Cosmic Queries – Grab Bag – Cosmology Crisis??? With Paul Mecurio

How do we know the age of stars? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio answer fan questions about stars, black hole collisions, the speed of light, and the present crisis in cosmology.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And my guest co-host today is a friend of StarTalk, the one and only Paul Mecurio. Paul?

• 0:28Paul Mecurio?

  Hey Neil, how are you?

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:31Paul Mecurio?

  Nice to be back. Great to see you again.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, let me just remind people who you are. Like you started out, was it an investment banker or something?

• 0:39Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that wasn't funny enough for you, so you became a comedian?

• 0:42Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I started...

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the hell happened there? And how much of a disappointment were you now to your family?

• 0:49Paul Mecurio?

  Then and now.

• 0:53Paul Mecurio?

  I can't even say that. I was a lawyer.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, lawyer, sorry.

• 0:56Paul Mecurio?

  No, no, Bo, you got it right. I was doing M&A law and I was like, okay...

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, mergers and acquisitions. See, you're still in it.

• 1:03Paul Mecurio?

  Right, I know, sorry.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, M&A.

• 1:05Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly, exactly. I was Gordon Gekko with big lips. And then I decided, well, I want to really sort of, you know, be a little bit more scummy, so I'm going to be an investment banker. And then I...

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lawyer defending investment bankers wasn't scummy enough for you?

• 1:24Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly, exactly. It's like, why am I defending these guys when I could be one of them and make them four times the money? And so I'm like, ah, they go jump ship. And I was still doing mergers and acquisitions, but on the banking side. And the difference is like the bankers sort of come up, do the financial modeling to decide the value of the company, and then they get into a price negotiation and they hand it off to the lawyers and then we negotiate it and...

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're already in how that all that worked anyway? That's what it seems like?

• 1:53Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. So if you got put out of a job because of an M&A deal, just tweet me. You can...

• 2:01Paul Mecurio?

  Here's my address if you want to come and burn my house down.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might have been you.

• 2:04Paul Mecurio?

  It might have been me. And then I thought, um, how could I disappoint everybody in my life, including my wife? I know, I'll go into comedy and entertainment and start all over again. And then that's what I did.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I enjoyed your story. We had lunch recently and you were telling me that a part of the birth, you know, the origin story of Paul McQuirre was selling a couple of handwritten jokes to Jay Leno.

• 2:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the Tonight Show. That's just, I'd love that. I'd love that. And now you did a warm up for Stephen Colbert.

• 2:35Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in The Late Show.

• 2:38Paul Mecurio?

  In The Late Show. I wrote on The Daily Show, worked on The Colbert Report, and now work on this show and then appear on The Late Show occasionally too.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if I'm ever watching Stephen Colbert and his audience looks a little dead, it's because you didn't, you failed.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're supposed to get them all excited, right?

• 2:59Paul Mecurio?

  No, it's because I wasn't there in some lame-o film.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, ooh, good one. Good one.

• 3:06Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, no, it's this weird sort of thing. You can't do jokes in it because it doesn't work in that setting. You need like an intimate space and...

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With cocktail tables kind of space, yeah.

• 3:16Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you know, and then, you know, angry waitresses serving around you, that kind of thing. And then, uh...

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, just to remind people that his show is in the Ed Sullivan Theater. So it's actually a theater, not just a little recording space.

• 3:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I mean, you've been to the show, and I don't know if you saw it downstairs, but below, they have these huge timbers and an elephant painted on the wall. And it turns out that they used to have the Ringling Brothers Circus perform in the theater. And they would bring the elephants in on the 53rd Street entrance. And they needed to put these timbers up to support the stage because of the elephants, so...

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, the Ringling Brothers came to perform at Madison Square Garden, not only on the Ed Sullivan Show. And so, so this was like PR for the regular show, right? You wouldn't go to the Ed Sullivan Show to watch a three-ring circus, right?

• 4:06Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. Well, a couple of the elephants were divas. They wouldn't even go on the Sullivan Show. They're like, "I don't need that." And they're just looking at their hooves like, "What, what?"

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do elephants have hooves? No, I don't think so.

• 4:17Paul Mecurio?

  I don't think so. They're large hooves.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd call them big feet. That's really awkward.

• 4:22Paul Mecurio?

  I was starting to feel stupid when you corrected me, then your answer didn't make me feel so stupid now. They have those big feet. And, uh, so yeah, I mean, so it's a, it's a compact thing, like in 10 or 15 minutes. You gotta, it's, it's a weird, going to a TV taping for an audience is strange because a lot of people haven't been before. So you don't really know. And I think sometimes they think you have to kind of actually be quiet and like polite and we.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause otherwise you interfere with the filming. Right, right.

• 4:49Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, they think that.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ethos.

• 4:51Paul Mecurio?

  Right. And the whole vibe is that they create this wave of energy and then we kind of surf it. So, um, I mean, you know, you've been on and they, they, they love you. I mean, you've been heckled a couple of times, but we, we cut that out and edit and, uh, I can't believe somebody threw a pie at you from the balcony. I thought that was highly inappropriate.

• 5:12Paul Mecurio?

  It was something like, "You haven't returned my email in three years." And then he threw a pie at you. And I was like, wow, this guy's got a lot of enemies. Uh, no.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I like reintroducing you to our audience. So that's great to get some of that background. So did you come loaded with questions from our audience?

• 5:27Paul Mecurio?

  I did.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's the theme today?

• 5:28Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, the theme is sort of a grab bag. We, uh,

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag? Okay. We have those every now and then. Yeah.

