Cosmic Queries – Astro-lore with Moiya McTier

Is it time to update the constellations? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Matt Kirshen dive into astrophysics, folklore, and our ancient connection to the stars with astrophysicist Moiya McTier, Ph. D.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You have to think about the fact that not everyone in the world is going to see constellations the same way. Depending on where you are, you might not be able to see constellations, but...

• 0:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or if you're on drugs, then you'll see them differently.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Or if you're on drugs, yeah.

• 0:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not everybody sees...

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Can't forget to mention the drugs.

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm certain that the Greeks were on something for half the constellations that they had.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Oh my god, they must have been.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They must have been.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  People back then, I'm sure, were doing so many drugs.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition, ever-popular with all of our audiences. And I got with me my co-host today, Matt Kirshen. Matt, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:54Matt Kirshen?

  Thanks, Neil. It's good to see you.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Matt, you're a host of Probably Science? I was a one-time guest on there.

• 0:59Matt Kirshen?

  Absolutely.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call me.

• 1:01Matt Kirshen?

  I will. I'd love you to come back. We're still one of our most popular episodes.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So today, our topic is folklore in astrophysics. It's like, and how do they relate? And who connects a line between modern or even ancient astrophysics and cultures and folklore? This is like, there aren't many people who do this. And when you think about it, you know, the sky was really accessible to everyone at all times forever, right? I mean, unless it was cloudy. But cave dwellers saw the night sky. So of all the sciences, modern astronomy and, of course, astrophysics would have connections

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that maybe other sciences don't. So if anyone's going to tackle this, it's going to be on StarTalk. And we have an expert in this, in the name of Moya McTier. Moya, welcome to StarTalk.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Hi, Neil. Thanks for having me. This is a goal of mine. It has been for a long time.

• 2:06Matt Kirshen?

  Oh my god.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  I'm really happy to be here.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. So you're an astrophysicist, a folklorist, and a...

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Communicator? I love that, that that can be a title today because it's so necessary

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To move information and knowledge and wisdom from one place to another. That requires communicators. And so you, you have your own podcast, right? At what's it?

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Podcasts. Cause I'm busy.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me. Excuse me. Okay, podcasts. Tell me their names.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  Uh, so the one that is my, my favorite brain baby, probably just because it's oldest, is called Exolore. Um, it's a portmanteau actually of exoplanets and folklore because the whole shtick of the show is building fictional worlds based on facts and science. Um, usually that means I start with some astronomical difference, like what if this planet didn't orbit a star? And we know that those types of planets exist. They're called rogue planets. There are probably tens of thousands of them out there. Um, or what if a planet had two suns? Or what if it got hit with asteroids all the time? And then we just imagine the consequences of that difference.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Um, my other podcast is more straightforward, more obviously about science and it's called Pale Blue Pod. It's actually quite new. It just launched in November and it's a show for people who are-

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  November 2022.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Of 2022, yeah. So it's, it's a little baby. And, um, it is a show for people who are overwhelmed by the universe, but still want to be its friend. And I have, I've taken some notes on your, your show and the way that you do things. I have a comedian co-host. Her name is Corinne Caputo. She's very funny, very smart. Uh, but the whole vibe of the show is extremely cozy. We want to make space feel very warm and familiar for people.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so, so the microphones are closed and say, welcome to Pale Blue Pod.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  We get very ASMR about it.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:11Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, something both of you just then, like there are some listeners who got properly tingly right then and you're welcome.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is the universe. Yeah. I love it. I love it. So tell us about your, your, this, this strand, this thread that, multiple threads that you've woven to connect astrophysics, which was one half of your major in college, to folklore.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, let me, let me tell you a bit about how I came to major in both of those things, because you, you might know this, Neil, having gone to Harvard yourself, but you, there's a pre-approved list of double majors at Harvard, and they're, they're normal things like government and econ, or psychology and computer science. Surprisingly, astrophysics and folklore mythology, not on that list of stuff that Harvard administrators thought people would want to study together. So I actually had to do some negotiating and go to the heads of both departments, which are very small. There are two of the smallest departments at Harvard. And I said, you can't afford to lose bodies. Let me study both of you, and then everyone wins. So they did.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  They did let me study both of them, but only after I gave a list of potential thesis topics that I could write. Because when you do a double major at Harvard, you have to write a thesis that sits at the intersection of your two fields. What I ended up doing was writing a science fiction novel that was set on a real exoplanet that I studied. I characterized it with data, with data from Kepler, and I-

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Kepler mission to find exoplanets. Right.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we have a very good data set there.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Well, it was K2, so the data was a bit noisier than from the Kepler primary mission. But the plot of the novel was kind of an allegory, or like a parallel to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. I got to go to Hawaii. I talked to the protectors, the people demonstrating on Mauna Kea when the 30-meter telescope conflict was happening, and that was a really fun project. But I, it's taken me many years to figure out-

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you were in the middle of total cultural turbulence, and it was a fun project for you?

