Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries – Dark Mysteries of the Universe

Black holes, neutron stars, the multiverse, and much more. Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Leighann Lord delve into the dark mysteries of the universe – now extended with a cosmic conversation between Neil and Matt O’Dowd, host of PBS Space Time. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and this is Cosmic Queries.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep thinking of it as an after-hours kind of thing.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  It has that feel to it.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the voice of Leanne Lord. Leanne, thanks for being on StarTalk again.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me back. You know I love it here.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excellent, because plus you're a geek person.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally geek, so you can do this. And in our Cosmic Queries additions, we get one of our favorite comedians, in this case it's you.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To call the internet on our websites and all our social media to collect questions, sometimes solicited, others, the questions just come in.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  They do.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because people are bubbling with curiosity.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Right, and you know, to have a personal astrophysicist.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'd like to.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Why would you not take advantage of that?

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, so, let's go ahead and do that. I haven't seen these questions before, and not to stump me or anything, but just, my answers are fresh, and if I don't know something, I'll tell you.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Alrighty.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The topic is dark things, right?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're exploring the dark mysteries of the universe here.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mystery, mysteries or dark mysteries?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Dark mysteries.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  With quotes?

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark mysteries, let's go for it.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Alright, well, this first question, we're coming in from Nick Fisher, and he wants to know, if all this light is created in the universe and travels for billions of years, why is it still so dark?

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Good question.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, a couple of things. There's light from stars that comes for billions of years across the universe, and when you look at that light, you see the star. So, it's not dark.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's dimmer, but it's not dark. And light comes from the billions of stars of galaxies. The billions of stars contained within a galaxy, you look to the edge of the universe, there's a galaxy there. So, it's not dark. So, galaxies and stars and things, they are themselves not dark, alright? So, they get dimmer, but they're not dark. Now, how about the rest of what is dark?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not dark.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is ablaze in microwave light.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Does that mean it's blazing, but we can't see it?

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, your eyes can't see microwaves.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if, if your eyes could see-

• 2:30Speaker 01

  No matter what prescription I put in.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly right. So the whole spectrum of light is not just Roy G. Biv, which is-

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Um, Roy G. Biv, the colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  That's my closet.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indigo is the tricky one that people never get. So-

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Who doesn't get indigo?

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Isaac, Isaac Newton first net labeled those colors. And that's the, that's visible light. And for the longest time, we thought that that was the only way that light could exist. And if we're looking out in the universe, that's the only way that the universe would speak to us. Until we learned that below red, we have infrared and above violet, we have ultraviolet.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And beyond that, and, and, and the light goes in each direction. So your eyes are not the measure of all that can be seen in the universe. And the methods and tools of the astrophysicist, over the past century, we have found ways to detect light far outside of visible light.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that includes radio waves and gamma rays and X-rays and, and microwaves. And the universe is ablaze in microwave light.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Wow, we just can't see it with the eyes we have.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you were Geordi.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Geordi La Forge with the banana clip visor.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That visor enables him on Star Trek: Next Generation.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Next Gen, of course.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To see all the spectrum of light that even the human eye can't see. And he would look up, tune in and say, "The universe is a glow."

• 3:53Speaker 01

  You know, that actually brings up an issue. He possibly unfairly then got his job because he can see stuff that other people, uh, could not.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you mean Geordi on, on the-

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yes, on the show, not the actor.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The actor Kunta Kinte, the actor.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  The actor Kunta Kinte.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Did you seriously go back to roots?

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I so did.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Let's throw a little reading rainbow in there. We'll just give his whole resume, why don't we?

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We met, we have a StarTalk episode.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bumped into them. I mean, we, we arranged an interview at Comic Con 2012.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Brent Spiner, yes.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Brent Spiner was there too, uh, Data.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  So jealous.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we told together, we had them together. It's like the-

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That's one of my favorite photos.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The space-time continuum almost imploded there. So, uh, so what else you got?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  All right. I have a question from Joe Vera.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And, uh, he says, "I recently found out about something called dark flow." Isn't that a DJ?

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark flow.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A beatboxing DJ, dark flow. That's a great name.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It is, isn't it? Something like a cartoon. All right, um, now from what I gather, it is the un-

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other great name for it was like MC squared, that's it, you know, if you want to be MC.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that. Be there or be a four-sided polygon. Can we get any geekier? All right.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. Go on.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  All right, from what I gather-

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But four-sided polygons are not always square. They could be-

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Arambus?

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rumbus, yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Which is my favorite. Love arambus. We're never getting to this question.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, go, sorry.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, so, "Recently found out about something called dark flow."

