Cosmic Queries – Space Junk! with Moriba Jah

What do we do with all this space junk? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer questions about the stuff we put into orbit with astrodynamicist and space environmentalist, Dr. Moriba Jah. Originally Aired July 5th, 2021.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey Startalkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. The archives run deep. If you enjoy this, take a peek at the full catalog on your favorite podcast platform. There's a lot there to tickle your geek underbelly. Check it out.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to Startalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Startalk begins right now. This is Startalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're going to talk about the space environment in which business, surveillance, travel, all takes place. It's like from Earth's surface up to the top of the atmosphere. That's something we haven't talked about. Chuck, that's where we're going today.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right. I like, I like space junk better than. See, you said, you said it all fancy. I just, I just like to say space junk.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space junk.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Almost hear like Quincy Jones in the back.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sanford and Son in space. That'll be the next.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I've got, I've got one of the world's, if not the world's expert on this very subject right here with Startalk. And his name is Moriba Ja. Moriba, welcome to Startalk.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here with all of you.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So you're an astrodynamicsist and space environmentalist. That sounds like if no one knew what that was, you would have to invent it just because the world needs it. Right? Is that, is that a fair way to describe what you do?

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  You know what, though? I gotta tell you, there, that, that means that there was a time.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When there wasn't.

• 2:12Chuck Nice?

  Where we didn't need you. So this is not a good thing that you exist because, you know, it's like, it's like social media manager. Like, there was a time that meant that you had somebody, but you were clearly a person who socialized with the media quite a bit. And, you know, you needed somebody to handle that. It didn't mean what it means now.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  It's a bad thing that we have to have.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a bad, it's a bad thing that you exist. I'm sorry. I've got to say that.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I agree with all of you, full heartedly. You know, after, after about 1957, with the launch of Sputnik, my, my, the need for me to exist began to grow.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. So now Sputnik.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me finish with the man's resume.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I forgot. I'm sorry. There's.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  I'm ready to talk to him because he's got some fascinating stuff. I'm sorry.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got some fascinating. So he's a professor and researcher at UT Austin at the Cockrell School of Engineering. And so let me just give the list here because every one of these could be like an entire Startalk. Non-gravitational astrodynamics. I love that. But I don't know what in the universe is moving without the influence of gravity. Advanced nonlinear multisensor object tracking. Sounds like the Pentagon needs you. Prediction and information fusion. What a space object detection. This man is like, okay, if we're gonna have a space war, I want him on our side. But on top of that, and we'll get to it in a later segment, but I want to put it

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  up front right here. Eyes on the sky, mixed reality experience. That's not with the engineering department. What is that?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So interestingly enough, we have some faculty that are in the fine arts and they've created something called Texas immersive. And it's really trying to combine digital and physical experience for storytelling.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay. So this would, this would increase the impact of any kind of science that you do.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. 110% because one of the things that I've seen is just going to talk to scientists, it's like the echo chamber and, you know, the self licking ice cream cone, not so, not so useful. So I need to be able to reach, reach people and the storytelling mixed reality seems to be something that could really help.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that. And the website is eyes on the sky.org. So that's good. So Chuck, what, I keep interrupting.

• 4:43Chuck Nice?

  No, I was just gonna say, I just want to be a self licking ice cream cone now.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  That sounds awesome. That just sounds like the happiest thing in the world.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I think it's, there's a limit, though. I think there's, that's part of the problem here. It's like, like the snake eating its tail.

• 4:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disappointing where that doesn't really work out.

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  For the snake or the tail.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're actually going to turn this into a cosmic queries where we've actually solicited questions from our fan base. Chuck, I think you have those questions, right?

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  I hope so.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me the other Chuck.

• 5:22Chuck Nice?

  Where's the something that has the question?

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But before we get there, while Chuck is finding his questions, Moriba, you, you wrote something recently, just towards the end of May, which seemed to me to be a kind of a self-reflection autobiographical sort of memoir, sort of, it's an arc of life from your beginnings to where you are right now. And I just want to ask, what compelled you to write that? Because it is a highly unusual story. And between you and me, every interesting person I know and have ever met has had an unusual background. It wasn't just that linear fat, go to college, go to graduate school, get through, get the degree, get the degree, and then boom. No, the most interesting people are the ones who've lived a little. And often

