Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Cosmic Queries – Everyday Astrophysics, with Russell Peters About this episode Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Russell Peters answer fan-submitted questions on a variety of astrophysical topics including Pluto, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, the Equator and the Earth’s axis, E = mc2, exoplanets, the Moon, and more!
NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-everyday-astrophysics-with-russell-peters/
Photo Credit: StarTalk®.
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? From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.
0:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I'm here today with comedian extraordinaire, Russell Peters. Russell, dude!
0:39 Speaker 01 Neil?
0:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? First time on StarTalk!
0:40 Speaker 01 First time, first time listener, long time fan?
0:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you for your enthusiasm and you-
0:47 Speaker 01 It's real.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's, I believe it's real.
0:49 Speaker 01 It's genuinely-
0:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I heard rumors that you were on some other show, and said, "Who'd you want to have dinner with?", and I came up in the list.
0:56 Speaker 01 You were the number one person.
0:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, well, we're testing you on the show first, before we make the dinner plans.
1:00 Speaker 01 Go ahead. Go for it, yeah. Yeah, before I invite you out.
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so, thanks for doing this. Today is an episode of Cosmic Queries.
1:09 Speaker 01 Correct.
1:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Every now and then, we gather questions that we've either solicited or trickled in from our fanbase. And the topic today is everyday astrophysics. You didn't know there was such a thing, huh?
1:23 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, would this be astrophysics for dummies at that point?
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know, actually. You've been handed the questions.
1:29 Speaker 01 Oh, I got the questions.
1:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got all the questions.
1:32 Speaker 01 These are actually really good questions, from what I can see so far.
1:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, well, that-
1:35 Speaker 01 I'm impressed, and I'm like, "Oh, good, that's a question I would like to know as well."
1:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's good. So you can pick them that way. But before we get into that, just remind me, you're on the road all the time touring.
1:46 Speaker 01 Constantly.
1:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Constantly?
1:47 Speaker 01 It's all I know. Thirty years of this.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So where is home? It was on a bus somewhere, some-
1:53 Speaker 01 Well, technically, home is, well, I guess technically, home is Toronto.
1:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, but born and raised in Toronto?
1:58 Speaker 01 Born and raised in Toronto.
1:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
1:59 Speaker 01 But I've been living in Merke for thirteen years now.
2:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Merke.
2:02 Speaker 01 Merke, thirteen years now.
2:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thirteen damn years.
2:04 Speaker 01 I'll tell you what, boy.
2:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tell you what?
2:06 Speaker 01 I'll tell you what. You need the "H" in front of it.
2:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What?
2:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, no, it's great to know that you're out there and you've been doing this a long time. So, just try, uh, try to make comedic sense of the world for us, just so, because we need some laughs.
2:23 Speaker 01 We did, there's some in this world definitely need some laughs. It needs something. It needs laughs before that asteroid hits us.
2:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you're done with this, get the hell back out there and get back to work. So, what do you have for us?
2:35 Speaker 01 All right, you ready?
2:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
2:36 Speaker 01 Uh, Rene Douglas.
2:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we're, we're duty-bound to make sure the first question is from a Patreon.
2:41 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm reading.
2:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what you're reading, okay.
2:43 Speaker 01 Rene Douglas from Patreon.
2:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
2:46 Speaker 01 Would like to know, why do you think Mercury and Venus don't have moons?
2:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh. Ooh. Hmm. Well, Mercury's pretty small.
2:55 Speaker 01 Right.
2:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mercury is, I, I forgot whether it's just slightly bigger or just slightly smaller than our moon. So, but it's small. It's, it's much denser. It has a huge iron core, so it's much heavier than the moon. So, it's got planet mass.
3:09 Speaker 01 Right.
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But its size is, is, is small, and it's, it's hard to have something else orbiting you when you're small. You know, Jupiter is huge, has more mass than all the other planets in the solar system. And, and it has sixty-plus moons orbiting it.
3:24 Speaker 01 Sixty-plus?
3:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's its own mini planetary system, if you will. Um, but the act of being small doesn't preclude having moons. It's just harder when you're that small and orbiting that close to the sun. Because then you have a gravitational tug-of-war. Okay, who, who's, you know, who's your daddy? Who's your gravitational allegiance?
3:44 Speaker 01 Who's your gravity daddy?
3:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who's your gravity daddy? So, uh, by the way, Pluto is also small. There are like six moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto. But Pluto has multiple moons. The point is, that far out in the solar system, there's very little sort of gravitational, um, disturbances from other objects, so you can sustain orbits however delicate they are.