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On this show, you're allowed to get your geek on. If you can't do that here-

• 5:23Speaker 01

  If you can't geek out here.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  All right, "From what I gather, it is the unexplained coherent motion of galaxies toward one side of the universe. Can you please elaborate on this phenomenon and is it po- and its possible ramifications for our understanding of the universe?"

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's something called the Great Attractor. It got labeled that because when you-

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I know that guy.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you, uh, measure the speed of galaxies as they move in the universe, there are multiple ways to do this. One of them is just how fast is the universe expanding? So that's the speed they have just from the expanding universe. But while that's happening, galaxies are moving among themselves. For example, we are about to, in seven billion years or so, about to collide-

• 6:02Speaker 01

  We better hurry.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the Andromeda Galaxy. It's our nearest big galaxy. So we're about to collide, but the greater activity of the universe is expansion while galaxies are still moving among themselves.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when you map the speeds of all these galaxies, it was found that there's a whole swath of galaxies in the universe that have sort of an extra motion towards one direction. So you don't know if they're escaping something or being drawn towards something.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Run, everybody!

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's an, it's an interesting sort of phenomenon that's not completely explained.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  So you just didn't explain it?

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  I love it. You made it sound real good, though. That's nice. Wow.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If somebody figured it out recently, I haven't read about it, but put it that way.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Well, check your Twitter stream.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll check, I'll check it, yes.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  All right. That's hilarious. All right, next question is from John Coleman. And he says, "Is there any possibility that the singularity that created our universe is still active and part of the reason the universe is expanding?"

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, the singularity was a point in space and time.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is not still around. We, we are the singularity writ large across the dimensions of the cosmos.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  I'm gonna put that on a t-shirt. I'm a singularity. What are you?

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you were once a singularity.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I was once a singularity.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are what the singularity became.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  I'm a has-been.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, is it, is it good for you?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  It's good for me.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We have like, like 15 seconds left. See what you can give me in 15 seconds.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  All right. Kevin Pulito wants to know, according to the theory of the multiverse, what is space, he'll call it space, between universes?

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, 15 seconds is not enough time to answer that question. So, when we come back on StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Edition, more of the questions, your questions called from the internet, from our Facebook page, like us on Facebook. And of course, you can put your questions online at starTalkRadio.net. We will be right back.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition, which I like to think of as StarTalk after hours. Leanne Lord, thanks for being with me.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Oh, always. Thank you.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you tweet at Leanne Lord.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I do.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you spell your name funny.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I do. My parents spelled my name funny.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could change it. L-E-I-G-H-A-N-N, Leanne Lord. That's your Twitter handle. And I know where you're performing because I'm on your list at veryfunnylady.com.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yes, you can spell that. That's easy.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got questions that you're

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I do.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen these questions before and they're all, they're all that is mysterious and dark in the universe.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, we left off, there was one, read me that question again.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I thought it was a good question. And this is from Kevin Polito again, and he said, according to the theory of multiverse, what is, what is space, and he says, I'll call it space, between universes? What is the space between universes?

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a higher dimension. Next question.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Oh, and not the fifth dimension, as in the singing group.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, actually, there's a fifth dimension in there somewhere, but if you take the three dimensionality of our universe, and then you embed it among other universes in another kind of space, that's a higher dimension. And in fact, I hosted a panel on nothing.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  You hosted a panel on Seinfeld?

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On, on nothing at my host institution, the American Museum of Natural History, and we talked about what is between galaxies if the multiverse produces galaxies. And that's a kind of nothing, but it turns out it's not the best nothing that you can come up with.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  It's like the dark alleys of the universe?

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because that still has dimensions.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it nothing if nothing's there, but it still has a dimensionality? See, we got really deep. I mean, heads were exploding left and right.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the aisle.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Like now.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, no, it's, it's, it's what we would call the space of a higher dimension, which is not even our space, because it would not have the matter, it would not have the energy, it would not have the, anything that we associated with our stuff, or even with where our stuff isn't. Because outside of our universe, there's not even the nothing of space.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Wow, no?

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because if space is nothing, then where there is no space, there's not even that nothing.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Okay, next question.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to call next question.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, no, go for it, go for it.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Because I'm just, what?

