Cosmic Queries: UFOs

“Keep Looking Up” has a different meaning when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman turn a speculative, scientific eye towards Unidentified Flying Objects.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City where we record the show. Live in studio with me is the one, the only Eugene Mirman.

• 0:37Eugene Mirman?

  Hello.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funny guy Eugene Mirman.

• 0:40Eugene Mirman?

  Very great to be back.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for joining us on the Cosmic Queries portion of StarTalk. And today's topic is Eugene.

• 0:49Eugene Mirman?

  UFOs.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UFOs. Ultra funny objects.

• 0:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, flying unidentified flying O's.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so let's get straight in. You've got questions called from the internet from all of our social media presence.

• 1:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't.

• 1:05Eugene Mirman?

  Called from your social media presence.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Facebook and.

• 1:09Eugene Mirman?

  Twitter.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twitter and all.

• 1:11Eugene Mirman?

  MySpace.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  MySpace. I don't think we have a MySpace presence.

• 1:15Eugene Mirman?

  No, I hope you don't.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just ask, I have not seen the questions before.

• 1:18Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just, but they were solicited and people participate and it's great service to the fanbase of the show. So bring it on.

• 1:25Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. On Facebook, Steve Butler asks.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know where, did he say where he's from? I love knowing where they're from.

• 1:30Eugene Mirman?

  He didn't say where he's from, but I'm going to guess Detroit. I mean, Steve Butler, he sounds Detroit. Are there any reasons why a spacecraft would or could be shaped like a classic flying saucer in terms of physics or engineering?

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, you know, who's to tell how good aliens are at designing their hardware. But I can tell you, anytime I saw flying saucers in movies start spinning. Yet, the people in the flying saucer just look out of a window that has a constant facing direction.

• 2:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I couldn't reconcile.

• 2:01Eugene Mirman?

  Do you think they were in a gyroscope, but the inside was still?

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but everything looked like it was rotating.

• 2:08Eugene Mirman?

  I'm just trying to help.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, there's some fundamental problems with an entire rotating ship. If you set it into rotation, something else has to be set rotating the opposite direction. It's a little thing, you learn it in the second week of physics.

• 2:21Eugene Mirman?

  Even if it was made on Kepler 22b?

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even, because these are laws that apply to the entire universe. And you learned it in second week of Physics 101. And it's the conservation of angular momentum. So, if you set something rotating one way, something else has to be rotating the other way, in order to counteract that fact. So, for example, if you extend a spaceship, if you go into space and you have one of these space station rotating wheels where you simulate gravity, if you've got something rotating one way, something else has to be rotating.

• 2:52Eugene Mirman?

  Rotating the other way.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other way, to balance it. You start out with nothing rotating, two things rotating in opposite direction mathematically equals zero rotation again. So, you have to always sustain that fact. So, for a saucer to just spin up and start, I don't see the point.

• 3:09Eugene Mirman?

  It's the fact that the whole thing is spinning. That's what you're bummed with. Because a propeller on an airplane, you're fine that that's just one part of it is spinning. But your problem is the whole saucer spins, and that's what a fool would build.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Those would be stupid aliens. And, but if they managed to do that somehow, it would be violating very well-tested laws of physics.

• 3:28Eugene Mirman?

  But, you know, also, in their defense, you've built very few spaceships.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, and clearly, they have. So, no, the way to-

• 3:35Eugene Mirman?

  It's the one flaw, other than it probably wouldn't-

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way to say this is, the laws of physics are quite commanding, or rather, quite descriptive of how, because the universe doesn't obey our laws. The laws describe what we see. And, one of the deepest laws of physics we know is the conservation of angular momentum. Once a system has a certain amount of momentum, it never changes within itself.

• 3:55Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless something from outside of it touches it. So, I don't buy it. Why spin at all? I think it's because, when did the frisbee come out?

• 4:05Eugene Mirman?

  It's probably around the same time. You're right. Probably people were like, that must be how it would work. It would be great if you always cut inside the spaceship and it was just aliens up against a wall throwing up.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like that. What's that, a ride?

• 4:15Eugene Mirman?

  Turkish twist?

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, in the, in the amusement park.

• 4:18Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, where the floor falls out underneath.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and I wrote about that in one of my books, I think, in Death by Black Hole. If you spun fast enough and you, so that the centrifugal force is pushing you against the, the back walls. If you got sick and had to throw up, the throw up would not leave your mouth.

• 4:34Eugene Mirman?

  Would you die or would you?

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you do is turn your head sideways.

• 4:38Eugene Mirman?

  And throw up on the person next to you.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can fly out to the side.

• 4:41Eugene Mirman?

  It's why I only did that ride once as a kid and never again.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what else you got?

• 4:46Eugene Mirman?

  Next question from Benjamin J. Rivera. Under current technology, could we develop a round dislike, disk-like flying object with the ability to hover and change direction like many UFOs have appeared to do?

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called an helicopter. Next question.

