Cosmic Queries – Timekeeping

What time is it? Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and astronomer and anthropologist Anthony Aveni answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about timekeeping, the history of time, and more!

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. This one titled "The History and Science of Timekeeping." Ooh, something we take for granted, but some people don't, and they think a lot about it. And I got with me Chuck Nice, Chuck.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always there for me Chuck.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  That's right, no matter the time.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Longtime veteran of StarTalk Radio, and you're my co-host for StarTalk Sports Edition. So thanks for making that happen too.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in spite of someone who has no formal athletic background at all, you're actually quite knowledgeable about sports. I'm very impressed.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's easy to be knowledgeable about something that you've never done.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, it's easy to have opinions about things that you've never done.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  Well, this is true.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's easier to be loud and opinionated about that.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I love this topic. I know something about timekeeping and history. Everything I know is a tiny subset of what our guest today knows. Anthony Aveni. Anthony, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Thank you Neil for putting me on, or having me on.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Always fun being with you.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been on at least, at least your third, possibly fourth time, but it's been a long gap between these, and we've got to have you on more frequently. So I'll make sure.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  A long time, we might say, a long time.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're not only an astronomer, you're also an anthropologist, and that's where the history dimension of your expertise comes in. You're a professor emeritus of anthropology and Native American studies at Colgate University, and author recently of a book called Star Stories: Constellations and People. So you think a lot about just the relationship between...

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Humans, our culture and civilization, and the sky above. That's a... And people pay you to do that?

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Yes, believe it or not. Well, not anymore, because I've just retired, so I'm now out on the streets selling pencils.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Little pen. But I started, I've been trained in astrophysics, a Kit Peak astronomer of old, and I got interested in the Maya, the Maya calendar.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, Kit Peak is the name of a mountain in Arizona where we have major national telescopes on location that we all compete to use the observing time on them. And so, so that's where you did your PhD research?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  My PhD in Arizona, yeah, through the looking glass, as it were. And then I got interested in the Mayas, the Maya calendar. And the question was, how in the world did these people achieve such precision in timekeeping and get so engulfed in time measurement if they were, in fact, without a telescope, without an enlightenment, without a scientific revolution? And I ended up spending the rest of my life, or up to now, engaging those studies, astronomy in other cultures, which really does teach us to look at the other point of view, the other culture's point of view about how we watch the natural world.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And astronomy, I mean, because of that, this background is actually quite rich in cultural diversity, because everyone is looking at the same thing. It's the same sky above all of our heads, but you come from a different place, a different time, a different valuation of what you see and think and care about, and up comes a whole other selection of stories.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Same time, different story.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same time, different...

• 3:53Speaker 02

  I wonder if that would apply to aliens. We think about E.T. out there, you know, and sometimes we're so darn sure of ourselves that, oh, they gotta be doing it the way we do it. And anthropology has something to say about that. There are some lessons you can learn from studying anthropology about contact and the other, with a capital O.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask this other question then. In anthropology, I've heard it characterized, I thought quite cleverly, that when the Brits went around...

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exploring the world, that's code for colonizing the world. They would come back and write about it. And they would write about why where they found was not like them. Rather than writing why they are like the way they are. Right, so it's a different, different sort of outlook towards other. Right, so in your studies, how do you navigate that? Because you are, I presume, a Merkin, you're Merka.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  I am a Merkin as President Johnson was.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you've got that, then how do you navigate that when you're trying to interpret what others have done that have come long before you and you have nobody to talk to about it?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Well, let me, I am so tempted to give you a quote from an anthropologist. In fact, I'm gonna do it since I'm taking over the show right now. I happen to have it handy, and it's by Edward Evans Pritchard, which is a rather astute sounding name. He's a British anthropologist working among the Nuer people, N-U-E-R, of South Sudan. And this is how he sums up a thousand pages of his ethnography, and it's about time. He says, "Though I have spoken of time and units of time, the Nuer have no expression equivalent to time in our language, and they cannot therefore, as we can, speak of time as though it were something actual, which passes, which can be wasted, which can be saved, and so forth."

• 5:54Speaker 02

  And then he says, "Nuer are fortunate."

• 6:00Speaker 02

  How do you tap into that? Well, the way I do it is I work with the anthropologists. Because if you're trained in astrophysics, what do I know about anthropology? So I've made a habit of co-authoring a lot of works by trying to understand anthropological theory. It's really impossible to tap into because the past is gone. And the ancient past before writing, the prehistoric past, is very gone. So it isn't easy to do, but you have to work together.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so I didn't know that. We have gone and very gone.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that like Chuck, if you're bad on stage, you're bad or very bad? There's only, there's only one level of bad for me. Yeah, you know, there's, you don't have to quantify it. You don't have to qualify the badness. You qualify the bad, it's just it, it's, there's no level. So Anthony, in timekeeping, there's some obvious things like a day, right, and a month, and certainly the cycle of seasons for crops. Beyond that, why would anyone really care historically?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I think they wouldn't, they wouldn't care to be the masters of time, that is to delineate a system with the, uh, very, very precisely stringing out all of these events and measuring them, because in most of these cultures, I find the time is the activity itself. It's not some measurement that stands apart. There's milking time, there's nap time, there's lunch time, there's cocktail time. Time is what you do. But then wise guys like us in the West and the Enlightenment had to come along and take the measure of it. We get it from the Greeks, that's where we get our gears from. We mechanize it. We build clocks because we want to see it as something apart, something that's quite

