Cosmic Queries – Renaming Time

Can you measure time without something moving? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice tackle your cosmic questions, from the Silurian Hypothesis to singularities to the edge of the known universe.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we just did a grab bag and people asked questions from all over the world.

• 0:03Chuck Nice?

  And finally, we know if you wear boxers or briefs.

• 0:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not. Coming up on StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Oh yeah. Chuck?

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gonna help me out here?

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Is there a theme today?

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Nope, this is a grab bag.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just random?

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  Whatever they want.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ask me anything.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  Let the people speak and ask.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's get right into it.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Inquiring minds want to know. Here we go.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get right into it.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay, Eric44 says, "Hey legends, Eric here, exercise physiologist and spaceflight physiology researcher from New York City."

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  He says, "My question is, all motion requires time, but does all time include motion?"

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would say the measurement of time requires not only motion, but something that repeats.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about it.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you ever measured time with something that did not repeat periodically? The answer is no.

• 1:24Chuck Nice?

  No, you can't.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A day repeats every day, seconds repeat, everything repeats, months repeat, years repeat.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where there is no repeated motion, there can be no coherent measure of time. All you'd be able to do in your own reference frame is sequence events. This came before that, before that, right.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  I remember in the before four times.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the before four, four, four times.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm older than you. Before four, four, four. So now the sequence of events can be different depending on your reference frame relativistically. You could be moving in a different direction and you will experience those events in a different sequence than I will. But in my reference frame, like I said, if nothing repeats...

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time cannot be measured.

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With any meaning or repeatability. So that's a great, it's a fun, interesting philosophical question.

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but, space can exist without a time, I would think. Space doesn't need time.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  No, it doesn't. I mean, it's, it's spaces like, I'm here.

• 2:40Chuck Nice?

  You know, I'm not going anywhere.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to measure something, that's your business.

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  That's what you, I don't care what you measure. I'm right here.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there you go.

• 2:50Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool. Well, there you go, Eric forty-four.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why answer that quickly?

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  That was a great one.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, we're in, we're off, we're off like a rocket.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is Maurice Backer. Says, Dear Lord Nice, Dear Dr. Tyson, I am Eliyada from the Netherlands and I am twelve. My question is, what is the one book that every twelve-year-old should read? And my name is pronounced Eli- Eliyada. Okay. Thanks for the phonetic there, Eliyada.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He knew in advance.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I called you Eliyada. And, uh, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, uh.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop.

• 3:27Chuck Nice?

  No, no, okay, Eliyada. And I didn't get it right. She then asked, I should read these beforehand.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  Uh, anyway, universal respect and greetings.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Delightful. What a mature twelve-year-old.

• 3:41Chuck Nice?

  Very mature twelve-year-old.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's clearly not written by an American kid.

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt, you know?

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm very biased here. Because I only write books that I think people should read to get them enlightened about the universe.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I find gaps in the publishing landscape.

• 4:02Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientific landscape, I say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bridge that gap.

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna put something there.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll go put something there.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I can say, at age twelve, writing like that, and plus the Dutch, they, they're fluent in English.

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean.

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so.

• 4:19Chuck Nice?

  Even though they're free to.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's not the Dutch. No, you're mixing that up with the Swedes.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  With the Swedes, I know, but it's funnier when, you know.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Like Dutch is actually

• 4:33Chuck Nice?

  That's actually Dutch, but it doesn't make for a funnier, you know Makes for a funny joke, but anyway, you're right.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• 4:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, has a young people's version of it.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Called Astrophysics.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  For young people in a hurry.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I keep thinking, young people should never be in a hurry.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, they gotta get back to them video games.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? I'll read this real quick, because Valorant is waiting.

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Halo ain't gonna play itself. Gotta get back to the video game. Let me see what Neil says before I get back to Roblox.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so that book was conceived for ages eight to 12.

• 5:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow, cool.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which collectively is called The Tweens.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and its value is, it's not just that it's, is it dumbed down? No, it's, it folds in a lot of my own background when I was that age. Cause I was a geek kid.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you get to sort of live with me through your own years that you're reading the book.