• 5:33Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but there does seem to be a little bit of a through line of sort of, uh, you know, in terms of the galaxy and sort of, uh,

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:41Paul Mecurio?

  mentions, but let's, we'll jump in.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I know the answer, I'll, I'll, you know.

• 5:44Paul Mecurio?

  I read these ahead of time. I don't think you're gonna know any of this, so I will.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is end of year.

• 5:50Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I should just have a glass of wine and I'll take over, uh, Mr. Big Feet. And, um, all right. So we'll get started then.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

• 5:59Paul Mecurio?

  I apologize on this first name. It's a little tricky, but I'll, I'm doing my best here. It's, uh, Hade, uh, Wagamins. And the question is if the.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we know where Hade comes from?

• 6:09Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, we.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was like knowing their origin.

• 6:12Paul Mecurio?

  We do not know. I just have the name. Um, I think.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, and these. Yeah, yeah. All these are Patreon. Right. So Patreon, um, they get perks for supporting the show. And, uh, so we love them for that. And here, and here we have it. So yeah, but so what do you have?

• 6:28Paul Mecurio?

  Um, if the universe expands at light speed, how does it expand? At light speed. And by the way, I've listened to all of the episodes of StarTalk Radio. You don't have to kiss ass, you're gonna get your answer.

• 6:42Paul Mecurio?

  You don't need to.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, at least he said it at the end of the question, right? Rather than at the beginning. Right, that shows a little more class.

• 6:50Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:53Paul Mecurio?

  So yeah, if the universe expands at light speed, how does it expand at light speed?

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a common concern people have when they learn of this. And because they know fundamentally that nothing can travel faster than light. So how is it that the universe could possibly expand faster than light? In fact, if you go to the early universe, right after the Big Bang, it was expanding way faster than the speed of light. So here's where the rubber hits the road, or the spaceship hits the vacuum, or however that will work. So in 1905, Einstein came out with his quote "theory of relativity." But that theory of relativity was in a very restrictive case.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so it came to be known as the special theory of relativity. Not because it was special, like you're special. No, no, it's not that. It's because it was a limited invocation of the principles of relativity. It was a special case, really, is what it should have been called, really. And it would take him another 10 years to generalize the principles of relativity to a much larger, more encompassing concept.

• 8:14Paul Mecurio?

  Which, by the way, proves 10 years? He was lazy, let's be honest.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think what that is.

• 8:21Paul Mecurio?

  I could have done it in two.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lazy bum.

• 8:23Paul Mecurio?

  I could have done it in two.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the special theory of relativity broadened to become the general theory of relativity. Okay, so that's what's going on there. And so it turns out, in the special theory of relativity, it describes what happens when you move through a pre-existing space and time. And if you're trying to move through pre-existing space and time, there are speed limits. The speed of light. It's not just a good idea.

• 8:56Paul Mecurio?

  It's just, what happens, is it possible to exceed that?

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have to finish the line. It's not just a good idea.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the law. Don't you remember this?

• 9:07Paul Mecurio?

  I'm sorry.

• 9:09Paul Mecurio?

  I missed it. I'm sorry. I missed it.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you been living in New York so long that you forgot how to drive and you forgot those rules about the speed limit?

• 9:17Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly, exactly. I totally missed it, yes. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the law. You missed it. You know, I'm hanging these low hanging fruit for you.

• 9:29Paul Mecurio?

  I know, I know.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So in the universe, so what's interesting is photons, packets of energy, do move at the speed of light. But anything with mass cannot ever achieve the speed of light under the tenets of the special theory of relativity. And what happens is the circumstances become oddly interesting, right? So if you're gonna watch me move faster and faster and faster, you will see that my time will begin to slow down. You'll compare my clock to yours. I'm on a spaceship and you're down here on Earth and you watch me fly by. My clock will tick slower than your clock.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not only that, you will see the length of my spaceship shorten in the direction I'm moving. And you will see that my mass has increased and I will have no idea any of that is happening. So even though you see my spaceship getting shrunk front to back, I'm in the spaceship and I look behind me, I look in front of me, and it's a normal spaceship. So the point that Einstein noted, this is part of, one tiny piece of his vast brilliance, is that while I'm on the spaceship, if I try to measure the length of the spaceship, my ruler shrinks as well. So I'll still measure the same length, even though you're gonna say, "Hey Neil, you know, you're really shrunken up."

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "No, I haven't." And I take out my shrunken ruler and I say, "Everything is fine," right?

• 11:01Paul Mecurio?

  But why does, is it the perception of shrinkage?

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's what happens. That's a great question, that's a great question. So what, um, the reason, well, I don't recall the reason like that, like someone made this a reason. It is just the reality of the universe in which we live. And it's that. Everybody measures the same speed of light, no matter how fast you're going, right? So if you're in the front of a train, let's say a train's going 60 miles an hour, and then you throw a rock 10 miles an hour in front of you. Okay? You're standing on the train, and the rock is leaving you 10 miles an hour, okay? Someone on the ground will see the rock go 10 miles an hour plus the speed of the train. Okay? So the train's going 60,

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they'll see the rock going 60, like going 10, and so the rock 10 in front of the train is actually going 70 miles an hour. It adds for that person.

• 11:58Paul Mecurio?

  I was just thinking it would catch up, but it does.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it doesn't. No, no, once you throw it, it will fall. But if you just throw it out ahead, now watch. If I send a beam of light in front of me, I will measure it to have the speed of light. You, on the ground, try to measure that same beam of light, even though I beamed it in front of a train, and you will also get the exact same value for the speed of light. This is freaky. The speed that you measure for light is independent of how fast you're moving. So Einstein said, "How do I make that happen in the calculations?" The only way we can all agree that the speed of light is the same, no matter who's measuring it,

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is if my length shrinks as I go by you, is if my mass increases, and if my time slows down. So that simple observation about the universe, that everybody measures the same speed of light, forces all the rest of that to be true. And that is the special theory of relativity. Okay, so now, 10 years goes by, because he's just such a lazy bum, and then he figures out how to think about this with regard to accelerations. So the full answer to this question would take an hour, but I want to shorten it and say... That the expanding universe is not an object moving within the pre-existing universe.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And therefore, the speed of light plays no role in constraining it.