• 7:46Speaker 02

  apart from all the events that take place. But in these cultures that I study, it's mostly the activity itself.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But isn't it actually the activity itself in our own culture? But, and time is like an observer of that, but not really a participant?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. I think it, well, ask me that question at cocktail time, but don't ask it at bedtime.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, because you've seen the wristwatches, right? And say, what time is it? And it's, it's beer o'clock. Have you ever seen that?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Well, the sun used to be, the sun over the yardarm was the time for cocktails. So it's an astronomical measurement, always comes down to astronomy.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we didn't have astronomy, how would we have measures of time?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Well, I would say you stick a stick in the ground, of course, then you're in astronomy.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're in astronomy.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Stick a stick in the ground. And we don't know.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we grew up on Venus, holding aside the fact that we'd be vaporized, no one would ever see the night sky. And Venus has no moon, and it would sort of get light and dark, but very slowly, because Venus rotates very slowly. So it seems to me the measurement of, there are places where you can imagine the measurement of time to be a pointless exercise.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that goes in most cultures. But then why is it that people like the Maya or the Inca got so wrapped up in it?

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll ask you why.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Well, the bureaucracy had a lot to do with it, because if you're a bureaucrat, you've got to make, maintain control of the society, you've got to have control of the worker, you've got to have everybody marching to the same tune. So those Aztec priests knew what they were doing when they invented all of these deities to go with the names of the days and so on.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, don't say that. You're telling me that highly precise timekeeping of the ancients can be credited to bureaucracy? I don't want, I'm sorry, I don't want to hear that.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  You know what, it kind of makes sense if, you know, if the first guy to invent work and workers, I can see that might have been the guy that's just like, I gotta have something like time.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you gotta punch a clock, gets you in and out of the, in and out of the temple.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Well, surely you've all been to the great Glockenspiel of Marian plots, you know? I only say that once.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was there yesterday, but yeah, go on.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  In Munich, that clock, that huge clock on the, on the church that goes around and they bang and they gong and comedians have made jokes of it, I think probably even Chuck has. That is a device to keep all the workers in order. You have bells that tell the cutters when they have to cut, the shearers when they have to shear, the packagers when they have to package, and it's damn near like Amazon today. You know, I mean, I think this really starts with the industrial age.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the difference there is, it's not that you need to know the time to cut or to pack, it's that someone else wants everyone to be doing that activity at the same time.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Bingo.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's the simultaneity. Of of culture that requires organized timekeeping.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's, yeah, it's the conveyor belt, if you will, you know, whether you be in the Ford factory in Michigan, assuming there's still a Ford factory in Michigan.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is, yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Or you may remember the I Love Lucy episode where the-

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, with the candy.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  The candy and they're fucking things down their shirt and so on. Well, that's-

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if anyone over sixty knows that episode, I don't know if anybody else does.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  If they're over eighty, they got it from Charlie Chaplin's, uh, uh, what is it, nineteen thirty-six film. Now, I'm forgetting the name of the film, but it was a, uh, somebody will phone in what it is. Where he's caught in the gears, he's caught in the wheels of time, and you see him, seeing, seeing him going around, getting chewed up by the gears of the clock.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've seen, we've seen clips of it, yes, yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, uh, so it, it, this, all this leads us to think of time in this more mechanized, precise way, whereas for the bulk of human history, as far as I know, uh, it, it never really was that way.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now that you're retired, are you gonna do what every retired person says and get rid of clocks in your house?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't quite done that, although the, the clock that Colgate gave me for my retirement lost its minute hand, so all I have is the hour hand there, so I'm going by hour time now. The hour, and I think I can see now, I know it's between twelve and one. I'm okay.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's cold. You, you, your retirement gift broke. That, that ain't right. That's what- And, wait, wait, and they're giving it to a guy who's a world's expert on time. That's, wait, wait, did they really not like you?

• 12:21Speaker 02

  I must have done something bad with the football team. I failed an athlete somewhere.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You failed a quarterback, can't do that.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  And then again, that's kinda liberating. I kinda like the idea of just having the hour, because now every hour is yours. You know, somebody says, "Call me at four thirty," like, "I'm sorry, I can't do that."

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Chuck, I gotta ask you, have you ever seen a one-handed clock?