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that living involves stress, trauma, failures, as well as achievements. So what can you tell us about that?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Look, I mean, I grew up in Venezuela and, you know, I went to military school for high school and a lot of trial and tribulation going through that. I enlisted in the US military when I graduated and I wanted to be a fighter pilot, watched plenty of Top Gun when I was a teenager. So that was like my dream. I never thought that space would have a place for me. And, and yeah, basically as a security guard guarding nukes in Montana, that's when I started noticing dots going across the sky that disappeared in the middle of the sky. And I'm like, is it just me seeing this? Like, is this a UFO? Like, what is this? Right? I just, I was completely ignorant. And when I found.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, it most definitely was a UFO because you didn't know what you were looking at.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was definitely UFO for me, right? And so.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Definitely. For others, for me, others, it would have been an IFO. That night, for you, it was a UFO. Okay.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So yeah, so basically, you know, when I, when I was able to figure out that these things were human made objects reflecting sunlight and going through Earth's shadow, that really, that really crystallized this curiosity for me to want to know more about that. And that, that's where my, I think my path towards astrodynamics and motion of stuff in space started.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you see what happens when you look up sometimes? See what happens? Now, by you in Philadelphia, I don't know where, where you've been looking.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  When we looked up, when I looked up, what I saw was a ceiling.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  So not quite the same.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you have to not only look up, you have to be curious about what you see.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly what Moriba was doing. Okay. So how, were you American born in Venezuela and not Venezuelan? Otherwise, you couldn't just join the US military.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's good for you to notice that. So I was born here in the US in San Francisco, actually. My mom's from Haiti, my father from Sierra Leone. They got divorced when I was very young. My mom met this guy from Venezuela. So we moved to Venezuela when I was seven years old.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay. And tell me about your, your life in terms of discipline. Because to be a faculty member at a major university specializing in the fields you do requires discipline. So, so how do you go from, from, from my reading your tract, basically no discipline to discipline? Because that's, that's a, if that's a secret you can let out.

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, that should be your new job. Teaching people that. What, talk about getting paid?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Nice. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. So, look, I, I think when I was a teenager and kind of having some moments of self-reflection and going through some very low points in my life, and I think that I kind of discovered, I want my life to serve a purpose for humanity, for other people. And I think the discipline came as a function of my inner commitment to, to that inner clarion call of thou shalt do something that's useful for humanity and don't let other people's opinion become your reality, sort of thing. I think that's where that came from.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, but that takes a level of maturity, especially growing up to even realize that.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, having gone through military school, I think that was being forced to grow up faster than a regular teenager would have. And then doing four years in the military at a nuclear missile base in Montana, that was also something that instilled some hard knocks discipline into, into me as well.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. If that doesn't, I don't know what will.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the nukes. You're on watch.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's kind of hard to screw that up and then you can't get out of it with them. My bad.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My bad. That doesn't work.

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, eating a sandwich and he's sitting back on the control board and bam, you pop the button.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my, my bad for a lot of people.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. Everybody's bad. Everybody's bad. So before we get to our Q and A, could you give me some sense, give us all, some sense of the magnitude of the problem of space junk right now?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  In 1957, we launched Sputnik, one satellite that didn't live in orbit too long. But since 1957, we've been launching hundreds, thousands of things. And it turns out that now we track almost 30,000 individual objects in orbit around the Earth, ranging in size from cellphone all the way to the space station. These things are in different orbital highways, going at very fast speeds, as you know. And so when two things meet at the same place at the same time and the speeds are quite different, bad things happen and they become smaller pieces. Those collisions generate more garbage and that sort of thing.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  And we don't have any sort of space traffic rules, protocols, practices that people say, "Hey, yeah, if I'm gonna head towards you and you're headed towards me, we'll both turn left or do this." There are no rules of thumb in Earth orbit, which makes things a little bit worse.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mentioned things smaller, the size of a cellphone, but you don't mean actual cellphones are in space, do you?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. So, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have actual cellphones in Earth orbit, but it wouldn't be a surprise to me if an astronaut went on a spacewalk and decided to pop this thing out and they left it like they've left wrenches and these sorts of things and people just don't talk about it.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's up to fill out of people's pockets.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  It also wouldn't surprise me if somebody has my carrier, which I won't disparage publicly, but they actually were just trying to get some service. And that's how far they had to go to try and get a damn signal.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you hear me now?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I think that's what they needed to do for the commercial, man, is actually like, go up to the space station and see how well that worked.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely. That's a good advertisement. I'll buy that.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Right?

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  That's the carrier I'm going with.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so I love your expertise. Let's see how our fanbase, where they come from with regard to your expertise and their curiosity. So Chuck, what do you have?

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  All right, for Dr. Mor Bajah, we have questions that come from our Patreon patrons, which is how we solicit our questions now. It used to be that we gleaned them from the various iterations that we find ourselves on the internet, but now, if you want, you just support us on patreon.com and then we'll read your question. Here's the deal. Jeff Johnson of Salt Lake City, Utah, says, "Dr. Bajah, can you please give us some insight into China's recent space station, Sinafu? Were they irresponsible or was there really little to no danger to Earth's inhabitants?"

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or did they do it on purpose?

