Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries: Superheroes

Neil Tyson and co-host Colin Jost get their geek on answering questions about Thor, Captain America, Batman, Superman, Wolverine, and more. Now extended with 12 minutes of Neil, Bill Nye and Steven Soter discussing sci-fi movies in the “Cosmic Crib.”

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Where I also serve as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium. And here we are entering the Cosmic Queries portion of StarTalk Radio. And the Cosmic Queries section, I don't do that alone. We get questions that come from every conduit through the internet, from Facebook, from tweets, on our website, and I troll the streets and found Colin Jost walking among them.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Colin, welcome. You know, the last time I had you on, I called you Colon.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, I remember.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  I like how little faith you have in my mom. She would name me after like the least appealing part of a body.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were so polite to not correct me on it. Certainly Colin Jost, and you're a lifetime guy in the world of comedy, right?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I've been doing it, yeah, I've been in SNL and been doing stand-up too.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, but you're not that old, so you have quite a resume in these years.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  No, maybe time traveler, I don't know.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I'm old enough to like to remember the first episodes of Saturday Night Live, back before it was called Saturday Night Live.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  This is like 40s?

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. In fact, it was just called Saturday Night, which is why they begin Live from New York is Saturday Night.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  And it predates that day of the week, right? There wasn't even that day of the week. And then they were like, we should name this whole day Saturday.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The show, the show needs a place to air. Right. There you go. So thanks for joining me for this StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  It's a delight to be here.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now I don't claim any personal expertise on superheroes, but I do know physics and astrophysics. So let's see what we can offer.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spade of questions that have just arisen.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Well, here's right off the bat. Here's one from Google Plus from Nathaniel Dorn. I'm a big X-Men guy, so this is, I'm very curious about this. If you were Magneto, what would be the coolest thing you would do with your power over magnetism? This is really more of a wish fulfillment question for you rather than a science question.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Magnetism, power of magnets.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I would do? I would clone myself and put one of each of me on the interplanetary voyages of the astronauts and create a magnetic field around the spaceship to shield it from harmful solar particles.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Now, but see, that presupposes you can also clone yourself. I feel like that's a whole other step.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so the magnetic control over magnetic fields, that's the easy one to accept, but not the cloning? No.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  I can't give you every power.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  You know, even, even magic has its limits.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so the big challenge today is when you leave the magnetic blanket of the Earth, the Earth has its magnetosphere, which extends not quite to the moon. And so if you're in Earth orbit, you're protected from it. Sorry, you're within the protective blanket of Earth's magnetic field and charged particles from the sun, which would otherwise harm your DNA, get channeled to the poles away from you and it collides with molecules in Earth's atmosphere and it renders the atmosphere glow, becoming the aurora borealis.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The northern lights and the aurora australis, the southern lights.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was called the aurora australis.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got to call it, yeah, yeah. The borealis and the australis.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I would have thought it was in like Antarctica or something.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. There'd be aurora articus.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Articus.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that was a guy from Rome.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I am aurora articus. You are my subjects.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Someone brought up too, that Magneto as a controller of all things magnetic could theoretically just tear the universe apart. Is that accurate?

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Next question.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the universe is not magnetic, I'm sorry.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Well, what's the most damage, like, you know, long-term, wide-reaching damage they could do?

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the way they've written his character in the comic books is that he's controlling metal, because metal is the obvious magnetic.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, if I remember my chemistry, if you super-cool certain gases down into a liquefied state, you can have liquefied magnetic materials.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  So, he could combine with Iceman.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that would be cool.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  That would be a good...

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow, yeah, but not only that...

• 4:48Speaker 01

  That might be a good plotline.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plasma, plasma, which is what the sun is made of, which is essentially the contents of flame, but the sun makes a better example for what I'm about to describe. A plasma is a gas that's so hot that the electrons in the outer layers of the atoms have escaped, and they're roaming free in the gas. And that means that the gas can respond to magnetic fields. So, the sun has a very powerful magnetic field, and it's plasma. And so, here's this gas trying to rotate with the sun, and the magnetic field gets trapped in the rotating gas and gets wound up on itself, and it busts through the sun's surface every now and then.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, it's on a cycle of 11 years, and you get solar storms, and sunspots, and solar flares, and prominences. All of this is magnetic activity. So, Magneto would not be limited to metal. Magneto could totally tear a new one in a star, because he can interact with the magnetic fields that control where those gases appear and what they do.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I think you just wrote the Latinx 12 issues of Magneto for them. Okay, here's the next question from Twitter, from Jimmy B., at HeyJimmyB. Could Superman survive the spaghettification of a black hole and the force required to escape it?

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah...

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Obviously, he's known to be traveling faster than the speed of light.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, okay, well, Superman, in Superman 1, what's the one where he went back in time to save Lois Lane?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Oh, where, yeah, he traveled, where he spins...

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that Superman 1?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It is 1, right?

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Superman 1. He, in order to fly around the Earth that fast, he's going faster than light, so that establishes...

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That...

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So, it's real.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's real!

