StarTalk Podcast
Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about exploring space with planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, aka Madame Saturn, leader of the Cassini Imaging Science team.
6,585 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
This is StarTalk. Chuck, you like my James Earl Jones invitation?
I like it.
You know, I taught him everything he knows.
This is what he told me. I just got off the phone with him and he was like, "How's Neil?" You know, he taught me everything.
I know. I got Chuck Nice in studio with me. Chuck, always good to have you.
Good to be here.
Thanks for doing this. We've got one of my favorite people in the world. There's a friend and colleague, Carolyn Porco.
Okay.
And I call her Madame Saturn because she's head of NASA's imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn.
Wow.
And so she's in charge, all the beautiful images you ever seen of Saturn in the last 10 years, they came out of her lap.
Nice.
I know. I know. How could you not do it? And so, you know, Cassini mission was launched in 1997 and Saturn is a long way away. It took seven years to get there.
And so, finally pulled into orbit and a lot of things happened on that mission. It had a little probe that it dropped off of itself and plunked down on what is Saturn's moon, Titan, which is one of the few places in the solar system that has an atmosphere.
Right.
And it's a moon because our moon don't have an atmosphere.
That's right.
All right. Titan's got an atmosphere. This probe went down there and it saw mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes, but the lakes were not made of water. They were made of liquefied methane. That's how cold it is. Methane, the gas that comes out of your stove that you light.
It freezes.
It liquefies.
Liquefies. It's an alien landscape. And you know, that missions will go clear through 2017 and then guess what they're going to do with it?
No.
We can't bring it back.
So what are they going to do?
Just leave it?
Is that what we did?
Plunk it down in the atmosphere.
Just let it go.
They're still talking about it, but we'll figure it out when we get closer to the time.
That's how aliens will know where we have been. All of our stuff is sitting up on blocks.
Saturday, it'll be the toilet bowl of, of missions that have been there. So let's, let's go to my first clip with Carolyn Porco. She came to my office, I interviewed her and find out just where she coming from, where she been, where she going, let's check it out.
So Carolyn, you're a native New Yorker, I understand.
I am, I come from the Bronx where you do.
The Bronx.
The Bronx, yes.
So what part of the Bronx?
The northeast part, Pelham Bay.
Pelham Bay, cool. So your first night sky would have been the same as my first night sky.
Oh, I have a story, I think like yours about the night sky.
The Hayden Planetarium?
No, well, I have a story that starts with me waiting for the bus, Westchester Square in the Bronx. I used to work in a library and I'd have to catch the bus at Westchester Square and I just remember looking up and seeing like one or two bright stars, probably one of them was Jupiter. And like everybody else in New York, I had the same experience going to the Hayden that I guess apparently you did.
Yeah, is that the real universe or not?
Right, yeah.
So how early did you know you wanted to do this?
So I got into astronomy the back door. I was attracted more from my spiritual questioning when I was just a young teenager. I was like 13 going on 80 and I was thinking things like, what am I doing here? What is the meaning of life? You know, I was probably very depressed, that's probably why I was thinking these things.
So you had existential angst at age 13?
I had enormous existential angst.
That is the beginning of a troubled teenage.
I know, and I read about Hinduism, I read about Buddhism, I read about.
So you were totally messed up?
I was totally messed up. I even for a while got very, very serious about my religion, Catholicism, and for a period about four months, I went to church like four times a week and I did all the indulgences.
And you're still around 13?
Yeah, and I thought that just didn't cut it for me. I even did read about existentialism and that was really depressing. But, you know, thinking about what is the meaning of life and, you know, who am I? Where am I? Got me thinking, all right, where am I? Well, you know, where is where?
Beyond just being in the Bronx.
Yeah, really.
If you ask anyone, you're in the Bronx right now, man.
The ultimate existential question, is there anything outside the Bronx? So I started reading about the universe and about galaxies and stars and so on, and that's how I became interested in astronomy.
That's a first that I've ever heard.
But you know, most males, I don't know if this worked for you, most males seem to get interested in astronomy by doing things like grinding lenses and building telescopes. I was never a tinkerer, I was a seeker. That's how I described myself. I was a seeker. And I thought the answers to the question of the meaning of life, you know, lay in the universe.