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I haven't.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Because they, you can see them, they're around in museums. And I can't say when the last one was made, but it's certainly more than a couple hundred years ago. Where you just went by the hour. And in the sundial, it was pretty much the same, you know, one, two o'clock, I'll see you between one and two.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  And then longer.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sundial doesn't have a sweep second hand or a minute hand, right?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  No, no. And then people would say, you know, well, why don't we meet at the next quarter moon? You know, we'll see at the next quarter moon. Well, was that Tuesday or Wednesday? Doesn't matter, you know, we'll just, when, when Powhatan attacked the colonists in Virginia. He did it by regulating the tribes to come at the last quarter moon. I mean, that's well established in, in local history in Virginia. And they, they seemed to get it right. They beat, they beat up on the colonists by, well, some of them got there a day early, some a day late.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But a quarter moon is, is pretty, that's as precise as you, right?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, can you get it, can you get it to the day? I know a lot of, my students can't get it to the day. I used to ask them to time it. Some of them would get Tuesday, some would get Thursday, most would get Wednesday. And it would work out, but you gotta have a little leeway, I think.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that movie, we just researched that, it's called Modern Times with Charlie Chaplin.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Yes, Modern Times, thank you, thank you.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, very good.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  It's in one of my books, but I forget.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how many books have you written? I own most of them, I think, but not this latest one yet.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Thirty, thirty-five, depends on what editing, I've edited or written, that's what I have in my CD.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what's about to collapse on your head behind you in the scene there?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Oh, well, those are OP books, other people's, you know.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Don't do any research. I'm, I'm down with OPB. OPB, yeah. Here, I'll put them around if you wanna see, go to the other.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's very beautiful, very beautiful.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  It's my rabbit hole, I hope you enjoy it.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you, we got questions from our Patreon members, I think?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Yes, we do.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right? So start me off with one.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  I thought that was it. I didn't know we had questions.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, yeah, no, you know, we're not letting you go that easy.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm done.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm friends. I can't, I can't do no more.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  Ah, that's great. All right. Okay, let's jump right into it. As a matter of fact, uh, all of our, uh, questions have come from our community of Patreon patrons. And so, um, if you are listening to this and you are not a Patreon patron, I encourage you to do so, so that, uh, your questions can take priority.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, it's just not that. I mean, Patreon, if those of you don't know, it's not just because people feel charitable, as you might know, for NPR or PBS. It's like, they want something in return for it.

• 15:23Chuck Nice?

  No, that's right. No, this is a, listen, this is a transaction. We have no problem with that.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all transactional.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  We have no problem, we have no problem with that. You, you, you support us and we do things for you.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole, there's a whole list of stuff.

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you tend to parties and stuff.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right. It's like any marriage, okay?

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Transactional.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  All right. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Um.

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  Hello, Neil and Anthony and Chuck. We use atoms.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, who, who, who is this?

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm sorry. This is John David Newman. Hey, John.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Thank you, John, for having a pronounceable name for Chuck.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Why did you say, why do you think I said, wait a minute, hold on, hold on? I had to, I had to scroll down the list to get to something that I could pronounce.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why? You're pick, no, you can't pick questions just if you can pronounce their name.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is wrong.

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  I won't do that anymore. Okay. I just wanted to start off with a pronounceable name. John David Newman, uh, he says, hey, Neil, hello, Anthony, hello, Chuck. We use atoms for the most accurate timekeeping. Could an atom change its rate of vibration? And if so, would we even know if it did?

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that is so good.

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  What a great question.

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta wait till we come back.

• 16:42Chuck Nice?

  Ah, ah. Damn it.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll take a quick break. Uh, I love that question. Uh, and when we come back, more of StarTalk Cosmic Queries with time, astronomy, anthropological expert, Anthony Venney, when we return.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Cosmic queries. Time, and measurement, and culture, and history. It's all there. Chuck, good to have you. Chuck, you're tweeting these days?

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  @ChuckNiceComic, yes.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  @ChuckNiceComic, you have to tell people you're a comic? This is lame.

• 17:55Chuck Nice?

  No, I mean, listen, I don't want there to be any doubt.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, should I laugh at this? Oh, it says Chuck Nice Comic.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Right, yes. I mean, listen, I look at it this way. Sometimes, if you go to medical school and you have a practice, you put "MD" at the end of your name.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to remind people.

• 18:14Chuck Nice?

  Just to remind people, okay? That I'm just not...

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good answer.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, I'm not just Joe Johnson, okay?

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a good answer, good answer. So Anthony, we left off with a great question. Here we are, anchored on atomic time for the last five decades at least. And if that's the measure, how do we know that Adam is not messing with us?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I want to thank Johan for a brilliant question. Or was it John? I think it was John.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  That's John, yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  The last I heard, we were keeping time by the vibrations in the cesium atom to something close to 10 to the minus 15 seconds. And I'm sure as John would know, that's a 1 over 10 with 15 zeros after it.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a quadrillionth of a second.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if a second is the distance from the Earth to the moon, the femtosecond... is about the width of one of Neil's hairs that I'm looking at right now. So, pretty small.

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. Neil has some pretty luxurious hair. It's pretty thick, I gotta tell you.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  You may notice when you're seeing my image, I didn't use one of my own hairs.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You used your hair. Singular.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  We can only make the measurement as accurately as we can make it, and if the CCM Adam wants to mess with us, there's no way we're gonna know until we can go beyond femto femto femto seconds. That's what happened with astronomy. When we thought that the movement of the sun and the moon and measuring the sun's transit at noon time was accurate enough.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Earth's rotation, yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's not, it's not accurate enough, and that's why we went to the CCM Adam. So, who knows where we end up.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we won't, so we won't know anything about whether the atomic vibrations change until we find something more accurate than it to hold it accountable.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  And that's the nature of science, isn't it? You never pretend to have a theory that can't be changed or updated. And so, it's a good example of how science operates.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but just to be clear, the changing is to make it more precise, not to make it something completely different, just to be clear. When, when we're on to something, we're on to it. And when we got it. Chuck, you gonna say something?