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, go for it.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  I need to go back to school. Okay, Edwin Martinez.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's nothing wrong with you because you can't imagine higher dimensions than the ones in which we are embedded.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  I, I imagine higher dimensions, but.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, here's a way, I'll help you out. I'll hook you up, ready?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you take, take an ant and put him On a piece of paper and then draw a box around the ant.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a with a sharpie, alright, and say, ant, you can't leave the page.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Oh, that's not gonna work.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and so you just tell that to the ant, and the ant says, okay. And so the ant walks around, it hits the this line that you drew, and it can't get past it. And it's a prisoner in your sheet of paper, surrounded by this square drawn by your sharpie. Because the ant is embedded as part of the two dimensional world you just created for it. And you and you can say, well, just escape. I can't escape. Just jump out of the page. Step over the line and then go back into the page. And the ant says, I don't know what out of the page means. This is my universe.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now I put you in prison, surrounded not by a square that was containing the ant. I surround you by a cube. Six walls. And you say, I can't get out. But from a higher dimension, that person say, just step out into the higher dimension. Step back in and you've escaped. And you see, I have no idea what you're talking.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  No, no, I actually do. And I'm totally getting, I mean, I'm imagining. That's why the pictures move in Hogwarts, because they can step out of their dimension.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You step out of your dimension, and then the walls no longer contain you.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you step out of our dimension, you get to see things you would not otherwise have even known were there. Perhaps even the multiverse itself. Next question, Leanne.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I'd love, I just wanna bask in that, but I'll move on.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basking doesn't work on radio?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. That's why I'm moving on. Edwin Martinez wants to know, uh, why is energy, uh, considered different from mass? And how is it that photons or waves are able to travel but yet have no defined mass? Uh, should not something have a mass if it's ejected and has a defined speed?

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so photons have a mass equivalent.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You plug their energy into which equation?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  E equals mc squared?

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, so their energy on one side. And a c squared is the speed of light squared. So you take that, remember your algebra, bring that to the left side. You divide both sides by c squared. So you have E over c squared equals m.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. If you remember your algebra.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like learn that in the fourth grade.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  I'm rolling.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Well, maybe in your school. I didn't give mine until sixth grade, but you know, whatever.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got that, and so you put it, plug in the energy, you divide by c squared. That will tell you how much mass equivalent that energy has. And once you have the mass, you can plug that into a gravity equation. And that will tell you how much gravity the energy has. And so they work back and forth with one another. The difference is, once you become energy, if you're electromagnetic energy like light, then you move at the speed of light. I mean, you move at very high speeds.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the speed of light. If you have material substance, you cannot move at that speed. That's a problem. So what should you rather be? Light, uh, light energy or mass energy or mass?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Light energy. Good, duh.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh, okay.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  That's easy. Oh, finally, a question I can answer. Um, moving on.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  I have a.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Well, yes, by the way.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As you move faster, time slows down for you?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Duh.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  See, here's a, you know, when I actually know something, I have to revel in it.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. So Einstein's relativity, when you, when you speed up, your time slows down relative to others who are watching you. And the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time moves for you. At the speed of light, time stops, which means photons of light do not move forward in time.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They live forever because they have no clock.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Cause they're moving at the speed of light?

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Did I just say that?

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. So does this have any reason why, uh, on Star Trek, the Enterprise's photon torpedoes don't work? Or this is, these are different photons?

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no. Here's the problem with a photon torpedo. If it's the energy going forward, you wouldn't see it from the side. That's just an FYI.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's empty space. It's just, the energy's not coming to you, the viewer, it's going to the target.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the photon torpedo should be invisible to anyone who is not getting hit by the photon torpedo.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, otherwise you're wasting the energy illuminating my sightline for energy you're trying to deposit in the target.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And the entire special effects department just got fired.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just did FYI on that one. It's the same with the phasers. If it's directed energy, you don't want energy leaking out the side of it.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless there's like someone hit two chalkboard erasers together along the path between the Enterprise and the target, and then it would illuminate the chalk dust.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Right, right, of course.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Along the way.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Wow, that's very imaginative. Um, all right, I have another question.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I have a question from Natalie Dangle.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Dagle. Uh, approximately, how many stars are born and die each day?

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love that.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Now, what's a day?

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  How are we defining a day?

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm assuming Earth Day.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Let's assume.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not somebody else's day, Earth.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Earth.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. But of course, other planets have days.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in fact, Venus's day is longer than its year. Just chill on that one for a bit. So, Leanne's face just scrunched up in a, like.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Cause I'm chewing on it. I'm actually chewing on it. That's okay.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Venus, the day lasts longer than a year, but we'll get back to that if, if we go there. So, now where was I before I distracted myself?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  How many stars?

