Cosmic Queries – Science is Cool 4

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice answer Cosmic Queries about the secrets of the universe, science curriculum, tackling religion in the classroom, and more for a remote audience of thousands of science teachers. Recorded live at ScIC4 in collaboration with PocketLab.

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. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I've got with me my co-host Chuck Nice. And this is a special edition of Cosmic Queries. Brought to you in partnership with Pocket Lab. These are people that find all manner of reasons to gather together thousands of teachers around the world, which they did for this special livestream. And this presentation was called "Science is Cool." We took their cosmic questions and turned it into a StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Check it out.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, everybody in virtual universe. And hi, Dave. Good to be with you guys again.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Guys, it's great to have you again. And, you know, as a testament to how much the audience really enjoys this, we got over a thousand questions. Can you imagine that?

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we'll just go fast.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  It's gonna go fast.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, soundbite mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  People love to ask you guys questions. So I'm gonna hand it off to you guys and I'll be back on towards the end.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Excellent.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dave.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks. Okay, so Chuck.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  Hey, buddy.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good to see you again.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're in LA right now, right?

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  I am in Los Angeles.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm in New York. So we got the, we got the whole country.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  We got the, we got the country blanketed from end to end. End to end. Science, we have science across America right now.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Science across America, and we've got many international viewers from...

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you know, I was gonna say international from other countries, but of course that means.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you know what we really need? We need, um, when, when the flat-earthers had a conference, it was, they were boasting that they had Flat Earth supporters all around the globe.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  Right. (laughing).

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it should have been all around the disk.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The disk.

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, flat Earthers.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got, so, so let's hit about, I mean, I won't necessarily know the answers to these. I mean, I, you know, people, these aren't even constrained by topic, right? They're just whatever, whatever people want.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  Whatever they want to ask you, this is my favorite. This is when I like it, you know? When people just come out and they ask you whatever is on their mind.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just galactic gumbo.

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's right, the guaranteed, the galactic gumbo. They didn't all see any guarantee, no one put on there now a little side, little side.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is everyone who makes gumbo speak like that?

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, let's get to it.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 2:45Chuck Nice?

  Let, speaking of international, man, why not, why not, let's start this from a little further down south. Let's go to Bogota, Colombia.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bogota. Yeah, and just before we begin, let me just establish my credentials here. I don't normally do this, but there might be new people to this. And I just want to say, okay, so I have an undergraduate degree in physics. I have a PhD in astrophysics. I'm widely read on many current scientific topics. I have various hobbies that inform back into my work. And I count myself as a lifelong learner ever since I graduated, ever since I exited school. So any day that goes by where I don't learn something, for me, feels like a wasted day.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So often when I'm given answer, I'm pulling from different places in our, in my portfolio of knowledge and expertise, which can flesh out an answer, make it, make the answer a little more memorable to you if I add a pop culture reference. But I, I spend some time thinking about pop culture, which folds back into this. So, so there you have it, Chuck. And if I don't know the answer, I'm just going to say, I don't know.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's cool. And I, I guess I should give my credentials too. I have read every issue of Scientific American this year, and that's it. So let's.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Jamie, Jamie Cardozo, Jamie Cardozo wants to know this. This is a great question. Neil, what is the most beautiful and inspiring process?

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  In space.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  We start, we're starting off, we're going yard.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go, let's go, let's go deep.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  We go.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go deep. Okay. By the way, most of our listeners might now, might not be Americans, so we're not going yard. We're going meter. Okay. Going yard is an American football expression for either going, no, going yard, that's basketball.