• 5:04Eugene Mirman?

  Oh my God, he is gonna be so psyched when he hears about helicopters.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, by the way, Leonardo da Vinci, in his notebooks, drew an object that had a sort of a spiral rotating. It wasn't quite a propeller, more like a, one of those, um, what do you call those lamp looking things that spin?

• 5:22Eugene Mirman?

  Chandelier?

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, in Asia, they have these sort of spinning, uh, helical.

• 5:29Eugene Mirman?

  Heliotrope? No, I don't know.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he had one of these sort of spinning things. He did not know about the conservation of angular momentum.

• 5:36Eugene Mirman?

  He just guessed it.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's why helicopters have that tail propeller.

• 5:39Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, right.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It turns out the forces of that counteract the tendency of the helicopters want to spin in the opposite direction. So if you shoot out the tail, the tail propeller, you ever see in, in the movies?

• 5:50Eugene Mirman?

  They fall down. And they would in real life.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They not only fall, but they spiral their way down. All of a sudden, the body of the helicopter starts spinning the opposite direction of the propeller itself. That's all real.

• 5:59Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though it's a movie. Yeah.

• 6:01Eugene Mirman?

  So actually, the answer to his question is sort of no. Like a, like a spinning disk won't randomly change direction, but a helicopter is, is great.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, sure, you can in principle do it, but you, the, the act of the disk spinning is not what you would draw upon to change directions.

• 6:17Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, you know what? Did he even say spinning? I think a disk like flying object. So would he, it could be a disk with jet engines on every direction.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 6:25Eugene Mirman?

  A superconductor.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The good thing about it, a circle is that you can, it doesn't have a preferred direction when moving through an atmosphere. So you can move in any direction if you were, if you had that shape. An airplane cannot just up and go sideways.

• 6:37Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 6:38Eugene Mirman?

  Unless you punch it. But here's a question about that. What if you, is it possible to have a flying disk that somehow works with the Earth's magnetic field that, that some, like, like a superconductor that would be able to do that?

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth's magnetic field is lame, first of all.

• 6:52Eugene Mirman?

  So you'd have, so it'd be impossible. That's what the question is. Could you tap into this very sad lame field that just makes compasses?

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We actually tried that in space. You, there is a, there's a tether that, a very long wire or conducting material. And in space where you're moving very fast in orbit around Earth, you're moving 17,000 miles an hour. You drag this wire through the magnetic field. And we've known since the middle 1800s, Michael Faraday did this and demonstrated that you can induce a current. You can make electricity just by moving a wire through a current. And if you're moving any way, you might as well drag something behind you that'll then produce the electricity you might need. So sure, the problem is, yeah, it's good for like moving around Earth, but once you go farther into space, you're not near Earth's magnetic field anymore.

• 7:37Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, are you saying that the problem with my plan to create a disk that can travel around the magnetic field is that it can't leave Earth?

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 7:43Eugene Mirman?

  Is that, is that what's disappointing you? You can have a flying maglev train, but you can't go into space, so it's not worth trying?

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more cosmic queries from StarTalk. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson with Eugene Mirman. We'll see you in a moment.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Startalk Radio, we're back. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with the one and only Eugene Mirman. Eugene, I follow you on Twitter, you know.

• 8:27Eugene Mirman?

  I follow you on Twitter.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's...

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you are Eugene Mirman on Twitter.

• 8:31Eugene Mirman?

  I am, at Eugene Mirman.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you keep me laughing there, that's good. And all hours of the night, too.

• 8:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You must not go to sleep, I'm guessing.

• 8:38Eugene Mirman?

  I rest in the afternoon.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're still a voice on Bob's Big Boy.

• 8:42Eugene Mirman?

  Bob's Burgers, yeah.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 8:43Eugene Mirman?

  Bob's Big Boy. Yeah.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm mixing, what am I mixing here?

• 8:47Eugene Mirman?

  I don't know, I think it's that legacy.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bob's Burgers, yeah, thank you.

• 8:49Eugene Mirman?

  You might not be mixing up that much.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, good to hear you're out there and we can share with you, share you with, your fans can share you with us. This is the Cosmic Queries edition of Startalk, and the topic, Eugene?

• 9:03Eugene Mirman?

  UFOs.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UFOs.

• 9:04Eugene Mirman?

  We're talking about...

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cold from our Facebook page, which is Startalk Radio, and online, startalkradio.net, and our Twitter stream, Startalk Radio. So, give them to me.

• 9:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, well, we were talking about, I just wanted to finish, so could you theoretically have some sort of flying disc that worked on, say, potentially the Earth's magnetic field? Even though it's a weak, sad field.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, picking up the question we left off on, yeah. So, just to back up on that, if you dragged a wire through a magnetic field, you'd get a current. And then it's power.

• 9:33Eugene Mirman?

  I do it all the time.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem, there's no such thing as a free lunch. So, whatever fuel you're using to move your spaceship through the magnetic field, whatever energy that is, that energy, some of that energy is gonna go into the, the...