• 13:31Paul Mecurio?

  So it can expand at any rate of speed?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arbitrarily fast, because nothing is moving faster than light within the medium.

• 13:42Paul Mecurio?

  So.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is the stretching of the medium itself. And that's so, and that was allowed in the general theory of relativity, which still constrains, constrains your speed if you're trying to move within the space itself.

• 13:55Paul Mecurio?

  And so if something can expand with no parameters, is it, is it possible to measure, to measure that in any way? I mean.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What will happen is as the, as the uni, if, so you'll see a part of the universe expanding, and let's say it hits the speed of light. Well, the light it tries to send you will lose all energy before it reaches you. So it basically disappears and it creates a horizon for you. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, so that, so that's what's interesting. So there's more universe out there, it's just beyond the horizon and that light will never reach you.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light can come towards you. So, so yeah, it's gone forever. So you'll never even see the thing, objects embedded in space moving at the speed of light or greater.

• 14:44Paul Mecurio?

  So the, the short answer to by the, if the universe expands, how does it expand at light speed? It is very complicated and it's not sort of it's this or it's that. It just depends on the medium and the circumstances.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it depends if it's because the space is expanding, not objects moving within the space at the speed of light. So that's, that's, that's the fundamental difference there. Okay, and there's a really brilliant reason how and why Einstein came up with this concept of the general theory of relativity relates to the equivalence principle. And I, I could get into it if we have time, but we're gonna have to take a break in like a minute. But I just want to say that the short answer here is. General theory of relativity allows space to expand at arbitrary speeds. And it is not constrained by the speed of light. Whereas we are, because we're embedded in a pre-existing spacetime. And we cannot then go faster than them.

• 15:38Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference.

• 15:40Paul Mecurio?

  Let me be clear. You all are. I am not constrained. I'm a whole other being that is able to morph. I'm the bad guy in Terminator.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. By the way, by the way, Terminator 2. You know. Yeah.

• 15:56Paul Mecurio?

  I hate it when you correct me and you're wrong.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just, I'm not actually correcting you. I'm just enhancing the truth of what you're saying.

• 16:02Paul Mecurio?

  Wow, you must be fully getting in an argument with your wife. Honey, I'm not correcting you. I'm enhancing you. Well, enhance outside because you're not sleeping in this bed tonight.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, science fiction authors know all about this limit of the speed of light. And they don't want to violate that. All right. It's like sacrosanct. So what they do is they come up with other methods that circumvent the speed of light limit. Like warp drives. And what do they do? They're distorting the fabric of space and time. And traveling and surfing that. We're traveling through wormholes. And these are all other ways you can get from A to B faster than a beam of light would have. But you're not actually moving through space faster than light to accomplish it.

• 16:47Paul Mecurio?

  So like in, in Star Wars, which was, you know, we're going to jump to, was it light speed?

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hyperspace. Dude.

• 16:55Paul Mecurio?

  Hyperspace.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your vocabulary.

• 16:57Paul Mecurio?

  Hyperspace. Is that, is that plausible in some way? Like they've worked around?

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, because the future, so you give them whatever, whatever special engines they need. But they were distinguishing the fact that they can't just accelerate faster than the speed of light. Something has to happen. Okay. In order to engage that. And, and the streaking of the, of the starlight? That's kind of what it might look like if you sort of did that. So I, that's one of the three accurate things in the entire Star Wars series that is.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That has any correspondence to physical reality.

• 17:36Paul Mecurio?

  The other is that Jar Jar Binks is a very good actor. That was another.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's on the list, too. Let me add that. That's the fourth thing.

• 17:44Paul Mecurio?

  There you go.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break, but when we come back, more Cosmic Queries on StarTalk with my guest co-host, Paul Mecurio.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, grab-bag edition. I got my guest co-host, Paul Mecurio. Paul, Mecurio, that feels like the planet Mercury, right? Was, is that Mer- is there an R in your last name?

• 18:53Paul Mecurio?

  There actually is. I had to change the spelling for performing purposes. My, my guy gave a name is M-E-R-C-U-R-I-O, or Mecurio.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, God gave you that name? That's interesting.

• 19:03Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, he and I are, we're like that, and...

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on a last-name basis with God, apparently.

• 19:08Paul Mecurio?

  Well, apparently I was born and a guy in a robe walked in and said, "Your name is Mecurio," and then they don't know if it was God or a homeless guy. But I'm going with God, just so I feel important.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that works every time, yeah. So, so you're born Mecurio, and you, and you took it out. Why?

• 19:26Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I was, had a part in a show in Los Angeles, and my manager called and goes, "There's a problem," and I go, "What, am I getting fired from this acting job?" He goes, "No, but you will be." The problem, real problem is that there's an actor in the union with the name Paul Mecurio.

• 19:44Paul Mecurio?

  And I just was like, I went nuts. I'm like, what are the statistical chances of somebody having that same name? And it was this Australian actor, you may not remember him, but he was in this really good independent movie called Strictly Ballroom. He was a-

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did see, I was, I was a ballroom dancer at the time. I saw that.

