patrick Carr, okay? Patrick Carr, all right?

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It takes you that one. You have to think about that, Chuck. You don't just, you, you, you have to read it and think about it and then say it.

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because, I mean, you know.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  Hello, Dr. Tyson and hey, Chuck, please pronounce my name.

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute. Uh, uh, Akshat, okay, Akshat.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he gave a phonetic.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  He gave me, he gave me his, you know what? Akshat, thank you, my friend. Uh, he gave me, there you go. He says, my question is that about 400 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton, hey Neil, I know that's your man, discovered the laws of motion and gravity. He also discovered calculus and had already discovered the laws of optics. How was he so focused and deeply indulged in his work during the plague, which was a pandemic during that time? Um, how was he able to manage his mental health? And how can we manage our own mental health? And have a spark of our own creativity and imagination during this time of peak anxiety?

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, Akshat is coming to us from India. Love from.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Akshat. So first, I don't claim any mental health expertise, but I do know a little bit about Isaac Newton, and I know a little bit about others who have made singular contributions to our understandings of the natural world. And one of the things they all had in common was that they had episodes in their life, either thrust upon them by Isaac Newton escaping the Black Plague in London and in Cambridge. He was a professor at Cambridge, or at least in school at Cambridge. Or if you have an injury that sort of lays you up for a period of time. All these people had long periods of time where they were in solitude. Solitude. And so the brain just explored on its own.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, other than families that have many young kids running up and down, so there is no solitude and everyone is quarantined together, there are others who just can't go to work and you live alone and you can't go to the bar or the club. So what are you doing? Are you sitting alone on the couch, thinking? Or are you binging on the latest Netflix series? So we live in a time where many people's creative juices that might have otherwise flowed are arrested because they have distractions in their life. Evening television, on-demand television, streaming services.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I lament. I wonder what discoveries remain unrevealed by brilliant people today simply because of the distractions we have built into our own lives. And the distractions are fun. They're not chores. We enjoy them, all right? But... And sitting alone by yourself, staring into the ceiling, no one would call that enjoyment. But that's exactly the conditions under which Isaac Newton contemplated the cosmos.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Darwin contemplated the cosmos, his long walks alone in the woods. No, there wasn't a TV screen, there wasn't advertising, there wasn't, I gotta get back and watch, you know, Westworld. No, none of that was going on in their lives. So if you ever had a chance of making such a discovery about the natural world, it's not, I don't think it's gonna happen while you are distracting yourself with modern media, or hanging out on Facebook, or anything else on the internet. It's just not. Unless something there gives you an idea. You could be a fertile person, and, oh, that's an idea, that's an idea, but then you step away and develop the idea. How about that? Okay, so for me, that's what's behind that.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of my great disappointments in the Corona-verse quarantine is I'm not giving myself enough solo time. Cause I'm catching up on email, and I'm doing, and I, you know, I'm cooking, and I'm perfecting some recipes, both my wife and I, we both like food. So that we're doing that, there's some other things, but it's not quite, let me just be alone and think and write. So I'm failing on that myself. But, and plus, not everyone is Isaac Newton.

• 46:00Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah. That's an understatement.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh, by the way, Isaac Newton, all evidence suggests that he was, I don't wanna call it quite a misanthrope, but he did not really enjoy the company of other people. He never married, he never had kids. So if you don't enjoy the company of other people, then being sent to the country home in Lincolnshire away from other people, that's a godsend to you. Right?

• 46:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yeah, there you have it.

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  I forget, I don't know, I forget who said this, but there's a writer, and she said, "The greatest impediment to creativity is distraction."

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, sure, definitely.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and basically right along with what you just said.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's another, there's another saying, which is, "If you wanna be more creative, then become less productive."

• 46:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. That, see, now that's where I'm a Viking.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where do you...

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because when you say, "Oh, I went shopping, I did this, I made..." "And look how much I got done today." Well, did you create anything? Chances are, the answer is no.

• 47:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well, you don't give your mind a chance to do that. So, yeah, right, yeah, cool. All right, so, here we go. This is Alfredo Baldo Castiano, who says...

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're showing off now. You're getting in the mood.

• 47:20Chuck Nice?

  Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, "Dear friends, I have a black hole question. If a black hole is a point of infinite density, that means it can bend the spacetime so much that a particle falling inside can accelerate so much that it can reach the speed of light." Now, he put a question mark at the end. He wrote it as a statement, but he's asking it as a question. So, if a particle falls into a black hole,

• 47:57Chuck Nice?

  is the gravity so strong, since light can escape, will it cause the particles coming in to reach the speed of light going in?

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll come close, depending on how far away they emanate, but no. No, no, the answer is no. So, you can calculate this. So, if the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light, it means if, just put it right at the speed of light, just for this example. If you went the speed of light, you can escape the black hole. It'll keep tugging on you, slowing you down, but you'll reach infinity and have zero speed there. It's weird to speak on these terms. If you had more than the escape velocity, you'll reach infinity and still be going. Okay? If you have less than the escape velocity, it just pulls you back. So, it depends on what distance you fall into the black hole from. And you'll, and you can calculate what your speed is,

• 48:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and it's not, in most cases, it's not anywhere near the speed of light for that.

• 48:55Chuck Nice?