• 9:53Eugene Mirman?

  Making food on the ship?

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The magnetic field on the wire will create a drag on the ship, and that drag is what produces the electricity. So, you don't get a free lunch out of this.

• 10:02Eugene Mirman?

  But this is if you have a wire, what if you had just had a floaty thing with power inside it, nuclear, a nuclear-powered floaty magnet?

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you're not using Earth's magnetic field.

• 10:11Eugene Mirman?

  I just meant this, oh, I see, I meant to stay aloft.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no, you just, oh, sorry, so you just need other, you bring your fuel, sure, you can stay aloft. And that's what, like I said, that's what helicopters do.

• 10:20Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, but, but, uh, right.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you remember the jet packs, that doesn't use rotating blades, that's just a thrust coming down that lifts you up and makes you weigh nothing.

• 10:28Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that I like.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I miss that, we should have had that by now, shouldn't we have?

• 10:33Eugene Mirman?

  We do have that, I just don't think it's a good idea for you and I to try it. I've seen it on TV and it seems dangerous.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's dangerous.

• 10:40Eugene Mirman?

  Here's another question, this one's from Thomas Fraulenfläckler. I could have skipped the question because his last name was hard to read, but I didn't because I'm brave.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 10:49Eugene Mirman?

  Um, do UFOs spin in order to create gravity and if so, how fast would it have, would it have to go to create it? So the answer is no.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what's interesting is that-

• 10:59Eugene Mirman?

  UFOs are also not identified, so there's something really funny about being like, this thing that we don't know what it is.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what these, these questions are great because they're trying to bring some understanding of physics to the UFOs that we show in the movies.

• 11:11Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the ones claimed to be flying over places.

• 11:13Eugene Mirman?

  And the ones really, we're talking about from the 50s.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 11:16Eugene Mirman?

  They're not, they're not just trying to define UFOs, specifically the ones from like 49 to 61.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, yeah, the ones from the B-movie era where, now, in, in, what's the Spielberg one? Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the mothership wasn't rotating.

• 11:30Eugene Mirman?

  No, they were like, oh, this doesn't have to rotate. Right around like the 60s, right around the Beatles and Rolling Stone, somebody was like, there's no reason for these to be rotating.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No reason.

• 11:40Eugene Mirman?

  There's in fact reason not to show it do that.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not only that, uh, in the first segment you commented that if you rotate, you're wondering if you peeked in there, whether all the Martians or the aliens were pinned into the edge of the, the rotating circle. You don't have to rotate all that fast to create, to simulate 1G gravity. The speed of rotation of nearly all flying saucers portrayed that I've seen, you can do the math and it's vastly greater than 1G of gravity.

• 12:06Eugene Mirman?

  It's totally unnecessary.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what are you doing? I mean, why?

• 12:08Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe they're from Jupiter, so they're very strong, of no really, what, two and a half times as strong as a regular person?

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're from Krypton, you know, so, uh, yeah, so perhaps they need a really high gravity, but it's just, uh, I think it just looked cool when they had spinning lights and I think it was a visual effect.

• 12:23Eugene Mirman?

  I'm glad that now there's more accuracy. The today's science fiction is like, that's real. That's likely. Okay, this one is from Robert Spe- Speziel. In your opinion.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How come we don't know anyone with last names as complicated as the names of people who write?

• 12:40Eugene Mirman?

  Clearly a lot of, like, this is, there's a lot of people writing from like Norway. And they're just like, I am wondering. How spaceships, in your opinion, why is there the common thread of flying saucer style UFOs? How come that image is the stereotype that has endured?

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. But as we said earlier in the, in the first segment, a flying saucer can move in any direction. That is a, if you want to say it mathematically accurately, a circularly symmetric object. Does not have a preferred direction of motion within a medium such as an atmosphere. Whereas planes do. So if it's flying source, it'll go up, down, left, right, sideways.

• 13:19Eugene Mirman?

  So it's, it's an idea of creating something that's the most versatile.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Versatile, if you're going forward and back or left and right. Exactly. If you're going sort of longitudinally.

• 13:27Eugene Mirman?

  In fact, it's almost more realistic to have a giant floating sphere than a spinning disc.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, because then you can go in any direction. That's the ultimate, because that's symmetric in every direction you would move. It's, it's less, spheres, it turns out, are not aerodynamically sound, it turns out. As air goes around the sphere, it, it becomes turbulent around back. And that turbulence creates a partial vacuum that puts a drag on the sphere. So this is why in, by the way.

• 13:54Eugene Mirman?

  So should ships really be a rhombus? What's the ideal shape, would you say, for a flying?

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They should be like.

• 14:00Eugene Mirman?

  Multi-directional.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cross-sections of modern wings or wings ever from the, since the beginning are teardrop.

• 14:05Eugene Mirman?

  But, but, and that could go in any direction. That's the one catch that I'm saying.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no.