• 4:45Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no, going yard is baseball for your.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baseball for going.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Hitting it out of the yard.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Okay. Oh, it's you're hitting out of the, the.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Out of the ball yard. Yeah.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's not how many yards away it is.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, fine.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  But anyway.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I would say.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  What a great question.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would say on earth, because well, I'll go out into space in a minute, but I would say on earth, on everyone's bucket list, especially since in modern times, there's more traveling around the world than ever before. It used to be really rare if you left your country and went to another country, or if you got on an airplane, that was a newsworthy event now. It's a little more common, it's more affordable. On everyone's bucket list should be to bear witness to a total solar eclipse. By happenstance, the size of the moon on the sky is the same as the size of the sun on the sky. Of course, the sun is much, much bigger, but it's also, but the, the sun is 400 times bigger and it's 400 times farther away.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they exactly cancel out so that they're the same size on the sky. So the moon passes in front of this, you can't see the moon because you're observing the backside of it. It's the other side is lit up by the sun. In broad daylight, the sun looks like it starts to disappear. And then the sun does disappear. You have the beautiful corona, not the coronavirus, just the corona, which is Latin for crown. Um, and, and, and it, and it lasts only a few minutes. So you travel all this way and there's the anticipation, it's like a cosmic pilgrimage. To participate in one of the great spectacles of the universe. A total solar eclipse. I've seen two. One when I was, I was 14, the first time I saw one.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I saw the one that came across the United States just a few years ago. But total solar eclipses happen every couple of years. So they're not rare. By the way, practically every news article on eclipses say rare eclipse coming by. No, they're not. They happen every couple of years. You don't say, "Rare World Cup is being played this year." No, it happens that that happens every four years. Eclipses are more common than the World Cup. Okay, so, but, but newspaper people and many other people want to believe that you're experiencing something that never happens ever. And it's just happening in your lifetime when you happen to be here on Earth. No, the point is eclipse paths are very narrow. So it's, you gotta put in some effort to get in the path of the moving shadow.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And usually it's in some exotic, interesting place in the world. Use that as an excuse to travel. So for me, it is beautiful, it is elegant, it drives you to poetry. And beyond that, if I could go anywhere in the universe, I would watch the collision of two galaxies. But have it happen in my own time scale. Because it typically takes a half a billion years and I don't live that long. So the next best thing we have are colliding galaxies on a computer. Because you can speed up time. Go Google "colliding galaxies" and oh my gosh. It's like a cosmic ballet choreographed by the forces of gravity. As two spiral galaxies intersect. And they feel each other's gravity completely across their diameter.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the whole galaxy begins to distort. And then they overpass, they, they overtake each other. They pass through each other and then they come back and then they oscillate. We, we have these simulations. Go look, look on, go Google it, "colliding galaxies."

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll get some of the most beautiful simulations there ever was. I'd like to see that just dangling out there in space and live long enough to just watch it happen. So there you have it.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  There you go, and thank you very much Neil for explaining where baby galaxies come from.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's where it's where train wreck galaxies end up. They start out as two beautiful spiral galaxies and they end up quite the mess.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  Quite a mess.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And their black holes typically merge in the middle. So they now have a monster black hole that's twice the monster it used to be in either one. So yeah, so there you have it.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying the imagery is very reminiscent of, you know, procreation.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Okay, cosmic.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic procreation, even though that's not, I mean, I know, I know stars come out of nurseries, you know.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but there are baby galaxies, they're called satellite galaxies. We have two, they're, you know, less than a tenth the mass of our own galaxy. And they, they're called the Magellanic Clouds. They're not really clouds, but that's evidence of what they thought they were when they were first observed. You know, 500 years ago, when telescopes revealed that what they thought was a cloud resolved into a pastiche of stars that are a collection of stars that orbit our own galaxy.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our evidence shows that galaxies over time actually end up eating them. So we don't call it galactic procreation, we call it galactic cannibalism.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can Google that, galactic cannibalism.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me another.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's go to, okay, yo, let's, let's keep it international right here. Hafiz Murtza, Hafiz Murtza, coming to us from Malaysia.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna apologize in advance for Chuck's inability to pronounce anybody's name. He tries.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I know it's not your name, but here's the thing, now you got a better name.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you got a name, a chuckified name. No, they'll decide whether it's better, okay? It's got chuckified.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on, but he's trying, just everyone to know.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  I love this, how does astronomy help civilization? How does astronomy?

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  Have economic value.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 10:40Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, so let me start, let me, let me get base on you here, okay?

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone I know

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  who dropped out of astrophysics graduate school and did not complete a PhD, okay, earns at least three times more money than any of the rest of us. So the talent, the, the skill set that you have as an astrophysicist, it's problem solving, it's mathematics, it's programming, it's taking large sets of data and making sense of it. That's hugely valuable in many other fields that are out there. In fact, Michael Bloomberg, the multi-billionaire turned mayor of New York City, one-time candidate for president of the United States.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michael Bloomberg, okay, studied physics and astronomy in college, okay? And, and, and engineering. And so then he went and, uh, left, left that and went to Wall Street. He became the youngest partner at Solomon Brothers, the youngest partner, and his parents said, but you're not using your science degree. And then he left and founded his own company called Bloomberg Financial Markets. And his mother said, but you're not using your science degree. Then he turned that into a billion-dollar multinational corporation. But you're not using your science degree. And the fact is, he was using his science degree the entire time. Don't think that when you go to college or, or study in, in a graduate school

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that, that the specific knowledge is what you're applying. No, no, no, you go to school to learn how to think.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and I can give another example that's not even in the sciences. Let's say you're in an English class or a history class and you write a paper on Napoleon. Okay, yeah, you'll know a lot about Napoleon, but really that's not what will matter later on. What will matter later on is that you took a topic that you knew nothing about. You researched it, you composed words, paragraphs, ideas into coherent arguments, thoughts, analysis. That's what you retain when you exit school. In fact, you know what wisdom is? It's what's left over after you've forgotten all the details of what you were taught in the classroom. That's wisdom. So that was just for people who didn't become astrophysicists, alright?