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so this was with a rocket booster from one of the stages and it just, they didn't know where it was gonna fall. And I thought, when you launch something that big, you put little retro-rockets or something on it and you guide the thing into the great toilet bowl of space, the Pacific Ocean. So what went wrong here or what was not in the planning from the beginning?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think you got it, as they say, tickety-boo there, Neil, in that the responsible thing would have been to outfit this rocket with propellant and thrusters to force it in, to maximize the chance of the thing not surviving reentry. But when you leave it to Mother Nature to clean up the mess, hard to predict what Mother Nature is gonna do sometimes. And so I think that's where the increased risk is. And until China actually puts on these thrusters for subsequent rocket bodies, it's a problem.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  And it's really bad news to make the world spin up on, is the sky actually gonna fall on me today?

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it sounds like the Wild West. Aren't we overdue for some rules and regulations, a treaty that everyone... A treaty for what you do with your trash. It's a trash treaty. All right, everybody gets together, here's how you dispose of the recyclables, the smelly trash, the burnable trash. Why don't we have that?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the interesting thing is that we do have a United Nations Convention on Liability and Damage, and it specifically states that the parties to the treaty should avoid harmful interference. I would say that a big rocket body falling on top of your head would constitute harmful interference, but the thing is, it's so loosely interpreted that perhaps China's saying, "Well, we don't necessarily consider that harmful. Harmful interference is not really defined." And I think that's the major issue.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  So, from a sheerly litigious standpoint, they were not irresponsible.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a word, Chuck? Sheerly?

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. It is now.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sheerly?

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Sheerly. No, from a sheer, litigious standpoint.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of like or pertaining to sheer?

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Right, there you go. So they are... I told you it's a word now.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the Chuck dictionary.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Look, let me tell you something. There's three dictionaries, all right? You got Webster's, you got Oxford, and you got Chuck.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Chuck.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  There you go. But, so if you're looking technically by the law, they're not irresponsible. But then, if you wanted to attach morals to this, then yes, they would be irresponsible.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, right? And I think, you know, most of the world agrees that this is not behavior that they wanna see carry on, carried forward, and they should do something responsible about it, just like Neil said, finding a way to purposely de-orbit this thing so that at least there's some intent with how the thing might re-enter and hopefully, you know, burn up.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  All right, that bet's the next question.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it from Patreon or is it from you?

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  Nah, it's from me.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I told you, you wanna ask a question, you go.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  I just joined Patreon! I just joined while we were here!

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. All right, go.

• 17:51Chuck Nice?

  Has the United States ever done this?

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we will get to that after the break. All right, yeah, so it's one thing to point your finger, if, you know, he who is without sin casts the first stone. We will get back to that when StarTalk returns. Space junk. Beat it.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's yet another fact from Lost in Space, the latest collaboration between StarTalk and National Geographic. 1995, we discover the first authentic exoplanet, a planet orbiting another living star. So, anyone born from 1995 onward, I now declare each one of you to be Generation X O-Planet.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you like that fact, you can find 4,999 more in Lost in Space, 5,000 facts to help navigate the universe. Lost in Space is now available wherever you get your books.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. Got special guest, Mor Bajah, who's a professor of, was it astrodynamics? Did I get that right?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrodynamics, I love it. I love it. At the University of Texas at Austin, is in their School of Engineering. And I have Chuck.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the break Chuck asked a great question and even though he's not on Patreon I'll let him ask this question. It was here we are pointing our fingers at China for dropping one of their boosters who knows where, right? Well, we know where, but they didn't know where until it hit. So are we without guilt in this game of lost boosters?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  No, we're not. In fact, I would say in low Earth orbit where you can think of low Earth orbit going from about, I don't know, roughly 100 kilometer altitude to about, you know, 1200 kilometer altitude. There's probably about 2,000 dead rocket bodies, derelict rocket bodies. Of the 2,000, probably about 1,300 belong to Russia. Launched from the Soviet Union era and all that stuff.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, still there.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, still there. And, and the remain, out of the remaining 700, I'm thinking that somewhere about 350 of those are Chinese and the rest are American. So, so the US has quite a few 100 dead rocket bodies that are kind of like ticking time bombs and, um, yeah.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And none of them have, have, will have a controlled reentry.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you're telling us.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  That's what I'm telling you.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh. Okay, so of all the non-controlled reentries going forward, based on your statistics, half will be old Russia. Half of the half that remains is China and then what remains is going to be us. So, so watch that space. Plus Skylab, we didn't have that. Seems like enough people went in and out of Skylab, we should have known where that would have fallen and we didn't at the time. I was alive and around and ready for that. And I remembered Baskin Robbins, the ice cream store, said, "If you get hit with a Skylab part, you will get an ice cream cone that has every one of their flavors stacked on top of it."

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Wow, what a, what a prize, right?

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a prize for being dead, yes.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so tell me, what was, what happened with Skylab, America's first Skylab laboratory?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, um, as, as, as you said, that thing re-entered and, um, people were pretty freaked out about that. I remember the Mir space station. Uh, those were, that's the one that I remember was Mir and even that was a very, you know, scary experience.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Russian, Russian space station. All right, so we are not without guilt. So we just have to, it'd be nicer if we weren't, pretend we were high and mighty, uh, as we point out.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Well, that kind of brings up, uh, that, that brings further to bear the point that you made about having international rules, actual rules, you know? Then everybody would have to follow them or, you know?