• 20:01Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, okay. And he was a great dancer, and apparently the story there is he was a choreographer on the film, and the actor they hired really couldn't pull the dance moves off, so they put him in front of the camera and he acted fine. And he had a career for a while, and he did Exit to Eden with Rosie O'Donnell and some other. So he got in the union before I did, so for a while I was Paul Michael Mecurio. My, my confirmation name was my middle name, Michael.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're so, you're so, you're so pious. God gave you the last name, the confirmation, God gives you another name.

• 20:30Paul Mecurio?

  Hang on, I, hang on, I gotta heal a leper. Hold on one second. And we get some water.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you had lepers in your apartment. Good, I'm not never visiting you, okay?

• 20:41Paul Mecurio?

  It's my door, man. It's the best we could get with COVID. Everybody else is on unemployment. And, and so I, I tried three names for a while, and the end of the story is that God forbid somebody could introduce you and get Paul Michael, Michael Mecurio. They couldn't say three names and get it right, and so I dropped the first R in my name.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Mecurio. It worked. I got you. We're still good.

• 21:02Paul Mecurio?

  I got Mecurio, I got references to Shakespeare, and I guess my name is sort of my, I have a, I'm an Aries, so I don't know if you believe in astrology, but-

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you think? Yeah, okay.

• 21:13Paul Mecurio?

  A little bit. And that I'm sort of a mercurial kind of human being. And my wife is easy, very simple. Anyway, sorry, that was too long an answer. I apologize. You can edit all that out.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, so what do you have for the next question?

• 21:26Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, we're out of time. Thanks for tuning in, everybody.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul's too long explaining the absence of an R in his name.

• 21:35Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. In his head, Neil's going, why did I ask this?

• 21:40Paul Mecurio?

  All right, David Goldberg, two parts. Hi, Dr. Tyson. How do astronomers know how old stars are? That's the first question.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, that's okay. Well, there's another part to that.

• 21:50Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. I recently read that they observed a moon forming around a planet near a star that is only 6 million years old. And I was wondering how they can tell.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. So that's a, that question is way deeper than most people know and imagine. So we look out in the universe. And how long are we alive? At most, 100 years. And stars live billions of years. The universe has been around for 14 billion years. We're not sitting around and say, oh, there's one getting born and there's adolescence and then old age and dying. We don't have that luxury. All we can do is take snapshots. Okay, we take a snapshot over here, a snapshot over there. And we line it all up and we scratch our heads. Okay.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, by analogy, let's do the same for human beings. Okay, so let's say we are some insect that lives for one day. And we want to know, how do we decide how old humans are that we encounter? But we only live for one day. Okay, so I amass all of my fellow insects together. So let's take photos of humans throughout the day. Bring them all back and sit down and scratch our heads, if the insect has a head. So what will they see? They will see this, a building with tiny humans in it. Okay, very tiny.

• 23:24Paul Mecurio?

  How big is this insect? This is freaking me out.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm sorry. It wouldn't have to be an insect. It wouldn't have to be an insect. Just another creature who's curious about humans as life forms the way we are curious about stars. Okay, so that, so they'll see, they'll see women sort of facing this building with distended bellies. Okay. They'll see, in the building, they'll see little humans. And then they'll, and they'll also see women exiting the building, holding these little humans.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's kinda interesting. Alright, hold on to that for a minute. They will see wooden boxes going into the ground. Okay? Oh, what's that? Okay. Oh, by the way, in the same building that has the women with distended bellies, they will see other humans laying down that are very wrinkled, maybe? Or, um, okay.

• 24:36Paul Mecurio?

  Do they see, do they see my super not fixing the leak under my seat?

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, they will, they will catch that as well.

• 24:42Paul Mecurio?

  And can they kill him for that? That's all I really care about.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you can ask, um, do, does this life form, are they born in the earth in boxes? Cause you don't get to see the box move. These are snapshots, right?

• 24:58Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do we, do, do, are, like seeds, like plants? And we take them out of the ground and they start out wrinkly and then they get healthier and healthier and then they begin to shrink and then disappear. Okay? Cause you don't even know the time vector when you're just looking out in, in the universe. So you start assembling this and once you bring enough of this data together, you can start constructing a timeline of a human being. And you might say, okay, um, here's another subtle point. You ready?

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people have this stick in their mouth and there's froth in their mouth. Okay? Not many. It's maybe one in a thousand. Okay? How, what fraction of a day are you brushing your teeth? Right? It's like a couple of minutes out of 24 hours. So most people will not be doing this. Some will be. So is it only this kind of person is only ever brushing their teeth and no one else does? Or does everyone brush their teeth?

• 26:08Paul Mecurio?

  It's like watching people running for exercise. These people are sort of, they're moving faster than most people are moving in terms of walking. What does this mean?

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does it mean? Exactly. Or what, you won't see them moving. You'll just catch them with longer strides, in a long stride, with wearing fewer clothes or something, right?

• 26:28Paul Mecurio?

  You know, wet from sweat, whatever that, yeah, right.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So, all of this has to go into a box. That you sit there and scratch your head, and it's like a puzzle, really. And you say, well, this, maybe this comes before that. Oh, we got this now. The distended bellies and this, this place, and the women, and, and do I even know that they're women? Well, statistically, they have longer hair? And so does, because does everyone get a distended belly? So, you have to think all of this through. For me, the, one of the more intriguing ones is trying to figure out whether one kind of person is the only one who's ever, what you find in the bathroom? Or does everyone go to the bathroom, you just didn't catch it because it doesn't take very long?

• 27:10Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because you'll, you'll just miss it.

• 27:13Paul Mecurio?