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many stars were born each day? So, you can do what's called a back of the envelope calc- calculation.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready? All right.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our galaxy has about, just say a hundred billion stars.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And the universe has been around for about 10 billion years. Back of the envelope means you change the number to make the math easy, but your answer will be.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I back of the envelope my taxes all the time.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but your answer will be approximately correct, and later on, you could put the exact number in if you want the exact answer.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Fine, too.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, say we have about 100 billion stars, and the universe, and the galaxy's been around for 10 billion years. Okay? So, we have 100 billion stars, and we've been around for 10 billion years. That means the galaxy makes 10 stars a year.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  That's an average.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, on average. That's right. If it made 10 stars a year, throughout his whole life, we'd have 100 billion stars over the 10 billion years. That's how that works. So, it makes about 10 stars a year, so that's about one a month. And so, we don't quite make a star a day, on average. About one a month. We could live with that. However, that's not actually how stars are born. They're born episodically, in stars, in stellar nurseries, where thousands of stars are born all at the same time. So, if you were a planet in orbit around one of those stars, you'll see stars lighting up daily as they are born.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It must be pretty.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, not daily, but frequently.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Like, poof, there's Brad Pitt. And, poof, there's Angelina Jolie.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A reminder that we had the stars first, before there were Hollywood stars.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Oh, well, of course. Of course.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got like, half a minute left. What do you got? What can we fit in here in this segment?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Um, wow. Okay, I'll try. Uh, this is from Abdely. I can't even get the name out that quick. All right, here's a simple question. The moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, our solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Does this pattern stop on a galaxy level? Or is our galaxy orbiting something else? And that's from Chris Carlson.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool question. I can do that in five seconds.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Listening.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four, three. No, I can't do it. I'm gonna come back. What does our galaxy orbit? When we come back to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Edition.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you never knew it, my day job is as director of the Hayden Planetarium here at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Come by and visit. Tell the front gate that you know me and they'll still charge you admission. Just an FYI. So, Leanne Lord, I got you in studio. Thanks for reading Cosmic Queries to me.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Oh, no, thank you.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are dark things in the universe, dark mysteries of the cosmos.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Dark mysteries of the cosmos.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we almost, we just didn't have time in that last segment. What was that last question?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  All right, that last question, again, was from Chris Carlson, and basically, the moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, and our solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way. So, does this pattern stop on a galaxy level, or is our galaxy, among others, orbiting something else?

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We technically are orbiting the Andromeda Galaxy. Oh, by the way, we should be clear. The moon doesn't orbit the earth.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They... The moon doesn't orbit the earth. The moon and earth orbit a common center of gravity.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is not in the center of the earth. In fact, it's 1,000 miles below earth's surface, on a line between the center of the earth and the moon, wherever the moon is at any time.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we're 4,000 miles in radius. So, 1,000 miles down is not the center of the earth. So, while the moon goes around us, we do a kind of a jig. We do a little jiggle. All right?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  The Earth shimmy, the Earth Harlem Shake?

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Earth kind of shimmies, because the point that it revolves is within itself, and it's not at its center. So, you got that, all right?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meanwhile, earth and the moon go around the sun, a common center of mass between the two of them, which is not at the center of the sun.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  I'm sensing a pattern here.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except, we are so schmaltzing compared to the sun, that the center of mass between the sun and the earth is really close to the center of the sun.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? The sun is so large, a million earths can fit inside it. So, we're not really yanking the sun's chains here. But, the little bit that we do, that's how many planets are discovered orbiting other stars. You look at a star and the star is not just hanging out, it is shimmying.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Don't shimmy.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're saying, "We infer a source of gravity that's orbiting that shimmying star." And the amount it shimmies tells you how far away the planet is from it and how much mass it contains. So, yeah, so Earth and Moon, common center of gravity. Earth, Moon, and the Sun, common center of gravity. The Sun and the center of the galaxy, we orbit that. The galaxy is technically in orbit with the Andromeda Galaxy together. Except our orbits are really elongated. They're not circular.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're like, they're so elongated that in fact, we're on a collision course.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Really?

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, we will collide with Andromeda in about seven billion years.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Alright, let me mark my calendar.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will be a train wreck, a Titanic collision. Mark, you put it in your, your, your, your smartphone, you'll have it.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Alright. Shall we move on?

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Alright, this is from Lexi Davis. This is a cute question, I love this. Uh, "Is there anything smaller than the infinitely small? And can you put it in a way that does not make me hate that I don't even get to be in pre-calc till next year?"

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, high school student.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Can you smell that? Young person.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, so, uh, by the way, see, if you really like math, see if you can skip pre-calc and just go straight to calc. Just, just, tell them Tyson told you.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Tyson told. I have a, I have a note from my personal astrophysicist, can I please get in?