  Got you. So, the answer is, basically, nope?

• 48:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah.

• 49:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, right.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, a lot of material spirals into the black hole.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't just, yeah, because you see these discs of matter.

• 49:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that accretion...

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accretion disk, very good, very good. I got an accretion disk of my own right here.

• 49:17Chuck Nice?

  That's well, that's you and your wife are cooking. See, that's this is the result.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good accretion disc cooking. It's another cookbook, right? Maximizing the accretion disc. Yeah, so in fact, most matter that falls into a black hole is spiraling in. It's not just falling straight in.

• 49:33Chuck Nice?

  Very cool. Um, this is, um, FLBOQ. I don't know what that, I don't know what that is. Uh, from Instagram, he says,

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks like a random hits on a keyboard.

• 49:48Chuck Nice?

  It really does. FLBOQ. Uh, he says, while I was listening to the podcast, I heard about nuclei getting spaghettified. If the nuclei gets spaghettified, uh huh, here we go. What about the quarks?

• 50:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have an answer for that. I don't know.

• 50:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I, I have to, if I were to guess, I would say it also spaghettifies the quarks.

• 50:17Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 50:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's, it's pretty bad down there.

• 50:20Chuck Nice?

  That is nasty, man.

• 50:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's nasty. It is.

• 50:24Chuck Nice?

  I mean, you are literally tearing an atom apart.

• 50:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so, so you tear the atom apart by ripping off the electrons. That's nothing. Okay? Electrons are easy.

• 50:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then the nucleus, which is very tightly packed, that gets spaghettified. And they're asking, now that you've spaghettified the nucleus, now you have the nuclear particles,

• 50:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 50:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  protons, neutrons.

• 50:42Chuck Nice?

  And then you gotta propose them.

• 50:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quarks.

• 50:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 50:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, and so I think the answer is yes, but I'll pull in Jenna to see

• 50:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  what she says.

• 50:50Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild. Okay.

• 50:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But my, my, I think my answer is yes. Nothing.

• 50:56Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 50:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing survives a black hole.

• 50:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Damn. That's really just disturbing for

• 51:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you know, be fun. That's a good poem that needs to be written. Ready? Everything falling into a black hole gets spaghettified. Except spaghetti. It's already spaghetti.

• 51:13Chuck Nice?

  It's already spaghetti.

• 51:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So go straight in. It's got no, got no problems.

• 51:18Chuck Nice?

  No one thing should have all that power. That's all I'm saying. That's a lot of power. Okay, this is a.

• 51:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else you got?

• 51:27Chuck Nice?

  Teague Guiton. Teague Guiton. People are making up stuff now, man.

• 51:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, this has to be the last question because we're spending too much time luxuriating on these answers.

• 51:39Chuck Nice?

  Ah, it's okay. Here we go. Teague Guiton from Instagram says this. What are your thoughts on the simulation theory? How likely is it that it exists? Now, yeah, so.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm happy to end on that because my thinking on that changed in recent weeks.

• 51:54Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 51:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, did we do an explainer?

• 51:57Chuck Nice?

  We did. Yes, we did. That's why I said, go ahead and do it. So.

• 52:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, so I now think we're, we, there's a better chance that we're not in a simulation than I had previously imagined.

• 52:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, good. Now let's stop there and now go find that explainer so we can get more views on YouTube. And I'm gonna say, and Michael Bruce wants to know this. How can we, yeah, that's right. Now go find it. Go find that explainer on YouTube and we're gonna get more views. We're gonna get more views now. So Michael Bruce wants to know this.

• 52:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And while you're there, subscribe.

• 52:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, make sure you subscribe. So Michael Bruce wants to know this. How can we prevent a mass extinction event when the world governments believe more in listening to who pays them over scientific fact? Wow.

• 52:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 52:45Chuck Nice?

  So a better question, I mean, not a better question, a different question is, how we elevate science to a place of respect when it comes to our leaders in government?

• 52:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I wish I didn't have to say this, but maybe science needs better advertising. You know, you know, politicians can get you to like them just by a series of ads. Maybe we need that for science. There's, there's science in your life that you don't even know is in your life. That's keeping you alive and breathing. Uh, most people who are alive today are alive because of some, some scientific advance in food production and prenatal care and, uh, uh, health and sanitation to just.

• 53:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think people, it's easy to take something that's so embedded within your life for granted. So, once you do that, then people will then see and understand what science is, how and why it works, and then they'll respect it, and then we won't go extinct from short-sighted politicians. I hate to say that, because science shouldn't need advertising. But maybe we teach people, maybe teach them to constantly see and embrace it, then you don't need the ads. Teach them that in school. And so every day, "Hey, that's science. Hey, that's science." Hey, if you do that, then it's built into the system. So, by the way, when we were going to the moon, every day you were reminded what science was. Because we were going to the moon.

• 54:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't need someone to say, "Oh, we need more science teachers. How do we attract them?" People were climbing over themselves to study science, and technology, and engineering, and math. Because they saw the fruits of that in that era. So, yeah, I don't have a good answer. Extinction may be in our future, for that very reason. I'm science, and I approve this message. On that happy note, Chuck, we've got to call it quits there. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Chuck, as always, thanks for being my co-host. Of course. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, bidding you to keep looking up.