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it might have, still have value to a precocious 12-year-old.

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if not, then just go right to Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. It's not Astrophysics, it's, it's real Astrophysics.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Astrophysics.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Astrophysics.

• 5:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I have cherry picked it for the coolest stuff in the whole universe.

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what's there from Big Bang.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  I call it the book you should read when you don't really wanna know the granular details, but you wanna be able to have a cool conversation at a cocktail party.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll totally equip you to do so.

• 6:12Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's that, but then, if he just wants to have fun, definitely the Merlin book.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Merlin's Tour of the Universe. It's a Q and A, he's asking a cute question and answer right now. Uh, it's illustrated by my brother.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a fun, I think it's a fun book, so forgive me for recommending my own book.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  For shamelessly promoting myself.

• 6:37Chuck Nice?

  No, you're supposed to. That's great.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's not shameless. I'm doing it with complete shame.

• 6:40Chuck Nice?

  You're doing it with, right. I know, and like, I know what I'm doing.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Ain't no shame attached here.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think he will enjoy those. I'm certain of it.

• 6:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're written with that in mind. That's all.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  Now, is Elida a boy's name or a girl's name? I don't know.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. He or she. Elida?

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Elida. Yeah.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's neutral, let's, we'll degenderize it.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we'll call them they.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Elida, sorry to misgender you, if in fact that's what I did.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  If, right.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, those, I think any of those three books will, as Chuck said, you can get some good reading in between video game playing.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, we're gonna play itself.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  All right, here's Andrew Bowen. I'm riding at the edge of our universe, since the Big Bang, and moving with the expansion. What does it look like when I'm facing back at us? And what does it look like when I'm facing outward ahead?

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks just like it does here and now.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  Ooh!

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are at the horizon

• 7:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of anybody who's at our horizon.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And anybody at our horizon sees the universe all around them like anybody else does.

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Chuck Nice?

  Yep, that's right.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what'll hap, what would happen is, if you, in this, imagine this instant, go to our horizon in this instant, light from us emitted 13.8 billion years ago is only now just reaching you. You will see all of us as galaxies being born.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this would be your horizon.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  That's what, that's what it is.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that works.

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, that's, that's so cool.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are all equally as far away from the origin of the universe as each other.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  It's like being in the middle of the ocean.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go to your horizon, you're still in the ocean.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  You're still in the ocean.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:43Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow, great question, Andrew. I love it.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, we don't know how far the universe extends beyond our horizon.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just where you don't, it might be a point where land shows up.

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No matter how big the ocean is.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there might be a point where you run out of galaxies in the universe.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  And stuff, right.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:02Chuck Nice?

  But we don't know that because...

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because every direction we look, we see galaxies being born.

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we are deep within a spacetime continuum that's much larger than our own bubble.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Ah, man, that's so...

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you know what happened if?

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  If?

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  If?

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One day.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cosmic microwave background disappears.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that would mean that our horizon, which is expanding, at what rate?

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's gotta be, well, supposedly, isn't it faster than the speed of light now?

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, just a visual horizon. It's, it's, it's expanding at one light year per year.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in a billion years, we'll be 14.8 billion years to our visual horizon. All right, so, the point is, if the cosmic microwave background disappears.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you just see galaxies up to that edge, that means our horizon is washing over a part of the universe where there is no matter. There are no galaxies.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we would have reached the edge of any material substance in the universe.

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Right, cuz we're, now, wait, is that because we're traveling?

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm, well, I'm, no, no, our horizon is continuing to move outward.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cuz it's moving out, right, it's moving out.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it'll always find a galaxy being born.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? It's, until it doesn't.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  I gotcha. And so, right, once we get past that, that means nothing's there.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing's there.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, correct.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. That's like, that's finally getting beyond the ocean and land.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  All right, wow, that was cool.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  I'm Jasmine Wilson and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 10:56Chuck Nice?