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  Well, I was just gonna say, um, that makes me think that all measurements then are subject to that same principle.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, every single measurement you've ever made.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Width, height, you, you name it.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Okay. God, now, now I don't believe in anything anymore.

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So Chuck, how tall are you? Was it?

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's great.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me another one.

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

  All right. Wow, what a great question. What a great answer, guys. Thanks. Okay, here we go. This is, uh, Sam O'Neill, and I'm, I'm not looking for names. It just happened to be that way. Hello, geniuses. And, and Chuck.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what he said. I don't believe that.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  No, he didn't. I added that in.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Samantha here and I run and use kilometers instead of miles to measure my workouts. Firstly, because kilometers are shorter and that allows me to believe that I have less work to do while I'm an individual kilometer. And secondly, you clock up more kilometers and feel happier about the number of kilometers you've run. My question is, if we adjust the scale of time and make years shorter so that the average life expectancy, age, number becomes higher, what psychological impact would that have on the human race?

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  What a profound question.

• 21:44Chuck Nice?

  Couch in a humble brag.

• 21:48Chuck Nice?

  Of our physical fitness.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  But if I, if I, instead of living to be an average of 80, I live to be an average of 160, forget whatever the measurement is, does the number alone have an effect on who I am and how I think?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think Samantha, I don't know if you're old enough to have remembered the move in the 80s to try to kilometrise miles and change to the metric system.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the United States.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, was it the 80s or even early?

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, 70s, in the 70s, under President Carter.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was under Carter. It didn't happen, but I mean, if it did, we'd be, we'd be talking different numbers now. My wish has always been to get together with Elon Musk and go to Mars and live there and start a colony and live for thousands and thousands of years because Mars revolution period around the sun is closer to two years than to one, and then I'd only be half my age. And my kids and their kids and their kids, kids, kids, kids, kids would then come to think the way Samantha likes to think about kilometers, they would come to think about years.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so that's the reason why you want to go to Mars?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  It's the only reason.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not to save the species, not for science.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  No, it's my own selfishness. I just want a number that tags me younger. I don't want to be an octo no-no doo-deco-genarian.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's my, my reply to both of y'all, okay? So the solution to this is, we adjust the human genome so that you never die, and therefore you don't have to worry about how many years you just counted for your age.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh god, that sounds awful.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Adjust your genome.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That fixes that problem in a different way.

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  Well, it does, but that creates a whole nother set of problems, you know? Like, the fact that we would never die, I mean, that would change your psychology of life completely.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, can I tell you a quick story here? And just into the psychology of this?

• 23:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I was, this is a slightly long story, and I hate doing this because I want to really get questions, but it's directly, it is directly related, okay? I have never been picked for jury duty. I always get kicked out after the voir dire part, because they ask me questions and they never like my answers, okay?

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm the same way, except I'm racist.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that'll get you out. All right, so that's not the reasons why they get, so I'm there and I made it far enough, like fifteen people, to hear the details of the case, all right, were read to us. So I said, man, maybe I'll get on a case this time. And so the judge reads the particulars of the case. And here is what both sides agree, and the defendant was found in possession of cocaine, um, three thousand milligrams of cocaine on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and they were found by an undercover cop, and then, so this was done, and then I, and they said, are there any questions about these details?

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I raised my hand and said, Your Honor, why did you say three thousand milligrams of cocaine? That's just three grams.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is, you know, barely the weight of a penny. So, uh, uh, why did you say that? It's a, whoa, that's what it's written here. But it's, well, it sounds like you want it to feel like more drugs than it actually is. And while I'm saying this, the whole rest of the potential jurors were looking at me and looking. And so, and I was out on the street 10 minutes later. Because, and I might have contaminated, quote, contaminated, just by, just by undoing the units of measure they're using to make something sound bigger.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  So here's my two, here's my two takeaways from that story. One, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the only guy in America trying to get on a jury. Uh, right. And, and two, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the drug dealer's best friend.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't think of, I was just thinking about the honesty of the read.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  Now, you're right.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Anthony, that was all about psychology there.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I like the way you say 3,000, which is the same way Carl Sagan used to say Bill Young.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  3,000 milligrams.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  That's so funny. You know, it's so funny. We had a conversation once, Neil, uh, and we were talking about the metric system and how the only people in America who use it are drug dealers.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yeah. The drug dealers are the best.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Drug dealers are the only people who know the metric system.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They should have been the ones training Americans and we'd all be metric fluent today.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me another one.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's go to Dustin Fenwick, uh, who says, I've been listening to Star Talk for some time now, and many times I've heard you, Dr. Tyson, talk about how other life forms out of the universe may see human beings in a similar fashion to how we see chimpanzees. So if that is true.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With regard to intelligence, yes.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes. Um, is it possible that aliens visiting Earth?