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That makes it legit. So, yeah, actually, if you can actually travel faster than light, you can just climb out of a black hole, nothing will stop you. However, the, the journey down to the, to the singularity would, as sure as night follows day, would spaghettify him. He would be ripped apart head to toe. Yes, he's made of denser matter and can stop bullets and he's, yes, but if his material is of this universe, he is not resistant to the power of gravity on that scale. And you'd have a totally spaghettified Superman.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to go over what spaghettification is, oh, we only have 20 seconds left in this segment. Oh, no, sorry.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  So he needs a wolf, he needs to pair with Wolverine, who has a healing power. So if he got out of it, he could reunite his particles.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find out when we come back in the next segment on StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries section. We'll see you in a moment.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we are in the Cosmic Queries section. Helping me is Colin Jost. Colin, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We left off the last segment.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Talking about spaghettification.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettifying Superman.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is a real, that sounds like a classic Italian dish. What is spaghettification? It's when you're being sucked in, your, the particles are being ripped apart.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what happens is as you get closer to the center of a black hole, the field of gravity at your feet becomes insanely higher than the field of gravity at your head. This is a feet-first dive into the black hole. And, and the consequence of this is that your feet will accelerate towards the black hole faster than your head will.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And initially that, you know, you're just stretching and it might even feel good, but there's a point where that stretching force, it's officially the tidal force, the same force that makes the tides on Earth, is what rips you apart as you fall into a black hole. That tidal force eventually exceeds the binding force of the molecules of your flesh.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the point-

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Which sounds bad.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It because it is bad. And when that happens, you snap into two pieces on your way down. And this difference in force continues. Your upper half and your lower half each feel this difference in force. And they then rip into a pair of pieces each. Now you're four segments and then eight and then sixteen. Thirty-two and you run the series down. There'll be a point where you will be a stream of atoms descending impossibly towards the center of this abyss. If Superman is made of materials of this universe-

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not he is of this earth, it is if it is of this universe-

• 9:49Speaker 01

  You will.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is subjected to those same laws of physics and he will be spaghettified just as day follows night.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  But then what if he were basically took on the powers of a worm? Who's able to, you know, you could segment them and they would still live. Different pieces would then there be a bunch of Superman out there?

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem, when you cut up a worm, each segment of the worm still has a full genetic code for what the whole worm was. When you spaghettify, you are just atoms.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, so it's not even-

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the hydrogen atom that got yanked off of your DNA molecule does not remember the DNA molecule from which it came.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're a host.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And then so what about Mr. Fantastic, the rubber guy?

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the rubber dude.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Then how would he go in a black hole?

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, in the Fantastic Four. Ooh, or who's the woman in The Incredibles?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Uh, oh, yeah, right.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it Elastic Woman?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Elastic Girl? Rubber Girl.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Elastic. So Elastic Girl, yeah, anybody who's stretchable in principle might be immune to this.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  But they have to then travel faster than the speed of lights and they need-

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, to get out. If they want to get out, you gotta travel faster than lights. We've established that Superman can do that. So we would send Superman into a black hole until he was ready to snap into two pieces. Then he flies his way back out again.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that'd be cool.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Or Superman has a baby with this Elastic Girl, right?

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So, which we all been fantasizing.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you been fantasizing about being with Elastic Girl or fantasizing with Superman?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I just wanna watch. I just wanna watch Superman a lot.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  I don't even know how old Elastigirl is, maybe that's inappropriate for me to say. What, so this seems, this is the next question, this is from Jeffrey Williams on Facebook and it says, "The character of Captain America seems to be the closest to reality." I don't know what that means, but I guess of the Avengers, say.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Batman is. Batman.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Batman's a regular guy.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  He's regular, but of a, someone that has superhuman powers. "Do you believe there are currently experiments happening that are trying to increase the capacities of the human genome? Example, human strength, super strength, increased visual acuity, heightened stamina, etc.?" And he also wants to know if these experiments are going on, are they morally correct?

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to comment on that. Next question.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so I can say a couple of things. First, you can't just take a guy that has normal looking muscles and make them 10 times stronger. If the muscles are, if it's made of muscle tissue, because the physics of strength correlates with the cross-sectional area of your muscles. So in other words, the reason why when you work out, your muscles get bigger is because they're getting stronger.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a direct correspondence between the strength of your muscle and how big it is. There's some variation in there, like in, are you in good shape? So you can be slender and still be stronger than someone else who's slender, but who's not in shape?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Because aren't there varying muscle densities that people have?

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, but not so, not so, we're all human at the end of the day.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're all human. And so muscle size correlates with muscle strength. So you can't have a Captain America who, he had a good body, you know, he turned heads in a fitness center. But the strength of those muscles are not such that he would have the strength exhibited by any genetic manipulation at all. It's just not, no, unless-

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So you can genetically alter the, say, density or efficiency of muscle?

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not and have it still be biological matter. You'd have to, in fact, just replace the muscle with some other material.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Make it more cyborgy?

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just cyborg him out. Then, oh yeah, then you're good to go. So to rely on our feeble biology to improve in strength, I think is not- Not the right way to go if you want to, if you want to make a better human. Not only that, to try to improve your sight, there's a limit to how dim you can see because of how, how, because of the size of the iris in your eyeball.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Like we were talking about.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back in the telescope show, I had you on, on, in the studio for the telescope show. Bigger telescopes see dimmer things.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's that simple.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so people said, oh, can cats see in the dark? How big is their eyeball?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? If it's not bigger than your eyeball, and we all have retina in the back as detectors? No, they're not, you know, they might do a little better.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not going to do much better than you.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So unless they had huge eyeballs.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  There are no owls.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  And this, another question here from Sean Karp on Facebook is, would it be possible to do an embedded metal skeleton? With optional deployable weapons, ala Wolverine, could you do that?