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just go, see if you can go straight to calc. But, alright, so, is there anything smaller than infinitesimally small?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yes.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Alright, next question. You are so evil.

• 23:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, no, so here it is.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The electron is smaller than the smallest thing we have ever measured. And in fact, it is so small, we do not know how small it is. We cannot measure it, it is so small. In fact, it could be so small as to not occupy any volume at all. As far as our measurement devices are concerned, it has no dimensions at all. The electron. So, the electron comes closest to infinitesimally small of anything we have ever known, thought of, dreamt of, or measured.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Okay. So.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. What else you got?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I have a question from Paul Lundgren.

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And he says, can a brown dwarf? What are you doing? No, okay, I'm moving on. Can a brown dwarf accumulate enough?

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, don't go there.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I'm not, yeah, I thought about it. No, I like my job. Can a brown dwarf accumulate enough matter to ignite itself into a star? And then he says, corollary, can a neutron star gather enough additional mass to collapse into a black hole?

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, corollary, that person actually used the word corollary?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Corollary, sir.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Corollary, very nice.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  That is our SAT word of the day from Paul Lundgren.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a brown dwarf is a failed star. Didn't have enough mass to make its center hot enough.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  It's a muggle?

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To, so the center never got hot enough to engage nuclear fusion. And so it kind of withers there, giving up the little bit of heat it did accumulate on collapse, I know. So they're asking, if you sort of fed it matter, would you, could you ignite the center into a star? Yes. And that would be awesome. If we had the power over stars, you could, you can turn off some stars, turn on other stars. And in fact, you could do that with Jupiter. Jupiter is about one tenth, a little less than one tenth, the mass necessary for a star. If you start feeding it material, that puppy will grow, get hot in the middle, bam, we'll have a two-star solar system.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, that would, that would be good. And, uh, and the other one was about the neutron star. We'll get back to neutron star after this break.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we do something with a neutron star by adding matter to it? We'll see in a moment.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Radio, after hours. Cosmic Queries Edition, Leanne Lord, thanks for being with me.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So we're reading, uh, Dark Mysteries of the Universe.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Questions I haven't seen.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  You have not seen.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hearing them for the first time. And we, at the break, we had an awesome question from a high schooler.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Um, well, that was from Lexi. Um, I don't know if Paul is, uh, in high school or.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, great. But we answered Lexi's question.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  We did answer Lexi's question and you.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm assuming she's in high school because she was talking about taking pre-calc.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Pre-calc, right.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and you wouldn't really do that in elementary school. And you could be like a, a, a full-up adult going back to school.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  You could be.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could be, but I, I bet she's like in 10th grade or something like that.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And you're advising straight to calculus.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you love it, just.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Just fight no big dog.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, don't know this pre-stuff. That's like preschool, just go straight to school.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Straight to school. Directly to school. Do not fast go.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prenup, just go straight to the nup.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Wow. No, no, no, he don't mean that, y'all. Get a prenup. Don't mess around. Get a prenup.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Well, it was Paul Lundgren who had a, a two-part question, and he wants to know if we could gather, could a neutron star gather enough additional mass to collapse into a black hole?

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  All right, great.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a neutron star is, uh, below the mass, is the endpoint of a star's death, a high-mass star's death, and it didn't have enough mass. I say high mass, but it's not high enough to cram the material down in the middle to create a black hole beyond, a boundary beyond which the matter will never be seen again. So, uh, here's what, here's the problem. We think that if you just slowly deposit mass onto a neutron star, it will flare up. It might flare up rather than become a black hole. So you have to add it in a way that the whole thing knows about all the mass at the same time. Right? So that might be hard to do. In other words,

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it's not clear whether you can just feed it until it tipped its threshold.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might have to add it all, add it all at once. But I'd have to check my equations on that, but that's my guess.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Because we don't know the tipping point?

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, yeah, because you just put on a little bit at a time, that might flare up on its own and then it, it's gone. It blows itself away.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's how the original stuff left. It, the original star that exploded and left behind the neutron star blew up. That's what happened. So I, I, I think you'd have to need a scheme to add it all at once.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Uh, as with everything else, I'm taking your word for it.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh. Oh, by the way, neutron star is really dense. I mean, it's, it's.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  It's not smart?