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yes. I like talking to people. I like hearing their sides of things.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just to catch some people up on that. So the largest, the plans to build the largest telescope in the world, in the best observing site of the world, which is in the big island of Hawaii, met resistance from indigenous communities who viewed the mountain as sacred in a way that would should not allow this kind of construction. And so it was very, it's fascinating, cultural, political confrontations that unfolded. And you just drop yourself in the middle of it, damn. So, so, so you wrote a, you wrote a novel, interesting, as, as, in, in, as a, in place of, but that was your thesis.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  It was my thesis, yeah. I had the creative part, and then I also had an appendix with all of my research notes and conclusions attached to it.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a brilliant, brilliant way to, to stitch those two together.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great. But you have a, was that published?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  No, I, it's, it's in a Google Drive somewhere up on my website that people can read.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, somebody's gotta make a movie out of that.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I'd be so down.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calling all Hollywood.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  If anyone wants to approach me for TV or movie rights to Lion Hordes, please, please let me know.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, definitely. We'll make that happen. And you have another book?

• 7:43Speaker 00

  I do, yeah. That, this book, my most-

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just out of control, you know?

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I, you know what, Neil? I like to stay busy.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, go on.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  This latest book is called The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy. Please pay close attention to that word "autobiography" because this entire book is written from the point of view of our Milky Way galaxy. It tells its story from its birth to, you know, what might happen when the universe ends. It talks about its life, its adolescence, and how it feels to make stars. It talks about the, the galactic neighbors that it has, most of which-

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, how about the collision with Andromeda? What does that feel like?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Oh!

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  So, in, in the book-

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you like it?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Well, it hasn't happened yet. So the Milky Way is going-

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's only in autobiography up to today?

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Up to today, yeah.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  And so the Milky Way looks forward to it.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About to merge with Andromeda. How's it feel about that?

• 8:37Speaker 00

  Oh, it is quite exciting. So in the book, I frame galactic mergers as like romance, almost, or, you know, like interpersonal relationships. And so there are minor mergers and major mergers. Minor mergers happen between galaxies where one is much more massive than the other. And so I, I think of those as little flings.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. So we, those who study this, call that galactic cannibalism.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When a big galaxy eats a little one. But you're calling them romances?

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Okay, well-

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's such a different take on the situation.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  You know what, Neil? Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Like, sometimes the galaxies are eating each other, and at the same time, it's romantic. So like, whatever.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 9:22Matt Kirshen?

  And then that happens in the insect world. Sometimes, sometimes the female eats the male off. What's, you know, it's like-

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Like, galaxies are just praying mantises.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  But, but no, the merger, the eventual merger between Andromeda and the Milky Way will be a major merger because their masses are much more similar. And that's more like a marriage. So for billions of years, the Milky Way and Andromeda have had this long-term courtship. They've been sending love notes back and forth to each other in the form of hypervelocity stars, where they encode their messages into the spectra of the stars. And it's very nerdy and very cute.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Wow. Okay, so this just came out in 2021, is that correct?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  2022, just a few months ago in August.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This came out, oh, mid-2022, just, just to emerge from COVID.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice. Okay. So we'll look for that. Damn. Damn.

• 10:17Speaker 00

  It's a good story. It's very sassy. I feel like I should prime people. The Milky Way has a healthy ego and some might say it's a little condescending to us humans, but like, who wouldn't be? Look at us. We're so tiny.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every alien would be condescending.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's clearly the case.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clearly. And one last question. So we got your astrophysics, we got your folklore, and what about your science communication, science education part? What do you think is missing that you can bring to it?

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Ooh, I think the folklore connections that I can help people make are really important because I know that people will feel better about learning science if they can connect to it personally. And one of the strongest personal connections.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Culturally, I guess.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, culturally or personally. I was getting there. Like, the cultural connection is a great way to make it feel more personal. People might grow up hearing stories and legends and myths from their grandparents, from their elders. And if you can learn about science and tuck it into what you've already heard from your people, then it makes it a lot more familiar.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, got it. So that's a gap that needs filling. Very good.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah. And I'm not a comedian like Matt, but I think that sometimes I can make people laugh. And so I try to bring that into my psychom, too.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's been some movement within planetariums to do that, especially in planetariums that have access to indigenous communities.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the southwest, in Australia. If you go to Australian planetariums, there's Aboriginal storytelling that's often folded in to the show.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  And they have such beautiful stories. I mean, they have cave paintings and cultural evidence and like oral storytelling that talks about astronomy going back like 60,000 years. It's a really, yeah, old knowledge base.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a book called Dark Emu. Do you know about that?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Oh, I haven't heard about the book, but I do know about the Emu constellation.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the Emu, the Dark Emu. So Matt, obviously you know about this. The I do not. In the sky, the Western cultures typically describe what they see based on the existence of a star and a pattern or sources of light. But if you look at the dark lanes within our own galaxy, the Milky Way across the sky, there's a stretch of darkness that looks like an emu.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's the absence of light.

• 12:44Matt Kirshen?

  Oh, they go by the negative, the shape of the negative space rather than the shape of the...

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The shape of the negative space.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  They have, they have both, but, but yeah, that particular constellation is negative space.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a design person would say, yeah, negative space.

• 12:54Matt Kirshen?

  Well, also, just...

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thing up there.