So if this were a few thousand years ago, you could have been a prophet. Think about it, because if you're young and you're having these kinds of questions, most adults don't even think that way. So you would have been labeled as someone with a search for wisdom, and then you'd acquire it and share it with others.
And they probably would have like hung me for it.
No, it burns you. You're a girl. They burn girls and they hang boys.
They hang boys, they burn girls.
From the Bronx. Everybody from the Bronx got a story.
Yeah.
And they got a story.
Yeah, because you know what? I think the Bronx puts out a good product.
What does that even mean? I tell you, no. I don't know anything about the Bronx.
But there's actually an existence proof that you can grow up in the city and fall in love with the night sky, though never having seen it for real at night.
And this is the value of a local planetarium, which in New York is the Hayden Planetarium.
Absolutely.
Turns out, that's like...
It's funny how similar your stories are.
Well, minus the religion part and the existential angst part and the Buddhism part, and other than that, they're identical.
I mean, what are you saying?
Oh, that's so funny.
But you just never know, as a kid, what they're gonna become. You want to keep the ground fertile.
The intellectual quest fertile. She's a seeker.
So what that meant was, she wasn't gonna really land anywhere. She was always taking flight. She was always in search. So to have gone through these other philosophies meant there was a philosophy still waiting for her to find.
That's a beautiful thing.
That is. I mean, well, you know, that's...
You meant she wasn't home watching TV, right?
She's an explorer.
Yeah, watching the Beverly Hillbillies or whatever the hell else I was doing at the time. No, explorers are rare among us, the people who keep searching. You can be a spiritual, intellectual explorer, or you can be a physical explorer. These are the people who leave the cave and come back wiser with fruits from across the valley.
Right? And where the rest of us are like sitting back watching the Beverly Hills.
Yes. I love explorers because I am the person waiting for them to come back with the fruit from the valley. It's awesome.
And you know, the question is, if the explorers are so highly revered, how come everyone is, why, where's that in the genetic makeup of human beings? How come everyone isn't an explorer?
You know why?
Why?
Because everyone who's not an explorer is back in the cave.
That's true.
They're back in the cave making babies while explorers out finding stuff. So, so, so there's an interesting sort of, sort of fact about that. But when the explorers come back, then everyone wants to make babies with the explorer, you see?
It plays both ways, but I'm just saying. When we come back, more of my interview with Carolyn Porco, Madam Saturn.
Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Chuck Nice in the house.
Yes, sir.
Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.
I follow you.
I follow you too.
I laugh most of the time.
Most.
Just kidding.
Chuck, you got about a 280 batting average.
Not bad.
So, we're featuring my interview with my friend and colleague Carolyn Porco, who is probably one of the world's experts on Saturn and what Saturn looks like and how Saturn behaves. Cause she was head of the NASA imaging team for Cassini, which is still there, still in orbit around Saturn.
Cool.
Rocking the boat. Oh my gosh. And have you seen some of these jokes? After the Beyonce song came out, if you want it, you gotta put a ring on it.
I saw a comic.
There's a picture of Saturn and Jupiter and it says, "How Saturn got her ring."
If you want me, I need more than just you saying you love me.
How Saturn, it was a ringless Saturn.
Ringless Saturn.
Yeah, how Saturn got her ring.
So Jupiter put a ring on it.
Put a ring on it, that's how you keep it. Uh, so Carolyn Porco has a fascinating background. She's a New Yorker. And, uh, let's find out about more about her academic trajectory.
I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
So you're still a hometown girl, basically, that's Long Island, yeah? So after that, you went to Caltech for graduate school?
I did, indeed.
And focused on what topics?
Well, I went there because I was just told by the people who were my professors at the time, it was absolutely the best place I could possibly go. I didn't think I'd get in, but they encouraged me.
The best place to go for your interests.
Yes, obviously. And I knew this much. I knew that I wanted to be a part of the American space program. I did not want to do stars and galaxies.
We don't send ships to stars and galaxies. We send ships to planets.
Yes, that's right. Maybe someday. I don't know. Maybe they'll send you, Neil.
Not till I can assure that there's a budget to bring me back.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Caltech operates the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mind you, this was in 1974. So the Apollo program, of course, had came and went.
Apollo had just ended in 72.