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Chuck, give me some more questions.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is, uh, Robert Weaver and he says, um, "Hey, would it be possible to use, uh, the Lagrange point to make a giant pile of space debris? Seems like that would be easier than bringing it all back to Earth and much more ethical than just flinging it out into space. Also, in the future, we could use it like an auto junkyard. And when we want components or metals or stuff like that, we could just go to that to build in space instead of recycling."

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow. So, so Moriba, tell us first about Lagrange points.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so basically these are points in a three-body system where, uh, you have some stable and some unstable points, places where, uh, this gravitational influence in, in that system is, let's, let's say kind of null, things cancel each other out. Um, but yeah, out of the five, out of the five points, uh, out of the five Lagrange points, uh, I believe two of them are, are stable and the other three are unstable. And so I would say this, we need to find ways of not creating orbital landfills. So, so, so the thing is sending stuff to a Lagrange point, uh, while you might be able, and oh, by the way, even when you send stuff there, it doesn't mean it just stays there forever.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Like, you know, eventually the thing's going to drift out just due to perturbations that are non-gravitational, uh, mostly in that sort of stuff. Plus, as, as Neil, you, you clearly know this, uh, there's more than just a few bodies in, in, in the universe. And so eventually, uh, you know, the curvature of spacetime will force these things out, uh, if they're uncontrolled. So it's not a good answer and, uh, uh, it's not a viable solution. And we should avoid, uh, trying to find a place in space to just send garbage to.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  So, uh, yeah, and, and so basically, let me just see if I got this right. He's asking whether or not we could create a celestial equivalent of our ocean's great garbage patch.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Which is where the currents come together and create a stillness.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  And then that's.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And let's do that in space.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  And we'll just do that in space.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we don't, we don't want to do that, Chuck.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so just let me throw some astrophysics in here, okay? The, one of the Lagrange, one of the attractive Lagrange points in the Jupiter orbit, the Jupiter sun orbit, there's a leading Lagrange point and a trailing Lagrange point. If you look there, there are asteroids that have collected there. And they're called the Trojan asteroids. And so it's, it's fascinating. And we knew to look there because we said, "Here's a place where all the gravitational forces cancel out." So there's gotta be some, anything that sort of drifts in won't have a reason to drift out very quickly or at all.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we actually find these places that are repositories. But I'd like the trash heap example, uh, and I think a Sanford and Son, "Space in Space." We should do that.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  We're sure, uh, uh, we, when, if we do do that, it should have the theme song that goes along with it.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It should have.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, damn.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We agree.

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, every time you drop something off in that great, uh, junkyard in the sky, you should hear, "Shut up, dummy." And that's it.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me, give me some more.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Chris Newberry and Chris says, "Uh, hey Chuck, bet you don't get my last name correct on the first try." Aw, man. Uh, that, that, see, I should read these first. Uh, I'm gonna say Newbry instead of Newberry, but anyway, because it's, uh, N-E-W-B-R-Y. Uh, Dr. Tyson, just love you and, uh, love, uh, your Cosmic Queries book. Um, SpaceX, the idea that put 42,000 satellites into orbit for optimal internet around the world. That being said, does that put a lot of junk into orbit?

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  How much does that increase the risk of future endeavors, uh, of this rock having such a net surrounding it?

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so let me reshape that slightly. So Moriba, if we have functioning satellites, then they're not junk. But if you have thousands and thousands of functioning satellites, isn't there still a risk that they could collide with each other?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and so, and so I would say this, low Earth orbit is already building itself up to be this place with these functioning satellites, like you said, owned by different companies. But there isn't a, a space traffic coordination, uh, entity, right? So, so the thing is, people are making decisions about how to maneuver and go, you know, how they want their satellites to behave, but they're doing that in the absence of coordinating with other people that are also making decisions. And so that does increase the risk of things, uh, you know, bumping into each other in the night, so to speak.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not, and space isn't just so supremely empty that we shouldn't worry about it?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  No, because we have very specific orbital highways where we put these satellites, given the purpose that we want. And right now, for instance, uh, you know, with SpaceX and the Starlinks, which, oh, by the way, you know, out of the nearly 30,000 objects that we track, um, about 3,500 are working satellites and Elon owns about, you know, 1,500 of those. So, so it's already quite a bit, but, uh.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so Chuck, Elon is going to become Skynet.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. Yes. Look at that.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Skynet's going to be, achieve consciousness.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then control the robots.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, Neil, he's your friend.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do count him as a friend. But, but that, that.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just, you say that like, okay, I'm also to blame, just because I know the guy.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Well, hold on a second. So I'm not saying that Elon is at fault for anything. What I am saying is that he owns most of the working satellites in Earth orbit. He will continue to own most of them, as I see now, given the fact that he's got licenses to launch. And so, pretty much, if you want to go beyond 500 kilometer altitude, you've got to coordinate with Elon, because you've got to go through his layer of Starlink satellites. So, the coordination piece is really important, and that has not become manifest yet. So that is an issue.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got this, Elon is the next James Bond, so he's 008? And they say, "License to launch."