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's, uh, you know, dense, uh, heavy dense. And I tweeted, because I swear in the movie Thor, the guy said that Thor's hammer was forged of the material of a dying star. And I said, cool, I can calculate how heavy the hammer must be.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  So only you would sit there in the theater.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I said, I can so do this. And so, but I didn't know the dimensions of the hammer. And so a friend of mine got me a Thor's hammer to borrow. I would have to give it back in the morning. And so I got, I got Thor's hammer. And so I measured it up and I said, okay, well, this is, this is pretty awesome. And I forgot the number I got. It was something like the hammer. If you crammed a herd of 60 billion elephants into the volume of that hammer, it would weigh about the same as the hammer. And so that's why the Hulk couldn't lift it. And I was, so I tweeted that. I showed a picture of me holding the hammer. And then someone geekier than I am, a professor of physics.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  This person exists?

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's a Thor enthusiast, said, no, it's not forged of neutron star matter. It's not forged of the material of a dying star. It's forged in the material of a dying star, but it's made of some other stuff that is in fact as light as feathers. So I said, well, that's no fun. The hammer weighs as much as feathers. And then therefore it's really the magic god power that prevents you from lifting it or enables you to lift it. So I thought that was nowhere near as interesting as my elephant.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. It all turns on an article.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I will in and of, but I'll defer. I mean, I got, you gotta defer to the folks who like live for this stuff. So go on, that's my, that's my aside on the neutron star, but go on.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  That is amazing. I, you know what? You still had me at the fact that somebody got you the hammer. This is totally not legal.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw, I saw cool. It's got the leather strap and everything. Oh, yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Very sexy. All right, um, I have more questions.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm, go for it.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  We do here, um, from George Beardston. How does the Higgs feel different from earlier ideas of an ether?

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, did you spell ether right? A E?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. The A is silent.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, a science, it's a dipthong.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  It's a dipthong.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think it's a dipthong.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  That's very kinky.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They should invent a new bathing suit, the Dipthong, you know? That would be cool. So let me see, we only have like 20 seconds left.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you're fooling around.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me see, well, I have to give half the answer and you're going to get the full answer at the end of the break. But the ether was this proposed medium of the cosmos through which light traveled. Because people knew that light was a wave and sound is a wave and you, sound doesn't move through a vacuum, does it? You ever remember the bell jar experiment where you have a bell ringing? You put a jar over it, you evacuate all the air and the bell shuts off. The bell is ringing and you can't hear it.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't go through a vacuum, so neither should light, was the hypothesis. When we come back, more on the answer to that question on StarTalk.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, this is the last segment.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  It is. This goes by way too fast.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is normally our lightning round and it will be, but I left a question hanging out there. So the ether was about, is the Higgs field like the ether of yesteryear perhaps? Is that, was that how that question?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does the Higgs field differ from earlier ideas of the ether?

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because the ether was a thing. Nobody knew what it was.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was proposed to allow light to vibrate its way from a star to us through the vacuum of space.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because sound needs something to vibrate, the ground, the air. Sound doesn't travel through space, such was the tagline to the movie Alien in space.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  We can hear you scream.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. However, light travels through it, so surely there must have been a medium out there through which light can move and vibrate. And it was proposed to be the ether, but it was never found, never measured. It was never found, so, and it went away.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  So is the ether dark matter?

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we learned that this, that light does not require any medium at all to vibrate, it is self vibrating.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't go there, stop.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Ooh, it hurt. That actually physically hurt.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just talking universe here.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Drain myself.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just universe.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Is it warm in here?

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the lightning round. Lightning round cosmic crazy. Let me get my bell. See, we'll check it. There we go.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  All right.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's see how many questions we can get through in this final.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  All right.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Ready?

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Mike Thorson, what is the speed of gravity?

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light. Hundred and eighty six thousand, two hundred and eighty two miles per second.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Nice. Jesus Perez.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry. That's the speed of a change of gravity. If you jiggle the space time continuum, that ripple will move at the speed of light.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Jiggling the space out. Listen. Jesus Perez, how do you know math is?

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jesus.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Jesus Perez.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say Jesus. Oh, wow. Jesus reads our web pages.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Of course he does. Jesus is literate. How do you know math is the language of the universe?

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do we know? Because the universe tells us. Eugene Wriggar, a physicist back in the 20th century, commented on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  The unreasonable effectiveness.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we invented it, yet it accounts for the operations and motions of the universe. Since math is purely logical, it means the universe at its finest is logical.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  The math is Vulcan. Love it. Lionel Lyman wants to know, can you explain zero point space?