Yeah, 72. But we were sending spacecraft to other planets and I wanted to be part of that. So I was encouraged to apply to Caltech. I did. I got in and I went sight unseen. I find it remarkable. These days, it's de rigueur for parents to take their kids to various colleges to see which ones...
Parade you around, yeah, to find out, yeah.
I just said, "Bye, guys." I got on a plane and went to Caltech. I'd never seen the place before. Yeah, and there I arrived in California.
So it did right by you, it seems.
Oh, yeah. I loved it. I loved it.
And, so tell me, in the 70s...
I mean, excuse me, I say I loved it. It was, you know, they say getting into Caltech is incredibly hard. Getting into Caltech is easy compared to getting out. It was very hard to get out. But anyway, I did it. I got my degree and got out.
And PhD?
A PhD.
Yeah. Right around then, they're planning for the Great Voyager planetary tour. Were you old enough and active enough to be a part of that?
I wasn't part of the planning, no, because I was just-
Voyager was launched in 1977.
Seventy-seven. I was in graduate school when it got launched. I remember the excitement about it. And then I took a leave of absence because I was lost and trying to find my way. And by the time I came back, it was-
So all that existential meanderings earlier resurfaced within you?
Well, kinda, yeah. I've been wrestling with this all my life.
Had I known, I would have been more sensitive to your needs.
Really, you need to be more sensitive.
But anyway, so there I am at Caltech, struggling along, intimidated so much because everyone there is so incredibly smart.
Feynman would have been there at the time.
So here I was about to say-
Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
I see Richard Feynman walking around, talking to himself. That was a common scene at Caltech. He was so brilliant, he probably had no one else to talk to. So he was talking to himself, or you know, we'd be, you know, the cookies and tea before seminars. You'd see people milling around, having pleasantries. And Feynman would be on a blackboard, probably writing string theory or something. And I was so intimidated, and this is a regret of mine, so scared I didn't take a class from him. But anyway, so I took a leave of absence at one point. I was kinda lost. The project I was working on didn't go well. I went off to live in the mountains outside of Boulder. I lived in a cabin. I was chopping wood, believe it or not.
Whoa!
Yeah, I was trying to live like an Orgo, hippie kind of person. Ten years too late.
Yeah, seventies, that's a little late.
It's a little late, but there I was. And then I went back to Caltech because I just hated the thought that I had quit. And I went back and I got immediately involved in Voyager, and the rest was history. It's like I found myself-
So you needed that-
Hitching a ride on what I consider to be humankind's greatest scientific exploration.
You needed that little excursion to find yourself again.
And land, land your plane.
I brought my spacecraft in for a landing.
Excuse me, land your spaceship.
So as a result of that, actually, I encourage people in two ways. I say it's probably good for people to take a break between either college and graduate school, maybe even between high school and college, just to go out and taste what the world is like before you, you know, you know how restrictive and
Everything.
constrictive academe can be.
It's all about rules.
And when you take a break, there are no rules.
But it's also an artificial environment academics is, even though I think it's special and I'm glad I was nurtured and raised in it, I think people need to see what the real world is like. And so that helped me.
Not everybody takes a straight path. Yeah, exactly. I mean, here she is, a PhD astrophysicist, and she was chopping wood in a cabin outside of Boulder, Colorado. An unlikely departure. For especially for a New Yorker from the Bronx. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So she was Most people who are using an axe in the Bronx are not chopping wood. I'm just saying. Don't you be talking about my home borough like that.
I, I, I, I got people, you know? I know you do, and they have axes, and that's what scares me.
So, no, so she, she would get involved in Voyager, and Voyager is an extraordinary mission because what we knew at the time was here's a mission that we're going to send to more than one planet. Well, how do you do that? Because the planets are in different parts scattered around the galaxy. Right. But we were able to, we, I mean, my, my planetary brethren at the time, were able to calculate a trajectory for that spacecraft that could get gravity assists from one planet to another and visit most of the planets in the solar system by doing so without using any extra fuel. So when you say gravity assists, is that like a slingshot effect? What I mean is, if you try to go from planet to planet at will, that takes fuel. Right.