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's the problem. So if we replace your bones, which are already pretty strong.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With some kind of metal.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Adamantium, for instance.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adamantium.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Adamantium.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've forgotten about, okay, right, this is what I want. So if you replace that with, with some kind of super alloy metal.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still susceptible to tissue damage, right? What you're describing is the Terminator.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Terminator.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could still stab him and he'd still bleed.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you still suffer tissue damage, but you're not knocking him down.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he's got that super alloy metal for bones. Sure, I don't see why you couldn't work that.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you still could, you know, if you don't have a healing factor, the healing power, then you're.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd just be this bloody mess at the end of the day.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd be alive and bloody.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like when he was repairing himself in the hotel room in Terminator.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, when he was.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The guy knocks on the door and he looks for a response. And he says, go away.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except a little more colorfully. Yeah, so, and he's got flies and stuff, yeah, because he's got biological tissue. Keep in mind that for the human body to work, you'd have to graft the tissue onto the metal. Our, our muscles connect to tendons that connect to ligaments that attach to your bones. So, it works biologically. In order to get foreign material in there, you're gonna have to attach it all some other kind of way.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  And what about, now, this is, I've read articles too about the rise of nanotechnology where theoretically one day we'll have tiny robots in our bloodstream that will just sort of rebuild cells. Is there any, do you ever think that's?

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be cool. Yeah, I mean, a nanobot would be smaller than what a cell would identify as being a hostile invader. And so it would just be able to do anything it needs to do. I don't see why we can't manage that. But I'd rather do it from the outside. Why get all Fantastic Voyage on us and just have some kind of device that beams through your skin and lands at the tumor and cures the tumor? I mean, why?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, fair. Alright, I'll do that.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm a bot fan from way back, so.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Good.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  So you won't, you won't stop me?

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I won't. Oh, by the way, and Thor?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To lift the nuclear matter that is his hammer?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he's an alien, so aliens, you know.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  It's a whole other level.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a whole other thing, right.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  It's a different, do you have, can I ask, do you have a favorite superhero or one that you're most impressed by their construction or what the physics of them are?

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like Batman, because he's a reg, I can be Batman.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  He's a regular.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can be Batman. And, and who doesn't like the gadgets, alright? And who doesn't like the car? So, he's got the best car of any of them. I guess because they can fly, they don't need a car.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you gotta like the car.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Cars good.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As fallacy, as phallic as it is, nonetheless, he's got cool things that the car can do.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the car is an extension of his utility belt in terms of its coolness factor. So, for me, I'd have to be Batman. But as a kid, I don't know if I told you this directly, I wanted to be Mighty Mouse.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  No, why, just?

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I wanted to save women who were, were mean people, were trying to harm them.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's fair.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I wanted to sing opera while I was doing it. Here I come to save the day.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I just, I somehow resonated with that character. I don't know why.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  That is a great combination. I would have thought of saving women and singing opera.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and he could fly and other things were bigger than him, but he had strengths beyond what you would expect. So I just felt good about.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And you wrestled, right?

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I used to wrestle, but we'll get back to that in a minute. So we're in the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Join us again for our next segment coming right up.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're in the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your resident astrophysicist, here with Colin Jost, a resident comic. Colin, welcome.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you for having me.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, well, these are Cosmic Queries on our superhero show.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is kind of an exciting.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I thought so. And you, just before the break, you, one of the questions was, what superhero would I, do I most resonate with?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, I think Batman, just because he's real.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And his toys are fantasy-like, but they're in reach.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Curiously, right?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  They're justifiable with technology.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Justifiable extrapolation of what we know today. And I confess that in childhood, I totally was digging Mighty Mouse.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was asking, is that part of what got you into wrestling, was the Mighty Mouse?

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did wrestle, in high school, college, and a little bit of graduate school. No, because when I'm wrestling, I'm not thinking I'm doing it to win the heart of a woman. I'm just doing it just to do it.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, it's a very personal thing, actually. Because if you lose, you just got beat. Nobody to blame.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no team.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no, no team, there's no, and it's not some apparatus. It's you, your muscles, your quickness, your smarts, and that's it. So for me, it was the purest form of athletic contest.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so what other questions?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  A great one.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I got to ask you, what superhero do you resonate with?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  I mean, Wolverine for me is my favorite of all time. I just, just his style.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And his attitude. He's so attitudinal.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It's pretty awesome to get shot in the head and then just like kind of shake it off and see the bullet come out of your head and just drink a beer and, you know, be unshaven. And I'm approximating the look as much as I can with hair and not be shaving.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he the only superhero that drinks beer and goes unshaven? I'm wondering.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  I'm sure there are others in binges, but he seems like the most regular.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, yeah, he's, it's a reliable form of his character.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would feel more comfortable riding a motorcycle if I had a healing power and an adamantium skeleton. Then my mom might allow it.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than be the organ donor that the rest of them are.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So this, this next question from Facebook from Eric Shaw is, if Superman needs the sun's rays for his strength, how does he still have powers at night?