  But you will be able to, with all this data that you're collecting, a very quick determination can be that there's only two types of these beings. A naked man looks one way, a naked woman looks another way.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, to you, but if you're a praying mantis, do you even see the difference? I mean, when you see a praying mantis, when you see, no, when you see a pigeon, are you saying, oh yeah, that's a female pigeon, that's a male pigeon? Well, you look really different. No, they can tell each other apart, but can you?

• 27:42Paul Mecurio?

  When I look at pigeons, I try to look at them as more substantive beings. I'm not shallow like you. Like, hey, that pigeon's got a nice body.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Entire beings, right. So, what may be obvious to us would be completely mysterious to another creature. You don't run around and judge the gender of goldfish, right? You have no clue, because we don't have eyes for that.

• 28:03Paul Mecurio?

  No, no, but I'm not saying that they, that they would say today, gender, but they'll start to see a pattern that there's two, these, these beings look one of two ways in terms of bit, not size, not wrinkles.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but they do, but not all of them, okay? So, you know, elementary school children.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, um, unless they're completely stripped down, they're just, they're just smaller humans, right? And so, so the differences grow through middle school and high school, of course, but then you still have to figure that out. That's my only point. So fortunately, just for this visiting praying mantis, or whatever creature it was, there are billions of people. Fortunately for astrophysicists, there are billions of stars.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you only do something one in a million times, and I have a billion of you out there, I will catch somebody in the act doing it every time.

• 28:58Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? You need the large numbers to see the things that are rare. Okay?

• 29:04Paul Mecurio?

  And then to start putting, finding a pattern through that.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. And to create the temporal nuances of what's happening simply from snapshots. So, we look out in the universe and we say, hmm, there's a gas cloud over here. All right? And I see some stars deep within it. By the way, what are stars made of? They're made of gas. Hmm. Maybe that's a stellar nursery. Because over here I see stars and there is no gas. So where did they come from? Wait, could it be that these stars dissolve themselves into a cloud? That could, that, that could be.

• 29:44Paul Mecurio?

  It's analogous to, are they born in these boxes and then?

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the boxes and come back out.

• 29:50Paul Mecurio?

  Reverse, or are they born and then, yeah.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So here's what you find. You ready? You keep doing this and then you find out, wait a minute, this star just blew up. Oh my gosh, what kind of star is that? Oh, and you look very carefully and we have other ways to determine it's a very high mass star. Only high mass stars blow up.

• 30:10Paul Mecurio?

  And then you can look at the fragments.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but, but wait a minute. So, so it, so, cause you could ask, do stars, are they born with a very high mass? And then use up their mass over their lifetime and then just disappear? Right? That's another one, right? That's the, I start out big and I eat up my own flesh and I disappear. But no, it turns out, stars are born at a given mass, they use some of it during their life, but it's only a very small fraction of it, it turns out. And the high mass ones blow up with hardly any difference in their mass from when they were born. And the low mass ones never blow up and they have a different color. And, and some stars never wander far from their births, from their nursery.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you piece all, oh, oh, then you find out, ooh, then you find out, there's a whole bunch of stars here, that, that, the, the, the gas is almost entirely dissipated. Now you can't make more stars, so they must all be the same age. Oh my gosh, now I have a cluster of stars with the same birth date. Well, how about this other cluster over here? Well, the parameters are a little different. I see less gas among them, but these other things have changed. So maybe after a million years, after a billion years, these things are taking place. So, this took decades with the most powerful telescopes in the world. And one of the leading telescopes was Mount Palomar in California.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Hail 200 inch telescope really put teeth in the stellar evolution, um, uh, understanding of, of this universe. So, it is, it was a very hard task. It took many brilliant people over many decades. Not only the theorists to try to figure out what's happening inside the star that would cause it, but the observers who were saying, I see stars here, but not there. Okay? How come I don't see humans in the middle of the desert? Okay? Maybe, and how come I see more humans where there's water? Oh, maybe you need water for, okay? Just keep doing it. Right. You keep doing it. It's, it's sort of this never ending, there's a never ending. It's a never ending thing. And the thing about the universe is...

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bigger is your sample of stars, the greater is the chance you will see something that is so rare, it only happens once in a billion or trillion times. Right? And so every now and then you'll see a headline saying astrophysicists discover a new black hole that doesn't fit anybody's model or understanding, or well, because it's the millionth black hole we found, right? So, you know, if I, if I search enough people, I'll find somebody who has every disease you ever see advertised on television, right? Right? No, I'm serious, right? Everybody's got, there's something, well, this is one in a hundred thousand and one in a million, or what is it? Tay-Sachs, is it sickle cell, is it?

• 33:04Paul Mecurio?

  It's my Aunt Christine. She's got every pain under the sun, my back, my head.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, she's, then she'd be a goldmine for the investigating aliens. Because she's got all the data.

• 33:16Paul Mecurio?

  That's a perfect place to send her, actually. Let's put her on a ship. All right, we're gonna wrap up on this, we gotta take a break.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we gotta take a break? Okay, damn, I'm taking so long to answer. Maybe I'll have a lightning round for the, for the third, for the third period.

• 33:29Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely. And we're gonna be back right after this quick break.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Hey, it's time to acknowledge our Patreon supporters, Eric Ennis, Bill Savage, and Matt Schaefer. Guys, thank you so much for your support. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And anybody else listening who would like your very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com slash StarTalkRadio and support us.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. I got my guest co-host, Paul Mecurio. Paul, how do people find you on the internet?

• 34:20Paul Mecurio?

  At Paul Mecurio.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that was a hello-hanging fruit. You could've said, they find me repulsive. Paul, I'm handing, Paul, I don't want, I don't want to be the teller of your, the jokes that are just dangling.

• 34:33Paul Mecurio?