And this is just a, it's a, it's a radio transmitting antenna and some scientific experiments. There's no engine pack on this thing. It's got some adjustment fuel, but that's about it. Okay. Once this thing is set into motion, it is a ballistic particle in the solar system. And what you want to do is aim it right so that it could slingshot around one planet. Come out in a direction where the next planet is. Right. And then slingshot around that planet and go to the third planet and the fourth planet. It's like planetary pinball. Planetary billiards. Nice. It's like a four cushion pool shot. Yeah, no, it was nice. It was sweet. It was sweet. It was Newton's laws of motion and gravity just rocking it.
And so, yeah, so it's like a slingsh- it's a slingshot effect. Plus, by doing so, if you do it right, in the right direction, you can gain energy for having done so. And so, this is how you can make sure this thing just doesn't slow down and stop and fall back to earth. Right. And so, we built it, it was called the Grand Planetary Tour. The Grand Planetary Tour. Oh, it was a beautiful thing. Sounds like a sixties band. Grand Funk Railroad, and we're opening up with the Grand Planetary. I know, I love it. I love it. I mean, I love it when bands take on names like the Fifth Dimension, that's cool. We hadn't reached five dimensions yet, but they were there already. It was the sixties. Yes. You didn't, you didn't have access to dimensionality. I was gonna say, I know what got them there, too.
In the, in the Heineken, the first Heineken party commercial, where this guy walks in and he's dancing and plays with everyone as he walks through the crowd. Right. The band in the background is called the Asteroid Galaxy Tour. Sweet. Yeah, I know. I was loving it. Yeah, I had to tweet that. Yeah, the Asteroid Galaxy Tour. No, to, to combine asteroid and galaxy in the same phrase is a little not right, but does I, again, give them props for going there. I was gonna say, they're musicians.
Come on, let's give them a break. They're musicians. But, uh, it's great that, uh, for people just wondering, what does it take to become a scientist? It's not about how narrow and defined your trajectory is, it is how broad is your ambition? Right. And how open is your quest for knowledge? You too can take the Grand Planetary Tour. Yeah, and she did it, and she, well, she will learn in upcoming clips. Uh, how that played out. Okay. No, no, we'll find out. You are right now listening to StarTalk Radio. We're on the web, starTalkRadio.net. And we actually tweet at StarTalk Radio, and we're Facebook. StarTalk Radio. Thank you, Chuck.
Chuck catches on. Yeah, he did. He is trainable.
We'll be right back.
We are back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice across the table from me. Yes, sir. We're in Argo Sound Studios in New York City. Yes, we are. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. We got a lot of smiles through the window.
We've got my interview with Carolyn Porco. She's a fellow astrophysicist, planetary scientist. We're finding what made her tick. Yeah. Because she's delivering us images of Saturn as head of the Cassini imaging team. And in her life's trajectory, we find out some of the people who had an influence on her, which includes Carl Sagan. Socker.
So I think that sometimes I think everybody's got a Carl Sagan. I have a Carl Sagan story. Yes, you do. Everybody's got a Carl Sagan story. Yeah, well, you know, he was a very influential person. Influential guy. That's kind of what it's all about. Let's find out what her Carl Sagan story is all about.
I was immediately drawn to Carl Sagan's shtick, if you will.
Let me hear you say billions and billions.
Billions and billions. Well, I don't have to try to imitate Carl saying that because Carl never said that.
Yeah, he never said it.
So we can say it any way we want.
Still, I'll give you a B+ on that.
Okay. Anyway, I don't know where you picked up with what Carl Sagan was doing, but I got completely hooked when I was an undergraduate and my professor, Tobias Owen, who was a colleague of Carl's, invited Carl to come and give a seminar in the spring of 1972 to talk about the just fresh results from the Mariner 9 mission, the first orbital mission of Mars. And in preparation for that, the assignment was to read the book Intelligent Life in the Universe. In fact, the name-
Which Carl Sagan co-authored.
Actually, that's a translation of the original Russian book written by, how do you pronounce her name?
Shlaski. Shlaski. It's very hard to say. There's a K in there where it shouldn't be. I don't know what they were thinking.
Those Russians, what do they know?
What do they know about consonants, really? Yes, but you know the genesis of that book. Sagan was very audacious as a young man. He took a book that was already written and spliced into it his own paragraphs and words and thoughts and then went to Shlaski and said, "Hey, what do you think of this?"
Yeah, that's audacious, actually.