• 14:10Eugene Mirman?

  So something that would know obvious front.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or no obvious, any direction at all? Yeah, you can't, you can't.

• 14:16Eugene Mirman?

  You should have a direction, you're saying. Like even in Star Trek, in all the star-based movies.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's more efficient to figure out a way to turn your ship around and then go in that direction. Than to try to make it.

• 14:26Eugene Mirman?

  Go in every direction.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, most of your journey is through empty space.

• 14:29Eugene Mirman?

  I hope aliens come here just so you can criticize their ship one day and go like, you know, honestly, you've made this all wrong.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meanwhile, they're the ones who got here.

• 14:37Eugene Mirman?

  Exactly. And they'll be like, well, you still have a point.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, so the point is through space, it doesn't matter your shape.

• 14:44Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, when we launch spaceships to, space probes to the planets.

• 14:49Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you look at the ship on the launch pad, there's this, what we call the fairing. You get to the top of the ship and it's a little more bulbous at the top. Inside that bulbous nose cone, if you call it that, is the.

• 15:01Eugene Mirman?

  Do people call it the nose cone?

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's the fairing, it's called. Inside the fairing is the typically folded up rover or, or mirror or whatever it is that you're launching. The instant this puppy gets high enough in our atmosphere, so that atmospheric drag drops to near zero, they drop the fairing.

• 15:21Eugene Mirman?

  And then?

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you, you have less weight. And now the engines are still pumping and now the same force of in, of, on your engine is pushing less weight. Why bring the aerodynamic casing when there's no air?

• 15:35Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's why you drop those off.

• 15:38Eugene Mirman?

  You get rid of it and then you let it fall on Australia, whoever.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We launch, uh, east and so.

• 15:42Eugene Mirman?

  When do we let them?

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It drops in, it drops in the Atlantic Ocean.

• 15:45Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, Aquaman will be furious.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the Atlantic Ocean is the big toilet, the NASA's, NASA's toilet.

• 15:51Eugene Mirman?

  Is that where there's a float, floating like plastic cloud of NASA waste?

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's more, in fact, it's worse in, in the Pacific Ocean because most of the things NASA launches did make it to orbit. But when you de-orbit something, we drop it in the Pacific.

• 16:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the Pacific is actually.

• 16:06Eugene Mirman?

  On Japan.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, no, actually the great toilet bowl in the world is the Pacific Ocean. Now, it's like almost a third of the total, uh, uh, circumference. No, no, it's total longitude of Earth is Pacific Ocean.

• 16:18Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, really?

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why you don't have to be accurate when you drop satellites out of the sky.

• 16:22Eugene Mirman?

  Ah.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just, you can hit.

• 16:24Eugene Mirman?

  How often do they hit land?

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hardly ever, unless they come down without you wanting it to. And nowadays we can tomahawk them out and blow them up and then they burn up rather than come down in one piece.

• 16:34Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right, we can shoot them down.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can shoot them down.

• 16:36Eugene Mirman?

  We're in the future.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 16:38Eugene Mirman?

  All right, well, here's another question.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 16:40Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, Ricardo Cruz asks, many UFOs have been reported as balls of light. Do you think that interplanetary alien spaceships could be built not from matter but from energy in order to reach the speed of light?

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you're a ball of. Light, that means you can see it at a distance. And that's wasting energy. I mean, think about it. You have an energy budget to move through space.

• 17:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I can see you aglow.

• 17:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are you beaming lights at me? Why not use that energy and drive the spacecraft? So, so it's not realistic to me if the aliens are budget conscious. Maybe that's the-

• 17:19Eugene Mirman?

  Well, say they're not budget conscious. What would be, well, what's the reason for, is it, I think there's two questions. One is, is it possible? And then the other is, why, why are these aliens so wasteful? Don't they want to save their planet?

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so here's the thing. You might ask, could you take matter, turn it into energy, move the energy at the speed of light?

• 17:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then convert it back into matter again?

• 17:36Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that, that'd be kinda cool.

• 17:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the problem is the moment you get converted into energy, sort of the memory of who and what you are is lost.

• 17:48Eugene Mirman?

  So you don't believe in a transporter? Or you believe that when someone is remade, they're just a pile of whatever ingredients they were?

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, your ingredients are, you know, they have to be assembled in the way that, that was you.

• 18:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and by the way-

• 18:01Eugene Mirman?

  That's why they always are so nervous and they're moving those things up and down to really get it right.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's harder than any of us imagine because you're-

• 18:07Eugene Mirman?

  I imagine it to be pretty hard. I think that's not a fair assessment.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even harder because twins are fundamentally identical.

• 18:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet the twins are nonetheless themselves.

• 18:18Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are not the same consciousness.

• 18:20Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so-

• 18:22Eugene Mirman?

  They have different memories.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Eugene Mirman?

  But it would be fun to make one twin disappear and then the other appear to disappear. I don't know, we'll work on it.