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those who do, there's a long history of the relationship between governments and astronomers. Like, I wrote a whole book on this. This sounds like a plug for my book, but you asked the question. Who was it who asked it? Hey, you all asked the question. Right. Okay? Yeah, and it's a weird thing because if you know the sky, that's the earliest form of navigation there was. Right. If you're going to sail, to explore, to conquer, to for whatever is your good or bad reasons why a country might want to explore beyond its borders, you need to know where you are on Earth and what time it is. And both of those factors come to you by an understanding of the night sky.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it goes way back into indigenous peoples and what they did from Australia to the Polynesians, to Native Americans, and it goes way back. Navigation, some of the greatest navigational tools come from some of the oldest cultures. And in the Middle East, okay? And in my museum, in my office, okay? I have an astrolabe. And there it is, multiple discs that you put on depending on where you are. You hold it up and there's a weight at the bottom. And it's a beautifully carved Arabic in the brass. And this, people were doing this navigating in the dunes. You know why? Because there wasn't a street corner to say, okay, this is north and this is south and I'm going to find grandma's house, alright?

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the value of what an astrophysicist brings to the world is not so obvious to someone just thinking, oh, do you build a gadget that I can now buy in the store? We are enabling...

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are enabling the world to function in ways that might otherwise feel and seem hidden. And by the way, this is just spillage from the rest of what we do, which is talking about black holes and quasars. Oh, by the way, some of us actually are studying asteroids. In fact, we just did a stop and go on an asteroid just a few days ago. Why? To kick up some dust, scoop it up, bring it back to Earth and study it. We have wars on Earth, fighting over natural resources, over limited natural resources that are basically unlimited on asteroids. So if you're one of these people who say, why are we done up there when we should be focusing down here? You know, you sound like to me, you're like the

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  person in the cave. And I'm looking out the door, I peek out the door and I say, wow, there's a mountain over there. And there's valleys and there's streams. No, you can't explore. We have cave problems. Let's solve the cave problems first, then I'll let you exit the front door. That's what you sound like if you were trying to say, this is a luxury, we have to do the important things here on Earth. So, wow. So I'm sorry, I get all screaming at you.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry. It's all good stuff.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm like all in the lens.

• 16:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. You know, it's, I love it. I mean, you know, it's, it's the same fervor that you hear from the guy on the street corner in New York City telling everybody that we're all gonna die. But I, but for some reason from you, it works.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, plus I'm not saying we're all gonna die. I'm gonna say, the methods and tools of science actually provide us power over many things that would otherwise kill us.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break, but when we come back, more cosmic queries on StarTalk.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon, bringing the universe down to Earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. In this special Cosmic Queries edition, in partnership with Pocket Lab, it's drawn from a livestream that occurred recently. And in it, we fielded questions from educators around the world. Check it out.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's keep it moving.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it.

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  Let's, uh, let's switch gears and come back to the United States. Well, not come back, our first US question. This is David Wilkerson from Kentucky. And David would like to know this. He's a science teacher. He says misinformation is so prevalent in the media. How can science teachers better train students to see through the noise?

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a great question and an important question. And so I'm still, I have ideas that are still in the oven right now, baking. So technically that makes them half-baked if I share them with you. So I'll just put some things out there. And like I said, I think I've said that before. If, um, I still want to think more deeply about this, but I'll give you some of my early thinking, that science needs, simply needs to be taught differently. Okay? Whoever was the generation of educators who said, "Science is this body of knowledge, and we need to impart that in you." What is a DNA molecule? What is a molecule? What is DNA? What is, you know, what is metabolism? What is, what are volcanoes? What, what is a combustion engine?

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is knowledge, and that's an important aspect of science literacy. I don't want to lessen its value by what I say next. Let's retain that value, but add to it the understanding that science is a means of querying nature.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somewhere in there, that got lost, okay? Science is a tool. It is a, it is a, it is a process of inquiry. So that there's something you don't know and you ask yourself, "How do I go about finding the answer to that?" That is what science is. So the science denial that's going on is coming about because, I think, because people think of science as just this body of information. And they decide what the cherry picking information, the way you might in other subjects. You might say, "No, I don't think it happened there. I think it happened this way." You know, in science, science doesn't give you that latitude of denial, right?