It was audacious, but the book, I was supposed to read like a chapter. We're gonna read the book over the whole semester or something. I stayed up all night and read that book because I felt entranced by it. I just was completely hooked, so.
It's one of the first books of its kind to be published.
Probably.
A scientifically informed assessment of life in the universe.
Very, very precisely scientifically informed assessment of a topic that people always thought was so fluffy and science fictiony that serious scientists never paid attention to it. That was, I think, one of Carl's greatest contributions, was getting people, you know, to consider this topic in a serious fashion. Anyway, that's how I came to know of Carl.
He came to embrace his whole mission statement, I guess.
I came to embrace his mission statement, but, I mean, I don't feel like in the course of what I've done, and I've done a lot of Carl Sagan-y type things, I don't ever feel like I'm copying him. I feel like I was drawn to his message because of the spiritual quest I told you I was on. I feel like Carl really tapped into, he kind of offered people the spirituality in science and the study of astronomy, don't you think?
Yeah, I agree 100%. It turned astronomy from a science into...
A humanities.
Uh, to humanities.
Really?
Yeah, of course astronomy had that built-in potential because people look up and out into the universe. Anytime someone thinks of where their gods live, it's never under their feet.
Right, they don't look down, they look up.
Yeah, they look up.
Yeah, and I wonder if that has to do with when we're children, you know, we look up at our parents. It might even be like a physiological thing.
Ooh, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, someone ought to do a thesis on that.
Looking up, you look up to something bigger than you and more important than you.
Yes, you start out that way.
In fact, look up is even idiom, right? I look up to you, but you don't literally, if I'm taller than you, I'm not looking up to you. But we all know what that means.
I hold you in high regard.
Right. We hold the universe in high regard because we have to look up to see it. I mean, if you had to look down to see the universe, it might have been a whole different.
Yeah, a whole different, yeah. It would still be important.
Geophysics would have been the spiritual endeavor, but people don't think of digging into rocks as being a spiritual.
Other than geophysicists themselves.
Yeah, they probably do.
Oh, shout out to geophysicists.
Yeah, that, yeah, so the spirit of the universe. So, so we lucked out, so we have the spirit up in the sky and without, and there are no spirits in the rocks. I think we just concluded that.
No spirits in the rocks. That's a shame.
Why, you like rocks?
I like rocks.
Oh, you never told me that.
I'm a big fan of rocks.
You a rock collector?
I, you know, I, for a little while, I had a little teeny rock collection.
For a little while.
All right, that's cool.
You got rocks in your, in your blood.
And in my head.
No rocks in your noggin. If there's rocks in it, it's your noggin.
Exactly.
No, but Carolyn speaks from the heart. I mean, I think you, we feel that when she talks, we, we sense it as she, we feel her, her, she still has a childlike enthusiasm.
For what she's talking about.
Very passionate and enthusiastic.
And you, you put, you know, three parts of that and four parts Carl Sagan, or two parts one, three parts the other, you got a whole, you got, you have a, a, you, you have the person who would be heir apparent to going to the most majestic planet and telling everyone about it.
In a spiritual way.
Look at you waxing poetic about Carolyn. Very cool.
Do you know Saturn is mostly gas and if you, its, its density is less than that of water, so that it would actually float? If you, yeah.
So, wait a minute.
We gotta go.
Oh.
When we come back.
More StarTalk Radio in a moment.
We're back. StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Co-hosting Chick Nye.
Love having you, Chick.
I love being here.
We got my interview with the planetary scientist, a friend and colleague, Carolyn Porca.
Yes, fascinating woman.
Did I leave you dangling at the break?
Yes, you did. And I, you, basically...
I didn't do that on purpose. We just ran out of time. I'm sorry.
You hit me with the Saturn floats thing and...
Yeah, I thought everybody knew that. Nobody knows that.
What do you mean by Saturn would float?
Okay, people say things are heavy or light. They don't really mean that when they talk about it, okay? Usually, they're really referencing the density of a thing.
So, yes, a watermelon is heavy, but it floats.
Gotcha.
All right. So Saturn is, the density is so low, because it has so much gas in it.
That any piece of it you scoop out, you know, if you scooped out an average piece, it would float on water.
And when I was a kid, I wanted a rubber Saturn instead of a rubber ducky. Because I knew Saturn floated.
That's great.
To play with in my tub, but no one made it. So, anyhow.