  So, let's go to Young Han. Young Han.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spell Young.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Y-O-U-N-G.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  Young Han, who says, "Mr. Tyson, I love your work and your show. Can you talk about the Silurian hypothesis and how it impacts how we should view our own species, civilizations, and specialness, or lack thereof here on Earth? If advanced civilization is so fleeting and difficult to detect in our own fossil record, is it going to be easier or harder to detect in space?" Hmm.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't it be fun if we were just the nth intelligent civilization to rise up on planet Earth? Or even the nth civilization of humans that had rose up-

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  And-

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Destroyed themselves and rose up again multiple times.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you'd think, I think, we would see a record of this-

• 12:00Chuck Nice?

  Somewhere.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somewhere in the fossils.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd think.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'd be a Statue of Liberty sticking out of the ground. Damn you! Damn you all the hell! You apes! You-

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'd be, I mean, that's an example of a-

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Silurian civilization.

• 12:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That predated the planet of the apes, because that was Earth.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it seems to me we would find a record of it. If we find-

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bones, we find other fossilized artifacts of dinosaurs from sixty-five million years ago.

• 12:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, and by the way, the biggest mammals of the day were these tiny little rodents.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Running underfoot, trying to not get eaten by T-Rex as hors d'oeuvres.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you can't presume that would have, that there were big-brained mammals before that. Cause that was the origin of the mammals on Earth.

• 13:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around that time.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Around that time, right. Is there a possibility that the civilization before us were not mammalian?

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, I, I haven't seen any like dinosaur casinos.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I mean, just you would see things.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, we're not that, we're not ignorant of the history of what happened in Earth's crust. Here's where you'd have a problem.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can ask the question, what is the time scale for all of Earth's crust to get subducted back down and come out in a volcano?

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that would destroy all evidence.

• 13:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, all the, all the evidence would be gone because it'd become molten. And then it would spew out again and cover the Earth.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely gone.

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, different parts of the Earth are younger than other parts.

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The middle of Iceland is brand new.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like made yesterday.

• 13:55Chuck Nice?

  All of the big island of Hawaii.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iceland is on the mid-Atlantic ridge that is spewing out. I visited there recently.

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's this, this is a whole new land between where I was standing and another ledge on the other side. And I did the math because continents drift about the rate your fingernails grow.

• 14:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I did a fast, and I calculated how many millions of years that would have taken, but still, it's new land.

• 14:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to other places.

• 14:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go to places where it's not regenerated that rapidly and you don't find other evidence.

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, yeah, it's very unlikely is, was, yeah. Un, unless the dinosaurs were like the ABC TV show that used to be.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What TV show?

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Called Dinosaurs, where.

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  You never saw that?

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  I just remember it was a little dinosaur and whenever-

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just remember the cartoon Land Before Time. I remember that one.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah. A land before time. Do I know that one?

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a cartoon movie.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  I don't think I know that one. But, yeah, dinosaurs, there was like-

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they were just living.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  They were just living like regular human beings. They had jobs, they had everything. And everybody worked for one corporation called the We Say So Corporation and, uh-

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How did I miss this?

• 15:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and then there was one little baby dinosaur and every time his father would come in the room, he would jump on his head and hit him with a pot and go, "Not the mama, not the mama." In other words, like, "I don't want you. Get me, mom."

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is, so this is like The Flintstones, except they're dinosaurs.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole world that they-

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  A whole world, just like The Flintstones, but all run by dinosaurs, yeah. It was a pretty, pretty wild little show back in the day.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the thing about like the size of their brains, you know, there's an issue there.

• 15:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The higher levels of thought-

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  The higher levels of thought that might not be resident-

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Might not be happening.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  In a dinosaur whose brain is-

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an intriguing idea.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't, but I don't, I think we would see evidence of it and we don't.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so in that case, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, I love it.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is not always the case.

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  Not always the case.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. All right, this is James H. English, who says, "Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice." It's James from Denmark. Uh, by the way, James, uh, we apologize.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  We're so sorry. And, you know, all this talk, uh-

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Greenland?