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The law of gravity is not something that was just written by members of parliament, you know, 20 years ago. And if you gained three pounds, you know, three, two kilograms last week, you're not going to say, "Oh, I want to repeal the law of gravity because it somehow made me look fat." Right? This is, you don't have that option in science. And if you don't know the power and the objective truths that the methods and tools of science bring to you, you are susceptible to that way of thinking. So I don't know if you can go to adults and, you know, and convince them because they've already been through a system where they think

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that they can pick and choose what it is that they believe is true. So, but as science is taught as, here's something, if you wonder if it's true, investigate it. Don't say, "Well, that conflicts with my culture, my religion, my, my family values, therefore it must not be true." Oh, no, no, no, that's not how the world works. And so, uh, I, so yeah, I'm still working on how this could be implemented. But the science standards are, I think it's missing some elements.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of what science is that could protect us as we go forward.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  Very nice, very nice. There you go. That's a great answer.

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me answer questions faster so we can get through more of them because we have a thousand of them. And at this rate, we'll be here until the year 2025. So.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  That's fine. I'm, I'm, you know, during these COVID times, I don't really have a lot to do.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this.

• 21:15Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  COVID doesn't hang out that long.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let's hope. All right. Let's, uh, let's get a little more personal with Michelle Nedzlik from Wayne, Michigan. And Michelle says, love you guys. What is the one thing you learned about yourself during the COVID quarantine? A little more personal here, Neil. Have you learned anything about Neil deGrasse Tyson?

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have. Uh, first of all, I don't mind spending a lot of time alone or in solitude or with family. Fortunately, we, we live in, our apartment has enough rooms, people can go to them and separate. Not, not because we have COVID, but if you, you know, you can get on each other's nerves. Plus, I don't have like three-year-old children, we used to, but I don't have three-year-old, five-year-old children running up and down, creating the, the, uh, the, the entropic universe.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they're so good at doing.

• 22:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, that, I don't, so I don't want to, my answer to, to think less of the people who are actually trying to maintain their sanity. I will say is that I was very, I was very productive.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but I am disappointed in myself because I wanted to be a little more creative.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As much as it's difficult, if not impossible, to confess to ourselves or to each other. If you want to be more creative, you have to be less productive.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, you don't want that to be true, but if you think about it and think about your own life, it's true.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got this many emails done today and I cleaned up and I did the laundry and I did, and, and look at how productive I was. Did you create anything? Did you have any new thoughts? No. No. And you know what new thoughts take? They, it requires being alone for a while, just like looking up at the ceiling and letting the, the, letting the food that you spent your life feeding your brain, letting that find new connections. Because what is a new idea but old information connected in new ways? That's what a new idea is. And, but you know what is happening? Is people during COVID, they're binging TV shows. Okay? This is a stretch of hours that you could have sat there and maybe created something.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be Isaac Newton, you know, you could, you know, knit something new or, or read a new book or something that takes your thoughts in a new place. A good TV can do that and a good movie can do that. But if that's all that it is, all right, then it's really you're sampling other people's ideas and not true. So I, I'm, I'm, I was not as creative over this time as I wanted to be. And so I, and I, I, I'm gonna try to see what I can do about that going forward.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  I'm always creative because I'm never productive. So there you have it. There you have it. It's just all creativity all the time, baby. All creativity all the time, just creating.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you have laundry on the ground.

• 24:26Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I'm like, that's not laundry, that's an extra bed now.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless tomorrow's closed, because it wasn't quite dirty enough to put in the hamper.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. All right. So let's, um, great question here. All right. This is Catherine Higgins and Catherine is coming to us.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From, do we know where they're from? Did they say where they're from?

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  She's coming to us from Spokane, Washington.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spokane, okay.

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  Spokane. Here's what she says. If you could know the answer to one question about the universe, what would it be? You only get to pick one.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got that, I got that, I got that.

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  Really? So you've thought about this all right?

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, all the time.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  Jesus. Go for it.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, I...

