Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Our Burning Questions – Free Will Emergence About this episode What’s the deal with the strong nuclear force? Neil deGrasse Tyson answers the burning questions Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly, and the StarTalk Team have been saving all year about gravity as a force, cosmic rays, free will, emergence, and how physicists decide which equations to apply.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gary, I love this when you compile the questions of our people.
0:03 Gary O'Reilly? It's easy to do because we have so much depth of curiosity within our StarTalk group.
0:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a beautiful fact.
0:09 Gary O'Reilly? It is, and it's time at the end of the year to air them out.
0:13 Chuck Nice? Yeah, and we get to ask the questions and you don't, so there we go.
0:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Burning questions, all from in-house, coming right up.
0:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk Special Edition, and I have no idea what we're doing today, but Gary knows. Gary!
0:44 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, you've put the burden on me, responsibility upon me.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They just told me to show up for a special edition.
0:50 Gary O'Reilly? All right, so every year, we sit patiently through hundreds of fans' questions, and thank you so much. But now, after a year of good behavior, we get to ask ours. So I suppose it's that time of the year when there's naughty and there's nice, so I guess.
1:05 Chuck Nice? I'll be nice.
1:06 Gary O'Reilly? And I'll be naughty. How about that?
1:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the third time, apparently.
1:10 Gary O'Reilly? I know.
1:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
1:11 Gary O'Reilly? It's become a tradition, yes, in the making.
1:14 Chuck Nice? This one is the charm.
1:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Founded in 2023.
1:19 Gary O'Reilly? What a great year.
1:20 Chuck Nice? It just does not sound very impressive.
1:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so what do you have? So what happens now?
1:25 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, before we get to our questions and we-
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are questions you have.
1:28 Gary O'Reilly? The StarTalk family have, and Chuck and I are part of the StarTalk family, so we have our burning questions.
1:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Burning questions. All the people, okay, you have your burning questions, and you're also delivering questions from people who are in the StarTalk.
1:39 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I mean, we are built on curiosity.
1:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, if that's as it should be.
1:45 Gary O'Reilly? Thank you.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if I can't answer it, I will tell you.
1:47 Gary O'Reilly? All right, before we get to our questions, we recently had a Patreon whose question made the rounds. First, it stumped you, so then you passed it on to Brian Greene.
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
1:56 Gary O'Reilly? Who then recently passed it on to Brian Cox and stumped two different theoretical physicists. So congratulations to Mitchell Atkins for winning Cosmic Queries. Well done, you.
2:07 Chuck Nice? Yes.
2:08 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there some prize for that?
2:10 Chuck Nice? You get to ask more questions.
2:12 Gary O'Reilly? He gets the pat on the back for being-
2:14 Chuck Nice? I remember that, that's the quark question that you were so enamored of.
2:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah.
2:20 Chuck Nice? The quark question, like during spaghettification, when we get down to particles ripping apart. When you rip apart a quark- It makes two more quarks.
2:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
2:29 Chuck Nice? So.
2:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there a quark catastrophe?
2:33 Chuck Nice? Oh, great. A quark catastrophe.
2:35 Gary O'Reilly? Here we go. A asymptotic freedom?
2:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Asymptotic freedom.
2:38 Gary O'Reilly? Like I said.
2:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So now you guys got questions. So bring them on.
2:44 Gary O'Reilly? Chuck, you have a question here, um, I think.
2:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah, this was like a general kind of.
2:48 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
2:49 Chuck Nice? Well, we'll keep it to this year. My, my, my actual question was, what was your top non-astrophysics topic we covered this year? Or the favorite thing that you learned in this year?
3:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It would have to be David Chalmers interview on consciousness.
3:07 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay.
3:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. He's Aussie, is that right?
3:10 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
3:11 Gary O'Reilly? But he's NY, I think he's NYU.
3:12 Chuck Nice? He is NYU.
3:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So I just like hearing an expert. So many people are opining on what consciousness is and the mind and that. And he just thought a lot about it. And I enjoyed learning about, and that was on, on special edition.
3:27 Chuck Nice? Yes, it was.
3:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not just any of the, the flagship StarTalk content. So, so I like learning stuff as much as I can.
3:35 Chuck Nice? I find that shocking.
3:36 Gary O'Reilly? You're not the only one.
3:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, if I'm at a party, for example, and I learn that someone's like an expert on like bird wings or grasshopper legs, it wouldn't matter. I got a hundred questions for him.
3:50 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
3:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A hundred questions.
3:52 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
3:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And.
3:53 Chuck Nice? Why not take advantage of the expertise?
3:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Completely.
3:55 Chuck Nice? Take advantage of the moment. Yeah.
3:57 Gary O'Reilly? All right, Chuck, you want to follow up with your?
3:58 Chuck Nice? Okay, oh, here's my first question. Uh, is gravity truly a force?
4:04 Gary O'Reilly? Ooh.
4:05 Chuck Nice? Is it truly a force or is it just the bending of time itself? Okay, now, so clocks tick more slowly as they are closer to objects with more mass, right? Okay, so if we look at a flat spacetime graph, okay, so it's just two axes, all right? And on the space axis, we take Earth and we shrink it down so it's just a one-dimensional flat Earth, which some people actually think is the case, you idiot. Anyway, I take that back. You're not an idiot, you're just stupid. I'm sorry. That didn't come out right either. Anyway.
4:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No way for that to come out right.
4:44 Chuck Nice? I know, God. Okay, so the Earth is now flat on this, on the flat space axis, okay? If you traveled up, which is the time axis, right? Which means Earth is stationary.
4:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you're just moving in time.
4:57 Chuck Nice? You're just moving in time now.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That means you're not moving, you're just sitting there.
5:01 Chuck Nice? You're just sitting there.
5:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
5:03 Chuck Nice? The time axis then bends, okay? Which means that you're bending spacetime, which we know actually happens. But how do we get to that place? You know, in that example? You know what I mean? Like, how do we get to that place in that example? So is it just the large mass object bending time? Or, and dragging space along with it? Is that the case? And I left out acceleration purposely just for this. Like, this could never happen, we know. But if it could, how do we get to that?
5:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so, let me try.
5:43 Chuck Nice? Okay.
5:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To answer that.
5:44 Chuck Nice? Alright.
5:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know if I'll succeed. So, when you said the time axis has bent, what you mean by that is, the amount of mass represented by Earth and its surface gravity.
5:54 Chuck Nice? Right.
5:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Has a certain slope of that line.
5:57 Chuck Nice? Correct.
5:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That you would move at an angle, so to speak.
6:00 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, on that timeline. And that would be either faster or slower than the time that passes for someone on a more massive object or a less massive object.
6:12 Chuck Nice? Correct.
6:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. I think you shouldn't overthink it.
6:18 Chuck Nice? That could be an issue.
6:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I'm reminded of, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.
6:27 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a duck. Okay?
6:30 Chuck Nice? I got you.
6:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright. So, have we ever talked about the equivalence principle?
6:36 Chuck Nice? Briefly, in an explainer. Not in a special edition.
6:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not in a special edition. So, let's do a special edition.
6:40 Chuck Nice? Alright.
6:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? Special edition version, uh, the equivalence principle.
6:45 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So, we're here, and I'm on Earth. There's one G.
6:52 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
6:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay?