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  License to launch.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  License to launch.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the next thing.

• 29:53Chuck Nice?

  Right? Oh my god. Well, first of all, that sounds ominous.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right?

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Because that guy may be on his way to being the first real supervillain.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you heard how quickly Moriba backpedaled on pulling out his name. "Let me say something nice about it before you go to the next topic." "I didn't mean he's bad. No, no, no, he's good. Nothing wrong with Elon."

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we all know that Jeff Bezos is really the bad one.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the villain. Plus, he's bald like Lex Luthor.

• 30:29Chuck Nice?

  He actually does make for the perfect...

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lex Luthor.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he's going to be the world's first trillionaire, probably, because he'll be the one that will land on an asteroid and mine it for all of its presence. Yeah, yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. Let's go to Avnish Joshi. And Avnish says this, "Hi, Dr. Tyson, Mr. Nice, and Dr. Ja. I am 10 years old, and I want to be an astrophysicist. My parents gifted me with the StarTalk subscription on my birthday, and this makes me super, super excited."

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, now we can't potty mouth on the show. Damn.

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  So, he says this, "I read that space debris is causing the night sky to be much brighter. Why does this happen, if it does? And will it not make stargazing that much more difficult? How can we overcome it?" Wow.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Look at this kid.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, what were you doing when you were 10?

• 31:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. One thing.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  It wasn't that.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good answer, Moriba. It's like, "I don't know the answer, but that is the answer."

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  I was writing letters like, "Dear Santa Claus." And people were like, "You still believe in Santa?" Anyway, go ahead.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what about night sky observing? What's going on there?

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I will say this, right? I'm actually working with the astronomy community to try to quantify the effects and impacts of, you know, these pieces of human stuff, you know, orbiting the Earth, and they do reflect sunlight. So, in a sense, it's light pollution coming from the skies towards the ground, towards large pieces of glass. And yeah, when you look at the night sky, if you're in a place dark enough, you're going to see more dots going across the sky than you did a decade ago. That's happening now, and it's not going to get any better. So, I would say to you, 10-year-old, what's his name again?

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Avnish.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Avnish. So, I'll say to you, Avnish, the skies are not going to get less polluted with time, because we're going to keep on launching satellites. And so, the night skies are going to be changing. And I would love it if you could, you know, be part of the group of folks trying to find, you know, solutions to the problem.

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  So, how about this?

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again, we're admitting we messed up everything. And we can't wait till the next generation get older and fix it. That's all.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the real "sorry, Avnish," yeah, you're screwed, and we did it. Basically, that's the answer.

• 33:05Chuck Nice?

  So, sorry, Avnish, you're screwed, and we are responsible.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're responsible?

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  We're responsible, buddy.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll find us in the Bahamas. You'll fix the world.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  By the way, you fix the world. I'll be in Tahiti, spending your inheritance. So let me ask you...

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What'd you say, Moriba?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, so basically, I was just saying what Chuck had said is that, you know, basically, I'm trying to quantify the problem for Avnish's generation to try to do something about it, I guess.

• 33:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's great. I mean, you're really kind of a voice crying in the wilderness right now, my friend. You are indeed the John the Baptist of space junk, because nobody is really paying attention to this. So, it's important work to kind of wake people up about this issue, you know?

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a second religious reference here.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I really appreciate that, but I know how John's story ends.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. I was about to say.

• 33:59Chuck Nice?

  That was great. That was very funny. Okay. All right, let me ask you this.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so for the atheists out there, John the Baptist had his head served to, is it Salome?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ordered up his head.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:12Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Let me ask you this. In terms of all this...

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you're not, no. I'm on Patreon questions. No, no. One per segment. Okay, go.

• 34:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Here's the next one. This is from Simaya Cosmica, okay? And she says, "Which is the Cosmic Seed. Are there noticeable effects caused by space junk in the scientific astrophotography that interfere with ground-based observatories?" This is kind of like what Avnish was talking about, but more on the more professional level. When we look up into the sky, is there any research? Is there any discovery that is being hindered because of all this junk in space?

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got to do that when we come back. From this next break, we'll find out all the ways that space junk may be harming the professional community, even if it's just another interesting object to watch from your backyard. So, on StarTalk, stay tuned.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  This is Ken the Nerd Neck Zabera from Michigan, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. And we're talking about space debris, space junk, and it's a cosmic queries, just trying to find out what's going on, and how and why. And we left off, Chuck, with the question, and who is it from?