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, first, I didn't know he needed the sun's rays. Oh, because he comes nearer to the yellow star.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is what, of course, the sun is actually white, but that's a separate conversation, in fact, for another show.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the sun is yellow when it's on the horizon, when it's dim enough for you to notice and look at it without protection. So sunsets are these beautiful yellow, orange colors. In the middle of the day, when the sun is not crawling its way through the muck and mire of, of the super-thick horizon-depth atmosphere.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun is not yellow, it's white. That's the color of the sun, period. If the sun were actually yellow, then white things would look yellow, by the way. If you put yellow light on a white sheet of paper.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  It looks.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The white sheet of paper is yellow. So if the sun were yellow, then snow would look yellow. But that's only near fire hydrants, last I checked, so, no. But, um, so I don't see why he just doesn't have storage batteries to store up the energy from his daytime in the sun.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Maybe. He, maybe he doesn't have powers, but at least his, the electric car he has, he can still, like, putt around in.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Superman?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  So, yeah, maybe he's got.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he's a solar power car, maybe.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Little solar power car that he gets, you don't see him at night, he just goes.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where, that's where he recharges.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  His Batmobile.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it means, wait, Superman, if you send him to the Arctic, where there's six months of darkness, he'd be pretty ineffective.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  That's the thing, yeah, and isn't that his, his, like, cave that he goes to, isn't that sort of, it looks pretty icy?

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh!

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Seems like the worst place for it, right?

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The North Pole, for six months of the year, has no sunlight.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Seems like, why go there, of all places? Should be, it should be an equator cave that he goes to.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should be an equator cave, yes. So, now, if it's only his proximity to the sun, whether or not he's receiving sunlight, then he's still an earth distance from the sun.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  So he's still getting, he's still getting some.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Getting whatever is the magic rays from the sun, whether or not it's the light.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so he's, he's gonna be okay?

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you think he'll be okay?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  We don't have to worry about him. So this is a question from Stephen King on Facebook, I assume, I hope, God, I hope it's the real Stephen King.

• 22:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stephen King.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Is, "What is the likelihood of creating a real-world arc reactor, like an Iron Man, the kind of artificial arc reactor heart that he has? What if any negative effects would be present if you were to house something like that within the human chest cavity?"

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I like that question. So that's a huge... Oh, by the way, so I resonate more with Batman than with Iron Man, because the energy source for Iron Man is too, too remote for me to embrace that. But if you... Energy depends on how you store it. If it's stored thermally, it would be very, very hot. If you store it electromechanically, you'd have a lot of what are effectively wound-up springs. All right? There are multiple, many ways you can store energy. You can store it chemically. That's what you have in the form of gunpowder. It's sitting there, ready to explode, but it's not. So it's energy built in chemically. You can think of mechanically, you can think of thermally.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if you... If it was thermally, it would eventually heat him up. You wouldn't be able to insulate it perfectly, and so that would be bad for him. That'd be bad.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Is there a chemical way that you'd have, in the way of a gunpowder, where you would have a store of it, and it would have small gradual reactions of parts of it?

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best way to do that is to have a repository of antimatter. Keep it separate from the matter, with some kind of magnetic bottle. You can't put it in a regular bottle.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  I'm just writing this down, so I can do it later.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're going back to your lab?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Hide, where's the antimatter?

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you'd leak out little bits of it to merge with the matter, and then you'd have energy at your disposal, and there'd be no bad side effects. More on antimatter when we come back to the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk Radio. The subject: superheroes. See you in a moment.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, based in New York City, where we do most of our broadcast. And I'm here in studio with Colin Jost, comedian extraordinaire.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  That's the grandiose way of saying it.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that on your resume?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Extraordinaire, yes, that's very, it's, yeah.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And verifiable, too.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was, before that, I was a journalist extraordinaire. And before that, I was a, you know, lifeguard extraordinaire.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lifeguard, yeah. And what did you major in in college?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  I majored in the history and literature of Russia and Britain. So I read some, lived in Russia for a little bit.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you died.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Nah, not that. I read some books, that's about it.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a lot of comedic repository in British.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Russia and Britain are two different ways to go about humor.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. But one, one a lot darker than the other.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of our favorite friends of StarTalk is Eugene Mirman.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's, who has total 100% Russian.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I know. That's why I gotta talk to him in Russian sometime.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know if he's still fluent, but.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, we can probably both have two lines and then end the conversation.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got more questions for me?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Questions about superheroes right now. Here's one. This is from Christian Di Maria on Facebook. And the question is, would it be possible for a sufficiently advanced race to develop controlled wormholes as a means of transportation similar to the Rainbow Bridge that Thor uses?

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, entirely. We don't wield enough power over energy in the universe to just create wormholes on a whim. If we did, and the kind of power that would require, if we harnessed all the energy produced in all the stars, all the several hundred billion stars of the Milky Way galaxy, that'd be enough to kind of do what we want to accomplish.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Which is to what, to pierce through?