6:53 Chuck Nice? It'd be me.
6:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One Gary? Set the unit? A unit of measured. So, it's one degree, so all the mass of the earth is pulling on you to, for you to then weigh what you do. Right. Okay? People say, "Oh, gravity is strong." No, it's not, because I can pick something up away from the earth. You just violate a gravity. No, that's right. You just, like, take that gravity. No, I just jumped, I could jump. I'm just like, yeah. Alright, so, and objects accelerate. So, if I toss something to you, it won't go straight to you, gravity will bend it. Absolutely. Okay.
7:30 Gary O'Reilly? So, it's the parabola?
7:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
7:32 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
7:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Well, on an exam, the answer would be parabola. Right.
7:37 Gary O'Reilly? Alright.
7:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Once you understood that, then they say the real answer is, it's the, a segment of an ellipse. Right.
7:44 Gary O'Reilly? Okay. So, it's constantly falling?
7:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, so, if you answer ellipse, it means you know more than the questioner who wrote the question.
7:53 Gary O'Reilly? That's not gonna happen, is it?
7:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can happen, like when they write the New York State Regents in physics.
8:00 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
8:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I had to watch out for knowing too much. You have to answer what they think you should answer. They want the answer then. Yeah, yeah, so, when you do calculations with trajectories, it's approximated with a parabola. Okay? They don't say approximate, they just say it is a parabola. For it to be a parabola, it means the force is directly down at every single point on the trajectory. Right.
8:22 Gary O'Reilly? Alright.
8:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? However, earth is round. So, this vertical line is not parallel to this vertical line, because it's moved along earth's arc. They each point inward to earth's center. Right. Okay? You can approximate it over small, this is why people think earth is flat. Because sections of earth, you can approximate with a flat surface. But, if you did it precisely, you would find that those directions that gravity is pulling you angle towards the center of the earth, and that shape is not a parabola. It is an ellipse. Right. And, how do we know it's an ellipse? Because if all the earth were shrunk to its center, it would orbit the earth. This ball you threw to your friend would orbit the earth in a really elongated Right.
9:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? ellipse.
9:11 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
9:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, it's a cool fact.
9:12 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
9:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it's like the
9:14 Chuck Nice? All you have to do is visualize it as, don't look at it as you're throwing something and it's going along the ground. Look at it as you're throwing something and it's going along the curvature of the earth.
9:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or, or, or the curve that earth's gravity would give you.
9:27 Chuck Nice? That earth's gravity gives you, that's what I mean.
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay. And the force of gravity from earth, when you calculate with it, you put all of the mass at the center of the earth. And it's, so, when you say, when in Newton's equation of gravity, uh, force equals big G, which is a constant.
9:44 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
9:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mass of me, mass of the earth, divided by our distance squared.
9:48 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
9:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's our distance if I'm standing on the earth? The distance between the center of my mass and the center of earth's mass, which is down in the center of the earth.
9:56 Gary O'Reilly? So you have two constants. Your, your center of mass and the earth's center of mass.
10:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct, and that distance is that distance, it's not, the fact that there's earth between it and me doesn't make any difference to the math, it turns out. So, point is, that's why this arc is not thinking that earth is there. It doesn't care, it just cares that earth is operating as though it's at its center.
10:17 Chuck Nice? Okay.
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if earth's surface were not in the way, it would continue in this arc. So here's my point. So Einstein said, if I'm in a rocket, and the rocket is accelerating at 1G, okay? That's a pretty fast acceleration.
10:32 Chuck Nice? Right, that is.
10:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, uh, 1G in, in American units is 32 feet per second for every second you're subjected to the force.
10:43 Chuck Nice? Per second, per second?
10:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Per second, per second, right. So after one second, you're going how fast?
10:49 Chuck Nice? 32 feet.
10:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Per second?
10:50 Chuck Nice? Per second.
10:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? After two seconds, you're going how fast?
10:53 Chuck Nice? 32 feet times 32 feet, no, 64 feet.
10:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 64 feet?
10:57 Chuck Nice? 64 feet.
10:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Per second?
10:59 Chuck Nice? Right.
10:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? After three seconds?
11:00 Chuck Nice? Uh, 128 feet. No, 64 times 30, no, you're right.
11:07 Gary O'Reilly? 96.
11:07 Chuck Nice? See, I'm already confused. 96. Add another 32.
11:10 Gary O'Reilly? You're in trouble if I'm getting it right. Just so as you know.
11:14 Chuck Nice? No, this is where my overthinking starts.
11:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, exactly.
11:16 Chuck Nice? I start overthinking. But yeah, so it's 96.
11:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So yeah, that's the recipe to get you your speed after 3 seconds.
11:22 Chuck Nice? Right, because and it will just continue like that. The farther, the longer you fall, it just keeps continuing.
11:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It just gets faster and faster.
11:27 Chuck Nice? Faster and faster.
11:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay, so now, so that's Earth's acceleration of gravity.
11:33 Chuck Nice? Right.
11:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, all right. So in fact, what you're standing here and you, that's your weight. If I dropped you from an elevator shaft, or put you in an elevator and cut the cable, you will fall to Earth at 32 feet per second for every second. So it takes 4 seconds to hit the ground? How fast did you hit the ground?
11:54 Chuck Nice? Uh, wait a minute. This is time.
11:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Do, do, do, do, do. We need Jeopardy Think music.
12:02 Gary O'Reilly? 128?
12:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 128 feet.
12:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, you're 0 for 2 here.
12:07 Gary O'Reilly? I just, I wasn't sure. That's why I sat on that answer thinking, is he playing a game with me?
12:13 Chuck Nice? 32, 64, 96, and then the 32 on top of that.
12:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 120, okay. So, and then you, then you die when you hit the ground?
12:20 Chuck Nice? Right.
12:21 Gary O'Reilly? Or not.
12:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But while you're falling, you're weightless, just so you know.
12:26 Gary O'Reilly? So it's no good if I, just before I hit the ground, I jump in the elevator? When I land softer than if I was just?
12:34 Chuck Nice? Only if you're Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner.
12:39 Chuck Nice? That's when that works.
12:40 Gary O'Reilly? I just wanted to just test that theory.
12:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you, thank you. Uh, if you could jump, or you were as resistant to death as Wile E. Coyote.
12:48 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah.
12:49 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
12:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you jumped upwards at 128 feet per second, that would counterbalance the fact that you were falling 128 feet per second.
12:59 Gary O'Reilly? I'm gonna hit my head on the roof.
13:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then you would, I guess, you would just land softly.
13:05 Gary O'Reilly? It's not a theory I want to test.
13:06 Chuck Nice? You would be your own retro rocket at that point. Yeah, your own, you're your own retro rocket.
13:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a retro rocket, all right. So now, Einstein said, now here's a rocket that's accelerating at 32 feet per second.
13:16 Chuck Nice? Okay.
13:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? We're in space.
13:19 Chuck Nice? Right.
13:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? You're on the other side of the rocket, and we're accelerating sort of this way, upwards, let's say, up, I mean, towards our ceiling. You're across from me in the rocket, and I take a ball and throw it to you. At the instant I let go of the ball, it is going at whatever speed the rocket was going at that moment. Cause I'm in the rocket and my hand is touching the ball. Right. But if it takes one second to get to you, what happened to the speed of the rocket in that one second?