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Of Greenland. We have nothing to do with it, okay? Uh, we're just letting you know. All right, it's, it's like, you know, it's like our uncle got into the liquor cabinet while he was on his meds and now he's just sitting in a chair going, "I know we should buy Greenland, that's what I think." So, I'm sorry. So here's what James says, "I heard on a previous episode that what we think of as singularities at the heart of a black hole may not actually exist. But I'm not sure I understood. We know black holes exist, but what does it mean to say the singularities may just be mathematical artifacts?"

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, good question. Love these.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  Pretty wild.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you just follow general relativity math-

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the, the object collapses under its own weight.

• 17:03Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it collapses, the gravity on its surface continues to rise. It reaches a point where the gravity on the surface has an escape velocity greater than the speed of light. At that point, light does not escape, but it continues to collapse. When we talk about the size of a black hole, functionally, we're talking about the size of the event horizon.

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But inside the event horizon, all bets are off. So the matter keeps shrinking. According to the general theory of relativity, the gravity is so severe that nothing can stop it, and it shrinks to zero volume.

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right, and wow, that-

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's just crazy. What does that even mean?

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, what does it mean?

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We all presume that there's some other law of physics that's gonna prevent that, but that calculation is at the limits of the applicability of the general theory of relativity.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why we know in advance that the general theory of relativity has limits.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Limits to its applicability.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Whereas quantum physics have yet to find a limit.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got smart people on that frontier, string theorists, who are trying to send the math into that singularity to try to resolve that problem.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  And it's- Because if you do, then you reconcile-

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You reconcile-

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  You reconcile general relativity with quantum physics.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you will.

• 18:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That's pretty wild.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and more playfully, this fact that it goes to zero.

• 18:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people say that's where God divides by zero.

• 18:36Chuck Nice?

  Mm.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you know, remember, you're not supposed to-

• 18:38Chuck Nice?

  You can't do that, or you're not supposed to do it.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't find a zero.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  I still don't know why. I'm just like, you know.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you tried it?

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  Because zero divided by zero is, I got nothing.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's undefined.

• 18:48Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's my point, but I can't define it. I started with nothing, I divided nothing, I got nothing. There you go, that's a good song.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, thank you, Billy Preston. When I first heard that song, I said, really? Is that the best math you can give me? In this disco era? I was in high school when that came out.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Everybody was high on cocaine, baby. They weren't trying to do math.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who are you trying to impress with this math here? I could hook you up with some good formulas.

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's so funny. Okay, here we go. Uh, this is Michael Trilling. He says, "I'm an artist and I have been working in stained glass recently."

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 19:24Chuck Nice?

  "It had me thinking, how can light travel through some materials but not others? What makes something transparent at an atomic level?"

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't, I don't have a good answer for that. I have an answer, but I know in advance.

• 19:39Chuck Nice?

  It's not good?

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. What I, so I'm, I'm giving like a just so answer.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so transparent media. There's nothing to change the pathway of the light through the medium. And so it maintains a straight direction.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so it comes out the other side, you see whatever was on the previous side of that material. If the structure of the lattice or the molecules or the atoms is such that the light is either absorbed or dispersed, because it can still be transparent to light, but you can't see through it.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the word for translucent?

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  Translucent.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, light still gets through.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  Frosted glass.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Frosted glass, but the path the light took was varied, and so there's no coherent image that comes through to the other side. Here's a little known fact, as this person surely knows, light travels slower in a medium than it travels in a vacuum.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It travels slowest in a diamond, which helps it internally reflect, so that when light comes in from one direction, it pops out a different direction.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When, when it's cut, when the facets are just right.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, right.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why diamonds have a certain radiance of their own.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When they're just really messing with the light that came in.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  So, Rihanna was wrong. It's not shine bright like a diamond, it's just reflect, refract light like a diamond.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was that from, Ocean's Eight?

• 21:08Chuck Nice?

  No, she, she, she has a song, "Shine bright like a diamond."

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry, I didn't know that.

• 21:12Chuck Nice?