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  may have a completely different concept and understanding of time than we do. And what impact do you think this discovery could have on humankind and our understanding of the universe? So, I mean, there's an assumption in that question that there's a contact made and then we understand that they understand time differently than we.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and that's of course the theme to the movie from a few years ago, Arrival. Anthony, did you see Arrival?

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yes, I did, and I was gonna mention that.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so go ahead, just reflect on, so Chuck, this is exactly the centerpiece of the difference between this alien visiting intelligence and us. So Anthony, why don't you take us there?

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Well, I'm thinking of the hepto, the hepto digital people who had seven digits rather than the usual 10.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically tentacles, they were like, I think they're called.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Also Ursula Le Guin's work comes to mind, there was an American Masters on her, she wrote a book back in the 60s about a hypothetical base 12 culture that we evolved into a base 12 culture. So all the expression of our numbers and all of our mathematics is totally different and has to be re-deciphered. That doesn't get to the cognitive part of Dustin's question, but it does, I think, at least it allows us to think that there are other ways of cognizing reality.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, okay, obviously it's fiction and it's a novel, but is there any credence based on your understanding of the diversity of human understanding of time that this could be a real thing out there?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Well, yes, there are.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if I tell us what it was first.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Well, there is a tribe in Borneo which uses a language and uses cognitive elements wherein there is no past and no future. There's no past, present, and future. Everything happens all at once. It's all happening at once. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, you're saying, I had breakfast this morning, I know that was in the past, I know this wonderful session on StarTalk is gonna be over soon, and then I've gotta wash some clothes, but imagine having a brain that doesn't think that way, doesn't think of a past or a future, but everything is in the present, and it's reflected in the language and the tenses, there are no tenses. I can't

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because chances to distinguish past tense and future tense.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Yes, it's time dependent. And I can't fathom that, but I know Chuck is waving his hand, so I'll bet he can.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  No, I can't. I was trying to figure out, like, where do you get... It's just like, so I had breakfast this morning now. And, um, and, and so I'm going to the doctor now, now. And then I'm gonna have dinner later now. And it's...

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're getting married now, but...

• 30:01Speaker 02

  But, you know, who is to say why we think that way, but we do. Not as a Homo sapiens, not even as Homo sapiens. Because we're talking about a brand of Homo sapiens who do not share our thoughts about past, present, and future.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But remind us what, how the aliens thought in, in the movie Arrival.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Well, how they... Yeah, that's right. I think the past was conflated with the future, was it not?

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, right. So if I remember correctly, there was a, um, time was a loop.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  It was a loop.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so there was no uniform direction of the future in the past.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Time is a circle.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically, time is a circle.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  Time is a circle.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Which is, now that's interesting. Because I think whoever wrote that must have had some good understanding of anthropology. Because many cultures in the world conceive of time cyclically. We conceive of it linearly. We imagine all of the events that happen, that we experience, are like so many beads on a wire. And then Judeo-Christian, uh, theory and ideas teach us that that line or band or wire is tilted upward. Because those beads move toward the apocalypse, toward the great confrontation, toward the second.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it needed a linear construct in order for there to be an apocalypse.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  But how can we imagine living in a world where time is not linear? Oh, we can say, well, okay, there's the spring and summer and fall. And of course tomorrow follows today. And the movement of the sun around the earth, if we would have it that way.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is cyclical.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Is cyclical, but still, time is linear as we see it, isn't it?

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because next year is still different from this year.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe a good model would be a helix. You know, a loop that goes around and then ascends as it goes.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. So it loops, but doesn't, so you get the best of both.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that. Yeah.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get the looping of time and the forward movement of time.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  And you get progress fitting in, don't you? We love progress.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Because as time goes around, it gets bigger and things get better. We saw that in the inauguration speech of President Biden. It's gonna get better.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that concept. So what you're saying is if you live in a world where there is no, for lack of a more creative way to think this, technological progress, then next year is identical to this year.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why distinguish them with strong language about with numbering the years and, and having New Year's celebr... That seems all artificial now.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  And it comes from a belief in the idea of progress, which not every culture believes in. Chuck, I'm sorry, I interrupted you.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  No, I was gonna say, what, what you just sparked to me is the interest in whether there are cultures that mark time just be, just from events. So if you're not looking at progress as a demarcation of time, or if you're not looking at things in a linear fashion, then maybe it's just this happened.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  And that becomes time.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, hmm. So it, it's just a sequence of events without concern about the duration.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time between them.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  The duration is the key. Yeah.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right. We gotta take a quick break. We're gonna come back.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Fascinating stuff.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And keep this going.

• 33:15Chuck Nice?