  I forgot that you're so evil. And, uh...

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They find I have bad breath, I have, that's how they find me.

• 34:42Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, they find me repulsive. That's actually a perfect way of describing me.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Paul Mecurio on Twitter?

• 34:50Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, you don't care. Don't you, you just want to do this.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do, I want my people. My people wanted to know how to find my people.

• 34:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, @paulmcurio, M-E-C-U-R-I-O, one R, because we talked about this earlier, I had to drop the first R. And paulmcurio.com, and I'm on Instagram.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one word, Paul Mecurio?

• 35:04Paul Mecurio?

  Paul Mecurio, all one word.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Instagram, or TikTok?

• 35:07Paul Mecurio?

  Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. I'm thinking about starting TikTok, but I don't know if it's...

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TikTok is like a commitment. You gotta like be ready to get in on that.

• 35:14Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, and I'm not, you gotta dance, and I don't know, that's, nobody wants to see that.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I saw you dance, you're correct, nobody wants to see it.

• 35:22Paul Mecurio?

  I didn't know you were a ballroom dancer. Is there anything you haven't done? Like, this is amazing.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A few things, yeah, but no, I was on a competitive, international Latin ballroom dance team.

• 35:33Paul Mecurio?

  Wow.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and it's a team, so there were eight of us, eight couples, and it was the full choreography, it was...

• 35:40Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, a good friend of ours does it, and she loves it, and she's in great shape from it, too, it's amazing.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and that movie came out right at that time, and so it was a, you know, field trip for the dance group. So what do you have?

• 35:53Paul Mecurio?

  We're gonna jump back in, yeah, we have a question from Toby Sonnenberg.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, wait, wait, did I finish the second half of that question? Well, because we found a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star, so what we find is, the stars that are being born in these gas clouds, we also see discs of material. And then we say to ourselves, could these discs of material be the proto-material that will then make planets in orbit around this star? And so sure enough, this is what we observe. So, yeah. And so you can observe planets forming around stars, and then the planets themselves, some of them have discs. And out of that disc, they would have their own moon. So it's pretty cool.

• 36:35Paul Mecurio?

  Can I ask a quick follow-up on something you said in the last segment?

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, unless you're a Patreon member, you can't.

• 36:40Paul Mecurio?

  Alright, here we go.

• 36:44Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, Toby Sonnenberg. Hi Neil, could you please explain what the crisis in cosmology is? What are some possible ways the crisis can be resolved? What do you think is the most likely resolution?

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this person doing some homework there, okay. Well, so, old timers, it's hard to call it a crisis. It is a crisis, but for old timers, it's really hard. All right, I'm an old timer. I come from an era, an epoch, okay? Where we didn't know the age or the size of the universe, because they're related, to within a factor of two. Okay, a factor of two. Is the universe 10 billion years old, or is it 20 billion years old? And if you put all the data together, people sort of picked and chose and sifted, and there was the 10 billion year camp, and the 20 billion year camp, and they were warring factions for many years.

• 37:42Paul Mecurio?

  But there's two methodologies to...

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, so the methods are different, the chosen objects are different. So this is how you get this divide, and it's on the frontier. And eventually, with better telescopes, better data, which is how this is always solved. All right, that's the good thing about being a scientist, you can get into a fight, and in the end, you both agree. It's an unwritten contract that you and I have, that either you're right and I'm wrong, I'm right and you're wrong, or we're both wrong. And they'll reach a point where we say, "We need better data, let's go have a beer." Okay, so that's how that works. There's no duel, there's no who shouts the loudest, that's not how we roll.

• 38:28Paul Mecurio?

  But there's an analysis that looks at sort of historic data, and then there's one that takes, looks at sort of current state of things, and those are the...

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or there's another one that says, "Here's instructions for the next wave of observations. I need you to look at it this way, because that'll help me resolve this uncertainty." So, with this factor of two warring factions, with new data, especially with the Hubble telescope, and the observations of the cosmic microwave background with two satellites, three satellites that were engaged in this, one successively more precise than the next. You, we, so it turned out, the uncertainty was no longer a factor of two, it narrowed. And of course, the actual answer ended up somewhere in between. Alright, so we're now at about 14 billion years. No one is saying 10 or 20 anymore. Alright, so you'd expect that.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the two warring factions, the right answer is probably somewhere in between. As it turned out to be. Alright, so we're all happy, 14 billion year old universe. And then people start looking more carefully at it. They use this method and that method. And our observations are so precise. People are saying, and I forgot the exact two numbers. Is it 14.0 and 14.6? They're two different ages.

• 39:47Paul Mecurio?

  Well, it says the crux of the disagreement is at 67.4 plus or minus 0.5.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the value of the Hubble constant, which then gives you the age of the universe. So give me those two numbers, that's fine. 67 and the other number.

• 39:58Paul Mecurio?

  67.4 plus or minus 0.5 and 73.2 plus or minus 1.3.

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these two numbers are...

• 40:06Paul Mecurio?

  Kilometers per second per megaparsec.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Megaparsec, right. So those two numbers are the fabled Hubble constant. And you use the Hubble constant to get the age of the universe. I was content giving this answer in the context of the age of the universe. But now you threw in the Hubble constant in units of kilometers per second per megaparsec.

• 40:27Paul Mecurio?

  Because clearly you don't want to do your job thoroughly.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I don't care.

• 40:30Paul Mecurio?