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I lose sleep wondering whether we, humans, who are basically the first intelligent species of life on Earth. You can define the word intelligence so that that's true. Okay, so we're the first ones to have music and poetry and art and science altogether. Okay, no other, nobody else has done that and to build stuff. Okay, so we sit alone in that category. If you define it that way, okay. If we are the very first species to have that ability, who are we to think that we have sufficient intelligence

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to contemplate all the complexities of the universe? Imagine a world where there are multiple intelligent species and some are way more intelligent than others. Some might be more intelligent compared to humans than we are compared to chimps. What do, you know what chimps look like to us? Okay, yeah, they can stack boxes and reach a banana and they can use a stick and get termites. And, and we say, that's a smart chimp and they're using tools. Right. Yeah, but they didn't build an airplane, okay? So, you can praise them, but they're kind of really know better than our toddlers, what our toddlers can do. But if you find another species that's to us what we are to chimps,

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  what do we look like to them? What, what, what do their toddlers look like? Their toddlers would be smarter than our smartest human beings. Right. When I joke about this, their toddler comes home and says, oh, look mommy, look what I did. Oh, Junior, good sissy, what did you do? Oh, you composed a sonnet. Oh, you derived the first laws of calculus. That's so cute. Let's put it on the refrigerator door for grandma to see. This, that. So if you can imagine that increment of intelligence above us, what are they figuring out that we're not? Right. That we are just, that we are just, our most complex thoughts are incapable of even knowing what question to ask.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I wonder, and I lose sleep. Not every night, but certainly weekly, I think of that.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So, I mean, the real deal is for me, um, I don't, I don't mind if there, if we're far down on the intelligence quotient. Um, I just don't want us to be delicious.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  See, like, it's okay if aliens come here and look at us like we are much lesser beings, but I don't want them to come here and look at us the way we look at cows. That, that would bother me.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to be tasty.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  I don't want to be tasty. That's it. I'll be stupid, but I don't want to be stupid.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't even be their pet. They can make us their pet. If they're smart enough, they'll just completely trick us into being their pets, and we wouldn't even know the difference. So, yeah, so I just, I just wonder. And so as we contemplate the cosmos, and forget any one individual being smart, I'm talking about collectively, the human species, is the wiring of our brain sufficient? And I worry that it's not. And so, and that makes me sad.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  It could be that we're not capable of carrying the information necessary to know what is knowable.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or to even know what question to ask that would then later be answered.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow, yeah.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just think about that. Not even knowing the question.

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so a chimp won't even know how to ask, "What's the square root of 2?" Okay. You know, what is cosine of 45 degrees? That, that question is so beyond every, every other primate, okay? It's beyond some human primate, okay? But, but nonetheless, that's even a question that has no meaning to them. That's what I wonder. So, that's my answer.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, all right.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are we smart enough to figure out the universe?

• 29:35Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, should we just give up now and wait till some other smarter creature makes us their pet?

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, that, that can't be the answer.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want it to be answered.

• 29:45Chuck Nice?

  That certainly can't be it.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want it.

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's, um.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep it coming.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  Let's go to Stefania Gonzalez in Mexico, who says, "How do you deal or manage the contradictions between religion and science in the classroom if children were to ask you?" So if somebody were to ask you a question that certainly has religious implications, how do you give them a scientific answer?

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so in a free country, we have free expression of words and ideas, provided that they don't conflict with other people's freedoms. That's a common way you would think of what it means to live in a free country. You should have the freedom to worship whoever you want, in whatever way is, is, it fulfills the traditions of your family, your culture, or, or your community. And so that, at least in the United States, that's protected. It's protected. So you can have a stretch of road where there's a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  church, some Protestant churches. You can even, might find a Scientology, you know, building down the street. So that's protected. Religions, the tenets of most religions are not based on what is objectively true. It's based on what you might say is a personal truth. Okay, so Jesus is your savior. That's your personal truth. No one in a free country can or will or should take that away from you. But that doesn't mean it's somebody else's savior. Okay? So now you have someone who worships differently from you. And now you put them both in the same classroom. So, my response to you is, if that classroom is a science classroom,

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you teach the objectively true realizations of what, how the universe works. And that is true no matter who you worship, okay? And so, and by the way, you don't have scientists going in front of places of worship, saying, "You know, that might not necessarily be true. That's not, that's not how you do it. That's not what anyone has done, okay? You don't even find ardent atheists doing that, okay? The issue is just what the question pivoted on. What do you do in the science classroom, okay? So, what you can say is, whatever is, again, I'm not telling you to do this, but how I would handle the situation is, I would say,

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  if a religion or a holy book makes a testable statement about the world, we can test it using the methods and tools of science. If it turns out to be false, then that's the reality of the world you're living in. You're living in a world where the science gives you smartphones. It gives you means of communication, means of transportation. It has established what you accept and recognize as modern civilization. So you would need to go back to your religion and say to yourself, "Okay, do I need to reject the science because I believe in this religion so strongly?

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or do I sort of think of my religion differently as a place for spiritual enlightenment, spiritual fulfillment, as a sense of community?" You can do that without declaring the universe was made in six days. You can do that, and most enlightened religious people do. So there's a huge intermediate place in there for you to land between rejecting all of science because it conflicts with your religion or rejecting all of religion just because you're believing something that is itself not testable. That's a lot of words coming out of my mouth. You know, if you want to be like simple about it, you could just say, "This is a science class. You're going to be learning about science."