• 12:56Matt Kirshen?

  The look of the stars, because, you know, like you say, it was the thing that was accessible always, but in more accessible then than it was now, because I, I grew up in London. We were talking about this just before the show, and you both live in New York now. And if you look up, you don't see much in the way of stars, uh, on account of all the light, but the first few times that I've been...

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we have a planetarium.

• 13:16Matt Kirshen?

  Exactly. The first few, yeah, you have to build, you have to artificially build it in a building inside the city, but the first few times I've been somewhere, like, you know, I've been to like a mountainous place or a desert, or someone that's really in the middle of nowhere, and then suddenly looked up on a clear night and just gone, "Oh, now I get why they were always writing poems and, and songs and like this is suddenly this blanket of stars that looks truly..." Because when I, when I grew up, it's like, "Oh yeah, there's a star, there's another star, there's another star," and then you go somewhere that's properly remote, like it would have been everywhere thousands of years ago.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you're not assaulted by the sky.

• 13:50Matt Kirshen?

  It's suddenly, yeah, it is. It's absurd. It's this, this thing that appears after nightfall is ridiculous.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  And it's, I, I think the number, the last number I saw was that 80% of the sky is affected by light and air pollution now. So 80% of people around the world are not seeing the same sky that our ancestors saw. And that, that makes me really sad because I think that makes people lose a big point of connection that we could have with the universe.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cosmic connection. Well, this is supposed to be cosmic queries and so, but I delighted in learning everything about you there, Moya, so that when the questions come in, well, I mean, people were cued that you were going to be our guest and with that expertise. So Matt, load up the questions and we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we're gonna dive right in to Moya McTier's expertise, astrophysics and folklore, when StarTalk is here.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries. We're talking about astrophysics and folklore with Moya McTier, who studied both in college and professionally, and she is now a freelance podcaster and communicator, author of a book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy, written by the Milky Way itself, because, Matt, she's the Milky Way Whisperer, right?

• 15:43Matt Kirshen?

  Yes. I love the idea.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moya knows what the Milky Way feels.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  I do. Actually, if you look at the title page, it doesn't say "by" Moya McTier, it just says "via." I merely channeled the Milky Way.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, you were just channeling it. Perfect.

• 15:58Matt Kirshen?

  The Milky Way.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's great when publishers can go along with that.

• 16:03Matt Kirshen?

  Written by the Milky Way with its galaxy-sized brain.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. There you go. So, we're Cosmic Queries. Matt, from our Patreon.

• 16:14Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, the questions are, this is, again, because of the subject matter, the questions are all over the place. There's some straight astronomy questions, and there's some folklore questions. I'm gonna start with this one, because it ties into what we were talking about just before the end of the first segment. Stephen Murphy from Atlanta says, "Constellations have always been a good way to identify where stars are, but they are hard to remember and teach in the modern world where few know Latin and mythology. Can Ursa Major just be the Big Bear? Would you make the Archer Hawkeye instead of Sagittarius? It would take some getting used to, but so did Pluto not being a planet."

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love it. I love it. So, so, so, Moya, I'm gonna rephrase that question to ask you, why don't we just update all the constellations to, to modern mythologies or modern things we care about?

• 17:02Speaker 00

  That's a great question.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, have like the, there's some, I've checked this, because I like ice cream. There's some that looks like an ice cream cone. And so we have conus major and conus minor, for example. Or have like the smartphone.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For any rectangle that's up there. So, what do you say about, why are we so anchored to what people were thinking 2,000 years ago? Why don't make it relevant to today?

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Oh, God, there's so much here. So, first of all, if you want to start renaming the constellations, you have to take it up with the IAU, the International Astronomical Union. They are this organization that's in charge of naming stuff officially in space. And they have designated 88 official constellations in the sky. And, and I, I emphasized official there because there's a difference between constellations and asterisms to a modern astrophysicist. A constellation is the region of the sky, like the physical area that we have broken up the sky into. And there are 88 of those. Asterisms are the shapes that you can make by connecting dots between the stars. And there are an infinite number of those.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  So you can choose to rename your constellations. You can choose to, to focus on conus major or minor. You can make an iPhone constellation. You, you can just draw connections between whatever stars you want.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Samsung would totally, Samsung would get into that, because they make the Samsung Galaxy.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Galaxy, yeah, they would love that.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like a total sponsoring opportunity for a new constellation drive. But go on.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  But, but, I mean, you can make up your own constellations. I think that that would be a really cute, like, date idea, or just like something to do with your friends. Go out stargazing and come up with new names and new constellations and new stories to go along with them. But the constellations that we do have, the asterisms that we mostly talk about today, come to us from Greek mythology. And so they have these 2,000 years worth of... Traction, like they have dug themselves into our cultural memory. And before that, they came from Babylonians. The, like, the crab and the, the bull constellations both just pulled right from Babylonian mythology.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cancer and Taurus.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So even the Greeks were using more ancient constellations and asterisms than what they were making up. So I think we're just following in the grand tradition of using the names that have come before us. Because it would be really difficult if everyone actually did come up with their own names. You wouldn't be able to talk about it across cultures.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wouldn't have the shared, you wouldn't have the shared culture.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About that. Interesting.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Because a lot of them are, you know, the ancient Greeks called constellations catasterismoi, which meant placed by the gods. They believed that a lot of these constellations were messages intentionally put into the sky by their deities to teach us whatever we needed to know, like the story of Orion.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Human ego just knows no bounds.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  I know. I mean, life was rough 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. I imagine it was pretty comforting to know that if you lived, I don't know, a heroic or at least a notable enough life, that maybe the gods would put you, immortalize you by putting you into the sky as a constellation. That's what happened to Orion.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I have a fast constellation story that hardly anyone knows. It's not that it's secret, it's just hardly anyone knows it. When we rebuilt the Rose Center for Earth and Space and we got our new projector from Zeiss and they were going to have the constellations built in that you can turn on and off whatever, whenever you're showing the night sky. We use that in addition to our digital projector that takes us anywhere in the universe. Point is, we create the 88 constellations. We hired an artist to give a modern sensibility to the illustrations. Yes, it's still Hercules and it's still Orion, but it has, he has a modern hand as he draws it, right?