  Everybody loves it.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not shining.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's not shining at all.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why they put her in Ocean's Eight?

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Probably, and that, and she's Rihanna.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, couple more, go.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Alex Romillion says this. Greetings, Dr. Tyson and your ragtag team of lifelong learners. I'm Alex from northeast England. My question. There's a lot of talk about mining the moon. Wouldn't that be a bad idea considering if we're transferring mass from the moon to Earth? We won't make the moon lighter because of the gravitational effects it has on Earth? I.e. the tides? So we could over time and eventually stop. What other effects could it have? Regards from a lifelong learner.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. And I love lifelong learners.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you for checking in.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Couple of things.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Couple of things.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First, two things. So it is likely that whatever we mine on the moon will stay on the moon or go to other places in the solar system where we're doing work.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not likely that the moon has something so valuable that we need to bring it back.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  Bring it back to the earth.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially since the moon was carved out of our crust in a collision between a Mars-sized protoplanet and Earth.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sideswipes up, our crust goes into orbit, coalesces to form the moon.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the moon is, it's our crust.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  That's probably not too valuable.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not too valuable, not too valuable.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To go there and then bring it back. So now, but suppose we did.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose we mined 100% of the moon.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, right?

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brought the whole damn moon back, piece by piece.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? All right, we still have tides.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From?

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  The sun.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun.

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  All right, because.

• 23:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sun tides are about a third as strong as the moon tides.

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you still have tide, not as big, not as bodacious, but you still have tides. How much heavier does Earth weigh? The moon is a little more than 1% the mass of the earth.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's nothing.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's nothing.

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  I ain't doing that.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't, that ain't doing that.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  That's a mosquito on an elephant.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you weigh, so 100 pounds on earth,

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you'd weigh 101 pounds and a little and change.

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, that's, that's barely worth it.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You fluctuate that.

• 23:40Chuck Nice?

  That's not worth the trip.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between meals and between poop.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you fluctuate.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that happens to me every morning. You know what I mean? Get up on the scale like, damn. Go to the bathroom. All right.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, it's not, don't worry about it. Yeah, it's, it's a big moon, but earth is even bigger.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we good.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Bass Usterweld. And Bass says, greetings, Dr. Tyson, Sir Chuck. Bass from the Netherlands here. Something that's bothered me for a while is the term time.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Why do we still call it that? Time isn't absolute. It's relative and experiences differently depending on our motion through spacetime. A photon doesn't experience time at all.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Wouldn't it perhaps be better to rename time in a scientific context? Would something like observer-related perception of reality not be a better representative of what we should call time? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Have a beautiful day. I don't have more time for this, Mr. Usterweld. Okay.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have one answer.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  So it's a cool, cool little thing that is positing.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time has one syllable.

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what he read there are count the syllables.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Count the syllables.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Uh, observer, relative, perception of reality.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, it's fourteen syllables.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  Fourteen syllables.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time has one syllable.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we, so take that word and make it mean what we want it to mean.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  And by the way.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the meaning of the word.

• 25:39Chuck Nice?

  And you can't even say, what time is it with his, you would have to say, what is your observer-related perception of reality right now?

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's certain things that we do, just because it's simple. For example, our words that describe the sun and the horizon are pre-Copernican.

• 25:57Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't say to you, Chuck, at what time does Earth rotate such that our sightline to the horizon reveals the sun sitting out there in space? I, instead, I say, when is sunrise?

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  And when sunset?

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when sunset.

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think we're okay with that.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because the sun didn't really rise at all.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, from your point of view.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But still, it's a simple, two-syllable word.

• 26:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I don't mind precision, but not at the expense of economy.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  All right, very cool. All right, here we go. This is Zach Sweet, and Zach says, hello, Dr. Tyson Lord Nice. Zach here from Moonsville, New York, or Munsville, New York. You've talked about knowing mathematically how to create a wormhole in previous cosmic queries and other explainers. I was wondering, what is keeping us from taking the mathematics from paper and applying them to the physical world, going from script to screen, so to speak?