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And later on, when you're older, you can think this through for yourself and what makes the most philosophical sense to you. And we live in a free country. You have that freedom. But I'm not going to tell you something that is that is that is not otherwise scientifically established.

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, I think that you really

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the science classroom.

• 34:14Chuck Nice?

  I think you really hit the the crux of it in the in your first statement. When you said there are personal truths and there are objective truths.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And by the way, if you can, if you if you rise to power of of where you control laws and legislation, and you have a a country or community that is diverse in belief systems and what people want and care about and and who they love and who they what they look like. If you're diverse and you're going to make laws, it seems to me the most secure way to make laws is to base the laws on what is objectively true because that applies to everybody. And I've said before, you know, the good thing about science, and I mean that objectively true established science from experiment and observation, the good thing about science is it's true whether or not you believe in it.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a law then matters on all scales at that point. So when I think of establishing governments and laws, if in a diverse country, you kind of have to anchor them in things that everyone can recognize is true whether or not you wanted it to be true.

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  Cool. All right, let's let's stay in North America and go to Guadalajara. And um, this is Alejandro Salazar, who says, what features does a cool teacher need to have?

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love that question. I love that question. Okay. Now I'm going to talk about you all here, okay? So just are you seated? Don't get me started.

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Should I get out a book? Are we about to be read?

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't make me do this. I'm going to do it. You ready?

• 35:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, um, I've seen the curricula in schools of education. I've seen it, okay, maybe not every bit of it, but from what I've seen, what is commonly trained, well, train you to be organized, good. Train you how to give an exam where the questions are not ambiguous. Or the, good, how to give homework, how to grade, how to, how to mechanically create the perfect classroom environment, okay? Fine, you'll be a better teacher for knowing that. But you will never be a great teacher, just, I'm telling you that, okay? And, and, and, and how do I know this? Because I have never, ever met anybody who said, "That class was awesome." I said, "Why?"

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "The exams were so perfect and the homework was so consider..." No, nobody ever said that, ever, about any class they ever took, okay? What do they say about their favorite classes? "I love the teacher, the teacher was enthusiastic, they made me want to learn, they made, they had expertise that came from every, all places, and they put it together in fresh, interesting ways." And how many teachers in our lives satisfied those criteria? I bet it's like this many. By the way, I don't have to ask you because I know, because I poll people and I ask them, "Out of the scores of teachers you've had in your life, how many were singularly interesting to you?

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many changed your life? How many opened your eye?" There's like three, at most five, but it's typically fits in one hand. So who are these teachers? These, these are teachers who take their enthusiasm, and forgive me for using the word in a COVID climate, and their enthusiasm is infectious, okay? They breathe on you and they spread their infectious...

• 37:57Chuck Nice?

  Don't breathe on me, though.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their infectious love of their subject, okay? And the rest is, yeah, it helps if you're organized and you got the thing, but don't you want to make lifelong learners out of people? Don't you want people to want to continue learning about the subject you just taught them? Rather than at the end of the day, or at the end of the season, say, "School's out," and throw their papers in the air? And I'm saying, "What? What are you doing? Oh, I'm glad school is out because it was a chore." Nobody ever said that about their favorite classes and their favorite classes have people. It's not about being cool. It's about being interesting. It's about, it's about meeting them more than half their students, meeting them more than halfway in their spheres of curiosity.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because otherwise, what are you doing? You're standing in front of a chalkboard, whatever the board is made of today. Standing in front of it and you're writing facing the other way. And you say if they don't learn, oh, the students don't want to learn today. No, no, don't ever say that. I will never accept that as an answer. Okay? By the way, I've said that publicly and people say, oh, he's never been a teacher. Excuse me, go look at my resume. It's online. Okay? Forget the Wiki page. I don't know who ever writes Wiki page. My homepage. Go look. Okay? Okay, so, so. Again, I'm screaming again. I told you somebody, why are you making, turning me into this?