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. So the vacuum of space is not actually empty.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there is because of quantum physics. Every spot in that vacuum has a certain chance of having energy associated with it. Non-zero energy and particles pop in and out of existence there. And it's called the zero point energy. And space enthusiasts, science fiction enthusiasts want to one day tap that energy and drive spaceships through the vacuum of space without having to go back and refuel. But I think that's unlikely.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't access it. It's not accessible energy to you. But that's zero point energy. That's what that is.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Nice. Kirk Wilkinson wants to know.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. Oh, no, no. Sorry. Sorry. That's vacuum energy. Undo. Can we undo the bell?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Undo the bell. Undo the bell.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I just described vacuum. I haven't seen these questions. That's vacuum energy, that the energy of the vacuum. Zero point energy is if you chill something to zero degrees where there's no energy left in it, there's still energy left in it. Right, cuz something has a

• 35:00Speaker 01

  How is that not a contradiction?

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something has temperature because its molecules vibrate. Lower the temperature, they vibrate less.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lower it more, they vibrate even less. Classically, if you took that temperature to zero, absolute zero, it's called. They wouldn't vibrate at all. All motion would stop. But quantum physics tells us they can't stop. They can never stop. And that is zero-point energy. Next.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Nice. Kirk Wilkinson. If there's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, could the entire galaxy then be considered an accretion disk?

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, no, because we are not accreting to the black hole, thankfully. There's a gap between us and that black hole that is big enough, it ain't getting us.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  We gonna, we gonna shift a little bit to Star Wars.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which means it's possibly far enough away from, it's possible to be far enough away from a black hole and never get sucked in at all. Go.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Nice, good to know. I'll keep my distance. Adam Young wants to know, have we considered the consequences of tapping into the dark side of the force? And is the dark side of the force really stronger or just more loose?

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, well, all the forces we know don't have dark sides.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  You haven't met my mother.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah. There's, uh, there's the, there's a push-pull. There's an up, you know, there are forces that can move and shrink and things, but we don't put, uh, emotional, cultural interpretations upon them. They're just forces.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Nice. All right. Uh, this is an email from, oh, I can't see what it's from. Oh, it's from Paul Leonard.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we did, then you'd know they would have to be evil. Otherwise, you could not define any force as good.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  This is another show.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  If every action, this is from Paul Leonard. If every action or decision can spawn an alternate, an alternate universe, where does this universe worth of matter and energy come from? And this guy's been losing sleep over this.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has been hypothesized that at every point you can choose to make something happen, you choose to do so, but another universe spawns that continues the way you would have existed in that other way. Yes. This is the multi-universe hypothesis of quantum physics. Sliding doors, got it. Yeah, yeah. And so that was a way to understand how an experiment can have multiple simultaneous outcomes. Yes. Right? Maybe the universe split, but no one takes that literally seriously. It's just a way to explain stuff that we have no clue what it is that's actually doing. That's why quantum mechanics remains seriously mysterious even to experts.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned. More up next.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And for today's edition, it's cosmic queries potpourri. Matt O'Dowd is here, in from Australia. That's your home motherland.

• 38:04Matt O'Dowd?

  Well, Australia once upon a time.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once upon a time. And we've got you now. You're a professor of physics and astronomy.

• 38:10Matt O'Dowd?

  Happy to be got.

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the City University of New York.

• 38:14Matt O'Dowd?

  That's right.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lehman College up in the Bronx where I'm from.

• 38:16Matt O'Dowd?

  Hey.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're here because you have a YouTube channel.

• 38:21Matt O'Dowd?

  Sure, I do.

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Called Spacetime. Great name.

• 38:24Matt O'Dowd?

  Thank you very much.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good name.

• 38:25Matt O'Dowd?

  I didn't come up with it, but yeah.

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  PBS Digital Studios.

• 38:29Matt O'Dowd?

  That's right.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good. And so we're doing Q and A here and...

• 38:33Matt O'Dowd?

  So, my question is this. We live in complex and strange times and one of the weird things that's happened recently is that politics now happens on social media, it seems. So I don't see why... Science policy development can't also happen on social media. I want to ask you a really a simple question, overly simplistic, but your answer, I think, who knows, who knows what it could change. So if you are given the right, the power to direct the entire flagship science program of an entire, let's say, administration, you know, the moonshot of a given administration,

• 39:17Matt O'Dowd?

  it's going to be billions of dollars worth, but you only get to choose one thing. What would it be?

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean choose one thing? Choose one destination?

• 39:25Matt O'Dowd?

  Well, I'm not talking about necessarily traveling anywhere.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Choose a thing to get a nation to do.

• 39:31Matt O'Dowd?