13:46 Gary O'Reilly? It was about thirty two feet faster.
13:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It went faster, thirty two minutes. So this ball is not gonna make it to you. It's not gonna go straight across to you. No, it's gonna go down. It's gonna curve down. Right. I got you. It's gonna curve down exactly the way it curves down if you threw the ball on earth. And Einstein said, could you tell the difference between these two situations? In a rocket or on earth? If the rocket were sealed and just standing here on earth. Right. And you perform this experiment, the ball's gonna dip before it reaches you. If I'm out in space at one G, the ball will dip before it reaches you. He hypothesized, turns out correctly,
14:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? that those two situations are indistinguishable.
14:35 Gary O'Reilly? So you're telling me someone took a ball on a rocket, real?
14:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, no, there's another way to test this. Alright.
14:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, these are two different masses we're talking about. One is your gravitational mass. Yeah. And that shows up in the F G M M over R squared. The other is your inertial mass, which shows up in your F equals M A, which is another one of Newton's equations. And the question is, are those two masses the same? There've been experiments that have shown they're the same to like nine or 10 decimal places. Basically, it's a correct understanding of the universe. So you asked if gravity is a force. Mm hmm. You can think of it as a force when you're sitting here on earth. Right. But when you're just rocketing through space, is it a force? No, it's just the leftover speed the ball had over here that gives the illusion that something pulled it down.
15:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But in a sealed rocket, you cannot tell the difference. And so to say is gravity a force or is it just the curvature of space and time? I'm saying that distinction.
15:41 Chuck Nice? Is immaterial.
15:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is immaterial.
15:42 Chuck Nice? It doesn't really make a.
15:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want to make, you want.
15:45 Chuck Nice? You want it to be.
15:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want it to be.
15:47 Chuck Nice? Because that is our natural intuitive thought process.
15:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Experimentally identical.
15:52 Chuck Nice? Exactly, so.
15:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And since one of them involves no planet at all.
15:57 Chuck Nice? Right.
15:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All we can say is it's convenient to think of that as this thing called gravity here on Earth.
16:04 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a convenience. In space, it's not gravity, but it's doing exactly the same thing.
16:09 Chuck Nice? But it's not gravity in space.
16:11 Gary O'Reilly? When did Newton get to his laws of motion?
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sixteen, sixteen eighty-seven.
16:18 Gary O'Reilly? So since sixteen eighty-seven, we've been trying to break his laws.
16:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're not going to break in the realm that they were testing.
16:26 Gary O'Reilly? People have tried and they still are holding true.
16:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. No, no, it's been verified. So it's only breakdown at the limits.
16:34 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where, oh, my gosh, you're really close to the sun. The gravity of the sun is so strong, Einstein's Einstein matters. Okay, in the general theory of relativity.
16:44 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And where time begins to get altered and then Newton's equations fail. They just fail.
16:50 Chuck Nice? Got you.
16:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they still work. We went to the moon on Newton's equations.
16:54 Chuck Nice? Yeah, right.
16:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you know.
16:55 Chuck Nice? Yeah, all right.
16:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so it's like saying is a, you know, is a hot dog a sandwich? You know, at one point it's just semantic, but people want to argue as though it's a deep philosophical fact.
17:05 Chuck Nice? Right. It only matters for the sake of the argument.
17:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Good way to put that.
17:12 Chuck Nice? It only matters for the sake of the argument.
17:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It does not matter in the universe.
17:16 Chuck Nice? Right. And the universe doesn't care one way or the other because it works both ways. It's indistinguishable. It works. So basically, this is the spaceship. That's the problem.
17:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and, yes.
17:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this thing about time.
17:33 Chuck Nice? Right.
17:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, because I was only just talking about the trajectory.
17:37 Chuck Nice? Right.
17:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So if there's a, if there's a spaceship going past you. So now let's go back to what's called uniform motion. So it's not accelerating.
17:45 Chuck Nice? Right.
17:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, just easier to think about this. Okay. So a spaceship going past you, you don't know if you are stationary and it's moving or it's stationary. You don't know. There's no way to even. Determine that.
17:58 Chuck Nice? It's like when you're on a train and it pulls off.
18:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Real slow.
18:01 Chuck Nice? Real slow. The other train you're looking at, you're like, oh, they're, wait, who's moving?
18:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, who's moving?
18:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
18:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, because it's real smooth. Yeah, if it's smooth. In the old days, they didn't have smoothly paved roads.
18:11 Chuck Nice? Right.
18:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they just had horse-drawn carriages and chariots. And so if you were moving, you knew you were in motion.
18:17 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
18:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So how could Earth be in motion? We would feel it. No, because it's moving through space.
18:22 Chuck Nice? Right.
18:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not on your damn road.
18:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
18:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know.
18:25 Chuck Nice? Yeah, they don't have a Department of Transportation in the universe. That doesn't do its job.
18:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, they may, they may do, we've just not come across it yet. That's true. So here's the problem. If you want to know how their time ticks, all right, let's say they send out time signals. Just one every second. Okay? Well, you'll get one of those signals, okay? And the next signal that comes to you, the interval between those two signals will not match the interval between those two signals sent to you by the person on the ship. Because they're coming towards you and they'll be shrunken or, or expanded.
19:01 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
19:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so we also know that the speed of light is the same, no matter the reference frame. And so everything else adjusts to make that happen.
19:10 Chuck Nice? Right.
19:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so when Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity, it took the uniform motion and generalized it to any motion at all. Which, that's why it's called general. The General Theory of Relativity, which includes accelerations, which then talks about gravity and the curvature of space and time. So that's the best I can do with that answer.
19:28 Chuck Nice? No, that's pretty good. Um, and you're right. The real answer is.
19:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're gonna be asleep?
19:32 Chuck Nice? You're overthinking it. That's.
19:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, yeah, yeah. And, and like you said, on the ship, the, the, the trajectory, it looked like a duck, it talked like a duck, it acted like a duck.
19:40 Chuck Nice? Right.
19:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As far as you're concerned, it's gravity.
19:42 Chuck Nice? Gravity. Right.
19:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go on about your business.
19:44 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Okay. No, I'm satisfied.
19:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
19:47 Chuck Nice? We'll see, we'll see, we'll see with the next one.
19:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
19:50 Chuck Nice? I'm satisfied with this.
19:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
19:52 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I'm, uh, yeah.
19:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I appreciate your curiosity here.
20:05 Speaker 03 This is Ken the Nerd Neck Zabera from Michigan and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
20:20 Gary O'Reilly? So, right, next question from me. Recently Airbus grounded some 6,000 of its aircraft for emergency computer updates. As a result of cosmic radiation. Why was it just Airbus and not others? Is this a one-off for commercial flight? Or will this become something that will be a new normal for air travel?
20:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Great question.
20:44 Gary O'Reilly? You're welcome.
20:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, let's back up. There's high-energy phenomena in the universe, especially in the centers of galaxies. And that high-energy phenomenon accelerates charged particles. And to stupendously high energies, like 99.999% the speed of light. They travel across the universe, especially across the galaxy. And when they arrive on Earth, we call them cosmic rays.
21:14 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
21:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? They come from every direction. I would see them in my data when I expose a digital detector to the universe through my telescope.