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you do is you, you use that much energy, because energy and mass are the same thing. So if you wield that much energy, you can, you can, you can compress energy to smaller volumes than you can solid matter. But they both will. Have the same effect on the fabric of spacetime because mass and energy are the same in relativity. And in this universe, they're the same in terms of their effect on the universe.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And on the gravitational fields of the universe. So you'd wield this, you'd pull it out of your pocket. You say, open me a wormhole right here and there it opens and you dial up coordinates in time and in place. And you go through the wormhole, come out the other side and you can be anywhere in principle in the universe instantly. One of my favorite scenes in the movie, what's the one where the Monsters Inc?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Undiscussed in the reviews of this movie is that that movie tapped the fourth dimension. That movie was all about wormholes. Those doors were the wormholes.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would go through the door in the factory and end up in a kid's closet. No one, no one talked about this.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  By the way, here's a little extra physics.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little extra physics there. This was an awesome feature of Monsters Inc. Cause you know, they didn't come in your front door to get in your closet. It must have been some other way. It's a wormhole connecting the factory to everybody's closet. Awesome.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so possible. You don't even need to be a god like Thor to potentially down the line.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Thor wasn't a god. Thor was a regular guy in his own place. They just called him a god in Norse legend because he had powers above anybody here on earth.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Right, but then it's some legends, he's a good, right? I mean, in some things.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he's a god on earth, but in his hometown, he's just Thor.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Oh, in Asgard. Yeah, he's just.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's just a dude. Yeah, he's just, he's just a, you know, blonde hair and a tan, right? That's all he is. So he's just another guy, right?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  It's great. That's a crazy thing about Avengers is that you're just, the people are operating on all different levels. There's a guy that people will think is a god. There's a guy made of, you know, an iron man. Captain America is just kind of like stronger.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Hawkeye, a guy can shoot kind of well. That's just crazy. Scarlett Johansson can kick.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a excellent mixture.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Um, this question is, could Superman use a large telescope to view Krypton from afar, seeing his long-lost family and race before the planet was destroyed, assuming Krypton is further away in light-years than Superman is old in human-years?

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Awesome question.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Right, I love they did that, and could he then fly to Krypton and, armed with his knowledge of Krypton's past, reverse time like in Superman the Movie, number one, and therefore, prevent Krypton's destruction?

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but then he would have never come to Earth to then observe the destruction to go back and prevent the destruction.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  So it would, it would require some sort of being here, but then a time-travel element?

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying, if he came here, saw Krypton being destroyed, but didn't want it to be destroyed, and went back in time to prevent it from being destroyed, he would have never been cast adrift to have landed here on Earth.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  But then if he goes back and reverses it, would it stop, but then he would have no remembrance of what happened?

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, then he would have never come here on Earth to have stopped the explosion.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  So it's just, it eats itself, it's like you can't do it?

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, let's pick that up, after the break.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I need a break to figure it out.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's steam coming out of your ear. StarTalk Radio, back in a moment.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back in the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist, and it's my job each week to bring the universe down to Earth for you. And helping me accomplish this are people who bring different lenses from their walk of life. Today, I've got Colin Jost with me, comedian.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And definitely not astrophysicists. Non-astrophysicists.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm calling Joe's not an astrophysicist. You're reading me these questions, I've never seen them before these moments, but they come to us in all of our media outlets, Facebook, actually on Facebook, we are StarTalk Radio, and they come via Twitter, and StarTalk Radio is our Twitter handle, and what else do they come, also on our website, StarTalkRadio.net, so...

• 31:16Speaker 01

  And here's one that's pretty great from...

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I finish answering the other question? I don't think I did.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Oh, no, so I didn't quite understand it. Because it's Superman, he goes back, he finds out, he sees through telescope, Krypton is being destroyed, you know, in the past, as you know, the traces of it.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that light is just coming to reach us now.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Just reaching us now, so he flies out there, does his time travel whirligig around the planet, spins it back, saves Krypton, but then that means he never traveled to Earth.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's correct.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  So what is that, where does that leave him physically?

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Means it doesn't...

• 31:46Speaker 01

  It can't happen.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's not simply a paradox, it's a contradiction of what is even possible, so here, here's, consider it this way.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the telescope, he can go look and see Krypton in the past.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's true.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Which is crazy.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, okay, as he travels to Krypton, Krypton is still advancing into the future.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While he's traveling, he'd have to travel faster than light in order to go back in time to then...

• 32:18Speaker 01

  But can he do that, right, can he?

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Superman, and we demonstrated earlier, he can travel faster than light.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  So...

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We said that already, Superman won.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Right, so he can do that.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, all right, so yes, so he sees it destroyed, then he travels faster than light, gets there before the star explodes, but he can't save, he would have, they all would have, they're all powerful folks back there, somebody would have saved the star. They knew the star was gonna die.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, back then, he was a baby, so what, what's he gonna do?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't you think somebody there would have figured out how to save Krypton?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Or someone would have done the time travel thing on their own, the spinning thing.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but time travel doesn't stop the star from...

• 32:58Speaker 01

  They would have figured out the star, more physical.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What they would have done was move to another star.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, just do what with the hermit crab.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Away, just, they all gotta get out of there.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, just all, just high tail out of there, go find a star. That's, that's what hermit crabs do.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  This became a question for Superman's parents, what are you doing?

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  What were you thinking, guys?

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they had to get that Moses thing going, you know, send him forward and say...

• 33:19Speaker 01

  It makes, it makes a better story.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It makes a better story.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  They were martyrs for the sake of fiction. Uh, this is a question from, uh, Google Plus from Steven Burkhart. And he asks, he says, "Fun question," so he's already saying it's fun.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be the judge of that.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're very cocky. Great question here. Uh, "What element-based life form other than carbon would you be most interested in finding? Silicon, tungsten, potassium, etc.?"