• 21:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not these, these Renaissance curly constellations that you might see in old maps. Anyhow, do you know that Gemini in almost every constellation illustration are shown as two infants? Okay?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two babies. Because they're twins, okay? However, in Greek mythology, they were like adults, okay? They were like full grown people. But the reason why they were always drawn as babies is because the stars, for you to fully flesh out a human being, they have to be very close to each other. And the only way you could really pull that off is by drawing babies.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  Ah ha.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the illustrator was gay. And he said, I'm drawing two full grown men who are gonna be really close to each other on the sky. So, so in the Hayden Planetarium, our Gemini constellation are two full grown men, like with overlapping shoulders, arms around each other.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  I love that so much.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. So, so, so this was his, his little, you know, he didn't twist history, he made it real.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just said, let's try to put a little wokeness into the night sky. And so that's in the Hayden Planetarium's star theater.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  I love that, that's amazing. And one of the things we learn in folklore is that every new telling of a story, every new presentation of, of this folkloric knowledge is just as valid as what came before. It's not that you're changing, you're just, you're evolving it.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're accreting, accreting new, new insights. Yeah. Okay, so let's, so next one, Matt, I love these.

• 22:46Matt Kirshen?

  All right, well, you, since you mentioned Orion, FX Flynn says, Moya, I was struck last week-

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where? Do we know where they're from?

• 22:54Matt Kirshen?

  I don't know where FX, FX is from, but um, Moya says, says, Moya, I was struck last week by the magnificent sight of Mars atop Orion as it lay due south. Oh, here we go, it is actually mentioned in the thing. As it loo-, as it lay due south of my location in Vermont, so not too far, just up the road from you, during the wee hours of the morning, god of war above the hunter. I immediately wondered if this combination featured in any of the Inca histories we've collected. Uh, you know, William Sullivan's Secret of the Incas, myth astronomy and the war against time. Here's hoping this particular combination is only remembered for its dramatic combination of bright red, orange and bluish white points of light and nothing else.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, I love that. So, uh, so the question I think Moya would be, it was Orion a hunter in other cultures? Or because, and is Mars the god of war in other cultures?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  That's a great question.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Juxtaposed on the sky, you know, that could mean war.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the god of war over the hunter. In a lot of cultures, um, remember, not all cultures are going to place the, the stars that we associate with Orion into the same constellation. Uh, so I, I know that there are, there are cultures in South America where the three stars of Orion's belt are like three brothers fishing in a canoe together and have nothing to do with, yeah, with Orion, the hunt, I mean, they're still hunting, but it's, it's different.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess so.

• 24:15Matt Kirshen?

  I love, sorry, side note, but I just, I, I love that in every culture still, wherever they are, growing up on completely different sides of the world independently, they've still thought to just look at the stars and go and draw pictures between them, draw.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:27Matt Kirshen?

  Go like, what do they, what patterns do they make?

• 24:29Speaker 00

  I mean, it was the main source of entertainment that we've had for, well, hundreds of thousands of years.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They didn't have HBO, right? They didn't have, you know, streaming services.

• 24:36Matt Kirshen?

  I guess it's the same as looking at clouds, but the clouds, these clouds don't move. These clouds stay the same every night.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  They do, they do move. I mean, they, they would, they would look at the differences between the, the fixed and the moving stars, actually. So the, the stars in Orion, those would be fixed because they're moving with each other as, as a whole. Um, and it does really look like the sky is spinning around the earth. But then there are, there are wandering stars, um, which is where our word planet comes from because the planets and the moon and the sun were these points of light that appeared to move relative to all of the stuff in the background. Like Mars would have been a wandering star. Um, so no, not every culture saw Orion as a hunter, although many of them did if they could see the Pleiades. That's, that's an interesting thing because so many cultures around the world saw the

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Pleiades, this little cluster of seven stars as, as like seven sisters or seven, I don't know, swans, like the, they, they associated them with very feminine qualities. And because Orion is pointing towards the Pleiades, a lot of them also said that like Orion was hunting those sisters. You have to think about the fact that not everyone in the world is going to see constellations the same way. Depending on where you are, you might not be able to see constellations, but.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or if you're on drugs, then you'll see them differently.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Or if you're on drugs, yeah.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not everybody sees.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Can't forget to mention the drugs.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm certain that the Greeks were on something for half the constellations that they named.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, they must have been. They.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They must have been.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  People back then, I'm sure, were doing so many drugs. That's my headcanon for the ancient world.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, here's a question for you. Pegasus, a very northern constellation, for us to make a horse out of it is actually upside down. So we knowingly made an upside down constellation. I'm just wondering, in the southern hemisphere, did they, how do they?