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry. I, you know, I like to see you get worked up. I like to see you get worked up, especially about this. That's great stuff, man. I mean, that is great stuff.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take another quick break, but when we come back, we will introduce you to one of the co-founders of Pocket Lab, who has a few more questions to ask Chuck and me.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time for Patreon shout out to Kyle Marston, Fareed El Nasir, and Steve Lindauer. Thank you so much, guys, for your support. Without you, it'd be so difficult to make StarTalk a reality, at least in this dimension. And for those of you who want your very own Patreon shout out, it's so simple. You just go to patreon.com/stargtloradio and support us.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk, the third and final segment of our Cosmic Queries, brought to you in collaboration with PocketLab. And in this segment, we'll meet David Baker, who's co-founder of the organization, and Clifton Ruseboom. He's a mechanical engineer turned educator. And they each have some questions for me and Chuck about what it is they want to do as educators. Check it out.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Dave, Mr. Co-Founder of PocketLab.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Hey, it's great to see you guys. Thank you, that is pretty entertaining.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Dave, you've got other questions. What do you bring into the table?

• 41:04Speaker 01

  I do have other questions. You know, but, you know, and first, though, I have a complaint. You know, 2020 has been going so great for everyone. And then all of a sudden, just kidding. You know, as if anything could go worse in 2020. A week ago, I see a headline that says, "Mildegras Tyson says an asteroid is going to hit Earth." And that's all the headline says, right?

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, first of all, that's not what I said.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's right. I know that's not what you said, but I'm telling you.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the arc of exaggeration that unfolds after a simple scientific statement is made. What I said was...

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  "We're all going to die." That's what he said. His exact quote was, "We're all going to die."

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're going to say that, it's got to be, "We're all going to die!" You've got to say it with some panic, right? So, there is an asteroid the size of a refrigerator headed towards Earth. And there's a chance, on the day before the US presidential elections, that it will buzz cut Earth. And buzz cut, I don't know if that expression is common internationally. It's a close, you know, cut with the clippers.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's still a little bit of hair standing on end after you've done it. We call that a buzz cut. And you're not quite bald after a buzz cut. They can leave a little bit of hair there. So it could be buzz cut, but if it does hit Earth, it's it will be harmless to us. That's what I said, but that became Tyson predicts that we're gonna get slammed by, you know. And so, but what I made it clear is because it's harmless at that size, even though it's moving very fast and it if it hits it will explode in the atmosphere, be visible to anyone in view, even in broad daylight. And there'll be some rocks that make their way down, remnants of that explosion. Yes, all that'll happen. It's not going to disrupt the grid. Nobody's gonna die. And so I made it clear.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If Dave, if the universe ends in 2020, it will not be the fault.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Not be the fault.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, if Earth ends in 2020, it will not be the fault of the universe.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Right. So and but the good thing is if we do get hit by an asteroid the day before the presidential election, the good thing is we will then have to elect a president that we can all agree upon, Morgan Freeman.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morgan Freeman. Well, you're remembering him as president from the movie Deep Impact.

• 43:26Chuck Nice?

  Deep Impact, yes.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the best portrayals of a president I have ever seen.

• 43:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was his portrayal in that movie. He was dignified, he was intelligent, he was took care of business, he gave the right speech at the right time. And so if anyone wants to see, there are examples of presidents throughout, you know, American movie history, that's one of the best ones. 1996, I think it was, or 97, A Deep Impact. Came out within a year of Armageddon, uh, which where Bruce Willis saves the world. And that movie, by the way, has more violations of the laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever made, just so you know.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  That's good. It must be hard for you to enjoy movies. It's the most difficult, right?

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no, wait. Dave, Dave, uh-uh. It's it's not hard for him to enjoy movies. It's hard for you to enjoy watching a movie with him.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I, I, I'm, I'm polite. I'm, I, I'm okay in a movie theater. I'm not as bad as the people who read the book first. Those are the people who should never see movies. Cause they're never happy with their movie. Oh, they left this out, it's in the book, and well, get the hell out of, I don't need you here. I'm like, can I watch my movie, please? Go back home to your book.

• 44:45Chuck Nice?

  By the way, I just wanna now go to a movie theater with Neil and have him scream out, just, "That is factually incorrect." Or, you know what I mean? "The laws of physics are being violated, people." "This could never happen." Like, that would just be the best.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I just silently chuckle when I see it. But what, what, what are you saying, Dave?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Well Chuck, that would be a nerd's version of Rocky Horror, right?

• 45:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you speaking out to Rocky Horror Picture Show?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 45:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cool.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I do, I do have an important question. So for teachers who are teaching science, what is the best way to get science concepts across to students? Like, what is the...