  And I'm covering your behind. Like, I gotta carry. Go ahead. Go ahead, mister. I know the universe. Go ahead.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Hubble constant version of the age of the universe is... Is the Hubble constant 50 or is it 100? Okay? That gets you these two different ages of the universe. Alright, if the Hubble constant is 50, then the age of the universe is 20 billion years. If the Hubble constant is 100, then the age of the universe is 10 billion years. So, but point is, if you want to be Hubble constant fluent, that's fine. Those two numbers, which used to have a huge uncertainty, no longer has a huge uncertainty. But now they each have their own camps. Because the uncertainty in each number excludes the other number. Okay?

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we measure those two numbers so precisely. That the 73 doesn't allow the 67 in its error bars. In the range of uncertainty. You know the uncertainty when you read election polls. Um, they're leading by 60, plus or minus 3%, okay? That's an uncertainty where the data can't distinguish. So if you put the uncertainties around those two numbers, the uncertainties don't overlap.

• 41:47Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a crisis in cosmology. And I'm just saying, to call that a crisis, what a luxury of precision measurement.

• 41:57Paul Mecurio?

  Right. You would prefer the crisis because you, you as a scientist like the challenge of trying to figure things out and come to resolution. And this is a challenge still for you.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you have a crisis, it energizes people. That's correct. We call it a crisis because the two, had those two numbers had uncertainties that overlapped, then it's just a matter of time, you get some better data. It might be that these two methods, because it uses different methods.

• 42:27Paul Mecurio?

  Can you just hit that for a second? I mean, maybe everybody listening knows, but like, which method do you subscribe to?

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I don't, I, I, I don't, I have no such investment in my emotional energy. I step back and I embrace it all.

• 42:43Paul Mecurio?

  Wow, this got, this got really esoteric and can I have some of what you're smoking in the break? Cause that was a pretty awesome answer, man.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it'd be something like, you wanna measure the, the length of a, I don't know. Uh, the length of some object. And one person pulls out their pocket ruler and they do it. Another person pulls out a laser and another person pulls out like an inchworm, okay? And then they get three different results.

• 43:09Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But every time they repeat it, they get approximately the same results and the results don't agree with each other.

• 43:15Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to say to yourself, one of these results is wrong. Or maybe the inchworm is relativistically effective. I don't know.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I mean, it could force another understanding of the world.

• 43:33Paul Mecurio?

  Third measurement. I mean, they both, I mean, they both seem valid. I mean, one is the universe began and then using theories to predict today's experience.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. They're completely valid and that's why we're scratching our heads. Or...

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are irreconcilable and there's new physics that we need to put on the table that tells us why. That's, we all love new physics because it opened, it's like you broke through a door and on the other side of that door is this beam of knowledge and wisdom that could shed light on other stuff that had you, that still keeps, has you scratching your head.

• 44:10Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and let me give an obscure example of this. We have what are called GPS satellites, you've heard of them, and they orbit. They're in a place in Earth's gravity field where their clocks tick faster than our clocks. Okay, all according to relativity. If Einstein's relativity had not yet been discovered and we launched these satellites for the sole purpose of establishing a coordinate grid on Earth where timing is essential, we would see that it would constantly be sending us time that's too fast. And we'd say, engineers, what did you design? You must have made a mistake. Go back to the circuit board. Go fix it. Check your drawings. We would first assume that there was some mechanical problem with it.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the engineers say, no, here's the, here's the twin of it on Earth and it's, and no. So, well, what's going on? We can't, we can't figure it out. And so that would be a dilemma. And then Einstein would come along and say, we have the general theory of relativity that's explained trivially, bada bing, a whole new field of physics opens up. So, most crises in science lead, I hate the word crises because that implies human dilemma. How about dilemma? How about that? Most dilemmas, authentic challenges in science lead to, to new physics. You're breakthroughs, that's, there you go. So that's the whole story there.

• 45:35Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, well, I knew that. I just didn't want to say it.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do lightning round.

• 45:40Paul Mecurio?

  We're gonna do lightning round, okay?

• 45:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm taking too long to answer these.

• 45:43Paul Mecurio?

  No, you're not. It's always interesting. I fall asleep in the middle, but then I wake up. Peter Jacobs.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While I'm facing the chalkboard, that's when you catch up on your notes, on your reading and on your...

• 45:56Paul Mecurio?

  Spit balls at your back of your neck. Peter Jacobs, we're gonna do, he's got two questions. Let's do the first one. If two black holes collide... Can we tell their relative relations with LIGO? And how do they affect the final rotation of the resultant black hole?

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So this is lightning round. So LIGO, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observatory, is exquisitely tuned to look at the ripples through the fabric of space and time, predicted by Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity, that when you have a disturbance, a gravitational disturbance in the space-time continuum, it sends a ripple moving at the speed of light. And two colliding black holes will do that. Before they built LIGO, they set up models of what all manner of black hole collisions would look like. Equal mass, very different mass, slightly different mass.

• 46:52Paul Mecurio?

  What was the basis for the models? And I'm not making a joke. Is this analogous to sort of this preeminentist taking a snapshot of us on Earth and putting together?

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because we're not going to have a million examples here. So you want to set up a catalog that because you know general relativity, it works. We know black holes. We think we know what will happen when they collide. And so we say, okay, here is the gravitational wave signature that we just measured. Let's hold that up to our catalog. And which one does it come closest to? There it is, a 30 solar mass black hole and a 15 solar mass black hole. There you have it. Now, depending on how far away they were when they started their spiral, they have what's called angular momentum. And this is the momentum of rotation. And that, some of that angular momentum is carried away.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I don't know if it's most, but much of it remains within the system and you have a rotating black hole. So black holes rotate too, just like everybody else.

• 47:55Paul Mecurio?

  Why bother sending a probe to another star when it will most likely find one we sent later? Isn't that statistically unlikely, though?