• 26:32Speaker 00

  They have flipped?

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because some are upside down, right? So do they think of upside down constellations? Or is everything right side up to them?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Um, I don't know that for specific southern cultures, but I mean, upside down is just a matter of reference. I can't imagine many cultures in the past would have intentionally assigned a constellation to be upside down unless they had traveled to another hemisphere, identified it as the same group of stars, but in a different orientation, and then went back and was like, whoa, they see this differently.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because Pegasus does, does look, it's got some stars that resemble a horse's head. It's got that angle and the arc, but it is completely upside down and Pegasus, the constellation zone, has only room for half the horse. So it's an upside down flying half a horse. And somebody had to think that up. I'm just saying.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  At least it's the front half. That's the better half of Pegasus.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if it was the horse's ass, that's a whole other.

• 27:35Matt Kirshen?

  Can I ask you?

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different mythology right there.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  Totally different.

• 27:39Matt Kirshen?

  Can I ask you a quick question? This is a question that comes from Matt Kirshen from Los Angeles, California.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, are you a Patreon member? Is Matt Kirshen a Patreon member? I'm gonna check the files right now.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Oh, can I have your rights revoked?

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll give you a hall pass for this one only. Go.

• 27:54Matt Kirshen?

  I, I, am I right in thinking constellations, the stars are not necessarily anywhere near each other? Or are they?

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:03Matt Kirshen?

  Okay, so they.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Short answer, yes.

• 28:06Matt Kirshen?

  They, so there is sort of, there isn't a sort of astrophysics. Relevance to constellations other than helping to know where things are like uh, because the two stars could be in completely different clusters could be

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, that's a great question.

• 28:19Matt Kirshen?

  Huge differences.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think Moya, that would be a, a naive, if you just approach this whole subject naively, you would say, this is a constellation. It must be something scientifically relevant about this area of the sky.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, why wouldn't anyone think that?

• 28:35Speaker 00

  If you don't spend a lot of time thinking about the three dimensional nature of space, it is really easy to assume that this, this tableau of pictures we see in our night sky is made up of stars that are all physically clustered together, but there is that third dimension of distance that we have to think about. So, um, the stars might look close to each other in two D, but they might be very distant from each other in that third dimension.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except for the Pleiades, which you mentioned, which is a cluster.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  It is a cluster. Yeah, that's true. I did a, a research project in grad school on identifying moving groups of stars, uh, by their chemistry. And we, we looked at the Pleiades cluster. Um, but those-

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So in, in, in rare cases, they are related, but that's not, those are the exceptions. Right?

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Yes. Most of the time they are separate.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that question was from Matt Kirshen of Los Angeles?

• 29:27Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah. And I'm, I'm sure Matt's very grateful for that answer. I'm gonna quickly squeeze in this quick question because you did mention the ancients being on, on substances. And Gina Martin from North Carolina, you know, just hit, said, I just hit my THC pen, so bear with me. Uh, but Gina wants to know about dark matter and wonders if dark matter could actually be the matter that escapes from black holes. Uh, the question then goes on for a little bit, but I'm just gonna cut it short to there.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. Well, let's hold that for the break. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, segment three of Astrophysics and Folklore on StarTalk with our expert, Moya McTier, when we come back.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Star Call, Cosmic Queries, Maury McTier knocking it out with what we're trying to find out how people think about the night sky and what the relevance of that is to science and culture with Matt Kirshen. And Moya, where do we find you on social media?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  I've made it easy for you because I know my name isn't that easy to spell. I'm GoAstroMo on everything.

• 30:36Matt Kirshen?

  Love it.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GoAstroMo.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  I picked it in 2014 and I felt weird about it then, but now I kind of love it.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's your moniker. So, Moya, M-O-I-Y-A, and McTier is what it sounds like, but GoAstroMo, I love it. I love it. So, let's keep this up. Oh, one thing I wanted to add to that previous segment, when the questioner commented on Orion and Mars, what was implicit there is that the star Betelgeuse, which is Orion's upper shoulder, is a red giant star. So you have the red hue of that star near the red hue of Mars. And so I think that's contributed to the thrust of that question.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's a lot of red action over in that part of the sky.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  And we all know that red means angry.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, blood. Red is blood.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  So when we see it in the sky, then the gods are angry.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. All right, Matt, keep them coming.

• 31:35Matt Kirshen?