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, concepts are harder because concepts are not objects, right? So if you're teaching geology, so here's Earth, and here's a volcano, and here's lava, and here's this. And so, it, concepts are, are, um, they're an extra sort of step on the pedagogical pyramid for you to, it's an extra challenge for how to convey it. And while I try to, I use my hands a lot, you might have seen when I gesticulated in Eclipse. You know, I think I have pretty expressive hands, I think I get pretty far. But if you have tools in your classroom, models of things, then, then you don't have to be so inventive with your hands.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thing is there, and your hands could try to be inventive with the thing that you don't have a model of. Right? So, and I, I understand you guys have, have such models. You, you, they're in your storefront. But I'm just saying, um, when I think of a teacher's utility belt, walking around explaining things, um, if you're in a classroom, your utility belt is what lines the walls. Those are your tools. And the more of those tools you have, and the more informed you are on how to invoke them, I think the more potent you can be in communicating the concepts. And so, yeah, yeah, in fact, Cliff is on the line here.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  So Clifton.

• 46:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Cliff, one of the engineers for Pocahontas, what kind of engineer are you?

• 46:55Chuck Nice?

  Mechanical engineer by training.

• 46:59Chuck Nice?

  And, but you know, science educator by night.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, Bruce Wayne by day.

• 47:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Batman by night, okay.

• 47:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and then, you know, the, the skills of modeling, like you just touched on, and how we can apply that in our science classroom.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I would say that one of the, one of the cautions, or just, it's not a caution, it's just be actively self-aware that when you model something, there are some students who will think that you were describing the literal thing. Okay? And I don't know what, is it one in 10, one in 20? But there'll be at least one or a few students in your class that will not get the, the metaphor of what you're using, or the analogy of what you're invoking. And so, and by the way, that's where model breaks down, right? A model is not the exact thing, it's a model of the thing.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you can pursue the model until you have a breakdown in that correspondence, and then they have to be self-aware of that, or you bring in a better model.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  So is, starting with the phenomena, a good way to, to get around the limitations of models?

• 48:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't know. In my experience, I'd like explaining an idea first, seeing how far I get. Let them chew on it a little bit, you know? And if it's not tasty enough, I'll throw in some special sauce, which might be a pop culture analogy, or a life experience, something that adds a storytelling dimension so that I get their interest. And then they're grappling with the idea, what do you mean? The, the sun covers the earth, the, the moon covers the sun, huh? What, what is that? I'm trying to think this through. And when you, when they've invested a little bit of that, then you bring out the model. Oh, that's what you mean! Oh, now I see! All right?

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but if you lead with the model, then the model itself can become a distraction to the idea. I like, it's my personal, I'd like trying to put the, and let people struggle a little. Nothing wrong with struggling, nothing wrong with trying to figure it out. Then the model gets put out and then it becomes crystal clear. In my field, astrophysics, I have colleagues who gave slide shows every day when they taught. Cause we have a highly photogenic field, okay? Astrophysics, everything is beautiful, alright? Even the ugly stuff is beautiful. So they'd have slide shows and this is what we're gonna learn about today. You know, if you show something that you haven't learned about, it's just a pretty picture. I saved slide shows for the last day of class.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, okay, and here's, here is the planet Mars and notice it's red. Yes, we learned about that. It's red because it's iron oxides and we're not in the chemical part of it. Oh my gosh, yes, now I see, thank you. And it's cold on the poles, oh, it's got ice caps, just like we talked about, okay? Then all of a sudden, the model becomes the, it cements it in place. And then they've got the idea, they've got the model that supports the idea, rather than the model itself that becomes the idea. That's just, that's just me. You pick up on that however it fits your classroom.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  I think that's strong advice. Yeah, yeah, I really, I really like that. We, we talk about that a lot and we probably talk about this all day. You know, and the problem with the internet is, you know, you could just Google it and you lose that option, that opportunity to think about it and try to-

• 50:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To think about, yeah. Googling is like a replacement for, you know, I was gonna have a new rule. Cause when people get into an argument, they say, well, let's Google it. I have a new rule, no. Argue about it for at least five minutes, ideally 10 minutes, argue. That forces you to think, well, am I, are my thoughts correct? Oh, you have, you made a good point, let me reassess that. After 10 minutes, then Google it, okay? And by the way, you'll get to learn whether the loudest person was correct.

• 51:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or whether the overtalkers, like the male overtalkers, whether they're actually correct or just where they're just full of hot air. But you give them a chance to commit to something that they either know or don't know in the 10-minute argument, then you're Google. That's my new rule.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  This is great. Chuck and Neil in StarTalk, thank you so much. Again, it's fantastic to have you.

• 51:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dave, you're doing great work there. And any person who can bring together 10,000 teachers in a coherent way where everyone is on the same side of the same fence, trying to do what's right for this world. You know, we need more folks like you.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you can be a part of it.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk, and I've been Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I want to thank my co-host Chuck Nice as well as Pocket Lab for co-sponsoring this edition of Cosmic Queries. As always, I bid you to keep up the good.