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries, StarTalk.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Cosmic Queries Edition. Eugene Mirman with me in studio. Eugene, always good to have you on the show.

• 18:58Eugene Mirman?

  Great to be here.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about UFOs.

• 19:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we ended off, you, you, you didn't like my answer.

• 19:03Eugene Mirman?

  No, no, I, I didn't mind, well, uh, well, because your answer was you wouldn't travel, a ball of light wouldn't travel because that's a waste of energy. And why would they do that? Cause these aliens have a budget. And I'm like, wait, wait, but there's two different things. Is it possible?

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I said it a little better than that, but all right.

• 19:16Eugene Mirman?

  Well, you are a scientist, so you're more eloquent with those words. But I'm great at summarizing, so tell me.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you can imagine, in principle, taking matter, because presumably an alien would be made of matter, and converting it into energy, which then will allow you to propel that energy at the speed of light. Because light only exists at the speed of light.

• 19:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you get to your destination, you recollect that energy, and somehow

• 19:44Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  reconstruct that from which it came. And the energy has forgotten what made it. That's my point.

• 19:54Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so if you convert protons, electrons, and neutrons into energy, you can re-unconvert that energy into a different combination

• 20:02Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of these things, if you have enough of it.

• 20:04Eugene Mirman?

  You would leave like as a, some sort of a spaceship shaped like a shoe, and then when you redid it, it would appear just like an avocado, and you'd be like, this is not what I came in.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are exactly the two examples I was thinking of, a shoe and an avocado.

• 20:16Eugene Mirman?

  But you could see how you'd be very mad if you started as a shoe and you ended up an avocado.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be interesting to, if there was some kind of blueprint that it carried with it.

• 20:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you say, assemble this energy in this way.

• 20:27Eugene Mirman?

  Like mankind.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you could do that.

• 20:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you wouldn't have to beam the energy.

• 20:32Eugene Mirman?

  Well, here's the other.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just beam the blueprint, and then you have an energy reactor, and then take that energy and reconstruct the person.

• 20:38Eugene Mirman?

  That's how I plan to clone myself.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that's the case, then you didn't have to convert the person to energy to begin with.

• 20:43Eugene Mirman?

  No, just make a blueprint.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just ma-, you just send the blueprint and copy the person.

• 20:47Eugene Mirman?

  So here's the, then the last question, if a ship.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was the problem with twins. Twins are copies of one another, but they don't have the same thoughts. So, so if I make a copy of you.

• 20:56Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it still you? Or do I have to reprogram your brain to become you? And then you have multiple you's, and then do you have a common consciousness? Or do you just, at that point, split from yourself and become a completely different person? Different life experience, different memories, different lovers, all of the above?

• 21:11Eugene Mirman?

  That's, yeah, lots of different lovers.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 21:14Eugene Mirman?

  Um, wait, so if you were a thing of pure energy, you wouldn't necessarily be light, you might just be pure energy. So there's no reason to go as far as light when you could just be a ship made of pure.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's energy that doesn't have any speed at all, like, like chemical.

• 21:27Eugene Mirman?

  Energy.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemical potential energy. There's no speed in that.

• 21:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to be like a beam of light.

• 21:32Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that'd be the best way to travel.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's something called kinetic energy that an object has, a physical object.

• 21:37Eugene Mirman?

  When you kick it.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that, but that energy is not itself going at the speed of light. It's attached to the object.

• 21:42Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, well, that's the next question.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 21:46Eugene Mirman?

  Evan, welcome.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we don't know where these people come from.

• 21:49Eugene Mirman?

  I do, and it's all Norway. And Detroit, those are the two. Uh, supposing life, sorry, supposing life developed on a planet lacking heavy metals, but rich in organic compounds. Do you think it's possible for a UFO to be constructed from organic matter, material, rather than machinery or metal? A biological spacefaring object, BSFO.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This sounds like a new ver- a variant on the Flintstones.

• 22:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, this is someone who loves like, uh, uh, ju- like Youth Justice or whatever that show is, Young Justice.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, on the Flintstones, they had a modern culture, but it had no metal. Cause it was still, it was a modern Stone Age family and they had solutions for everything.

• 22:30Eugene Mirman?

  Stone wheels.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, stone wheels.

• 22:32Eugene Mirman?

  Coffee maker.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, everything.

• 22:34Eugene Mirman?

  Could you have a biological spaceship?

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't see why not. Here's a problem. A spaceship has to be pretty hardy, particularly when entering atmos- the earth, uh, the atmosphere of where you're going.

• 22:45Eugene Mirman?

  To send whale song to the earth, to the oceans.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, I saw that movie.

• 22:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you.

• 22:52Eugene Mirman?

  Me too.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, if you're gonna use an atmosphere to slow down, for example, which is very efficient. Otherwise you can use your fuel, but then you just use fuel that you could have used to get to the next planet.

• 23:02Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then your material has to resist very high temperatures. Organic molecules are not resistant to high energy baths. The kind of high energy that physical metals are resistant to.