  God, this is good.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm living it. Okay, this is StarTalk.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  I'm having an apotheosis.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time, anthropology, astronomy, all of the above. When we return.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons: Douglas Robinson, Michael Kitty, and Ascari Lane. Guys, what would we do without you? Well, we certainly wouldn't be able to make this show. And for those of you who are listening who would like your very own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/stargtorkradio and support us.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, time, culture, anthropology, Anthony of any. Anytime you say those other three words, Anthony is right behind the door, ready to walk in to straighten things out. Anthony, thanks for being on StarTalk for what might be a fourth time.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Thank you for explaining my ego.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need to know, you're retired, you know, we gotta help you out here. Retired for how many years at Colgate?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Just a couple, just packed it in two years.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couple of years, couple of years at Colgate.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  I don't keep time anymore.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. Okay, Chuck, give me some more questions, because we're in Cosmic Queries mode.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Let's go to Ben Butler, who says, hello Neil, Dr. Veni, my question is, how are time zones affected with the keeping of time? Do they have any part to play with timekeeping, or just a way to tell time in different countries? Sorry if this sounds silly.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. Anthony, what's up with time zones? Why doesn't the whole world have one time?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Thank you, Ben, for your question.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't we all have one time?

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Blame it on the railroads. Blame it on the high speed of travel, not now, but in the 19th century, when you could step on a train and go from New York to Cleveland in a matter of less than a day. Well, we regulate our time, of course, by where the sun is. So you've got time in the station, regulated by the sun, and then, once you get on the train, you're in a different place. So we've got time on the train and time off the train. You have to have some agreement about what the time is going to be. So we all get together and say, hey, let's share the time of the fifteenth, thirtieth, forty-fifth, sixtieth, and so on, multiples of fifteen meridians. Now, where I live in

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are longitude lines on Earth?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, longitude lines. That happens to be a longitude line that passes near Albany somewhere. So I'm west of that time. So I gotta set my clock back. And the people who are out on Cape Cod have to set it the other way. And we all agree to that.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, just to be clear. So you and everyone in Cape Cod are in the same time zone, but you are west and east of each other, which means the sun is not in the same part of the sky.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Right. If we put a, if we, if we stuck a stick in the ground and made a sundial, we would get a different result for the time.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From each other. And so you're saying, rather than it be noon for you at a different time than noon for Cape Cod, you want to agree on a noon, even no matter what the sun is doing.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Right. So we want to have what you might call a mean noon or an average noon. And that's what zone time is. And of course, then you have to have some place to begin the day. And you

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  Grim it!

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Well, you begin it out actually in the middle of the

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other side.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  The loose island, in the middle of an ocean where it doesn't matter too much whether it's Sunday or Monday.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Uh, but we've been forced into that because of high speed travel. And that all started with the railroads.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Wow. That is great.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  That's where the Big Ben clock got started, too. Big.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow. That is great. Okay.

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, keep going, Chuck.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, Steve Solomon says, hello Neil, hello Anthony, hello Chuck and the whole team. I'll bet Chuck can pronounce my name. Okay, thanks, buddy.

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  My question is, does the arrow, does the

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's his name again? What's his name?

• 37:51Chuck Nice?

  His name is Steve Solomon.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steve Solomon, okay.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  My question is, does the arrow of time always point forward for us ugly giant bags of mostly water?

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speak for yourself.

• 38:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. Now, he says, however, the math supports time in both directions.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed it does.

• 38:20Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For most things, yes.

• 38:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so if the math works, can we find a physical representation of the math? Or can that happen?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Well, Steve, I've had two Steve Solomons in my teaching career. You may be one of them. Both of them were wise guys, but it's a good question. The arrow of time.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because teachers never forget students.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Never forget. One of them I flunked out and he came back when he was in his twenties, but did very well and filmed them. But anyway, that's enough about me. You know, I think that Steve's question depends on what we want to conceive of as reality. You know, we can define an arrow of time that goes either way, but the way we've got it down, that arrow goes forward from the past into the future. Unless you can get a time machine, joke, you know, and make the time go backwards, travel faster than the speed of light. This is the reality we have devised to understand how events take place in the world. Sounds like I'm slipping away on the question, but I'm really not. What do you think?

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me see if I understand what you just said. All right, so you're saying because we experience the world with an arrow of time going forward, all of our language and everything we've developed about our thoughts and civilizations orbits that, so to speak. And so we don't need to reckon with an arrow of time that moves the other way. But if there were such a thing, then we'd deal with that, right? And things would break before you let go of them, right? That would be the order of events.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  But how neat it is that we've invented mathematics so as to deal with that. And that opens up our imagination to all kinds of possibilities that we wish we could experience. There are limitations in this universe.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'd see a scrambled egg unscrambled and go back into a shell and the shell. And we would see that and say, that's normal.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I can see it on a video. I can do that way backwards, you know?

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so things that move backwards in time that look irreversible, only because that's our life experience.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, not, and, and that had been our life experience, then cracking an egg and dropping it into a pan would say, "Oh, my gosh, how did you do that?"

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Well, you know, Neil, we all, not to get too serious, but we also devised the law of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. You know, which is that you're gonna, always gonna go from organization toward disorganization. But then we defined what organization is.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  And what disorganization is. So, so dependent on how we live, and that's the anthropology of it. That's the anthropology of it.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I like Einstein's, was it Einstein's quip? "Time is defined to make motion look simple."

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that deep?

• 41:06Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, so Chuck, let's do lightning round, because we've been luxuriating on these other questions.

• 41:13Chuck Nice?