  Oh, so just before the break, Gina wanted to know about dark matter and whether it could actually be the matter that escapes from black holes. And then the THC started to kick in and the question continues.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Wow, Gina, I hope you're having a great time. And I'm going to tell you, we don't know what dark matter is either as scientists. We have a lot of hypotheses. There are things we're trying to test out. But most of what we know about dark matter is how it behaves, not what it's made of. We know that dark matter is something that can interact with other stuff gravitationally. So you can feel this gravitational tug, but it doesn't interact with light. So you can't see it. You can't touch it. You can't, you know, if you shine a light through it, the light's just not going to know it's there. Is it stuff coming out of black holes? Probably not. I'm going to, I'll tell you now, that is not one of the leading hypotheses. There were people...

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Several decades ago, who thought maybe dark matter was just a bunch of little black holes? Because we can't see black holes, but they also interact with stuff gravitationally. So maybe dark matter is just like a big clump of tiny little black holes. But it doesn't seem like that's likely.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Plus, if they were coming out of black holes, the mass of a black hole would be dropping.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't really see that either. Right, right. And so that was a question that came out under the influence of THC?

• 33:00Matt Kirshen?

  Yeah, but I think it's pretty good. And also, just while we're talking about black holes, Molly Jebson says, who's an American university student living in Paris, says, "I'm fascinated by white holes. And I recently read that a white hole singularity exists in the future, and a black hole singularity exists in the past. What does that mean?"

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was THC involved in that question, too?

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Yes, it sounds like it.

• 33:20Matt Kirshen?

  It was not. Molly was a-specific as to what was influencing that question. It could have just been a sheer wonder of the universe.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. That is a force of THC unto itself, right? The wonder of the universe. So Moya, what do you know about white holes?

• 33:36Speaker 00

  I know very little about white holes. I was just gonna say, we're beyond my realm of expertise here.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all I know is that it's like a mathematical opposite of a black hole.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. If a black hole absorbs everything or brings everything in, not actively, it's not like a vacuum sucking. But if that's what a black hole does, then a white hole should be the opposite. It's where stuff comes out.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Moya, someone once told me that there's no such thing as gravity. Earth sucks. And I've believed it ever since. Are you saying? Are you trying to disavow me of this understanding of gravity? Come on now.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  I like to hold multiple truths in my head at the same time, so.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 34:13Matt Kirshen?

  All right.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Matt, keep going.

• 34:14Matt Kirshen?

  All right. Well, I'm gonna combine these two questions. So I think this is getting back more onto home territory for both of you. So Marcus Gusterson from Sweden, and also Dylan, who's a physics undergrad, between the two of them, ask, "What are the methods used to map the size of the Milky Way? And where are we located within it?" And also Dylan, who's the physics undergrad, says, "I'm wondering how we map the Milky Way. How do we observe something if we're currently in it? Do we just assume our looks from other galaxies?"

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Yeah. Plus, Moya, every star we see in the night sky... Is in the Milky Way, right? So tell us, what's going on there? I mean, we, colloquially, we say, see that band of light? That's the Milky Way.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Yep, we do say that.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As though that's something separate from the stars that are around us. So why don't you unpack that for everybody?

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Yeah, so one, one thing that I bring up a lot in my new podcast, Pale Blue Pod, is that we are not separate from space. It's not that we're here on Earth and then there's the Milky Way out there. We are a part of the Milky Way. The Earth is a part of it. We are a part of it. So I just wanted to get that out there first. Mapping the Milky Way, that's something we've been trying to do for hundreds of years. I do think it's really interesting that we only realized there were other galaxies out there 100 years ago. The great debate in the 1920s was all about, are we alone or are there other island universes? And it turns out, there are. So that's recent, but we did know that we were in a collection.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was island universe used in the context of a galaxy.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  Of other galaxies, yes.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, not as a separate, not in the multiverse sense.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Yes. They were not, they were not having a great debate about the multiverse theory in the 1920s. But we did know long before that, that we were in this collection of bright points of light. And so, the earliest map of the Milky Way was done by the Herschel siblings, Caroline and William. And that was back in the 1600s, where they, they made some very simplifying, inaccurate assumptions, that, one, they could see all of the stars in the Milky Way. We now know that we can't, we actually can't see most of the stars in the Milky Way. And that we were in the center of it. Like, they, they assumed we were in the center of it.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  So what they did was, was look out at the night sky and map the bright points of light, assuming that they were all like the same size. And so they tried to figure out the distance to them, using their brightness, because they were all the same size. Again, lots of very bad simplifying assumptions, but they came up with this map of the Milky Way that just looks awful. But I, I encourage you to look it up. That was the first attempt. These days... What we're doing is using much stronger telescopes and much better assumptions about how things should be distributed throughout the Milky Way. We've made observations of other spiral galaxies, so we have an idea of what the rough shape should be. But you're right, it is pretty hard to take a picture of a house when you're inside it.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Like, we don't, it's hard for us to get a full view of what the Milky Way looks like. But we have models, we have telescopes that can see through the dust, so we now have a better view of the center of the Milky Way. We know where we are in the Milky Way because we can see that there is more light in one direction than there is in the other. So yeah, it's a matter of meticulous mapping over time and trying to make sure our assumptions aren't as wild as they were in the 1600s.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it as hard as an unborn child figuring out what his mother looks like?