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think he meant the opposite of that. I think what he might be saying is, if you send a probe to another... Now, I don't want to invent a question that he's not thinking, but here's a version of that that he might mean. You send a probe to another star, it'll take 50 years. Even, you know, okay. But in those 50 years, we invent a way to tunnel or wormhole to the star. And so you get there faster than that. would have ever arrived because when we sent it, we didn't have that technology yet.

• 48:38Paul Mecurio?

  But it developed.

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so there it is, just passing it by and saying hello.

• 48:44Paul Mecurio?

  Hey, don't need to see.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. So people have argued, why don't we wait until the technology is better? Uh, and then do it right.

• 48:53Paul Mecurio?

  To send a probe to, to, right. But, but it's not like we're doing it wrong. Is, is that, I mean, that sort of presupposes that we're getting information that's inaccurate or any.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, no. It's just, uh, it's just why bother, right? If, if you're gonna say, if you're in California and you say, we discovered gold, put the notice on the back of a tortoise, okay, and send it back east. You can say, no, let's wait until the railroad is built, or let's wait until.

• 49:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it will pass the turtle on which in St. Louis, you know, we'll get the, it'll be better. So that, so I think that might be what he means, but okay, keep going.

• 49:32Paul Mecurio?

  Has anyone tried to calculate the cost in neutral resources of planet Earth if SpaceX would follow through with the plans to colonize Mars?

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, that implies that the colonization of Mars requires taking natural resources from Earth to put it there. But if you're gonna colonize, the way to do it is, you do everything in situ, okay? You want it, this is the buzzword, in situ resource utilization, I S R U. Google it, okay? And NASA has full running pages, and when you get to a destination, dig in the soils, get the carbon dioxide, split it, get the water, split the water molecule, you get oxygen, you can breathe it. The hydrogen, you get a rocket fuel. All of this is what you would do.

• 50:14Paul Mecurio?

  Two hours, Martian, hello? Do we need anything else to be, Matt Damon, the most brilliant, second most brilliant, next to Neil deGrasse Tyson, man in the world.

• 50:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So ideally, that's what you would do. Otherwise, no, I don't, whatever they had to take to have lunch for a year, that's not gonna throw Earth off its axis.

• 50:32Paul Mecurio?

  A lot of subway sandwiches, that kind of thing. Real quick, we have to wrap up. I mean, what are some of the advantages of colonizing Mars?

• 50:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if an asteroid takes out Earth, then humans don't go completely extinct, but...

• 50:47Paul Mecurio?

  Very negative attitude.

• 50:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is negative attitude. No, I don't, I don't, I'm a contrarian there. I don't see, I don't even agree that that's why you should do it, so we have more eggs in more than one basket. If you have the technology to go to Mars, terraform it, colonize it with a billion people, it seems to me you have the technology to deflect that asteroid that's headed for Earth, okay? Oh, we're destroying Earth with global warming and the billionaires are all escaping and they're gonna form another planet and then they're gonna terraform that planet, because Elon is into terraforming. It seems to me if we have the power to terraform Mars into Earth, then we have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.

• 51:30Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 51:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, yeah, don't worry, we're cool here.

• 51:33Paul Mecurio?

  Alright.

• 51:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last question, let's slip it in.

• 51:35Paul Mecurio?

  Wanna slip one more in? Okay, this is Alexander Wisnent. If gravity is due to mass and acceleration, could we get an object with enough gravity to pull something at the speed of light?

• 51:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you fall into a black hole, basically, you come near the speed of light as you come near. And what happens is, as you come near the speed of light, things, it's harder to distinguish you as a blob of mass from you of what would then become a blob of energy. So the mass-energy equation very much favors the conversion of matter into energy. And so, so yes, is the answer, and that happens in black holes all the time. And if you wanna, if you don't believe me, try it. Call me up and tell me how it goes.

• 52:25Paul Mecurio?

  Hey Neil, I'm falling through a black hole. Can you hear me?

• 52:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just like you said, just like you said.

• 52:30Paul Mecurio?

  I think that you're breaking up a little, oh my god, I'm breaking up.

• 52:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, can you hear me now? Wait, let me go to another...

• 52:36Paul Mecurio?

  This was not a good idea. And then Neil makes some notes and moves on with no emotionality about it. Uh, we are done.

• 52:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, thanks. Thanks for coming in for this.

• 52:48Paul Mecurio?

  This was so fun.

• 52:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's good to see you again. I hadn't seen you in a couple of years. Nice to know you're still out there. And, and, and holding on the Colbert for it.

• 52:56Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely. Are you gonna be back on, Sue? We gotta get, I'd love to see you.

• 52:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Colbert, I gotta, I gotta write another book to get back on. I gotta earn it, you know? That's what that is.

• 53:05Paul Mecurio?

  Let me put a word in for you. I know this up and coming scientist, you might have heard him. He's got a thing or two. Uh, thanks for, this is always great. It's always fun.

• 53:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you know what I said? I was on his show, March 2020. Like, March 9th. Alright, it was like the last week.

• 53:21Paul Mecurio?

  You're the reason COVID shut us down.

• 53:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he says, "What do you think of this COVID thing?" And I, all I said was, "It is an experiment in whether humans will heed the advice of science and medical professionals."

• 53:39Paul Mecurio?

  And we failed.

• 53:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I said. Okay, that's all I said.

• 53:43Paul Mecurio?

  And we're continuing.

• 53:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an experiment.

• 53:45Paul Mecurio?

  That's a show, a day, a show for another day, but yeah, that's a really great answer and you hit it on the head.

• 53:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What it is.

• 53:51Paul Mecurio?

  This is, uh, this is.

• 53:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright dude, we out. We out. Thanks, Paul. This has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.