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  Tarasina is her name, but she calls herself the Cosmic Seed.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Cosmic Seed? Oh, very nice. So, I know at least this much, Moriba, that these satellites that reflect sunlight, and you can see them streaking across the sky, that's primarily in twilight, when you're deep in twilight. But once all of the sky above you is Earth's shadow in space, then the satellites above you don't see sunlight, and so they don't reflect. So, can you think of another cost to night sky observing

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  if you can't otherwise see them because they're deep in Earth's shadow?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, these objects in space, they're getting heated up by, you know, the solar radiation, and also thermal radiation from the Earth, if they're sufficiently low, gets to where the satellites are as well. And so, when these things go in a shadow, they're radiating heat. And so, from an infrared, you know, wavelengths...

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very important band that we use in modern astrophysics, because not everything just gives visible light. So, yeah, we want to be sensitive to infrared. Okay, go on.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's where these things are now emitters of, you know, infrared radiation that then pollutes the folks that are doing IR imaging from astronomy.

• 37:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Observatories.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  That is, first, fascinating, but just something you really wouldn't think about, because we tend to think about everything in terms of visible light, which is...

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Geordi on Star Trek would have seen it.

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  Right away, right? Yeah.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because he's got full-spectrum vision.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Wow, that is so cool. All right, so now that it's another segment...

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me, and this is the same, you're allowed one question per segment, Chuck.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, so, one of the reasons why we have all this stuff in space is because they forget just the replenishment of outdated, you know, equipment, like still new satellites. They're doing something for us, like GPS or geosynchronous. Like, they're all doing some communications, weather, they're all doing something for us. What if, would it help if there were, like, a giant relay station? So you wouldn't put your satellite up into space, you would connect to that satellite relay station

• 38:42Chuck Nice?

  that would serve as your satellite here on Earth? You know, so a geosynchronous...

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A satellite hub.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  A satellite hub, thank you, Neil. So, a geosynchronous satellite hub that would allow you to, through like lasers, to connect anywhere on Earth? So the satellite hub is all connected, and then on Earth, you would connect to that satellite hub instead of throwing a piece of equipment in the sky? I'm making this up as an idea, because I just want to know, could that work?

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, I'm going to tell you once I tell you a thousand times, stay off the drug.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a line from, from, uh, Coming to America, actually. But go on. Yeah, so Moriba, what, what, what do you think of that? That concept? Here's everybody doing independent things. Well, maybe a lot of people want to do the same thing.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  So, so I want to say that there's merit to your idea, Chuck. Absolutely.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that was the best blow off I've received in a long time. He didn't even have to finish. He didn't have to finish. He went with, there's merit to your idea. In other words, that is the dumbest crap I've ever heard.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you let the man be polite? Be polite on, on the show.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  No, so look, I think, I think it's a great idea if you could get enough people to buy into it, right? But, uh, the thing is, nobody's, nobody's been able to kind of assemble this sort of consortium mentality behind doing something like that. Everybody wants to, they have their own investors, they want to do their own thing. They want sovereignty, full independence, yada, yada, yada. So people have thought about doing this for Mars, actually. A Mars relay.

• 40:21Chuck Nice?

  A Mars relay. So, uh, so, oh my God, now you've just opened up a whole new perspective on space junk for me just now, which is, it is emblematic of our greater problematic disposition here on Earth, which is...

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, it's emblematic of our problematic...

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disposition.

• 40:43Chuck Nice?

  Which is...

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you had a sentence with those three words in it.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  What's wrong with that?

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Emblematic of a problematic disposition.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Is that...

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to follow you here.

• 40:55Chuck Nice?

  Huh?

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  I'm picking up what you're putting down.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go on.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  I mean, here's the deal. The deal is this. You, you know, we can't, we don't really cooperate. I mean, scientists do, but other than that, let's be for real. Outside of like scientists on this earth, we are effed. Nobody gets together and says, hey, guys, do you go, do you want to do this? Or hey, guys...

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there are four things, just to be clear, there are four things. There's science.

• 41:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Olympics.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The World Cup.

• 41:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the waging of war. These are the only things that nations coordinate for.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna eliminate one of those, Neil, for I think obvious reasons.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, I'm just saying.

• 41:36Chuck Nice?

  But you know what I'm saying? Like, that's so weird. Like, this problem in the sky, from what you just, you know, uh, said to us, is the fact that we're not together. We can't get together.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we did it with the space station, space station, except we kicked China out of it for, for, and then they made their own damn space station, right?

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  Putting more junk in the sky. Well, space station is not really junk, though. Okay. Wow.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the size of a football field.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's really cool, man. All right, here we go.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, you got your damn question. Now, let's go back to Patreon.

• 42:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is, uh, Terrasina Rojas again, who says this, because I like her questions. Is there a plan underway to remove this doggone earth junk, I mean, space junk orbiting Earth? If so, I imagine it must be really expensive. Or is there a way to put together a plan so that someone could yield a great profit? Ah. So she's tapping into the real deal, which is, how do we make money off of the space junk? Because once you start doing that, everybody will race to remove space junk.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's how you motivate people. So, yeah, any plans?