• 37:47Speaker 00

  I think it's easier than that.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  I do think, because there's, there's no-

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't need like remote mirrors, you know, to look outside, you know?

• 37:56Speaker 00

  Because I think that they're, they're, like, the baby, the unborn baby could learn about the distribution of organs, but it would have no idea what, like, the mother's face looked like.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  I, I feel like we have a pretty good understanding of what the Milky Way's face looks like. Because there's not much variation, really. When you, when you boil it down to the different body parts of a galaxy, there's, there's not that much diversity. So we have a pretty good idea.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, cool. All right, Matt, keep it coming.

• 38:28Matt Kirshen?

  All right, well, we have, I have a question, we have a question about-

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, I mean, depending on how many questions you have, I might want to go into lightning mode.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this will put Moya to the test.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See if she, does she have sound bites in her? This is like a great test of the educator.

• 38:42Matt Kirshen?

  If we do, if we go into lightning mode, I'm gonna have to do some editing on some of these questions because this is, this is a subject that people have gone deep on with the questions. People are really like- People have written like many essays and uh cause

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They babbled on and on about it. Okay.

• 38:55Matt Kirshen?

  Well, they're very excited about it, but uh so the artist formerly known as James Smith from Indianapolis, I remember that name from previous episodes, says Dr. Moya astrology astrology is a very popular subject these days. I think it's I think I started to say there is a popular subject all day is it uh but James says, do people believe that the stars are influencing their lives because of tradition? Or do you think it's because they have something to blame their rational behaviors or even their great luck on who are the first to see the stars for more than what they truly are? I I'd actually say for for less than they truly are as well.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I love that question. And Moya, wouldn't modern astrology be considered folklore in your by your definitions?

• 39:36Speaker 00

  I do. I do consider it folklore. Uh, we are creating folklore and mythology in the modern day. Uh, I think both of those reasons resonate with a lot of astrology practitioners, uh, people who follow it. Um, they need something to reason. They have been told that the stars dictate events in their lives. And I think it's very comforting for them. Uh, I think a lot of people use it as a way to feel connected to the universe larger than ourselves.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  As a scientist, I I it's I don't I don't follow it. I don't believe in it. As a folklorist, I love looking back at ancient astrology to see the real and practical ways that humans knew the sky did dictate their lives.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So you would you would distinguish them astrologers of 500 years ago who didn't know any better. And that was like their best way to account for their reality.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Versus today where we actually do know better, yet they're still doing it.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Yes, I would distinguish them. Um, I think that ancient astrology was extremely practical. Um, it had to do with when were you planting your crops? When were you moving because of seasonal flooding and stuff like that? Um, there were also people who read Information from the sky that was less practical. Um, I, I think it's pretty agreed upon by folklorists now that ancient Babylonians were among the first to not just track the motion of stuff in the sky, but to assign divine meaning to it. By which I mean, they had priests, they had astrologer priests, who spent their lives learning how stuff in the sky moved, because that was their way of interpreting the will of their gods.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Um, and there was an eclipse or something, they wouldn't go to war. Or if there, if there was some alignment of planets, of these wandering stars in the sky, then that would tell them how they, how they needed to make, I don't know, government decisions in that time.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt, you think that'd be a badass business card?

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrologer, priest, and astrophysicist. That's, that, you know, you're in charge of everything at that point.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  That's kind of the business card I have. Like, people assume that because I studied the universe and because I studied folklore, that I just know how everything works.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're just totally plugged into everything that matters.

• 41:49Matt Kirshen?

  You're a scientist.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt, we gotta totally do lightning round.

• 41:53Matt Kirshen?

  All right, lightning round. Next question, I'm gonna have to summarize this question, because Edwin J. Rolldown from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, asks, what's your opinion on whether the next Mars mission should have life detection experiments on it? The Mars lander didn't contain a, a life detection test, but the Viking did.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, back 45 years ago, there were some ambiguous results from the Viking landers. And so, uh, you, you think about exoplanets a lot, Moira, and if you think of Mars as a kind of an exoplanet, because we're looking and we might have life, except we can also go there, um, what do you think should be the priorities for, for the upcoming rovers?

• 42:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that if there was kind of cloudy evidence before, let's try and clarify that evidence cloud. Um, as long as there aren't other instruments that would do better science. If it's not gonna take up space, then yeah, let's put something on there that could, um, try and detect. More directly evidence of life.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I like that. Keep going, Matt.

• 42:49Matt Kirshen?

  All right, I'm combining another couple of long questions, and I'm gonna cut them way very short. Jim from Brooklyn and also James Bennett, both asking about photons coming from stars. So where, James says, where does the energy of the photons go that have been redshifted due to the expansion of the universe? And Jim wants to know, if I stand out in the dark, I can see Vega shining brightly. Photons from Vega are hitting my retinas, but it's also true if I'm 10 feet from my left, 30 miles out to sea, or floating in interstellar space. So all these photons are coming from the same star. So basically, how many of these photons are coming off? There seems a lot of photons. And what's the deal with that? And then he goes on to questions about dark energy and matter, but I think you've answered that already.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a million photons.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  So many photons. One of my favorite things about light is that it's isotropic. If you have a source of light, photons are going to be coming off of it in all directions. And as they spread out, they're still going to hit you even if you're 10 feet to the left or somewhere in the middle of the ocean. It's all one of the millions of photons coming from that same star.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Millions.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  So many photons. I feel like that is very separate from the first question you asked.