• 23:16Eugene Mirman?

  You would have to fly in an already cooked steak, is what you're saying.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, because an already heavily cooked steak is carbon, right? Carbon, we're carbon based. Life, so is a cow. And so, and so.

• 23:27Eugene Mirman?

  You're very literal. You're like, don't fly in a cow. It's foolish.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what color is carbon when it's not a diamond?

• 23:33Eugene Mirman?

  It's a black.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black. And so when you cook food too long, all the bonds that are connecting to carbon break.

• 23:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're left with something that is the color of.

• 23:42Eugene Mirman?

  The ash?

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's black. It's just black. That's what it means to burn something. You've broken the bonds. So organic materials just are not.

• 23:50Eugene Mirman?

  So you'd have to have an organic material that we don't really know about that might be as hard as diamond or something.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but you don't need organics. You can, uh, stone is pretty hard, right?

• 23:58Eugene Mirman?

  But that would burn up too, right?

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 24:00Eugene Mirman?

  So you could fly around in a stone ship?

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I mean, you can come up with other materials that are not metals that could still serve your needs.

• 24:07Eugene Mirman?

  On a planet that has no metals?

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a planet that has no metals. Right. And by the way, the moon is an object that has very few metals.

• 24:15Eugene Mirman?

  But enough to build a spaceship.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the latest model for how the moon was formed was that there was a side swipe of a Mars sized object in the very early solar system. When it was dangerous to hang out because things were still forming and accreting material. And so here's this object side swipes the earth. If you side swipe us, we already dumped our iron into our core. That's where most of the iron in the earth is. It's heavier than everything else. And so, so if most of the iron is there.

• 24:40Eugene Mirman?

  Do you think there are dinosaurs there?

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hollow. Yeah. And so, so once you side swipe the earth, you're making another body out there. Out of stuff that's already pre-filtered to not have metal. So the moon is an interesting kind of place.

• 24:53Eugene Mirman?

  So, so the moon might be part of the earth or probably is.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probably was part of the earth, part of earth's crust.

• 24:59Eugene Mirman?

  And, and, and with all the stuff that was really delicious going into the middle of the earth already.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Already. When we come back, more of StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition. Eugene Mirman with me in studio. The topic Eugene?

• 25:32Eugene Mirman?

  It is UFOs.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UFOs, unidentified flying objects.

• 25:37Eugene Mirman?

  Which could be anything. Except apparently a steak. It would be foolish for aliens to come in a steak. Um, so Joseph Deveraux asks.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deveraux, just like get into the name.

• 25:51Eugene Mirman?

  I know, Deveraux.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 25:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, sorry, I didn't want to sound too flirty. Assume a UFO was approaching Earth and posing a threat towards the future of mankind. What sort of information will we be able to obtain about this UFO from Earth? And how would we collect this information? Information can be size, shape, density, chemical makeup, general physical properties. I think if a UFO comes here and wants to destroy us, we can hide, but it doesn't bode well.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an interesting sort of sociological question.

• 26:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But yet, I think the answer is obvious. If they can travel the huge gaps of interstellar space.

• 26:27Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because clearly, we can't, because lately, what have we been doing? Just driving around the block.

• 26:32Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all the space shuttle did, and now we don't even do that.

• 26:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, their aliens are probably watching us from far away laughing.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laughing, laughing.

• 26:39Eugene Mirman?

  At our space program, putting it in quotes, in air quotes around our space program and giggling, wondering when we'll finally rise to the challenge.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just picture that, an alien doing like air quotes.

• 26:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, space program.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the humans, "space program."

• 26:54Eugene Mirman?

  Dancing around.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know that dude who jumped out of the balloon with the?

• 26:58Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, no, but it sounds like a bad idea.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the guy with the Red Bull, uh, thing.

• 27:04Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, who jumped from space in a, yeah.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the marketing said he jumped from space, but I did the math on that. Did you get like a schoolroom globe and ask how high was he above a schoolroom globe? It was a sixteenth of an inch. So the human definition of space is really lame. And you're right, aliens would totally poke fun of this. So, once they saw we're just driving around the block, and they decided they wanted to destroy humankind. I'm sorry, there's no, if they, if they manage to get it-

• 27:31Eugene Mirman?

  There's a chance that if they can't, well, no, I guess they, they, if we have infrared, they do too.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they do. If they gapped the depths of space to get here and they're hostile-

• 27:41Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry. Uh, uh, wait, that's the end.

• 27:45Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The end. Alright.

• 27:46Eugene Mirman?

  That's probably why we haven't captured aliens, right? You know how there's all the theories of how there's Area 51 and stuff? It's very unlikely because if they could get here, there's no way they can't land.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if they crashed, I'm not interested in those aliens anyway. They're the ones who know how to fly.

• 28:01Eugene Mirman?

  But the aliens that could get here from far away and then what they can't do is just land.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just can't land. It's like, excuse me?