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, god, silicon, of course.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  And why, why is that the...

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because if, if you remember your periodic table of elements from your chemistry class.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  You mean Si?

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that mysterious chart of boxes on the wall. You might remember that columns of elements have the same configuration of electrons in their outer shells, which means they combine with the same other elements.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So every way you can make a molecule with carbon, you can make that same molecule with silicon. So carbon monoxide, CO, you can make silicon monoxide. Carbon dioxide, you can make silicon dioxide. Wherever you find carbon in the human body, you can swap in a silicon atom for it. So in principle, you can make life based on silicon, and silicon is kind of abundant, although not as abundant as carbon, it's plenty of silicon out there. And if you were trying to invent another kind of life, based on the model that we now have, a silicon-based life, uh, would be, would be cool.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Could we, could we somehow, could we somehow create beings that are, you know, genetically the same but replacing silicon?

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, we have tools to manipulate atoms. There's be no reason why we couldn't swap one atom at a time.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Well, it just so happens I have those tools right here.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got those nano tools? So what'd be interesting is if you imagine maybe a silicon-based life form superhero, that'd be kinda interesting. I wonder what that'd be like. What kind of powers it would have, but yes, the molecules are the same, but the properties would be different. They might have different strengths, different capacity to think, different acuity of vision. Uh, this would be interesting to explore, something I've, I've never done.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The problem is that the heavier you get on the periodic table, rapidly they become more, uh, rarer and rarer.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you want any chance of life happening spontaneously, it's gotta be just hanging out doing nothing and carbon fits that bill marvelously.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I think we've run out of time.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you have a really fast question.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Let's see, uh, uh, uh. Favorite Avengers.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, favorite Avenger, I'd have to say Thor throwing a hammer. That's so primal. Right? It's, it's, it's low tech.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. You just, you get, everyone gets it.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you were a baby and that was his rattle, that's what you just, it is so, it's, he is how you feel, you know? I don't like you. And then you smash him.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Thor after 5pm.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what Bam Bam was in, in the Flintstones, right? We gotta, we gotta wrap it up. This is the end of the superhero show.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  This is a treat.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Cosmic Queries. Colin, thanks for coming on to StarTalk Radio.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you not only farewell, but I compel you to keep looking up.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a good Cosmic Query session. When we come back, I'll have Bill Nye the Science Guy and co-writer of Cosmos, Steven Soder, to talk to us more about science fiction, specifically how it's portrayed in the movies.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the Cosmic Cribs section. Of StarTalk, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. With me, in my cosmic crib, which is really just code for my office at the Hayden Planetarium, here at the American Museum of Natural History, I've got Steve Soder, friend and colleague.

• 37:14Bill Nye?

  Hello, Neil.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's an associate of the Hayden Planetarium. I've got Bill Nye, also an associate. Thanks for just coming to chill, just chew the fat.

• 37:20Bill Nye?

  I love the crib.

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, I want to talk about today, because we're just chilling. I want to talk about science as represented in movies. And lately, there was like Interstellar came out, and I tweeted that the lead five characters are all portraying scientists. And in it, there have the roles of father, or son, or mentor, or wife, or child.

• 37:41Bill Nye?

  Also physicists who changed the world, who's a woman.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all, all, sort of, all personal relationships are explored in it. I thought that was a good thing. But here we have a movie that fully goes there. It wants the wormhole, and a black hole, time dilation. It's all in the movie. All of it. And then I think of other movies that...

• 38:03Bill Nye?

  Also apocalyptic. The world's ending. The Earth is no longer livable.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, isn't that just the storyline of every science fiction movie?

• 38:10Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying. We just tossed in a little apocalypse.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. The science fiction movie is, they go into space, and bad stuff happens.

• 38:14Bill Nye?

  Oh, man.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the plot of every science fiction movie.

• 38:17Bill Nye?

  Bad stuff's happening on Earth, they gotta go into space.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, in that, in that particular case. But I think of movies that have thought a lot about the science that's in them. Interstellar is one of them. As an advisor, they had Kip Thorne, who's one of our colleagues at Caltech. I have one of his books, it's sitting here on my shelf, Gravitation. The only book that you ever learn about, just by carrying it around. It's, it's huge, thick book, with the proportions of a, of a New York Yellow Pages.

• 38:42Bill Nye?

  In fact, when you had such things.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If anyone is young enough, old enough to remember the Yellow Pages.

• 38:45Bill Nye?

  So, by the way, Steve, I walked up into space sciences at Cornell University campus one day.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As an undergraduate?

• 38:52Bill Nye?

  As an undergraduate, and there's Carl Sagan, and I'm sure you were there, and Kip Thorne, talking about black holes. Falling into a black hole, living, ending up in another part of the universe at another time. And that was very compelling. And so that was part of the idea of Interstellar, is that you'd end up... You would control where you ended up.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because you had some access to the space-time continuum. But I think of other films, Steve, you've obviously seen Contact, the story, the film, well, there was a book and a film with it. I was impressed with not only the science of that film, but how much attention they gave to public's reaction to the possibility, the reality in that case, of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, not just extraterrestrial life. Steve, do you think much about science in films? Do I think much about science in films? Yeah. No. No, you don't. You just let the film be whatever it is. Oh, you are so kind.