  Ah, who cares? I like it.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Anthony, pretend you're on the evening news and you're interviewed for two minutes, and so it's, it's, uh, soundbite answers. Okay, let's go.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay, guys, here we go. This is Roman Freckup, Preckup. Okay, Roman says this, "Since the earth is slowing down, how long will it take until we need so many leap seconds that we will not, there will not be a rule that a minute has 60 seconds? So, you gotta put so many seconds in that..."

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just change the whole damn system.

• 41:45Chuck Nice?

  You change the whole system.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Anthony, what's up with that?

• 41:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say less than a million years. What would you think, uh, Neil?

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's, it's tiny right now, and we're doing good with the leap seconds. I mean, I, we're hanging on. Well, Anthony, how many have had 25 or so leap seconds in the last...

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  50 years, so leap second every couple of years.

• 42:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay, um, so when does it reach just where we're actually, uh, taking water in a bucket and, you know, becomes that?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Well, you know, what we'll do is we'll do leap hours, and we'll do what we did in the, in the Gregorian calendar reform, where you just whacked off 10 days, knock out 10 days, and tomorrow, today's the 4th, tomorrow would be, uh, 14th, you know?

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so the corrections might become greater than leap seconds.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leap minutes, leap hours, leap days.

• 42:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, interesting. So, so just to be clear, from the... The, what do we call the people who are experts at timekeeping? Not metrologists.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Chronologists.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chronologists, from the chronologists I've spoken with, they don't want to change the definition of the second. Because so much anchors on that. They'd rather just add more seconds into the day. Because you could just make the second a little longer, right? And that absorbs, it eats every correction you'd ever need to make to it. And put you in motion for another million years or so. But we have so much depending on that definition, we're keeping it.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Well, we used to have Roman numerals, we don't have much left of those anymore.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yes we do for the Super Bowl.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The last match in a row.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  But not 10 and 50, did you know that? That Super Bowl 10 was not X, it was 1-0.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and 50, I think that the reason why they didn't have it for 50, good you knew that. I wrote a lot about this. I tweeted about it. Because when we were at Super Bowl 49, which is a lot of Roman numerals stacked there, I said to myself, hmm. If we go to Super Bowl 50 and all of that just becomes an L.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  L.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then it's just Super Bowl, right? You'd have two L's. Super Bowl and then an L, and you wouldn't be able to parse that. So, and sure enough, they made it.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  And you know, when they went from 9 to 10, they didn't like the X because people were Googling up, whatever Googling up was in those days, and finding nasty websites.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, X, X websites, interesting. So what was Super Bowl 30? That would really get you in there. XXX.

• 44:11Chuck Nice?

  Why are all my searches for Super Bowl 10 ending up with a guy delivering a pizza?

• 44:20Speaker 02

  So much for the lightning round.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anthony, you failed that first test. Let's try them again.

• 44:26Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Robert Weaver, and Robert says, "Good afternoon. If spacetime is able to be bent by gravity, assuming humans could ever control that bending, could we travel across folded and then unfolded parts of space and time instantly? Would we have passed to either side?" Okay, and then he just goes on to give you a more examples of that. And then he says, "Hey, thank you guys, both of you, for inspiring us. P.S. Chuck, I like you too." Okay, so.

• 45:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a Chuck amendment to each.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right, you know, I'll take that, though. You know, maybe I'm not inspiring, but at least I'm liked.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so Anthony, let me ask, let me broaden that a little bit. So our modern sort of scientific culture tells us about relativity and the curving of spacetime and the distortion of time. And is that just our culture's sense of time? And then when we die off or in the apocalypse, there'll be some other one. And then we'll just be in the, in the, in the, in the archives of how people thought about time?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I'll raise you one by suggesting that all of geometry is part of our culture because we are Greek. The very idea of thinking about geometry, whether it's Euclidean or non-Euclidean, is a Western idea. Show me one evidence of geometry in any culture other than one that came through the Middle East in Greece. And I'll give you a dollar.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, the bending of space and time requires geometry to see it, to calculate with it, to predict with it.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  As far as we know.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, as far as we know.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  But we are talking in our own language. The answer to Robert's question is show me how to do it, but you can sure do it in your mind. But I can't imagine an operational way of doing it. And I can't even imagine conceiving of it any other way than geometrical. So it's part of our culture.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so it might be that I hadn't thought about this. If we did not have geometry as our, in our tap roots, we may have never ultimately arrived at relativity.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know how the story goes. We don't have time to do it, but I talk about it in more than one of my books. The whole geos metros, the measurement of the city, measuring the city is where this starts. And in the Greek city, they had orbs, even Aristotle even talks about this, orbs of citizens who cluster around the center, who orbit around the center. And then the intellectual thought turned to ordering the universe above the way they were ordering the city. So the whole idea of geometry starts in the city and then moves to the sky and then moves on to Einstein.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  That's anthropology. That's why I do the anthropology.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Western anthropology.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  In the culture.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, very good. All right. Chuck, keep it coming.

• 47:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. This one, um.

• 47:24Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is from Nick Stark. Sounds like a, uh, an alter ego for a superhero.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or Tony Stark's son.

• 47:31Chuck Nice?