Get right on that.
I guess, get top people, one of those.
So Carolyn is, is head of the imaging team at Cassini. And let's find out, let's find out what that is. I want to know. Here she comes.
The pictures that we create...
Because you're head of the imaging team.
I'm the head of the imaging team, and they are kick ass.
Fricking awesome. Especially because we never see Saturn from these extra angles that the spaceship gets, because the spaceship is orbiting the planet. And so, you're showing us pictures with Saturn eclipsing the sun. You've got to be on the backside of Saturn to see that.
I know. It's spectacular. I do want to say, though, that I have made it my calling to make our pictures, process them to be as beautiful as possible. I just went over the top with this, and no one had really gone through this kind of effort before. They're very, very beautiful. I'm proud of that. They're like my babies.
Now, you realize, maybe you know the story. The idea of even putting a normal camera on a space probe was a controversial decision when it was first done back in the 1960s. The public doesn't really know that scientists don't really care about photographs. They want to measure something else. They want to measure the magnetic field or the polarization. They want to measure things that are not just what the thing looks like. So now you've raised this to high art, right?
Yes, I have. But a camera is just a telescope with a two-dimensional array of detectors. The detectors gather scientific information. Just the fact that we can composite it into a beautiful picture does not undermine the scientific utility of the information collected in that picture. So they are still scientifically useful. But it is true that in the very beginning of the space program, the first spacecraft to go to a planet, I'm not talking about our lunar missions, but the first spacecraft to go to a planet, I think was launched in 1962. It was the Mariner Two of Venus. And I'm told it was Carl Sagan who was arguing to put a camera on the instrument payload.
It was some combination of Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray.
I guess. I guess. I'm hearing now that Bruce Murray played a role in this, too.
A former head of the Jet Propulsion Lab.
And a professor, former professor of mine.
Of geology.
At Caltech, yeah. And they, I guess, were arguing for the camera and the other people, the opposing side one, there was no camera on Mariner Two, but on every mission since.
They put the idea on the table to be reckoned with on later missions.
Right. And the people who opposed it were just, in the end, shown to be ridiculous.
They had up their butt.
They thought images were for kids. And it turned out that they have collected some of the most scientifically useful information.
Images.
Yeah. It turns out to have been that way.
Yeah. I did my thesis on, basically, on dynamics by measuring the positions of rings and so on in images.
There you have it.
Who would, I mean, I, it's so weird that people would think that imaging
Of another planet, after you spent money to get there.
Right. Is not a good thing. Like, you know, it's like going on vacation without a camera. Who would, hey, let's go to Paris. Hey, did you bring any pictures? Ah, who the hell needs pictures?
The hell do you mean they'll have pictures? I went to Paris. You know?
I'll just tell people about it.
So there's a, there's a skeletal looking structure that's kind of needle-like and it's, it's beautiful. You should see it. That's ridiculous.
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, every mission has had it since then. So, so, so we're good. There's a similar sort of parallel point. The Planetary Society, which is an organization founded by Carl Sagan and others, now headed by Bill Nye, by the way.
Ah.
The Planetary Society wanted to put a microphone on one of the missions to Mars. So Mars has blowing winds. You'd be able to hear what's going on. And there's been resistance to that.
Oh, God.
Yeah. Yeah. But these are extending our senses to another place.
I mean, why not?
Why not? I mean, that's great.
Like I said, the people had their head up their butt, but she said, oh, they just weren't there. I mean, she was way more polite about it.
Yeah. I think you were right. Head up the butt.
When we come back, more of my interview with planetary scientist, Madam Saturn, Carolyn Porco.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice with me in studio here in New York City.
Chuck, love to have you here.
Always a pleasure.
We're like towards the end of my interview with planetary scientist Carolyn Porco. She visited me at the Hayden Planetarium, a little bit of a memory lane for her, being a Bronx native and having her first night sky, the same as my first night sky, the night sky of the Hayden Planetarium. And so I made sure to chat with her for about an hour while she visited. And she, she can't say enough about the Voyager spacecraft. After having visited all these planets on this gravitational multi-pool cushion trajectory.
It then left the solar system.
Let's find out what that's about.
I did think it was a momentous juncture. And it's symbolic. Okay, you're right. It's only hardware, but it's symbolic because, I mean, even the message it carries, all those pictures and sounds.