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moriba, because it sounds pretty hopeless.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Well, so, so in order to like monetize the whole, uh, you know, space garbage cleaning thing, a couple of things have to happen first. Um, for one, I think we need sustainability metrics, like being able to say, look, here's this orbit highway, this is the carrying capacity for the orbit. It's saturated or it's going to be exceeded. And so in order to get capacity back, we need to remove some stuff, right? And, um, then we could actually hire somebody, just like, uh, you know, tow truck. Maybe we, you know, when you see a piece of, uh, you know, some car on the side of the freeway, um, you can't just go into it and pull it off the road, right? We have tow trucks that come by and do that.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  And so we could have the equivalent, you know, orbital tow truck company that, uh, you know, gets paid to provide capacity back to an orbit. But without that metric, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there's no rhyme or reason. Like, what's the benefit of removing this object versus that one, right?

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I got it. You create a space tax.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that tax supports the cleanup to the beautification of the highways.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Booyah.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that way, every launch, there's a little bit of money there that'll help get your ass back out of orbit in case you, you, you go dead.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  How about drones? Is there any way that we would be able to dispatch drones that would attach themselves to whatever? I know these things are moving at incredibly fast speeds, but that would be able to, um, safely de-orbit them? So the drone and the, and whatever it is together, with, the drone would just drag it down to a place where...

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, normally drones have propeller blades which require air.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  No, no, these are jet powered drones.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jet drones, jet powered drones. Jetpack drones.

• 44:38Chuck Nice?

  Jetpack drones, yeah. They wouldn't be, you know, but they would only fire, they would be dispatched, but they would only fire to drag the piece back down to where the gravity would then take over.

• 44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got it.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  What about, what about something like that?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Well, so here's the thing, Chuck. I mean, gravity is always doing its thing. Uh, so, so that, so it's, it's always there. The things are always falling, right, towards something? Uh, but yeah, I mean, basically, you know, if, if you could have a satellite that attaches to something to bring it back down, there's several companies that have proposed something like that. I think Astroscale, uh, out of Japan is one of them.

• 45:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Okay. All right.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you do have, have some, I'm getting on your case, but these are some good ideas.

• 45:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right. It's not bad. All right. Okay, here we go. Uh, hey, this is Gary Marmal. And Gary Marmal says, hey, Neil and Dr. Ja, if light photons can push and pull a spacecraft, why not bring the laser for a ride? So he's looking at like solar sails. Why can't we do something like a solar sail on the pieces that are floating up there as junk?

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so you have, you have an orbiting laser that you aim and knock satellites back down in a controlled way for them to re-enter and burn out.

• 46:05Chuck Nice?

  And cooler, and the coolest thing about it is when the laser fires, it goes...

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The space laser.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 46:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we have the sound effects already here. You heard it on StarTalk.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, so, so look, um, certainly there are a couple of groups of people that are trying to do something like that from the ground as, uh, kind of like a risk reduction, a demonstration of the ability of lasers to effectively remove some, uh, objects from orbit. People in Australia and Canberra are doing that, some folks in Germany, uh, you know, Stuttgart and that sort of thing. So people are already looking at applying these lasers, at least from the ground, to test that out. But yeah, here's the problem, Chuck, is that when you put the laser in space to do that, um, people from a space security perspective start having concerns

• 46:58Speaker 02

  because a threat is something that has the opportunity, capability and intent to cause harm. And so with the laser, you clearly have an opportunity and capability to harm something. Then the question is, how do you rule in or out the intent of this? If you can use it to push, uh, junk out of the way, then maybe you could do some damage to a working satellite? And how would you know and that sort of thing? So it gets a bit contentious.

• 47:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting.

• 47:25Chuck Nice?

  And interestingly enough that you said that about the threat, uh, who's to say that you won't use it to push my working satellite?

• 47:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  And disrupt my communications?

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Right.

• 47:36Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or maybe you did have good intent and then someone else takes control that you don't have control over.

• 47:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's like someone steals your gun and then they commit a crime. But it was your gun.

• 47:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 47:51Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. Interesting. Oh, man. This is really a, this is quite the perplexing little problem that you...

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the Wild West. It's the Wild West, except it's space.

• 48:01Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 48:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. Okay, all right, well, let's, uh...

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Cowboys versus Aliens.

• 48:07Chuck Nice?

  Cowboys versus Aliens. I saw that movie.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did I. I didn't quite know what to make of it, but...

• 48:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I didn't really like it that much, but, you know, except for the scenes where the aliens were doing, um, uh, probing the humans, that was cool.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the weird thing is, they, they were mining Earth.

• 48:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For natural resources, way easier to mine an asteroid.

• 48:29Chuck Nice?

  Right. Why would you, why would you come all the way here? Right?

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth is not your best supply

• 48:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of rare ingredients.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  That's right. It's like passing by like thirty gas stations just because, you know, you want

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard somebody, Joey filled up a handheld tank.