• 39:51Bill Nye?

  Oh, that's what's so troubling to me.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Steve.

• 39:54Bill Nye?

  Whenever there's, by the way, when there's an airplane disaster movie.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I mean, if they get something clearly wrong, I think about it, yeah. Well, that's where we're trying to head here in the cosmic crib.

• 40:04Bill Nye?

  Where did they get something wrong in that?

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, in Contact? Yeah, they got something really, really wrong in Contact. You didn't know this? I'd forgotten. Oh, no, so I'm sitting next, well, so I'm at the premiere.

• 40:15Bill Nye?

  Mining your own business.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never got invited to any premiere in my life. I got, just 18 years ago, right? And I got invited to a premiere, so there's a New Yorker in LA for a premiere of a movie. So I'd say the stupid thing, like, there's popcorn on display. And I said, "How much is the popcorn?" And the guy said, "Oh, it's $17." And then they all started laughing, because it's all free. It's a premiere, the movie company pays for everything. I didn't know this, I was an idiot, okay? You were just young and naive.

• 40:42Bill Nye?

  What happened was, what happened was...

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just young and naive equals idiot. So here's what happened. So I'm there, I'm sitting next to Frank Drake, who's a professor of astronomy at Cornell, famous for what?

• 40:52Bill Nye?

  The Drake Equation.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Drake Equation. Bill, recite the Drake Equation, or tell us what it is.

• 40:55Bill Nye?

  It's, you estimate the likelihood, the number of intelligent life forms that would be in your galaxy or the cosmos. Based on multiplying a series of what I would call fudge factors. It's multiplicative, it's algebraic. You multiply number of stars times likelihood of planets around stars, times likelihood of planets like Earth around stars, times likelihood of planets like Earth that have intelligent life, that times likelihood of intelligent planets with intelligent life right now.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, with technology, right, right.

• 41:26Bill Nye?

  Even because there are, if I may, billions and billions of stars, you end up with a pretty significant number of intelligent lives.

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, watch what happens. So, Jodie Foster, her character, is there next to...

• 41:38Bill Nye?

  Aroway.

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Ellie Aroway is there next to...

• 41:41Bill Nye?

  Matthew McConaughey's character is in both movies.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and he's a Palmer Johns or whatever.

• 41:47Bill Nye?

  He's a preacher.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a failed priest.

• 41:50Bill Nye?

  Well, he's a medium priest.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:53Bill Nye?

  Some success.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or some pastor, right. So, anyway, so they're there, that's not even relevant. They're there, and she is talking about the romance of the night sky, and he's up there saying, "So, what do you think about it?" And she says, "You know, if there were a hundred billion stars in our galaxy..."

• 42:10Bill Nye?

  A hundred billion, at that time, four...

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's fine, that's fine, a hundred billion's fine, fine. To astronomical accuracy, it's fine. Okay, a hundred billion, sir. "If only one in a million had planets, and only one in a million of those had life, and only one in a million of those had intelligent life, that still leaves millions of planets..." And I say, "Oh, I'm up to the minus six."

• 42:31Bill Nye?

  Ten to the minus, ten to the ninth times ten to the minus six times ten to the minus six.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're left with one millionth of a civilization.

• 42:39Bill Nye?

  I remember that now, yeah, they blew that, yes.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, they blew that. And then, then I said, "I'm blaming Jodie Foster."

• 42:46Bill Nye?

  Because that was her best take, bro.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what?

• 42:48Bill Nye?

  She wanted to go home and then...

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm blaming Jodie Foster, because last I checked, like, she went to Yale, right? You'd think they have arithmetic at Yale.

• 42:56Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, she would know to check this number that's coming out of her mouth. I would have, so I blame it all.

• 43:02Bill Nye?

  She's playing a character.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm play...

• 43:04Bill Nye?

  And you don't know what happens later in the screenplay, Mr. Professional Character Actor Guy. You gotta read the lines that you are given.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because maybe they had to be that.

• 43:12Bill Nye?

  It's the script writer.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the script writer, no, but still, I mean, yeah. So, but that was, that was a quibble. I mean, I thought the movie was brilliantly conceived, especially how the public interacted.

• 43:23Bill Nye?

  Yes, but I say this all the time, as CEO of the planetary science, as a product of the Frank Drake influence, the Carl Sagan influence, and the Steve Soder influence. If we were to discover life on another world, and the places to look that we could do in my lifetime and listeners' lifetime is Mars and Europa, the moon of Jupiter.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So far, it's.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Enceladus, moon of Saturn.

• 43:46Bill Nye?

  I was gonna throw the, Enceladus is a...

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Good candidate.

• 43:49Bill Nye?

  It's good, but it's a whole nother, it's not seawater.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Stephen, you lived, you lived through this. In, in my day, the planets were the great destinations until Voyager, and the Voyager revealed that the moons...

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Are more interesting.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were where the action is. And that you could have a civilization possibly on a moon of a larger planet that might not even have a, a rocky surface to land on.

• 44:10Bill Nye?

  A good-sized moon, though. We're not messing around.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be good-sized, like, moon-sized moon.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Well, there's bigger-than-moon-sized moons in our solar system.