  Exactly.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So first of all, this is a democracy where people vote for things, for people, and I value that. I guess we're also a republic in a way, but votes matter, okay? And as an educator, I will not presume that I have the right to take a country to a place that I think would be a fun place to take it without the full backing of everybody who votes.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my power that you've just granted me would not be to just steer the bus. It would be to walk up and down the aisles of the bus, teaching people the value of exploration, the value of knowledge, the value of moving a frontier beyond wherever it may have stagnated. Then I go back to the steering wheel and I say, where does everyone want to go? And then they all collectively say, space. They might say something else, and I'll respect that, but I want at least a shot at convincing them that space exploration is one of the greatest forces that can operate on.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our science literacy. Imagine knowing that your country is about to colonize Mars or or lasso a comet that has fresh water or to mine an asteroid or deflect an asteroid that might be headed our way. And I need the best chemists and the best biologists. Maybe there's life on Mars that we'll discover. I need the best biologist. I need the best aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers. Camp, I said chemists, geologists, all of the entire portfolio of STEM fields are represented in a space mission. So that's that a space mission that's ambitious enough.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So and we know that the engines of tomorrow's economy, the engines of tomorrow's growth economies have as their center innovations in science, technology, engineering and math. So in a democracy that is also a capitalist system where nobody wants to die, nobody wants to die poor. Space exploration is one of the, one of the most potent ways to stimulate this kind of thinking in a country. So you can turn a sleepy country into an innovation nation by doing this.

• 42:20Matt O'Dowd?

  By having innovation and a dream in the right direction.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A dream in the right direction that's hitting the headlines every day. Because if you're going to expand a frontier like this, you're going to have to innovate. You're going to have to invent. Patents will be awarded. The all that entire frontier will be new. And that is what stimulates discovery. So I would say, so you want to give me the power. I would want the power to convince people that that might be a cool thing to do. And then you implement the policy.

• 42:51Matt O'Dowd?

  Gotcha. And so with space, is it, I mean, it's hard. It's extremely hard to do. That's part of why it's so inspiring.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not because they're hard. No. I messed it up.

• 43:03Matt O'Dowd?

  Because they're cool.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I got it. Okay, sorry.

• 43:06Matt O'Dowd?

  All right, no, that's good.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We want, we choose to go to the moon.

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

• 43:15Matt O'Dowd?

  Okay.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I got that right.

• 43:16Matt O'Dowd?

  And it's the right thing to do. Alright, so the policy is implemented. Do we go asteroid mining first? Do we build a colony on Mars first? Do we go back to the moon first? Venusian cloud cities, anyone?

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I have a slightly different view of that. I want to call it a contrarian view, but it's definitely a different lane that I'm driving in. It is, why think of destinations in order? Why think of a destination as a goal? Why not let your goal be access to the entire solar system? Let that be the goal.

• 44:00Matt O'Dowd?

  Okay.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that's the goal, then you build ships that have different combinations of boosters. You pull this one off this shelf, and that this combination gets you to Mars. This combination, you chase the asteroid. This other combination with this payload, this other combination with this payload, gets you to the backside of the moon. So, it is, the goal is your capacity to explore, not the destination. And when you build the capacity, you then are, can be responsive to the creativity of everyone who's there. This is what, this is the difference between a computer that solves one problem, and a computer that can solve any problem.

• 44:36Matt O'Dowd?

  Sure.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any problem you can think of. So, so, so don't come to me saying, "Do we go to the moon first, or Mars first, or..." You do it all.

• 44:45Matt O'Dowd?

  Well, there, I mean, to some extent, there has to be some sort of timeline, but I think this is exactly...

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The timeline is on the capabilities of your spacecraft. That's the timeline. That's what you gotta, I'm gonna, I said I'm driving in a different lane here. You gotta think differently about space. Space is not about destinations. Star Trek, I think, the original series, was the first time there existed a spaceship in storytelling that did not have a destination in mind.

• 45:15Matt O'Dowd?

  The star on the right.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every, every spaceship in science fiction stories was built to go somewhere, and then you get out and do your thing. But that spaceship, the Enterprise, to boldly go where no man has gone before...

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't say to go to the moon. It didn't say to go to Mars.

• 45:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to go where no one has gone before. It was a ship without a destination. And you lived on it.

• 45:44Matt O'Dowd?

  That's quite beautiful.

• 45:47Matt O'Dowd?

  I think SpaceX is doing something like this, if I recall.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're building an arsenal. I don't like that word. They're building a portfolio of ships to try to do this, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 45:58Matt O'Dowd?

  Exciting stuff.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed.

• 46:01Matt O'Dowd?

  Neil, thank you so much.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for being on.

• 46:03Matt O'Dowd?

  Hopefully, we've convinced the school bus.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'll be the driver there. Where we go, you know? Then you spawn more school buses. And then you get on the school bus to the asteroid, or to Mars, or Venus, or Jupiter. And beyond.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.