And symbols matter.
Symbols matter. Symbols really, really matter. Think of myths. Myths are all built around symbols. And so this was so symbolic. And I wrote a little piece for, I think it was, I don't forget who it was, the BBC or something. And I said, "This event, a voyager's passage out of the influence of the sun and into interstellar space was like humanity's arrival at eternity's door."
That's beautiful. That's beautiful, because I kept thinking it was humanity just walking out the front door.
You're not into the symbolism of it?
Well, I am. I'm just thinking as creatively about it as you were. And so it was justifiably then a page one story with the New York Times.
Oh, of course. What really brings people along in understanding, or at least appreciating, what scientists do. The work that scientists do in teasing out the workings of nature, which is kind of like their fundamental job. And Carl knew this. He intuitively knew this, is to make them appreciate the symbolism in what scientists do and also the spiritual nourishment that it provides.
Well, so what it means, you have to embrace the fact that as you learn something new about the universe, you are enlightened in ways that go beyond just intellectual. You can be enlightened emotionally.
Yeah, and I think therein lies this whole duality of, do you look at the immensity of the universe and the almost nonexistent scale of our little planet, and does it frighten you? Or do you feel empowered? Right? To me, and I'm guessing you too, the fact that we can even know anything about the universe, to me, is enormously empowering. So I don't look at the universe, either pictures, look at the galaxy, the Milky Way, and appreciate, which I think is one of the coolest experiences around, right? Looking at the Milky Way.
Let the listening audience know that she's gesturing with her hands upward and outward to the sky. Okay, go.
Let the listening audience know that I'm an Italian-American and I can't talk without my hands.
So, to look at the Milky Way and appreciate that you're looking edge-on to a disk that's enormous, that kind of thing, right? I mean, to me, it's empowering to know that. But so many people seem to say, "Oh, but I feel so insignificant." And I think science is completely empowering.
So, have you ever thought of starting a cult?
You mean, I'm not a cult already?
Yeah, if you keep this up, a cult is gonna come out of me. All the people who do feel lonely, small, you give them the universe, there's the Carolyn Porco cult.
Do you know that conference that both of us were at, the Beyond Belief Conference, where I said you ought to be the first reverend of our Church of Science?
That was 2006, on the campus of University of California, San Diego.
The Salk Institute.
Yeah, the Salk Institute.
Right, and I said that to the audience. I said that I thought you should be the first reverend of the Church of Science.
Really? We could start a movement. We could get you a good salary, a lot of perks.
I need some robes.
Robes, a scepter.
A scepter, oh my god!
No, no, no, a lightsaber.
A lightsaber.
Okay, but anyway, where was I going with this?
I have no idea.
You know, you know those videos of us, all of us?
Yeah, it was a conference talking about, what does it mean to believe in something? And is it justified, is it not?
Is there God?
What role does science play? What role does religion play in belief? And should they continue the way they are or change? Yeah, it was a workshop of maybe only 100 people.
Well, it was a workshop where we didn't actually do much, we never accomplished anything, but we talked a lot. And there were these YouTube videos, right? You have one, I have one. Well, some group took mine, because of what I said in it. And I said things like, we should start a church. It was kind of tongue-in-cheek. And they christened me Saint Carolyn.
Yeah, isn't that amazing? I'm Saint now, in some kind of group, I don't know what they are, but I'm Saint Carolyn.
But it requires two miracles.
So not according to them.
Oh, okay. They relaxed the modern requirements.
Really? They're dumbing it down.
That's Carol Porco. So she's totally living this spiritual boundary between science and the soul. Science and emotion.
Science and insight into our place in the cosmos. And so she's surely a chip off of Carl Sagan's block, right there.
I kinda like the idea of a church of science. That's all I'm saying. Cause I am all about not paying taxes.
What?
That's, that's great.
That's the wrong reason to be religious.
That's true, but it's the best reason.
No, but I think the people, once they see how spiritually fulfilling just thinking about the universe is, that can just bring them in, bring them into the room. And, and it has the added benefit of being sort of objectively verifiable.
True.
That would distinguish it from any other endeavor in this universe. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. We gotta bring this to a close. Chuck, thanks for being on.
My pleasure.
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, signing off, bidding you to keep looking up.
Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