• 44:17Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Ganymede is a little bigger.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  And there's Titan, which has an atmosphere which is a lot denser than the atmosphere of the Earth.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Titan rocks.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:24Bill Nye?

  Apparently it is rocky with oceans and tides.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  I see, I see. But it's, it's oceans of liquid methane. It has hydrological cycle, it has weather, it has rain, it has clouds like the Earth, but the liquid involved is methane, not water.

• 44:37Bill Nye?

  So, just listen, everybody, this, these are, these guys are talking about real things.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, if, if we were life-form based on liquid methane, we would not even be saying it's cold. That's just the natural temperature.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  We're just saying that the Earth is a furnace.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we come to the Earth, we would, like, combust. Right. Right. Because we have methane.

• 44:55Bill Nye?

  Dr. T, you're a what?

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, if I went to, if I went there and inhaled some methane, and they came to Earth, where there's oxygen in the atmosphere, I should not go near any Campbells. Isn't that correct?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the methane will combust on contact with the oxygen.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  If there's still enough of it when you exhale, yes.

• 45:13Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:15Bill Nye?

  Now, your wife's from Fairbanks.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But she's raised in Fairbanks, Alaska.

• 45:18Bill Nye?

  And it's a big party, a buddy of mine, a guy went to high school with this, it's a big day when it's minus forty, because they can pour propane on the ground, it stays a liquid.

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, my, my, my wife's sister, who we visited often, when it gets that cold, their propane tanks liquefy, and so they can't get gas into the stove. So they gotta go out, heat the propane tank, so that it, so that it vaporizes, so that they can unturn the, this is like life in Alaska.

• 45:44Bill Nye?

  And it's fun for them. That aside, by the way.

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but, why don't we get back to movies? Here, so, so, Bill, what's your, what science movie do you think was the, got it the best?

• 45:57Bill Nye?

  Well, I think contact.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Contact.

• 45:59Bill Nye?

  Seriously.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you agree with me on that?

• 46:00Bill Nye?

  I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon, but I really very much enjoyed, until it got too weird, 2001.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, 2001 got weird.

• 46:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah, then, you know, I won't say jumped the shark, it just, uh, went back in time with the...

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think 2001, had they known about wormholes and black holes?

• 46:17Speaker 03

  They would've used it.

• 46:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would've used it.

• 46:19Bill Nye?

  Sure, who wouldn't?

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Duh.

• 46:21Bill Nye?

  No, but the whole...

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Well, actually, they had a scene that was like going through a wormhole in 2001, if you remember.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not quite, but it's not hole-like. It's very...

• 46:29Speaker 03

  We don't know what a wormhole looks like.

• 46:31Bill Nye?

  And one of the insights that you do get from Interstellar...

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what a wormhole looks like.

• 46:33Bill Nye?

  Sure you do.

• 46:36Bill Nye?

  Uh, one of the, uh, one of the insights that you do get from Interstellar, despite what else you might not get from it, is that a black, uh, wormhole is a sphere. There's, you can come in any direction.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, a hole in space is a sphere. That's correct. It's a three-dimensional hole. From, there's another movie I think is under-appreciated, well, underspoken of its science, and that's Deep Impact.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. It's an asteroid hits Earth.

• 47:02Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Unlike Armageddon, where the asteroid parts had good aim, and one hits the Eiffel Tower, one, like, decapitates the Chrysler Building, if I, maybe I'm mixing up a couple of movies, but basically, they aim the asteroids to civilizations' icons. In Deep Impact, they said, "Look, most of the world is ocean, let's just have the sucker hit the ocean. You can still destroy the coastal cities with a huge tsunami," which they did for New York.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  That film, by the way, had very good science consulting, and they took them seriously.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this is my point. Oh, you, so you saw the, you saw Deep Impact? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did it right. Unlike Armageddon, which I couldn't even, I don't even criticize Armageddon, because it's too over...

• 47:43Bill Nye?

  It's over the top. By the way, listeners, something I'd like you to think about is an asteroid impact, and what we would do about an oncoming impactor. Uh, there is no evidence that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No evidence at all. They didn't have opposable thumbs, and they had that walnut-sized brain.

• 48:02Bill Nye?

  You don't know. You don't know what they could've...

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or whatever, how big was their brain? It was littler.

• 48:05Bill Nye?

  It depends on who you're talking with.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  The brains might've been bigger than ours, but their bodies were so much bigger that it didn't matter.

• 48:11Bill Nye?

  But, you guys, you can be dismissive. But when I watch how ants can get organized, termites can get astonishing things done. You don't know what the ancient dinosaurs could have pulled off. That said-

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they had gotten organized.

• 48:23Bill Nye?

  That said, we're the guys with the prob- we're the people, we're the organisms with the problem if there is an impact or are coming toward us. And another thing to think about, science fiction-wise, is maybe the reason we've never heard from another civilization is because they did not pass an asteroid test. They did not deflect an oncoming asteroid-

• 48:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they've all gone extinct by their own asteroid-

• 48:45Bill Nye?

  ...delete out there, yeah.

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Guys, we gotta wrap it up. This is The Cosmic Crib. Bill, thanks for being- thanks for coming by the office.

• 48:54Bill Nye?

  Thank you. It's cozy.

• 48:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Steve Soder, thanks for coming by, as always. Likewise. All right. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, signing off from StarTalk.