  Or Tony Stark's son, yeah, Nick Stark. Uh, hello, Dr. Tyson, could you explain one of your, uh, most favorite OEDs? Or PEDs related to spacetime or just physics in general? So, uh, do you have a, a partial differential equation that you actually lay down at night and cuddle up with? You know? Ah, do you? Do you have a, do you have an ordinary differential equation that you, that you have framed on your desk?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  I thought it was either that or maybe some kind of disease of the intestine that he wanted.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right? Did you, did you, are you afflicted by the?

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in calculus.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  By the way, I just want to say Nick Stark sounds like the name of a, uh, a detective in a noir film.

• 48:23Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 48:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that too.

• 48:25Chuck Nice?

  That does. It's got, it's got that ring. It has that ring, yes.

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got the fast talking, you know?

• 48:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it does. Yes, exactly. It's just like, she came to me and I, yeah.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got the coat and the hat.

• 48:36Chuck Nice?

  It was a rainy night and when she walked in, I knew it was trouble.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so I, I would just say, just so people, in calculus, their equations. One of the great glories of calculus is it enables you to calculate using variables that are changing simultaneous with each other. And this is intract, basically intractable using any other kind of math that preceded calculus. And so there's a kind of equations that exist in calculus that allow you to just pry forward, watching something unfold with multiple forces and multiple variables changing at the same time. And with these, you have what are called differential equations that do that. The partial differential equ, PEDs, these sorts of things. So my favorite of these is the set of equations that came out of Einstein's work

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that describe the curvature of space and time. And it is this simple equation, it looks too simple, but the calculations are hard, that tell you. What, how much mass and energy will then give you how much curvature on the other side? And so, for me, that's for me. Anthony, do you have any favorite?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, I got an A minus in Diff EQ. I was a math minor and a physics major, so I do know well what you're talking about.

• 49:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Chuck, he's on a first-name Diff EQ.

• 49:59Chuck Nice?

  Wait, I Diff EQ. Listen, that's the nickname basis. That's beyond first-name basis, okay?

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got nicknames for your math.

• 50:09Chuck Nice?

  That's like, I call Barack Obama Barry.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you're on a first, if you're on a nickname basis with your equation.

• 50:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  While I'm talking with these two silly dudes, I'm gonna try to put the anthropological twist on this, because I think what Nick is talking about is conflating a whole, large number of concepts into one magic equation. The Maya did it with a magic number, 260. They had everything that they ever measured, or even sub-measured, multiples or parts of 260. They had the period of Mars measured according to 260. It happens to be three times 260. They had the period of Venus, the synodic period of Venus, measured that way. In fact, it's in the ratio of 8 to 5 with the period of Venus, and the year, and a

• 51:05Speaker 02

  whole bunch of other things. I know you're dying to know what 260 is. Well, it's 13 times 20. 20 is the number of digits on a human body.

• 51:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Digits, that's in fingers and toes.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  And, uh...

• 51:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you're a shop teacher.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  13 is the number of layers of heaven. 260, now this is where you guys are all gonna get really serious, I'm gonna tell you this. You're gonna drop your jaws, because it's the jaw-dropping number. Gestation period of the human female. Now, I know that answer isn't going to satisfy a person who's into differential equations. But the important thing is that you always look for expressions, numbers, equations, that can envelop the largest number of phenomena that you see. And for the Maya, it was the gestation period of the human female. The gestation period being the mother of all numbers, as they call it.

• 51:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, let me tell you, Dr. Veni.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  I'm in any sense of your job.

• 51:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm just gonna say that that was a very elegant answer in the face of our being silly. I'm, I am so impressed. That was, that was. He pulled that one out of the trash. I mean, that was, that was incredible. That was incredible. Pulled our stuff out of the trash. I mean, yeah. Dusted it off. Yes, that was, listen, you, I bow to you, sir. That was amazing.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Well, to be honest, I pulled it out of my butt, but that, that was.

• 52:24Chuck Nice?

  No, no.

• 52:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Anthony, I thought that, isn't the human gestation period slightly longer than 260? I'm thinking up around two.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Oh, it's 256.7. But what's a 3.5 among people who don't care?

• 52:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I've thought it was longer than that. I'm gonna look on that. I'm gonna get back to you on that.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Check me out.

• 52:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll check you out on that.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  I'll bet you, uh, I'll bet you the name of an asteroid.

• 52:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  A little shorter, but I, I could, somebody will have the answer for us instant.

• 52:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's up closer to 280 days, unless the Maya had different gestation periods from other.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  That could be, that certainly can be.

• 53:00Chuck Nice?

  Well, let me just, let me just tell you this. After three gestation periods, I know that the post-suffering time is 18 years.

• 53:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 53:09Chuck Nice?

  Let me just say that.

• 53:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calculated that. So Anthony, you come back with that multiple and tell us what you got.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  That was an excellent postpartum on your part, Chuck.

• 53:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta cut it, we gotta actually quit there.

• 53:22Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, oh. All right, dude, Anthony Aveni on our website, anthonyfveni.com?

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, anthonyfveni.com.

• 53:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dot com. Chuck, always good to have you.

• 53:33Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 53:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Thanks again to my friend and colleague, now-retired Anthony Aveni. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you to keep looking up.