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I like that.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Thanks in advance.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. Uh, so, the problem is, we're missing an ingredient.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. We need matter.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or some substance that has negative gravity.

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, matter has gravity.

• 27:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, matter can make black holes where you're compressing things down into one place.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a wormhole requires you pry open the fabric of spacetime.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you'd be parking this negative matter, this negative gravity substance, in a way that you pried open a tunnel through spacetime.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  The fabric of spacetime itself.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fabric of spacetime itself.

• 27:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we would know how to configure it, how much of it we need.

• 27:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we don't have it.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, there are people who say, "Well, what about dark energy?" That's a negative gravity pressure in the vacuum of space.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Of space.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Since we don't know what it is, I'm not saying, "Let's set up a factory to make wormholes out of it." I'm not ready to do that.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if one day we know what it is and that we can harness it and then package it and sell it, yeah.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm all in for wormholes. Oh, my gosh.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  That'd be very cool.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want wormholes everywhere.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in the back of your refrigerator connected to your grocery.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now you're going Homer Simpson on me.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm running low on milk to check on you.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  I just reach into the refrigerator, I'm at the grocery store, grab some milk.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no, the grocery does that for you.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh, he'll have your package. Oh, he stocks your fridge from the wormhole.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they just open it up.

• 28:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, I take it back. That's dope.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's totally dope.

• 28:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I love it.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're never low on any supply and they'll know the rate and you don't have to go travel.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, oh, my gosh.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that is fresh direct direct.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the wormhole edition of fresh direct. So, and there's so many things that we just take for granted require transportation systems that would just be rendered obsolete with wormholes, such as on Star Trek, the transporter.

• 29:05Chuck Nice?

  Right. Right. You don't need to deconstruct your entire body molecularly. Put it into a pattern buffer and then beam it somewhere and recreate it.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hoping you get the molecule straight.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  Hoping that you get the same pattern in the exact same sequence.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With all the neurosynaptic memories and everything.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you just walk through a portal and you're there.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you are.

• 29:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're there. It would render that solution to travel obsolete.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but it would just ruin like the most awesome effect that Star Trek came up with, which is.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  It's very cool.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right Chuck, we got time for two more.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a lot done in this one.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  We got a lot done today.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Am I getting better at giving short answers, maybe?

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  I think the questions might be helping. No, I'm joking. Yes. Here we go. This is James Leggett. Hi, y'all. This is James from Midland, Texas.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Midland, Texas. I know Midland, Texas.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  The place where baby Jessica fell down the well. James, let me explain something to you, James. Let me just, let me just help you out for a second.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, stop.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  That is not a claim to fame. That y'all let a little baby fall down a hole. And that you couldn't get her out. And that the whole country had to find about it.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whole country learned about it.

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  The whole country learned about it before you were able to get this child out of that hole. Okay?

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know Midland. It's a, it's a, the Twin Cities there. Midland, Odessa.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Midland and Odessa?

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Midland, the rich folk live in Midland.

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back when I was there, that was.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  That was the deal?

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a very clear, clearly understood divide.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In, in the, in the landscape.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Well, James says this. Since photons have no mass, how do they carry the image of their source to, say, a telescope or an eyeball? So what does it mean to say, uh, we see something because we process photons? There seems to be nothing there in a photon to process.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  Where?

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  In the mass, in the massless energy of a photon, is this information that we receive? This keeps bugging me, man, so please, help.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me hook up my, my board from, from Midland.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  From Midland, all right now.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mid, Midland, Texas.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  Midland, Texas.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Midland. So, here you go.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you took all the photons and just crammed them through the one little opening and didn't have a lens.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you would not have an image. You would just have light. That's what we do when we take a spectrum of an object.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We take all the light, funnel it down into what's called a slit. Goes through the prism or equivalent device. And you see how much energy, how many photons of different wavelengths is coming from that source. It's not an image at all.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  It's not an image.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know what the hell the thing looks like.