• 28:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, what's up with that?

• 28:08Eugene Mirman?

  That's very unlikely.

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if they're there, I, it seems to me the best information we'd be able to glean from it is, if we can see it, its shape, uh, what its aerodynamic form is, if it, if there's any aerodynamics going on in it at all. Presumably there is because it's within our atmosphere and moving around, so aerodynamics matters. But they would surely know this if they came here to destroy us. And what we could do-

• 28:32Eugene Mirman?

  They might want to enslave us, but not eat us.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we do is get all of our telescopes out and monitor it in the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum. So, we think of spectrum as just rainbows and, and light. That's just visible light.

• 28:44Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah. Not just butterflies, they have 19 senses of light or something.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, so, yeah, so, so other insects do this, so we're just some narrow portion of a huge range.

• 28:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so there's ultraviolet and X-rays and gamma rays and radio waves.

• 28:56Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we exploit each one of these in there alone for different reasons. We have microwave ovens, infrared lamps, radio communication, this sort of thing.

• 29:05Eugene Mirman?

  All of these things are used to make us sexier.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of these are one continuum of light.

• 29:12Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some visible, some not. And if it's communicating, we may presume that it's using some form of electromagnetic, of the electromagnetic spectrum. So we'd whip out all of our detectors to see which, which of these is it lit up in? Cause that, then it'd be trying to communicate. And, is it radio waves? Is it, whatever?

• 29:30Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, it's probably not using gamma rays, cause they don't move through the atmosphere efficiently. They get blocked. Radio waves, we know- Moves through air uninhibited. That's why you, you know, you can receive radio transmissions, even microwave transmissions indoors.

• 29:46Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, that's how, it's why, it's why your cellphone can work in places even though you're enclosed without a sightline to the tower. So, uh, what I would do if I were confronting this, and we knew we were all gonna die, so we might as well do some fun science experiments on it.

• 30:00Eugene Mirman?

  That's what you would do?

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally. So you'd, so you'd come out and just measure whether it's emanating in any of these bands of light. Beyond that, uh, there's not much else we can measure at a distance. We might check to see if it's emanating neutrinos. That's a particle, a very elusive.

• 30:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, tachyon particles.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something, but...

• 30:19Eugene Mirman?

  From three different eras.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electromagnetic radiation, that's how we glean essentially

• 30:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the inform, nearly all the information we have about the universe comes to us somewhere along this electromagnetic spectrum. So we'd be bringing out our primitive detectors to see if they're trying to talk to us, or ask us to take us to, it's

• 30:36Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Asking us to take them to our leader.

• 30:39Eugene Mirman?

  I like that, uh, if the world was gonna be destroyed, you would in last moments try to learn one more thing.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is to be a scientist.

• 30:47Eugene Mirman?

  I love it.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Edition. When we come back, the lightning round.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. I'm an astrophysicist, and I'm with

• 31:21Eugene Mirman?

  Eugene Mirman.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eugene, thank you Eugene. I did remember your name.

• 31:25Eugene Mirman?

  No, I know.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Eugene, this is your first time being part of the, the last segment

• 31:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of Cosmic Queries where it's the

• 31:31Eugene Mirman?

  Lightning.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lightning round. Cause I, I always spend too much luxurious time answering all the other questions. We have a backlog behind, and we gotta get, we'll just blow

• 31:38Eugene Mirman?

  Let's do it. Let's just answer

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna go in soundbite mode.

• 31:41Eugene Mirman?

  Nice.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soundbit mode. Are you ready?

• 31:44Eugene Mirman?

  I'm prepared for soundbit mode, and I will ask only the briefest follow-up questions.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let us test the bell. We are ready. Okay, Eugene, shoot.

• 31:51Eugene Mirman?

  John Randall asks, is it possible that UFOs are actually time-traveling tourists from the future, from a future Earth? This could explain why so many have witnessed UFO phenomena, yet contact is rarely, if ever, made.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Next.

• 32:06Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, it's possible that they could travel back in time, that someone from the past future is coming here to the past.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, however, if you're traveling through time, generally, if you really were really good at it, you wouldn't need a spaceship, because you're traveling through time rather than space.

• 32:20Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you travel back through time, you have to watch out, because if you want to travel to yesterday.

• 32:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And here, in that seat.

• 32:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth was in a different place in its orbit.

• 32:29Eugene Mirman?

  So you don't want to, a lot of people probably fall in the Pacific, because it's so big, is what you're saying.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll be floating in space. Yes, you do have to care about where you could land in space.

• 32:37Eugene Mirman?

  You'd materialize in a hallway, or in the middle of a wall.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or in the middle of a wall, a cement pier. Go.

• 32:43Eugene Mirman?

  What if other civilizations exist in dimensions that we can't perceive with existing technology? Could we be visited by UFOs and not even know it?

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 32:52Eugene Mirman?

  Great.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's the good thing about parallel other dimensions.