• 44:01Matt Kirshen?

  So the first question was, what happens to the energy of the redshifted photons?

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, so the redshift of the universe only happens on very large scales. When we're talking about Vega or other stars within our own galaxy that we're seeing, they are not being redshifted away from us because of the expansion of the universe. It's light from very distant galaxies that are being redshifted from the expansion of the universe. Neil, do you want to talk about where that energy goes?

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, sure. There's still the same amount of energy. It's just now diluted. Okay, so the total energy is still there, but it's now spread over a much larger volume. And so when you dilute the energy, the photon you detect, okay, has has lower energy, but the total energy of all of space remains the same from what had been put into it from the beginning. So it's so we have we think of energy density in the way you can think of matter density. Some things are more dense than others. You know, a brick is denser than a than a balloon. So when you stretch out the universe,

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  um, things just get less energy dense. But you're not losing any energy to some secret place.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  It's more diffuse.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. All right, Matt, go for it.

• 45:24Matt Kirshen?

  So Sandra Pagliani, who like many other questioners, says nice things about the podcast first and then says, can you possibly explain ghosts?

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, can't we hear the nice things? I want to hear the nice things. Just skip over that.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  I thought we were in a lightning round, Neo.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, sorry. Except when people say, nice things.

• 45:41Matt Kirshen?

  There's been a bunch of nice things that various people have said. Sandra said, my favorite podcast of all time. Someone else who I can't remember now says, thank you for all the science and the humor. There's people say people say lovely things about you and and the show.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think they're doing it just to get their question answered. Say you say nice.

• 46:00Matt Kirshen?

  Maybe true, but that's a strategy. But Sandra says, could you possibly explain ghosts with physics? Since we can only perceive a specific range of the frequency spectrums when it comes to sound and light, we base our reality on these limitations. Could it be that what we call, quote, ghosts is residual energy from past that is reaching us now, filtering into our current state of reality for a brief moment? Frequencies can create resonances at various harmonic intervals. So some of those frequencies can be picked up by humans. Dot, dot, dot, possibly?

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. And and and Moya, ghosts, aren't they part of folklore?

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Ghosts are absolutely part of folklore. Look, I I have never learned anything in any of my science classes that told me ghosts couldn't exist.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. Oh, I see what you did there. There's not a chapter, why ghosts don't exist?

• 46:50Speaker 00

  I've never read that textbook.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Um, but. I, I, like I said before, I like to hold two truths in my mind at the same time. I, I would love a world where ghosts and magic and these other folklore things exist. Uh, that's why I study them. I like to inhabit that world. Um, science can't explain most of that yet. So maybe one day there will be a textbook that says definitively whether or not ghosts exist because of physics, but until I read that, that book, science is real and also ghosts could happen.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 47:28Matt Kirshen?

  What about Frankensteins?

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Oh, that is, that is science. Yes.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What about the Invisible Man? What about vampires?

• 47:37Matt Kirshen?

  Draculas.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the list, I got a list ready to come into.

• 47:41Matt Kirshen?

  Perk specifically calling it Frankensteins just to annoy the many pedants who listen to this show.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, get away from the Frankenstein versus Frankenstein's monster thing. Um, yeah, Frankenstein was just a human. He was just a scientist. So yeah, that exists.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Dr. Frankenstein, yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  There actually are some very interesting scientific ties to the origin of, of a lot of these folkloric figures. Um, I've been listening to some podcasts recently about, uh, where the various myths about vampires came from, because there are, there are animals that suck blood. There are animals that will dig up graves. Uh, there are reasons why you might find these stories very present, um, throughout the world.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, uh, with natural causes is what you're saying?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is, so I, I didn't get a chance to say this in the first segment, but the main interest I have in this intersection between science and folklore is that I really do believe there are two sides of the same coin and that coin is something you can buy understanding of the universe with. People weren't just making up stories for the fun of it. Most of the time, ancient humans were observing the world around them and coming up with explanations that fit into their worldview. And as we scientifically progressed and we gained tools and we had accumulated knowledge over thousands of years, then our worldview shifted, uh, away from magic and, and gods and folklore.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  But there's still use, there's still value in the stories and the observations that people made.

• 49:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm hmm hmm. So what you should do is write a book of today's folklore.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That one day, science will have something to say about.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about that?

• 49:24Speaker 00

  I'd love that. Yeah, all the little superstitions, then maybe in a hundred years, scientists will be like, oh, that's why that happens.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Well, we'll hope to get you back on this show before 100 years from now.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Please.

• 49:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we have that, Moya, it's been a delight to finally meet you. Matt, great to have you here.

• 49:43Matt Kirshen?

  Always great to be here.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. You've been watching, possibly listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries, our folklore edition. Loving it. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.