• 31:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have this many that are red, this many blue photons. This has extra photons in a particular place. Cause an atom is sending you energy extra in that zone. And you just look at the spectrum and that is a no image measurement of the object. If you take the photons and have a lens, then there's a photon that came from your nose. A photon that came from your toe. A photon that came from the top of your head. It's a different color.

• 32:20Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause your hair is black, your skin is brown, your shoes are red. And so this will be a red photon, this will be a black photon. And the lens reconstructs where they came from. Onto your detector. You focus it up. The photon lands exactly according to what the image was. So you're right, a photon alone contains no image information. You need the ensemble of photons to do so.

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Dude, that was a really good question, James.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I hope he feels good about that.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that you should be, that's I learned something just then. That's really damn cool, you know? All right. All right, well, last question, as you said.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  This is Alan Short.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the Netherlands to Midland Odessa to Denmark.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To northeast England.

• 33:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, you're gonna love this one. This is Alan Short from Thailand.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thailand.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm joking, I'm lying. This is Alan Short from Italy.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Italy.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Italy. Buongiorno Alan. He says, with the profound admiration and the utmost awe of Professor Tyson and HRH Chuck Nice. I don't know what HRH means.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His Royal Highness.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  I'll take it.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I was a kid, when, you know, we have juvenile sensing, we'd say his royal heiny.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was about to say, that's, because that's exactly, I was gonna say royal hind parts. But don't, yeah, royal heiny. Okay. According to one theory, our universe is located inside of a black hole. If this is the case, where is our universe's singularity? Likewise, seeing as we have proof that our universe is expanding, why are we not seeing other black holes, presumably themselves being self-contained universes, expanding and taking over our universe? With much love. Thank you. Alan.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, Brian Green would be better to answer that, so I'll give what I can.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so a couple of things.

• 34:25Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some equations related to a black hole apply to our entire universe.

• 34:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Such as we have an event horizon, we have a horizon.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Right, we do.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is analogous to an event horizon of a black hole.

• 34:37Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, if you look at the density of matter in the universe out to that event horizon, it is the density of matter you would need to make a black hole the size of our universe.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's cer, but is it a black hole? Okay? And so if it is, then there ought to be a singularity somewhere that we haven't seen. And we'll know where it is.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so...

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Unless we're just the information of the black hole.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  And so what we're seeing is the holographic information of the black hole. The black hole is inside our black hole.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than information. I want to be, I want to be a boy.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's Italian, that's a Pinocchio reference.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  That's Pinocchio reference. We have done it, people. That is how you stick a lamb in a...

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Go to Italy and end up with Pinocchio.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So that could be just where the analogy breaks between the universe and what a black hole is. You have a couple similarities. But one last point, and we'll end on this. Go ahead. That the equations of a black hole, and there's a book here that I can dig out that will describe them. And your, our guy correctly noted that a whole new spacetime opens up inside the black hole. If you look back at us, the future history of the universe runs its course and a whole other spacetime opens up. So each black hole would contain a universe. A universe. And, but that universe is not sharing the spacetime of our universe. Right. So they're worried, will it fill up or bump in? No, in higher dimensions, you can fit everything.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And all, yeah, it doesn't make a difference. That's right. You can fit it all.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  That's so cool.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a quick thing. You have a sheet of paper that goes to infinity. Right. It's two dimensions. If I go into a third dimension, I can have another sheet of paper that goes. Goes to infinity. And it does not intersect the first. Exactly. In fact, I could have an infinite number of infinite sheets of paper. One above the other. Correct. So when you add higher dimensions, you don't have to think or worry about, you know, stepping on each other's toes. Cool. It can happen. Right. You just, it's, it's not a thing. Right. All right. Yeah. I think we gotta call it quits there, Chuck. Well, that was a good one. That was, that was very hodgepodgey. Yeah, I like it. I like it when they're all over the place and all over the world. All over the world. All right. Very good. This has been a StarTalk Cosmic Queries, grab bag edition. Those are fun. Yeah. Love those. Chuck, thanks for doing this. Always a pleasure.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, reporting from my office at the Hayden Planetarium. As always, keep looking up.