• 32:56Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like a flat surface, that's two dimensions, if you put an ant on that surface.

• 33:01Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you say, okay, you're a prisoner of this sheet of paper.

• 33:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could hover over it, and look at it, and poke it, and it would have no consequence.

• 33:09Eugene Mirman?

  You could give it whiskey, and it would be like, I don't even get what's happening.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know where it came in, because you're coming at it from a higher third dimension. You come at us at a higher fourth spatial dimension, or a fifth dimension.

• 33:19Eugene Mirman?

  So there might be eight dimensional beings watching us right now, laughing at this Q and A.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laughing at we being prisoners of our three dimensional cubes.

• 33:26Eugene Mirman?

  And a little bit of time.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 33:29Eugene Mirman?

  What if others, oh, that is the one. Okay. I have had a thought for many years now. Is it possible, possible, that what we call UFOs are actually natural creatures who live in the atmosphere? Critters with a different evolution and DNA, but Earth creatures nonetheless. Possible? I'm gonna say.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Highly unlikely.

• 33:46Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, I'm even gonna go, no. I mean, it's possible.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, we, look at how much of the airspace is sliced each day by aviation. There are thousands of planes going back and forth. You'd think we would have run into them every now and then. Where pilots would have a really good view of them, where people would have photographed them out the side window. We have good enough evidence of absence.

• 34:09Eugene Mirman?

  What if this person doesn't know about birds? How impressed would they be? If they find out about birds, and they're like, no, Neil, there's birds.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's awesome. Next.

• 34:19Eugene Mirman?

  What technology would you expect to find on an alien ship?

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I

• 34:24Eugene Mirman?

  What'd you expect, like a thermos?

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would love to explore new materials.

• 34:28Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe they went higher up on the periodic table of elements than we have.

• 34:32Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, really?

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Elements yet to be discovered.

• 34:33Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every element we've discovered has awesome, different properties from every other element.

• 34:38Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Amereum, for example, named after America, very high up there. That's

• 34:42Eugene Mirman?

  What's it do?

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one of the

• 34:44Eugene Mirman?

  What would happen if you put it in your soup?

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would, it's radioactive.

• 34:47Eugene Mirman?

  Die if you ate it?

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By a tiny amount, goes in smoke detectors, and it's what enables modern smoke detectors.

• 34:52Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, really?

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we would have had no concept of that without the existence of the element.

• 34:56Eugene Mirman?

  I just

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'd be feeling all the stuff on the ship and see if it had some new kind of uh, material properties that we have, that our material science engineering has yet to discover.

• 35:07Eugene Mirman?

  Right. I just realized based on what you said, don't eat smoke detectors, they're a little radioactive.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly. Oh, one other thing.

• 35:14Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, maybe they're using matter, antimatter drives.

• 35:17Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to know how they contain their antimatter. I want to know what piece of luggage they use to carry it.

• 35:23Eugene Mirman?

  Do we have access to antimatter right now?

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We make it all the, we make it all the time. You just can't carry it around.

• 35:26Eugene Mirman?

  Do we put that in soup?

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because what your vessel would annihilate with it.

• 35:31Eugene Mirman?

  Right, unless you traveled in, traveled in an antimatter ship.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but then the antimatter meets your atmosphere and then it annihilates. It's, it's really tough.

• 35:39Eugene Mirman?

  But we make it all the time, what do we do with all the antimatter we make?

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It annihilates pretty quickly with matter in its vessel, in, in the particle accelerator.

• 35:45Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly. Okay, great. Is it legal to shoot one down? I'm assuming a UFO.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so there are no laws against shooting an alien from another planet.

• 35:55Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of our laws are human to human laws. Uh, there's, there's a space law frontier.

• 36:01Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is trying to think about the laws of that next frontier. And so there, there are things like if the alien is more intelligent than you, it's a crime. If it's, if they're not, then they're just food, you know, for you, right?

• 36:16Eugene Mirman?

  But what if they're just dopey?

• 36:19Eugene Mirman?

  But the, the truth is, most likely if you shot, uh, at an alien or an UFO, you'd probably be just shooting at a plane or a cloud or something else.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, like shooting the deer and there's someone on their front doorstep. So I would say

• 36:31Eugene Mirman?

  Don't shoot guns in the sky.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 36:33Eugene Mirman?

  Let's just say that to our listeners. That's responsible.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I would say that the, the UFO, if you, I would say it would be, uh

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have the opportunity to interact with a UFO, don't shoot at it. Next.

• 36:51Eugene Mirman?

  Even though we're pretty sure they would have hostile intentions, unless they're super advanced. All right.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One more, real quick. We've got 30 seconds.

• 36:57Eugene Mirman?

  Is there any type of planned response to intercepting any type of alien aircraft, craft or object that has the outward appearance of manufactured by intelligent life?

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Editions on UFOs. Eugene, thanks for being with me.

• 37:18Eugene Mirman?

  Great to be here.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.