21:25 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
21:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, there are utilities we have that correct for cosmic rays. Because a cosmic ray hits one of the pixels and it blows it out. Okay? So what you do is you take multiple images and then you...
21:40 Gary O'Reilly? You overlay them?
21:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you overlay them and then you take out the high and the low. And you get the median of your images. And that basically takes out all cosmic rays. So when you see images reported, it's not the raw image. Raw image is always contaminated with cosmic rays. And so they're everywhere. Oh, by the way, the cosmic ray doesn't make it to Earth's surface. It hits our atmosphere and creates showers of other particles.
22:03 Gary O'Reilly? Oh.
22:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who in total equal the energy of that one particle. It's called a cosmic ray shower. You can look it up.
22:10 Gary O'Reilly? It's like a diffuser.
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It just comes down and it...
22:14 Gary O'Reilly? See, this is our problem with space travel, the radiation. And now you're telling me this radiation is penetrating.
22:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, the the total energy does actually reach the earth.
22:22 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
22:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, it gets.
22:24 Chuck Nice? Right, just not as cosmic rays.
22:25 Gary O'Reilly? Not as concentrated.
22:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not as concentrated, correct, correct. Not as the original.
22:29 Chuck Nice? As the original cosmic.
22:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We still call them cosmic rays.
22:31 Chuck Nice? Right.
22:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because of their effect on this. All right. This tells you cosmic rays are everywhere.
22:35 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
22:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Oh, and high charged particles, high energy charged particles from the sun. We're we're just right now with the end, recording this at the end of 2025.
22:45 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
22:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're on the downstroke, the very upper downstroke of the solar maximum. Solar max in the last year and a half or so. And we we heard about Aurora. Also, the the north magnetic pole, which when we grew up.
23:00 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
23:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Was wandering around Canada. In the last 20 years, has made a beeline towards the North Pole. And it just and it just recently passed the North Pole. It's on its way to Siberia. So Putin is going to own the North Pole very shortly.
23:13 Chuck Nice? Hmm.
23:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here, okay. Why are you laughing?
23:18 Gary O'Reilly? I just don't like the idea. I don't like the idea of that sentence at all.
23:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You'd rather the Canadians own the North Pole, doesn't it?
23:24 Chuck Nice? Santa, those elves are in for some slave labor.
23:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
23:28 Chuck Nice? That's all I can tell you.
23:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, so. Uh, as it goes closer to the North Pole, it actually comes closer to the northeast. Here we are.
23:36 Chuck Nice? Right.
23:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Recording this in New England, the Middle States. Because it just brought it a little closer. All those three factors combined, plus we're monitoring the sun as as never before. So we know exactly when it would happen. There was a day you didn't know, oh, we caught it here, you check it out, call me if you see. We now know, it's called space weather. There's a whole branch of NASA, if it's still funded as of today. Uh.
24:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That studies explosions on the sun.
24:03 Chuck Nice? Right.
24:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. And one of our favorite guests, Leica.
24:07 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
24:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go hotakuta. That one.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? She's a NASA solar astrophysicist.
24:14 Chuck Nice? Yes.
24:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so she thinks about all of this. But anyhow, so we have better predictions, better monitoring. And so there's a greater awareness of Aurora today than ever before. But there are people thinking, oh, my gosh, things are getting worse. But it's not. And this maximum we're coming off of, that max, what they do is counting sunspots. When they get a lot, and then when they come down, alright. This max was higher than the last max 11 years ago.
24:38 Chuck Nice? Right.
24:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But both of these were lower than the previous three. Okay? So there's nothing, you know, if the sun is gonna kill us, it would have happened already.
24:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah, we'd already be dead.
24:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're already in cycles.
24:49 Chuck Nice? So like every villain in a movie, if I wanted you dead, you'd already be dead.
24:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or let me put you in a contraption that will kill you in an hour after I'm gone. To give you a chance to escape without me knowing.
25:01 Chuck Nice? I'm gonna go have lunch now. When I come back, I expect you fully unalive.
25:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The laser will.
25:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, that's a long preamble to the fact that. It seems to me.
25:21 Chuck Nice? Does it?
25:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That given how many planes are flying every day? It's like tens of thousands of flights every day. There's a million people at any given moment who are airborne.
25:31 Chuck Nice? Wow.
25:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In an airplane, okay? That many flights.
25:35 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
25:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That have been flying for that long. Okay? And one plane uncontrollably loses altitude, then regains control. You wanna blame that on the universe?
25:47 Chuck Nice? Oh, no, I'm just saying that happened.
25:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, they said it happened. They blamed a cosmic ray. They didn't know it was a cosmic ray.
25:54 Chuck Nice? I don't know about that because that's not the only incident of charged particles. Because when you look at these circuitries, they're.
26:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, of course.
26:05 Chuck Nice? They're so small, it also happened to a car company.
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What I'm saying is, go ahead, what I'm saying is.
26:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My chip.
26:16 Chuck Nice? Yes.
26:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I, in my day, the chips were little.
26:18 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? About this big.
26:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
26:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I take a picture, depending on the length of the exposure, I have a half a dozen cosmic rays that hit that chip.
26:26 Chuck Nice? Ah, I see what you're saying.
26:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I'm higher up than you. I'm at 7,000 feet. The plane is at 30,000 feet.
26:32 Chuck Nice? Couldn't that make a difference? Because we said that the cosmic rays come in and hit these other particles.
26:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're missing my point.
26:36 Chuck Nice? Go ahead. I am. Because it sounds to me like you're making this point.
26:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no. What I'm saying is.
26:42 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
26:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're gonna blame it on the universe. It would be happening to way more than one plane.
26:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I see. The volume of cosmic rays bombarding the earth all the time.
26:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All the time.
26:57 Chuck Nice? I get what you're saying. I got you.
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On top of how many flights there are.
27:01 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you have to be so confident.
27:04 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the wiring of your plane, that the tens of thousands of planes that all have maintenance schedules and all of this, you have to be so sure that there is no human error in any maintenance schedule for any of those planes that are flying every single day. And it happens to one of them, and you say this plane is perfect, therefore the universe does it.
27:28 Chuck Nice? So here, this is a convenient, this is a convenient, I won't say excuse, but I'll say. Yeah, convenient way for the.
27:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tell them what CYA is.
27:38 Chuck Nice? Cover your ass.
27:41 Chuck Nice? It's a, it's a convenient CYA for them to say. Because this happened to a car company and they made the same excuse that highly charged particles that bombard the earth somehow hit the circuitry where it's supposed to go to a zero or a one. It changes it to a one or a zero. It changes the bit.
28:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
28:00 Chuck Nice? Okay, and the changing of the bit, of course, changes everything that the computer does.
28:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that is for that calculation.
28:06 Chuck Nice? For that calculation.
28:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
28:07 Chuck Nice? And so that, you know, so, but now that I'm hearing you say this.
28:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They updated the software. I don't know what they did, but I can imagine what I would have done.
28:14 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
28:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I've written in my life about 50,000 lines of code, so I, I think about this, but others, they're. Programmers who do a hundred times that. So I'm not bragging here. I'm just giving some street cred that this is what I would do.
28:29 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
28:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If I was worried about this in the future. If it were really a cosmic ray, any truly critical calculation, because planes are flown by computers.
28:37 Chuck Nice? Right.
28:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's be honest.
28:39 Chuck Nice? Yeah, that guy who comes on like, ah, ladies and gentlemen, ah, so great to have you on board with us today. By the way, ah, I'm up here not doing a damn thing.
28:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'll be taking a nap.
28:49 Gary O'Reilly? Same voice.
28:49 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
28:50 Gary O'Reilly? They go to pilot school.
28:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The pilot's school voice.
28:53 Chuck Nice? Yeah, cuz, yeah.
28:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here's what I would do.
28:55 Chuck Nice? All right.
28:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If I were the program, because they said they uploaded program. If there's any truly critical calculation that affects the safety of the plane. And the computers are fast, so you can do this in practically real time. I would put a loop in there to do it three times.
29:09 Chuck Nice? Right. Redundancy.
29:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Three times.
29:12 Chuck Nice? All right.
29:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? And whichever two of those are the same.
29:16 Chuck Nice? That's the right answer.
29:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the right answer.
29:18 Chuck Nice? Right. If all three are the same, it's the right answer. If two are the same, it's the right answer.
29:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
29:21 Chuck Nice? Right. And if a particle actually kicks something out, changes a bit.
29:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not gonna do two at once.
29:25 Chuck Nice? It's not gonna do two.
29:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
29:26 Chuck Nice? So, yeah, the redundancy will cover that.
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
29:29 Chuck Nice? And why couldn't you just harden the damn?
29:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what it's all about. Well, you're hardening not only the software, but also the hardware.
29:35 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
29:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And like satellites know all about this, because they're up there above the atmosphere.
29:39 Chuck Nice? They don't, they don't have any protection at all.
29:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Cosmic ray hit.
29:42 Chuck Nice? They raw dog in the universe.
29:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Raw dog.
29:45 Chuck Nice? Like, come on, baby. Bring it on, radiation.
29:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Raw dog.
29:54 Chuck Nice? I'm learning some new phrases.
29:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I can't get that picture out of my head.
29:58 Chuck Nice? Oh.
29:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Satellites, raw dog. Well, that's what it is.
30:01 Chuck Nice? That's what they do.
30:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not just, it's not just to protect against the radiation, but they're not protected against asteroids. Meteors.
30:08 Chuck Nice? That's right.
30:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You see, oh, what a beautiful meteor shower. These are. These particles hit our satellites.
30:14 Chuck Nice? Right.
30:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Especially the space station.
30:16 Gary O'Reilly? They have that last message, oaf.
30:21 Chuck Nice? Oh, wow. Okay, cool.
30:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, so I, if it's a cosmic ray, that's how I would solve it. I'm glad no one was harmed.
30:27 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
30:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In this, I understand it dropped altitude.
30:30 Gary O'Reilly? See, I was looking at saying, is this a distraction for something else? Or is this someone being smart and getting ahead of a story? And future-proofing to as much as they can.
30:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I think they originally wanted to blame it on the sun. Because we're near solar maximum and people are heightened, have heightened concern. But it'd be the same cause and effect. I mean, the high-energy particles hitting, hitting your software.
30:51 Chuck Nice? Cool, okay. All right, all right, here we go.
30:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got another one?
30:54 Chuck Nice? Here's another one. What's the most straightforward explanation of the strong nuclear force? And the behavior of quarks and gluons? Because they say gluons. And I think like, oh, that's a thing, like a quark. Like a, but it's not, it's not a particle. But we call it a name like it is a particle. And then when you think of the strong nuclear force, this should not happen. I mean, I know it's happening on the quantum, but these protons, they're like, yo, yo, what's up, buddy? Come on over here, let's hang out, man, I love you, man. Like, yo, give me a hug. But the truth is, they shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't be doing that, you know what I mean?
31:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they're like-charged.
31:41 Chuck Nice? They're like-charged particles and they should be like.
31:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They should repel.
31:44 Chuck Nice? Yeah, like, who the, who you looking at? What you doing over here, man?
31:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get out, I was here first.
31:49 Chuck Nice? I was here, what you talking about? What you mean, this is my space, you on my turf, get out. Like, it should be straight-up turf war.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
31:55 Chuck Nice? But instead, they're all loving and hugging.
31:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
31:58 Chuck Nice? Right? And then the electrons are hanging out just like, what's up, guys?
32:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
32:02 Chuck Nice? You know, which makes sense, that makes sense, the electron field makes sense.
32:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
32:05 Chuck Nice? Okay? But what is the strong nuclear force that this is able to happen?
32:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so. Uh, the strong nuclear force is one of the fundamental forces of nature.
32:18 Chuck Nice? Right.
32:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There are four, basically.
32:20 Chuck Nice? Electromagnetism.
32:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's really three. There's three, but.
32:23 Chuck Nice? Right.
32:24 Gary O'Reilly? Um. Just for my benefit, thermodynamics?
32:27 Chuck Nice? No. Electromagnetism.
32:29 Gary O'Reilly? Electromagnetism.
32:30 Chuck Nice? Weak nuclear force.
32:31 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
32:31 Chuck Nice? Strong nuclear force, and then what we just talked about, gravity.
32:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gravity.
32:35 Chuck Nice? Which we know is a force just because, accept it, bitch, anyway.
32:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it walks like a duck.
32:41 Chuck Nice? Because it walks like a duck.
32:42 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
32:43 Chuck Nice? That's why it's a force, that's why it's a force.
32:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, these are the fundamental forces of nature.
32:50 Chuck Nice? Right.
32:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we didn't invent them, we observed them, okay? And as I.
32:59 Chuck Nice? Once again, overthinking, see that?
33:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The opening page of one of my books, it says, "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."
33:07 Chuck Nice? Okay.
33:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, here's something to think about.
33:09 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
33:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The electromagnetic force weakens as the distance separates.
33:13 Chuck Nice? Correct.
33:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
33:15 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
33:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gravity weakens as distance separates.
33:18 Chuck Nice? Correct.
33:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The strong force gets stronger. As the distance separates.
33:25 Chuck Nice? Right.
33:25 Gary O'Reilly? Because?
33:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why did you ask because on the other one?
33:31 Gary O'Reilly? Because it didn't come into my head.
33:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Because those other forces are, we operate, they're, they're in your everyday life.
33:39 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
33:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In ways that the strong nuclear force isn't. So you can ask, is there anything in your life where if you increase the distance, they are attracted together more strongly? The answer is yes.
33:50 Chuck Nice? A rubber band.
33:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A rubber band.
33:52 Chuck Nice? Oh, yeah.
33:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A spring.
33:53 Chuck Nice? A spring, yes.
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, in physics.
33:57 Chuck Nice? But not a slinky. Because when you stretch it, it just gives up.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, slinky is, is a weak-ass spring.
34:04 Chuck Nice? So weak, you stretch it out and it's like.
34:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Slinkies are not.
34:11 Gary O'Reilly? Can't face another. Can't face another spare face.
34:18 Chuck Nice? Help me, help me!
34:21 Chuck Nice? I'm sleepy and they stretched me. I'm no good.
34:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, if you look at the force equation for a spring, it has a negative sign on it.
34:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? F equals minus k x is what it is. K is the spring constant. X is how much you have displaced the spring. Okay? The minus means as x gets bigger, there's more of an attractive force back in. Okay, whereas these other forces, it's a positive. Alright, so it's a contest of forces. A proton at a distance sees another proton and say, "I'm not coming near you. You can't make me." I say, "Yes, I can. I'm gonna heat up the gas." Now your movements are so fast, you will get closer before you successfully
35:07 Chuck Nice? Repel.
35:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Repel. Okay, it's a, you're, the temperature is forcing this, it's like a shotgun way. It's forcing it. Then is it at a threshold temperature? It gets so close, strong force says, "I got you." And the strong force, the strength of the strong force overcomes the strength of the repulsive force. In that instant. And then it attracts. And then it ain't even about the electromagnetic force at that point.
35:35 Chuck Nice? Wow.
35:36 Gary O'Reilly? We discussed earlier on about Newton's laws, how that for centuries, they've stood the test.
35:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
35:42 Gary O'Reilly? Are we likely to find new or slightly varied laws of nature?
35:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well,
35:47 Gary O'Reilly? As we explore the universe?
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Every time that's ever happened, it's like, oh my gosh, look how much more we now understand. When we were previously just touching the elephant, not knowing the animal. So, there's a lot we don't understand today. The, the nature of dark matter, the nature of dark energy, what was around before the universe? Was there a multiverse? How will the universe end? Well, is there a big rip? These are questions that are just dangling there.
36:15 Gary O'Reilly? About time.
36:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Possibly, the time, I would have caught Einstein, time is defined to make motion look simple.
36:22 Chuck Nice? Whoa. Dude. That is... F'ing crazy.
36:30 Gary O'Reilly? I saw that.
36:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
36:31 Chuck Nice? Yo.
36:31 Gary O'Reilly? Well, he did come up with E equals M C squared.
36:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That impresses you, but not E.
36:35 Chuck Nice? You're like, that impresses you?
36:40 Gary O'Reilly? E equals M C squared.
36:41 Chuck Nice? That's so funny.
36:44 Chuck Nice? Just saying. That's hilarious. He's saying that impresses you, but not E equals M C squared. I know, I should probably.
36:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Recalibrate.
36:53 Chuck Nice? I should recalibrate my.
36:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, recalibrate.
36:55 Chuck Nice? I should measure my, uh, my responses there. Yeah, that's a great say. Time is defined to make motion look simple.
37:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
37:03 Chuck Nice? That's, that's, that's very elegant.
37:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and deep.
37:06 Chuck Nice? That is really cool.
37:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so the quark, so quarks are what protons are composed of.
37:13 Chuck Nice? Right.
37:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As are neutrons.
37:15 Chuck Nice? Right.
37:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, and quarks have charge.
37:19 Chuck Nice? Yes.
37:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you knew this.
37:20 Chuck Nice? Yes, I do, but I'm, I'm not sure if I understand them because when I was reading about it, first of all, there's like, ah, Jesus Christ, like 13 or 16 different kinds and then.
37:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, there's six kinds of quarks.
37:31 Chuck Nice? Six quarks and then, but then there's another levels and then there's spins. Well, maybe I don't think about it. It's like two up, one down and then.
37:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right. So in a proton, it has a charge of plus one. And it has three quarks.
37:44 Chuck Nice? Right.
37:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it has two up quarks. I think it's up with a charge of plus two thirds. What's two thirds plus two thirds?
37:55 Chuck Nice? Um.
37:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Each of them has a charge of plus two thirds.
37:59 Chuck Nice? Two thirds plus two thirds.
38:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
38:01 Chuck Nice? Is.
38:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come on, help him out here.
38:03 Gary O'Reilly? Four, four sixths, which is 75.
38:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, not four sixths.
38:07 Gary O'Reilly? Then it's not.
38:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't add up the denominator.
38:09 Chuck Nice? Denominator.
38:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The denominator carries, you add up the top. So just do that. Two thirds plus two thirds equals.
38:15 Gary O'Reilly? One and a third.
38:16 Chuck Nice? Four thirds.
38:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One and a third.
38:17 Chuck Nice? One and a third, right.
38:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so the other quark has to have what charge for it to be plus one?
38:21 Chuck Nice? Two thirds.
38:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
38:22 Chuck Nice? I mean, has to be a minus.
38:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Minus, minus what?
38:24 Chuck Nice? Minus third.
38:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Minus a third.
38:26 Chuck Nice? Right.
38:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is.
38:26 Chuck Nice? Minus third and then it cancels out and now you're good.
38:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, then it can't, it adds up to.
38:30 Chuck Nice? It adds up to one.
38:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
38:32 Chuck Nice? Right. It cancels out, adds up to one.
38:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. And a neutron has. I forgot exactly what, but they can't, they cancel out to zero charge. There's like plus two thirds, minus one third, minus one third. Okay. Okay. And then- So there's still charges within a, there's still charges there. Gotcha. All right. Now, so the quarks are fundamental. Protons and neutrons are not fundamental. One, and then the electron is a negative charge. Forget the electron. We're not talking about that. I know what I'm talking about. Electron only knows electromagnetic force. Right, that's all it knows. Okay, and a, and a weak force, but- See, this is my problem. Now you see how my brain works. That's good, I'm glad, I'm glad Chuck. Yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not. This is very, I'm, I'm a nut job. This is my problem. I'm a frickin' nut job, but go ahead. The strong nuclear force holds the quarks together. Gotcha.
39:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the strong nuclear force that when you pull two quarks apart, you have to get more and more energy to do that, like the rubber band, and then it snaps, creating two extra quarks. All right? So that's the strong nuclear force at work. And the, the spillage out of those particles to attract the other, the other nucleons. So, the spillage of the gluon, did I say gluon yet? Yes, well, we, we didn't get to them. Oh, sorry, sorry. So, the quarks are held together by the strong nuclear force. What propagates the strong nuclear force? It is the gluon. What propagates the electromagnetic force? It is the photon. Right. So, there's something called a virtual photon that gets passed between two objects,
39:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? if they have a charge, and they will feel that and respond and either get repelled or attract. And they're called virtual photons. The photon is the force carrier of electromagnetic energy. And the gluon- Is the force carrier of the strong nuclear force. Of the strong nuclear force. And it's, it's strongest within those particles, but enough spillage so that two protons can stick together in a nucleus. But the real action is inside the particle itself. Wow. Yeah. Damn. I don't know. Talking now? Yeah, it's weird. It's, it's freaky.
40:49 Gary O'Reilly? Alright, should we have number one? Another question?
40:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Please.
40:51 Gary O'Reilly? This is from Tamsin, one of our producers.
40:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tamsin!
40:54 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah. "When approaching a physics/astrophysics problem, how do you determine which mathematical equation/equations to use? Depending on your approach or on which aspect of the overall problem you're looking at, do you shift the equations you use? Just explain how you apply all the equation." Tamsin says, "Thanks in advance."
41:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Great question.
41:18 Gary O'Reilly? Of course.
41:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I remembered learning physics for the first time. And a lot of it is kinda like, it's a sliding brick on an inclined plane. There's a pulley, there's... These questions don't look relevant to anything. I wanted to understand the universe, and physics is fundamental to that. That's what kept my interest in these boring-ass problem sets. Okay? So, then you realise, it's not about the problem set. It's about manipulating equations that exist only in the service of the problem you are reading. And so you build this inventory of things that can happen in the universe, and the equations that matter to it.
42:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So if it's motion, right off the bat, I'm probably gonna need Newton's Laws of Motion somehow. If it's moving really fast, I better know Einstein's equations. Okay? Is it dropping through a viscous medium? Okay?
42:20 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
42:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, by the way, can I tell you? In high school, I didn't know what the word viscous meant.
42:23 Gary O'Reilly? What did you think it meant?
42:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got a 98 on my physics Regents exam.
42:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I knew what question I got wrong. Cause I didn't know what viscous meant.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They said, "A plot, the, the distance time curve for a rock falling through a viscous liquid." You were like, "A vicious liquid?" What kind of liquid is that?
42:51 Chuck Nice? Shark infested.
42:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that was a vocabulary problem for me, not a physics problem. So I just got that one wrong. Had I known what viscous was, then it's trivial. Because what happens is you drop it into the liquid. Normally, if you drop something, it moves faster and faster. Right? Cause gravity is accelerating it. But in a viscous liquid, it just descends. That's right. Old timers will remember the Pearl shampoo commercial, where they dropped a pearl into the shampoo, and it just gently descended. So what happens is- What did that prove? I, I felt the same way. It met your hairs, man? How's that clean my hair? It was a physics- Big deal. So, if, if, if something is moving through a fluid where there's viscosity- Right.
43:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then there are viscosity equations. And if I never did a problem set that involved viscosity, I would not know to reach for that, that formula, or that bit of mathematics. And that's a real world problem, too. That would, well, all of these become real world problems. That's the point. Yeah. So, so every week, there were typically six physics problems, each testing different, for homework. Each testing a different physical principle. Right. You'd have to apply a new formula you learned that week in order to solve it. And when I say formula, that cheapens it. You'd have to apply a new understanding of the behavior of nature that you learned that week. And here's the equation of that new understanding. So there you, that's your toolbox. Toolbox? Yeah. Toolbox? Yeah.
44:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Toolbox. So, you look around, you say, "Wait a minute. There's matter becoming energy here." What's going on? Marie Curie, one of the first to show radioactivity is a source of energy. Coming out of nowhere.
44:33 Gary O'Reilly? Alright.
44:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, there's no machine or engine going in. What's going on? There was no way to understand that without an equation that has energy on one side and mass on the other. There was no way, you can just describe it.
44:46 Gary O'Reilly? Hmm.
44:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But there's no way to calculate with it. Until Einstein in 1905. E equals mc squared. Oh my gosh, a little bit of mass times speed of light, which is a big number, squared.
44:57 Gary O'Reilly? Hmm.
44:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You'd get a lot of energy out of that by doing so. So, if you have gaps in your physics knowledge, there'll be some problems that are intractable to you.
45:07 Gary O'Reilly? Yep.
45:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm. Now here's what I wonder. We're scratching our head today. What new physics lay undiscovered until it rises up? And we say, "That's the equation I need to figure this out." That I've been scratching my head on for the past 10 years. Maybe the equation does not exist yet.
45:27 Gary O'Reilly? Ooh. So it's, it's- We don't know the solution until we're faced with the problem.
45:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or if you're really clever.
45:34 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
45:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? People were just, were simply not clever enough with the known physics to solve the problem. For example.
45:40 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
45:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, superconductivity. If you cool down a metal of your choice, low enough, then electricity goes through it without any resistance at all.
45:51 Gary O'Reilly? Right.
45:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whereas any, any wire the electricity goes through, there's resistance which leads to what?
45:57 Gary O'Reilly? Heat.
45:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Heat.
45:58 Gary O'Reilly? Exactly.
45:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this, it goes through and there's no heat. Oh my gosh, what is that? It's a purely quantum physics phenomenon. Was there enough quantum physics to figure it out? Yes, but no one was clever enough to figure it out. Okay? What they found was that as the electrons get colder- Their wavelengths get longer. Because of the wave-particle duality.
46:21 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
46:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As they get longer and longer, all the electrons end up behaving like they're one particle. Because all of their waves line up, they come together. And as one particle, there's no resistance.
46:35 Gary O'Reilly? They behave themselves.
46:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They behave themselves. And it comes through.
46:39 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
46:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the quantum physics was available, but no one was clever enough to know how to apply it.
46:45 Gary O'Reilly? Didn't know where to point it.
46:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where to point it.
46:47 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
46:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where to point the weapons of.
46:49 Chuck Nice? That's a great example.
46:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, great question.
46:51 Gary O'Reilly? I have another question. This one is from Lane, one of our other producers. She's over in our LA office. "With David Krakauer and Brian Cox, we learned about the two main pillars of emergence. It is something greater than the sum of its parts, and secondly, possesses a distinct language to describe the emergent behavior. The example David gives is how fluid dynamics through its own formulas can predict movements of groups of particles without needing to know about each individual particle. Given that we have a language for describing and predicting a person's volition that screens off the microscopic factors in someone's life, would that make free will just as real as fluid dynamics?
47:33 Gary O'Reilly? Is free will just an emergent property of conscious thought?" And the finishing is, please discuss.
47:41 Chuck Nice? That was nice.
47:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man, we've got good people working for StarTalk.
47:47 Chuck Nice? Why are you surprised? I always knew I was dumber than the people on the show. I didn't know I was dumber than all the people who work here too, damn.
47:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The producers, the writers.
48:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I love that interpretation of what's going on.
48:08 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, that's a, that's.
48:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And just to remind people in case they, but you can dig up the show. The, there are gas laws we might have learned about in chemistry, which are macroscopic laws that describe the behavior of the entire gas. Okay, pressure, temperature, this sort of thing. And they work, that's why we use them. And they're called laws. Those were discovered before we even knew about atoms.
48:34 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
48:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Successful laws of nature describing the behavior of atoms in this emergent way. What they all do when they're sorted together as a blob of gas. That's remarkable. So, I like the direction certain branches of research are going. Trying to wrap their head around the meaning of emergence in understanding complex phenomena. And so, yeah, free will is emergent. It's an emergent feature of consciousness. I'm always been on the camp, even if it's not free will. If it feels like free will, it's free will.
49:17 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I think it's a fascinating thought experiment because you can say if it's not free will, it's still a choice that you're making. So, maybe it's the freedom of the choice. But then, if the choice is predetermined by other circumstances, is it really a choice at all? But if you alter the predetermined factors that caused the choice, who's to say that you did that? Or did the circumstance do it? It's so intertwined.
49:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or did the gas law?
49:52 Chuck Nice? Or did the gas law of your brain do it? You know what I mean? Like, did the neurosynaptic, you know, gas law property actually cause this to happen? And I think that in some respects, there's evidence for it all.
50:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Maybe.
50:06 Chuck Nice? When you look at it.
50:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Maybe. The future of neuroscience, I'm just pulling this out of my ass now. Maybe the future is looking at the electrochemical state of your mind. Okay? Just the way we look at the pressure, temperature, volume, and we put those together with equations that give the future state of that system. Will it expand? Will it contract?
50:30 Chuck Nice? So it becomes predictive.
50:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Predictive. Maybe if we do a download of your electrochemical state, maybe there are macroscopic laws that tell you what decision is coming out of that state.
50:44 Chuck Nice? That'd be great.
50:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if that's the case, I can say, well, you have this much poverty. You grew up in this situation, a single-parent household. You didn't have food, but... Crime candidate to be committed. What is it? More than half of people in prison?
51:00 Chuck Nice? Are illiterate.
51:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or come from poverty.
51:03 Chuck Nice? Well, that's more than.
51:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And those are correlated.
51:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah, they are. The illiteracy and poverty go together.
51:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you have the configuration that then makes the gas law prediction.
51:12 Gary O'Reilly? You're talking about mind reading, just from being able to take that snapshot.
51:15 Chuck Nice? It's brain reading more than mind reading.
51:19 Gary O'Reilly? In the sense of being brain reading, mind reading, yes.
51:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's better than mind reading. It's brain reading.
51:22 Chuck Nice? It's brain reading.
51:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because the brain creates the mind.
51:24 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
51:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So then we're the Minority Report all over again, aren't we? The great sci-fi short story writer Philip K. Dick.
51:35 Chuck Nice? What an unfortunate name.
51:38 Gary O'Reilly? What have you got against Philip?
51:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very nice. Very good.
51:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in the Minority Report, there were these precogs.
51:48 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
51:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So rather than doing a download off your brain.
51:50 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
51:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There were these precogs who were telepathic, basically.
51:53 Chuck Nice? Right, yes.
51:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so that's how they got into your brain to know what was going on. But same idea.
51:57 Chuck Nice? Yeah, it is. Except that you're mapping the actual person's brain.
52:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The actual.
52:01 Chuck Nice? Actually, this is better than precogs.
52:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, of course.
52:03 Chuck Nice? Because precogs only happen because an event precipitates their telepathic.
52:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're not going to know whether you're going to choose strawberry or chocolate for dessert.
52:11 Chuck Nice? Yeah. They can't do that. But with brain mapping.
52:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
52:15 Chuck Nice? And also, yeah, you would be able to determine a person's possible path, but also give them, equip them not to take that path.
52:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you might have to change the state of the system, like changing the gas. You'd have to change the temperature, the pressure.
52:31 Chuck Nice? The pressure, right.
52:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The volume, so that a different outcome would come.
52:34 Chuck Nice? Right.
52:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think once that state is established.
52:38 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
52:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's going where it's going to go.
52:40 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah. You can't steam clean with cold water.
52:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, good. Your momma tell you that?
52:45 Chuck Nice? No, I just made it up.
52:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very good.
52:47 Chuck Nice? You can't steam clean with cold water.
52:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So for example, the person who's just about to jump off the bridge, did they have the option to not jump off the bridge? I don't think so.
52:56 Chuck Nice? In that instant. In that instant, I don't think they do either.
52:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so.
52:59 Gary O'Reilly? And there's no ability to reset.
53:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
53:01 Chuck Nice? At that moment.
53:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not in that moment.
53:02 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
53:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that puts a greater burden on society.
53:05 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
53:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As treatment of people who have behaviors that are transgressive, or psychopathic, or sociopathic.
53:12 Chuck Nice? We should have that burden anyway, unfortunately.
53:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We should.
53:15 Chuck Nice? We don't.
53:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're right, right.
53:16 Chuck Nice? You know.
53:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? More blame should be
53:17 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
53:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the shoulders of.
53:18 Chuck Nice? And if you know somebody who's in that position, believe me, uh, intervene, okay?
53:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
53:23 Chuck Nice? You can do something.
53:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
53:25 Chuck Nice? Um, even though it may still happen. I mean, I've, I've lost family members to death by suicide and, you know, even despite the intervention.
53:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
53:34 Chuck Nice? But in one case, there was a ton of intervention and the other case, it was like, damn, I wish, I, I pretty much saw that coming.
53:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You saw it coming, yeah, yeah, yeah.
53:42 Chuck Nice? Saw it coming, you know, so, yeah.
53:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come on, bum us all out, Chuck.
53:44 Chuck Nice? I'm sorry. I know I did bring us down, didn't I?
53:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're on a happy note, okay?
53:49 Chuck Nice? I'm just saying, if, if you see somebody, don't be afraid to reach out.
53:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gotcha. Got one more, but we only have two minutes, so try.
53:56 Chuck Nice? This is from Matt the editor. He says, this is quite literally, and Matt, our editor.
53:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our editor, yes.
54:00 Chuck Nice? This is quite literally a burning question as it has to do with firewood. I once heard Neil mention in an explainer, some time ago, that energy of the sun is contained within the trees that we cut down and chop into lovely little pieces, uh, for the burning in our fireplaces. Can you expound on this idea? I found the fact fascinating and perplexing. But during a recent camping outing, I chose not to share it as I didn't want to sound like an idiot trying to explain this to my fellow guests as we enjoyed the sun's transferred energy via campfire.
54:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Love it, love it.
54:30 Chuck Nice? Ah, what a great question, Matt.
54:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you eat food that was once alive?
54:38 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
54:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everyone does.
54:41 Chuck Nice? Yes.
54:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Plant or animal. A plant, yeah, it was once alive, okay? If you eat plants, where'd the plant get this energy from?
54:47 Chuck Nice? The sun.
54:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The sun.
54:49 Chuck Nice? Thank you.
54:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, if you eat cow, where'd the cow's energy, gets energy from?
54:52 Chuck Nice? The plant.
54:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plants.
54:54 Chuck Nice? And the sun.
54:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The, the plants you fed it.
54:55 Chuck Nice? Right.
54:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, we are solar powered through that tracking. Of course. Now, plants use the sun to build larger molecules that have energy contained within them.
55:09 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
55:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so the cellulose that has energy, cellulose burns. Paper burns.
55:14 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
55:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's energy inside the paper.
55:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
55:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What color is the paper turn after it burns?
55:19 Chuck Nice? Black.
55:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Black.
55:21 Chuck Nice? Because it wants to be cool.
55:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The energy is not just sitting there in an energy vessel. The photosynthesis takes sunlight and creates energy dense molecules out of it. Now here's the problem. Here's why we are not cows. Because cellulose has energy. We cannot digest it. No. So you have to be careful in your calorimeter experiment. You don't want to burn things that we don't have digestive enzymes to metabolize. Right. Yeah, if I took straw and burned it, it has a calorie content of no use to us. Right. Okay? Yeah. So it has to be stuff you can digest. Otherwise, the calorimeter experiment is not meaningful to us. It was still, it's meaningful for physics and chemistry, but not for us. All right. And so you burn it.
56:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's solar power. It is.
56:15 Chuck Nice? Look at that.
56:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is.
56:17 Chuck Nice? Well, Matt, there you go, man. I, I hope that explanation you're able to use as your next camping expedition.
56:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just take this recording and play it.
56:24 Chuck Nice? Yeah, that's there you go.
56:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, that's all the time we have. Yeah. Oh, I like hearing from our people. No, no, they're great. Can we do like another one of these?
56:33 Chuck Nice? We need to.
56:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've got more than enough questions. From our own people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you, you did your first, your own questions first. Yeah, we're selfish.
56:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, always good to have you.
56:46 Chuck Nice? Always a pleasure.
56:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gary. Thank you, Neil. All right, Neil deGrasse Tyson here. You're a personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.
Previous Cosmic Queries – Space Volcanoes: Fire and Ice with Natalie Starkey Next Things You Thought You Knew – The Color of the Sun Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