• 48:47Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. That's crazy. Okay, all right. I'm really glad we debunked that movie. It doesn't deserve anything.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 48:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there's another one. I heard a radio play of aliens who came to Earth sucking up the water because they needed the hydrogen in the water for them to survive.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that person probably had only just learned that water molecule is H2O.

• 49:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a, they probably just learned that but didn't learn anything else.

• 49:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? That the universe is ninety percent hydrogen.

• 49:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Yeah, that's right, exactly.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have to

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Let me find a compensative way to get the hydrogen, right?

• 49:24Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, exactly. That's so funny, yeah. It'd be like creating a big giant tank that allows you to breathe air.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:34Chuck Nice?

  Right here, on the surface.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 49:37Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think time for just one more question. Give it to me.

• 49:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let me give you this one. We know Violetta. Violetta is the twelve and a half year old

• 49:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh oh, that's Violetta.

• 49:47Chuck Nice?

  This is Violetta.

• 49:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brace yourself.

• 49:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we gotta close the show out with twelve year old Violetta, who is also gonna be an astrophysicist, all right? Love that at twelve, she knows this. And she says this, "I only ever hear space junk described as being a negative thing." So this might be kind of a weird question, but I'd like to think on the bright side a little bit. Is there any possible upside to this space junk? Like even any way to turn trash into treasure? And then she goes, "Ha ha." So Clearly that's a twelve year old's joke.

• 50:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 50:27Chuck Nice?

  But go ahead.

• 50:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Moriba, what do you have?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, so to Violetta, this is a very good question. In fact, one of the things that I've been proposing to NASA and other people is, let's use the space garbage as a sensor. And what I mean by that is this, right? So, you know, Neil had raised this thing about non-gravitational astrodynamics at the beginning, and basically there's like four things that motivate motion of stuff in space. There's gravity, and then there's everything else. Everything else is like radiation, electromagnetic type stuff, particles bombarding different surfaces. And so, space environment, space weather, just like with earth weather, is very complex.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  But the thing is, just like we can tell how global circulation of water behaves based on following where the junk goes, like Chuck had brought up earlier, we could understand what the space weather is doing by following how it influences where the junk goes. And so we could actually try to solve the inverse problem of, given the behavior of the junk, what's our interpretation of the space weather? And use that for space weather science. Call me crazy.

• 51:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are, these are proxy for like weather balloons almost?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or weather buoys?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 51:50Chuck Nice?

  Interesting, that's

• 51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, when you say space weather, it's particles from the sun that create what we could say solar wind?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 51:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the space environment

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 52:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has been, by, of recent decades, has been known as space weather.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 52:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, wow, so they are all just, just quarks on the waves?

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As they bob back and forth.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'd like to use them in that, in that way, but, you know, nobody's given me any funding for that yet, so we'll see.

• 52:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, after they hear this show.

• 52:21Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 52:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After we edit out the Chuck part.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 52:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 52:25Chuck Nice?

  By the way, now that you said that, I take back everything I said about Jeff Bezos. I love you, Jeff. I love you.

• 52:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Well, we gotta end it there, but let me ask, so Moriba, what's your social media presence?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so basically, if you go to like flow page forward slash Moriba, you'll find all my stuff there. I'm on Instagram, Twitter, Moriba Jah, and, you know, also on Facebook and everywhere else. And so, yeah, I'm easy to find.

• 52:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Moriba Jah, M-O-R-I-B-A, so it's pronounced as it's spelled, spelled as it's pronounced, and Jah, J-A-H. All right, and Chuck, you on social media?

• 53:03Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir. At Chuck Nice Comic. There you go.

• 53:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, and I do, I don't officially follow you. I have you on a list, so

• 53:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 53:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or maybe I do follow you. Wait.

• 53:15Chuck Nice?

  No, well, you better start.

• 53:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I track, I track you. I don't know if I officially follow you, but I do track you.

• 53:21Chuck Nice?

  How do you not follow me? This is so disappointing on so many levels. My God, I've never been more

• 53:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 53:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm so

• 53:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tonight, I will follow you, okay? All right, Chuck. I think I already do follow you, though. I follow Pee-wee Herman.

• 53:37Chuck Nice?

  And not me? Are you kidding me?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Nice. Ya'uzza, ya'uzza.

• 53:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 53:44Chuck Nice?

  I'll get on a bar and I'll dance in some big shoes. Maybe that will change your mind.

• 53:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dun, dun, dun, dun.

• 53:50Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 53:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta call it quits there. Moriba, thanks for this. You know, as more things fall out of the sky, can we think of you?

• 53:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So here's what I want people to do, right? I want people to go to eyes on the sky dot org, check it out, see what we're doing, make a contribution if you're so inclined, and let's keep, let's keep the, the love on, on being environmentalists for the sky alive and well.

• 54:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't love what you don't know.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you can't love it as deeply as you ever knew you could until you have, have some kind of emotional, psychological relationship with the cause. So it's all, it's all good, and continued success down there in Austin.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 54:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you. Keep working out.