4:07 Speaker 01 Is it, is, is size? I thought, I always thought size was indicative of whether it was allowed to be a planet or a moon.
4:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No. Well, sort of. Okay, so it turns out if you're really, really small, your gravity loses to the structural integrity of the object. So the rock will take whatever shape it wants. So below a certain size, stuff in the solar system looks like Idaho potatoes.
4:32 Speaker 01 Yes, I've seen those.
4:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, yeah.
4:34 Speaker 01 I've seen the, I've seen the pictures.
4:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've seen the pictures?
4:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've seen, um, in fact, I used to have one here. Yeah, in fact, right up there. Could you reach up and grab that? Yeah, you can reach up. You get it?
4:44 Speaker 01 Let me grab your potato.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just grab that. This is a, a precise model. Thank you.
4:48 Speaker 01 I was hoping it was real.
4:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Anyhow, so this is a model of an actual asteroid. And this is sufficiently small that it takes whatever shape the rocks demand of it. All right, and rocks to, to take their own shape based on the chemistry and how they formed. So, but if this object were larger, then the gravity of the object says, I'm trying to get everything as close to the middle as I can. And there's only one shape you take if everybody tries to get close to the middle. And that's a sphere.
5:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So to be a planet, you gotta be big enough, have enough mass to be a sphere. But that's not the only rule. Pluto's big enough to be a sphere. Now we say, in your orbit, we want you to be dominant. We don't want anything else competing with your orbit. So Pluto is orbiting what we call the Kuiper Belt. There's thousands of other objects.
5:42 Speaker 01 Yes.
5:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Orbiting out there with Pluto.
5:43 Speaker 01 It's littered, right?
5:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Littered. Great word. Just like the asteroid belt.
5:47 Speaker 01 Correct.
5:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Littered. So nobody in the asteroid belt owns the space of objects. So they're all asteroids, even though one of the asteroids is big enough to be a sphere. And Pluto's big enough to be a sphere. So the rules are, are you big enough to be round? And significant enough in your?
6:05 Speaker 01 A little sensitive, but thank you.
6:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, big enough to be round. And are you dominant enough in your orbit to have cleared it out? So basically, you're the only game in town. And if you have to satisfy both of those, then you're a legit planet in the rules.
6:20 Speaker 01 Are we, um, does that, could we effectively be seen as our, all our planets as moons for the sun?
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't see why not, except because the sun is like alive with energy. We have a different designation for it.
6:35 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's hot.
6:37 Speaker 01 Warm. Hot's a little overrated, but it's a little warm, it's warm.
6:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you would vaporize. I can tell you the heat, it's just the humidity on the sun that I can't handle. So, uh, you, you can think of it that way, and not to like overrun this answer, but people wondered a hundred years ago or more, uh, the turn of the previous century.
7:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait a minute, if the solar system has a star and planets that orbit it, and planets have moons that orbit them, atoms have nuclei and electrons that orbit them, maybe it's that all the way down.
7:16 Speaker 01 Good, that's fair.
7:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or all the way up, right? So we have a galaxy, there's a center of the galaxy, and our whole solar system is orbiting the galaxy? Maybe it's just solar systems all the way down. But you get to the size of the atom and there's nothing smaller than that. There's nothing smaller than the particles that make up the nucleus. So.
7:36 Speaker 01 Except for antimatter.
7:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there's a car.
7:41 Speaker 01 See what I did there?
7:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
7:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, there isn't some other structure of the natural world that we have yet discovered, nor that we think is there. If you probe the atom and look at the nucleus and say, oh, there's another layer right on down, no, we ain't finding that.
8:00 Speaker 01 Well, that was Rene Douglas from Pittsburgh.
8:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
8:03 Speaker 01 You want this one, you ready?
8:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's up to you, you don't even have to go in order.
8:07 Speaker 01 Okay, well, that's good. Let's see it.
8:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
8:09 Speaker 01 What would the climate be like on Earth if it wasn't for the axial tilt? That was from Michael Groth.
8:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, so that's a good one. So, this is someone who knows that Earth is tipped on its axis relative to our orbit around the sun, so it's tipped like this, tipped at twenty-three and a half degrees. In fact, this is got Earth back there, let me get Earth, hold on. Yeah, so this is a, so I'm holding in my lap for those who are only listening. A map of Earth, which we're familiar with.
8:39 Speaker 01 Actually a globe.
8:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, thank you.
8:42 Speaker 01 Let me hump you out with this there.
8:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you, thank you.
8:44 Speaker 01 Hang on there Astro fellow.
8:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you. It's a globe.
8:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's the kind of globe we see in social studies class. Because all the countries are color coded. But of course, Earth from space shows no such color coding.
8:59 Speaker 01 I know, it's weird how they did that.
9:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so anyway.
9:02 Speaker 01 I tend to believe this globe much more.
9:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we're tipped on our axis and it turns out that because of that tipping, for one part of the year, the northern hemisphere is tipped towards the sun. And six months later, that same hemisphere is tipped away from the sun. And if you're tipped towards the sun, your rays are much more intense. And there's much more heating of the ground and you get summertime. And around the other side, we're tipped away from the sun, the sun's angles are low. Rays, the angle of rays is low and we experience winter. Now, since we're part of the same Earth as the southern hemisphere.
9:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If we're tipped towards the sun in the north, they're tipped away from the sun at the same time. So we experience summer when Australia experiences winter. That's all. That's all that's going on.
9:49 Speaker 01 So then how does the equator stay warm all the time?
9:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, well, if the equator is exactly between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, then they are switching always between summer and winter. Then the equator has no seasons.
10:06 Speaker 01 Interesting.
10:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can't.
10:08 Speaker 01 But wouldn't, uh, like.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can't have seasons.
10:10 Speaker 01 When it's even, uh, on the other side?
10:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can't have seasons because it is always exactly between all other seasons. The only way to be that is to have no season at all. And what they do is they say, oh, it's the rainy season. Or it's the, you know, the stormy season.
10:24 Speaker 01 It's to make them feel good about it.
10:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just so they think they're having a season. But temperature wise, the equator has no seasons. And it's largely true for all the tropics, but if you want to be precise, the equator uh, does not go through seasons. So if you want to undo the tilt and have Earth just pointing straight up and down. No seasons.
10:44 Speaker 01 But it would still rotate, right?
10:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We would still rotate on our axis and still revolve around the sun. We still have years, but there'd be no seasons.
10:52 Speaker 01 For anyone?
10:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, unless it's just rainy season versus not.
10:56 Speaker 01 Right, right, right.
10:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There'd be no temperature-based seasons of any, of any significant, um, measure.
11:02 Speaker 01 Would we still have cold and warm and hot?
11:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the farther away from the equator you go, the cooler it would get.
11:06 Speaker 01 Right.
11:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. Now, the whole earth is not the same temperature. But at a given latitude,
11:10 Speaker 01 Right.
11:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? it, it, you don't get seasons. That's all I'm saying. So the hottest part would be the equator, and then you move away from the equator to the poles. And that would be the coldest spot.
11:19 Speaker 01 I don't think you should blame the Polish for this, but, uh, whatever. The poles have done nothing to you. Uh, let's see.
11:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If the poles are people from Poland, then the Polish are people that they're sort of from Poland?
11:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, they're kinda. They're from Chicago.
11:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm Polish. Yeah, okay. Uh, what else you got?
11:39 Speaker 01 Let's see. If we were just plopped onto a gas giant such as Jupiter, like when they need to explain that one to you.
11:46 Speaker 01 Uh, what would happen to us assuming we could survive? Well, if you, all right, I'll just keep reading, but I, I'm not an astrophysicist, obviously, but even I'm looking at this going, come on. Come on, Jeremy Small, you're better than this.
11:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The, the word assuming, I think, carries this.
12:00 Speaker 01 Assuming we could survive, uh, there isn't a solid surface we could stand on, so where would we go?
12:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good question. So if I plunk you down on Jupiter, you would just descend through the clouds. Okay? Jupiter gets denser and denser and denser as it goes down. If you have a pressure-proof suit that you're wearing, you will continue to fall until you are about the same density as the surrounding area, and then you would just sort of bob there and float. That's what would happen.
12:31 Speaker 01 So you would find your floating point.
12:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your floating point. Exactly. But if you didn't have your pressure suit, you'd be crushed by the atmospheric pressure that was there.
12:40 Speaker 01 But don't they?
12:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and you would vaporize because it gets very hot very quickly.
12:44 Speaker 01 Is that what happened at Cassini?
12:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ignoring the vaporizing and avoiding getting crushed, you'll find, you'll find your, your, your, uh, your place, your zone.
12:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
12:54 Speaker 01 So is that what happened to Cassini?
12:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so Cassini, oh, you did, my boy did some, did some homework.
13:00 Speaker 01 I'm a nerd for this stuff.
13:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, very good.
13:01 Speaker 01 Just a quick side note, so you know.
13:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
13:03 Speaker 01 In 2017, I went to Chile, uh, uh, to the.
13:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Get that he's pronouncing that all like he's, like he knows Spanish or something. Chile, yes, go on.
13:12 Speaker 01 Chile, I'm a Chileno. I, uh, went to the, uh, uh.
13:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They have observatories there.
13:16 Speaker 01 European, the, the European, uh, ESA.
13:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, European Southern Observatory.
13:19 Speaker 01 Yes, I went there and I spent two nights, three nights there.
13:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How?
13:23 Speaker 01 Uh, I have a friend.
13:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You knew somebody?
13:24 Speaker 01 I'm friends with Nile Rodgers.
13:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, all right, you know people.
13:27 Speaker 01 And Nile, uh, this guy had invited us all down.
13:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very cool.
13:31 Speaker 01 Last minute Nile bailed, but the rest of us all went.
13:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't it magical?
13:34 Speaker 01 It is ridiculous.
13:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is ridiculously magical at the top of a mountain when it gets dark and you see out and it's just you and the cosmos.
13:41 Speaker 01 But I thought that I was gonna look through telescopes and see things and, cause they have those giant.
13:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no, there's no, there's no lenses.
13:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, they just shoot lasers and I'm like.
13:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Laser is another thing we can do, yeah, yeah, the, the two reasons why you would shoot lasers, uh, but we can save that for another question if it ever gets asked. But, but the, uh, it's, it is truly magical to be on a mountaintop at night.
14:04 Speaker 01 It is pretty wild.
14:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
14:06 Speaker 01 They did pull out like a little rinky dink, uh, telescope.
14:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, cause we don't look through telescopes anymore, they're, it's all digital.
14:11 Speaker 01 Apparently not. I found out.
14:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You thought there'd be this giant eyepiece waiting for you to walk up to it?
14:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, like I thought it was, I thought like this.
14:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you see the gates of heaven through it.
14:20 Speaker 01 I saw the pictures and I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna look through those and like.
14:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, no.
14:24 Speaker 01 You don't look through those. It just sends us data and I'm like, well, well, that's, how's that help me? I gotta read the data at home.
14:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
14:33 Speaker 01 Do you want my, can I sneak, sneak mine in?
14:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, sneak, oh, go on, go on.
14:36 Speaker 01 Let me sneak the one I wrote last night.
14:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got your own question?
14:39 Speaker 01 I do.
14:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that allowed?
14:40 Speaker 01 I don't know, I'm doing.
14:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Engineers, is that allowed?
14:43 Speaker 01 I'm doing, I brought, I brought a question.
14:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, go, go for it.
14:45 Speaker 01 Uh, is the Big Bang Theory only for the observable universe or does it, uh, encompass like, like the entirety of everything?
14:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So first, it's a TV show.
14:57 Speaker 01 Right.
14:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Finishing its last season.
14:59 Speaker 01 Highly successful, and I've never watched one episode in my life.
15:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really? Yes, highly, it's one of the most successful shows ever, actually. So if you type the Big Bang Theory into Google, the show comes up first.
15:09 Speaker 01 Right, far more important. Far more important.
15:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then next, I think there's a K-pop band called Big Bang.
15:15 Speaker 01 Is there?
15:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, and then they come up next. Then, the origin of the universe. These are our priorities.
15:22 Speaker 01 Is it still considered a theory?
15:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, a theory is the modern word we use to describe our successful understandings of the operations of nature. So, quantum theory, relativity theory, evolutionary theory. So, people say, "Oh, it's just a theory." That's the word we use to describe stuff that works. If you have an idea that hasn't been tested yet, it's a hypothesis.
15:44 Speaker 01 Oh.
15:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? So, it's Einstein's theory of relativity, it's Russell's hypothesis. If you have an idea about something.
15:52 Speaker 01 I have no idea.
15:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Until it's put out, and then it gets fully explored and investigated and tested, and has other predictive value, then we're good to go with it. So, the Big Bang is our understanding of the existence and expansion of the universe in which we live. And it goes not only to the edge of the observable universe, but it would include the universe beyond that. It's just that it's hard to get answers to that which is beyond our horizon. So, colloquially, we say it is the theory of our understanding of the visible universe. But technically, the whole universe came into existence, even the parts you can't see, in what we call the Big Bang. So.
16:37 Speaker 01 So, from nothingness comes somethingness.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. And by the way, just to put you at ease with that.
16:47 Speaker 01 Please.
16:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because the way you said that was all pejorative, just want you to know.
16:50 Speaker 01 It was, it had a little pejority to it.
16:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You copped a little attitude on that.
16:54 Speaker 01 I was like, I wasn't really excited with the answer. I was like, it didn't really answer anything for me.
16:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How do you get something from nothing? So, so let's say you have, oh, you know, let me save the answer to that. After the break.
17:06 Speaker 01 The answer to this, Mr. Bender, next week.
17:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back on StarTalk, we'll find out how you get something from nothing on this edition of Cosmic Queries.
17:28 Speaker 02 The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.
17:38 Speaker 02 This is StarTalk.
17:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Everyday Astrophysics. And helping me answer is my co-host today, visiting for the first time, Russell Peters. Russell.
17:58 Speaker 01 Hey.
17:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dude.
17:59 Speaker 01 I'm back.
17:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I can't go to Netflix without seeing your face.
18:01 Speaker 01 I created that job for you.
18:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're trying to get me to watch all your stuff.
18:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, don't, don't waste your time. Listen, you're an astrophysicist, you're smarter than this.
18:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love your rapport with the audience. It's great, it's great. You just make them all feel like they're, they want to be there, so.
18:15 Speaker 01 Well, hopefully, you know, you know, I'm not only I'm captive, you know. Unless they have Stockholm syndrome, I don't know about it.
18:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you've got questions?
18:24 Speaker 01 I've got questions.
18:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's on everyday astrophysics?
18:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bring it on.
18:28 Speaker 01 Uh, actually, um, you left me hanging on the last, it was a big cliffhanger that we left on. And you didn't finish it for me.
18:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I forgot.
18:35 Speaker 01 And I almost forgot too.
18:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
18:37 Speaker 01 Cause you, you, you, you, you greased me out of it.
18:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I said nice things about you. Hey, it's all about me.
18:43 Speaker 01 Yeah. I was like, I'm listening.
18:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, so the, the question was, how do you get something out of nothing? So it's, the thing is with energy, you can have positive energy and negative energy. It's not just an emotional thing, it's actually a real physical thing in the physical universe. And if, and each of those have consequences on space, time, and matter. And, but if you bring them together, it sums to no energy at all. So how does, how, how does this happen? So think about it, let's say there's level ground. And then I have a shovel and I put ground from this part and I stack it over here. So I'm digging a hole.
19:24 Speaker 01 Right.
19:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And making a, making a mound. Well, I can keep doing this and I can have a hill as arbitrarily as high as I want. And I can climb to the top of the Empire State Building. But there's a hole next to it. So how did I get that high? How is that even possible? I took the dirt over here and I put it over here. But if I put the dirt back in, then everything's level again. So it's a way to think about what it means when you have negative energy and positive energy. A lot of things we do where you started with nothing, but you ended with something. Something that you care about. But in the total picture, it sums to zero.
19:59 Speaker 01 I see that's good. See, now that's a good explanation.
20:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what I'm saying.
20:01 Speaker 01 That I can walk away with and go, okay, I get that.
20:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And not lose sleep tonight.
20:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would have, I would have lost sleep. I would have been, tonight I'm gonna be sleeping going, ah, damn it, I should have asked him.
20:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
20:11 Speaker 01 Let's go with, I haven't read this one. I'm just gonna read it now and see what happens.
20:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And see what happens.
20:18 Speaker 01 Let's see what happens. It might be, it might be a crappy question. We don't know.
20:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
20:21 Speaker 01 Vincent Zimmerman wants to know.
20:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From where? What, what, where is he?
20:25 Speaker 01 Just at Twitter.
20:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Twitter, sure.
20:28 Speaker 01 From the town of Twitter. What's the most distant star you can see with the naked eye?
20:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, so that's an interesting question. I can answer that two ways. So one of them is the most distant thing you can see with the naked eye is our nearest red-blooded galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy. And for the longest while, until the early 1920s, it was called the Andromeda Nebula. Because it was just this fuzzy thing in the night sky among the stars that trace out the constellation Andromeda. So we named it after Andromeda. And it was just a nebula. Fuzzy thing. And then with better and better telescopes, you're, wait a minute, this thing is composed of stars. Wait a minute, this thing is far away. Wait a minute, this is an entire other galaxy. It's not just a fuzzy thing in the Milky Way.
21:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's another Milky Way. Well, how far away is it? It was not close, quote, close, like these stars we see in the night sky. This is outside of our entire galaxy. The stars you see in the night sky are tens, hundreds, a few, or thousands of light years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is two million light years away. And you can see that with the naked eye.
21:41 Speaker 01 I believe I saw that when I was in Chile.
21:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would have. Well, no, no, no, no, no. That's too far north. There are other fuzzy objects in the night sky.
21:47 Speaker 01 I saw two.
21:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's called, those were first described and written about by Ferdinand Magellan.
21:52 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. That guy was no Magellan, I'll tell you.
21:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He was, uh, sorry, what I should say is, Western folk first learned of these two clouds when Magellan did his round the world voyage. Clearly Aboriginal peoples of Australia knew all about the Magellanic Clouds. So they named it in his honor, the Magellanic Clouds. And they were called clouds at the time. They are galaxies as well.
22:15 Speaker 01 Yes.
22:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except they're closer.
22:17 Speaker 01 There's a small one and a big one.
22:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they're called the small Magellanic Cloud and the large Magellanic Cloud.
22:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, they really went out on the names.
22:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What are we doing? We tell it like it is.
22:24 Speaker 01 They blew the bank on that one.
22:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, those are relatively nearby. A couple hundred thousand, hundred thousand light years away. Um, the, uh, Andromeda is two million light years away. You're not seeing an individual star. You're seeing hundreds of billions of stars, the muddled, muddied light. The blended light of hundreds of billions of stars that comprise the Andromeda Galaxy. That is the farthest object visible.
22:50 Speaker 01 Would you?
22:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To the unaided eye. And, and you can't see that from New York or any light, light polluted place. Just go out in the countryside, uh, it'll be there.
22:59 Speaker 01 Would you, um, venture to think that if there are people there, that they could see us the same fuzzy way we see them?
23:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, by all means. Oh yeah, I think about that all the time.
23:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, if there were, if there was intelligent life there and they had detectors and they're looking our way, they would see us not as we are, but as we were two million years ago. Cause that light is only just now reaching them.
23:24 Speaker 01 Wow.
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they would not see signs of what we would call intelligence on Earth.
23:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They would see very, I don't-
23:30 Speaker 01 If they saw us now, they wouldn't see those signs either.
23:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So would conclude it.
23:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So yeah, Andromeda Galaxy. There it is.
23:37 Speaker 01 That's pretty awesome.
23:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
23:40 Speaker 01 This is a completely different type of question. Let's try this.
23:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
23:43 Speaker 01 This is slightly angri, slightly angry Lugia, Lugia? I don't know, that's their name on Twitter. Why do sodium and chloride, two extremely toxic and harmful chemicals combine to form normal table salt?
23:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the beauty of chemistry. So you think that a thing's properties are somehow inherent in the thing. But the property is what manifests after you combine it with whatever else is. So you combine sodium, which is a lethal metal that you can cut with a knife. That's how soft it is. And it reacts violently with water. Add that to chlorine, which would poison you if you breathed it. Okay? And put them together and you get completely necessary table salt. For necessary for the life. So when you put them together, all the chemistry, it's a new chemistry.
24:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a new thing. Don't think of it as I need, it probably has some of those properties it used to have. No. All that matters is what are its electrons doing when they talk to your electrons? And if the configuration is different, that's all that matters. And the electrons that manifest themselves to you in table salt are differently configured than the electrons that manifest themselves to you as either sodium or chlorine. And for me, the best way to say this, I had a little paragraph in this in my, in one of my books. It was, let's take hydrogen. Hydrogen is explosive. If you have a ball of hydrogen and light a match to it. So is Mexican food.
25:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Carry on. Thank you for that clarification in case we didn't. So hydrogen will explode if you light a match to it, a ball of gaseous hydrogen. Oxygen promotes combustion. If you have a flame and add oxygen to it, it'll burn faster. Combine hydrogen and oxygen, you get water that puts out flames.
25:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go.
25:57 Speaker 01 You know, it reminds me of George Carlin's old bit about halfway dirty words. Words aren't dirty until they're put together.
26:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
26:06 Speaker 01 You know?
26:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he has a follow on to the seven dirty words?
26:09 Speaker 01 Well, this was, this is old great material, but he said cock isn't a dirty word, it's in the Bible.
26:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
26:16 Speaker 01 And if you go to the dentist or the doctor and they give you a sucker, uh, you put them together, you got a bad word.
26:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so good point. So alone, those words mean things. You put them together, it means something else.
26:29 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Entirely.
26:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so it's the same thing. Once, meaning is everything in language. And if two words together have a different meaning, you know, deal with it. Don't say, wait a minute, take it apart, and those have their own separate meanings. Therefore, the word together has a, no, that ain't how it works.
26:48 Speaker 01 So it's the same as the sodium and the chloride?
26:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly the same as the sodium and chloride.
26:52 Speaker 01 But it works in the opposite way. Where sodium chloride come and come form together and make something nice?
26:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And make something beautiful.
26:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
26:59 Speaker 01 Gotcha. See what I did there for you?
27:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
27:01 Speaker 01 You're welcome, kid.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what else you have?
27:03 Speaker 01 Let's see, Raoul Sala Narano. Uh, at a little-
27:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can do better than that. Try that again.
27:10 Speaker 01 Raoul Sala Narano. Narano, Narano. Narango, listen. It's on Twitter. What am I doing?
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
27:20 Speaker 01 Uh, uh, da-da-da-da-da. Nah, it's not a good question.
27:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not a good question.
27:24 Speaker 01 Okay, well, what would be the single most alarming thing that I could see with the naked eye? I don't know.
27:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, ooh.
27:31 Speaker 01 I mean, that's-
27:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, no, I got this.
27:32 Speaker 01 Okay.
27:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got this.
27:33 Speaker 01 I guess that's up for interpretation.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got this.
27:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, you ready?
27:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't know what the single most alarming thing I could ever see with the naked eye was until I saw it.
27:42 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
27:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which meant I did not anticipate it. Okay, you ready?
27:46 Speaker 01 Yep.
27:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, this is 1999. I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm looking up. Because that's how we roll.
27:54 Speaker 01 That's exactly how you roll.
27:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's November.
27:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remember this because there's a meteor shower. Okay, meteor showers are best typically after midnight. So there I am. And Brooklyn Bridge is a nice, you're away from lights. It's still very lit, but you're away from lights. As good as you can. I'm a city person. It's the best I can do. And I'm there. And I'm looking up and I'm seeing this meteor shower. It's called the Leonid Meteor Shower. And you see the streaks of light. They're shooting stars. It's beautiful. We're getting like three or four per minute. This is a good rate. Okay, then.
28:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I saw a new star in the sky. I said, I don't recognize that star. And it just got brighter and brighter and brighter.
28:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then it disappeared. Then I saw a puff of smoke.
28:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I said, whoa, whoa. Okay, so you know what just happened?
28:52 Speaker 01 No.
28:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't know what I just witnessed?
28:55 Speaker 01 It sounds like a firework.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was headed straight towards me.
28:59 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. And it disintegrated.
29:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it disintegrated, straight towards me. There was no streak. There was no, and I thought to myself. This is the final moment of my life.
29:11 Speaker 01 It's the best way you could go. In all fairness. I mean, it's the most appropriate way.
29:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We are so accustomed to seeing streaks of light in the sky. And some of those are going to be headed straight for you. And they're not going to make a streak. They're just going to get brighter. That when I realized a split second after that had happened. What I just witnessed, I freaked out. I mean, not in a psycho, I just intellectually freaked out. And I said, damn, that's what that's going to look like. So that's the, that's the most terrifying thing to look up and see.
29:46 Speaker 01 Well, there you go, Raul. That's definitely the most terrifying thing Neil saw.
29:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
29:51 Speaker 01 But what about you? What could?
29:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, what else you got?
29:57 Speaker 01 It's Ramona Vaughn on Facebook.
29:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ramona Vaughn.
30:00 Speaker 01 Ray Mona, Ray Mona Vaughn.
30:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ray Mona.
30:02 Speaker 01 Ray Mona Vaughn. Uh, can you explain why some of the planets in our solar system rotate in the opposite direction?
30:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, so the planet Uranus, for example.
30:11 Speaker 01 Oh.
30:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, its axis is tipped 98 degrees. So it's rotating upside down.
30:19 Speaker 01 But what determines that being, oh, because it's going backwards?
30:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, no, you're asking, I was hoping you were gonna ask that question.
30:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a very intelligent, thought-out question.
30:27 Speaker 01 Right.
30:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If, if, so if you take something turning, and then I turn it, and then I flip it, it's still turning.
30:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who am I to say that's upside down? That's basically your question, right? It's because of the right-hand rule.
30:40 Speaker 01 Okay, but Uranus doesn't know that.
30:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's
30:43 Speaker 01 It's not like, hey, Uranus is like, Earth, what, what's going on there?
30:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? (laughing)
30:47 Speaker 01 Oh, okay, I'm a lefty, I'm a lefty.
30:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's called the right-hand rule. So, here's how you do it, okay? So hold up your right hand in front of you, like you're gonna shake someone's hand.
30:57 Speaker 01 Right.
30:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good, okay? Now stick your thumb up.
31:01 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
31:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the axis of rotation. Now curl your fingers. Your thumb is pointing north.
31:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm declaring that.
31:10 Speaker 01 Okay.
31:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By tradition.
31:11 Speaker 01 Right.
31:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so if you go to the planet and curl your fingers in the direction it's rotating, your thumb is gonna point north on that planet.
31:21 Speaker 01 Right.
31:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? So, if I take Uranus with my thumb up and fingers curled, and I then tip my thumb so it's pointed downwards,
31:31 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
31:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uranus is cur- turning back the other way. But the north still has to have that relationship to that rotation. So, that's what defines the north of an object, the right-hand rule, just by convention. That's how we can say Uranus is rotating upside down. Now how, why do we think that happens?
31:52 Speaker 01 So their south is our north.
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
31:54 Speaker 01 So they're Russia, yeah.
31:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? (laughing)
31:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, they're no, no, I didn't, I, why'd you get me to agree with you on that? Their north is their north. Their north is their north. Um, it just happens to be in everybody else's, uh, occupying the same area as everyone else's southern hemisphere. That's all. But Uranus is, it doesn't have issues here.
32:16 Speaker 01 Well, Uranus doesn't have much.
32:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, all I'm saying is that Uranus, um, so we think in the early solar system, because all the planets would have formed in the same sort of circulating cloud, and so you don't get upside down things in that. Everybody, all the planets are going in the same direction around the sun. That's the direction the sun is rotating, that's the direction Earth is rotating, so everybody's turning the same way, because that's the ener, the, the rotational energy of the original cloud out of which we formed. If you rotate the other way, the way we explain that is you had some bad stuff happen to you early on, you got slammed by some other object in the early solar system that tipped you on your axis.
32:53 Speaker 01 So possibly during...
32:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We think likely, not just possibly, but even likely.
32:57 Speaker 01 From the Big Bang?
32:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, way later, when we're forming our own solar system. Big Bang made the whole universe.
33:02 Speaker 01 Right.
33:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait 10 billion years, then you get our solar system.
33:05 Speaker 01 Okay.
33:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're a little late.
33:06 Speaker 01 We're the dust settling, so to speak.
33:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? God, very good.
33:09 Speaker 01 There we go.
33:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very good. So, uh, it got, it got slammed in, in the early solar system, and then it got tipped and has been that way ever since. So, we gotta take another break, uh, and when we're back, more Cosmic Queries Astrophysics Household Edition when we return.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Startalk, we're back. Third and final segment of Cosmic Queries, Household Astrophysics Edition. Is that what we call this, household? Everyday, everyday astrophysics.
34:12 Speaker 01 Household sounds like a cleaner. Like, these are like tips for you to get the stove shiny again, you know?
34:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Using cosmic principles. So Russell Peters, great to have you on the show. So you got all the questions there.
34:25 Speaker 01 I got all the questions.
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Give them to me.
34:26 Speaker 01 This is from, I don't know if that's a real name, IC Bank Carl.
34:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I don't know.
34:33 Speaker 01 It's an Instagram name. "What is a fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation for the universe overflow?"
34:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
34:41 Speaker 01 That's a deep question.
34:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's beautiful.
34:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a beautiful question. Let me just hear that question again.
34:47 Speaker 01 I feel we need sax playing in the background when you do it. What is a fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation for the universe overflow?
35:01 Speaker 01 A fact and a thought are two different things, though.
35:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, I know. But here goes, here goes. I bask in our collective ignorance on the frontier of the unknown. I long to look out. Look behind me and say, hey, we got that. And look in front of me and say, we have no idea what that is. And so what keeps me awake at night and has me run back to my office every morning is the prospect that we could be on the heels of a major discovery, answering a question that we might have posed already,
35:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? but possibly revealing a question we had not previously known to ask. That's my muse, my cosmic muse. I feel you overflowing.
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I had to give an overflowing answer.
36:06 Speaker 01 You're like in LA when it rains. The LA River. So overflowing.
36:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Russell, give me more.
36:12 Speaker 01 All right. Harry from California would like to know.
36:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No last name?
36:16 Speaker 01 No.
36:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just Harry. Do you know Harry in California?
36:17 Speaker 01 No, but he's ScaryLevinedBread is his Instagram name. Harry from California wants to know, what do you think the single most important discovery in the history of physics is and why?
36:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh. Ooh, I got this. Okay.
36:34 Speaker 01 Now, physics or astrophysics, are they two different things?
36:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Astrophysics is a subset of physics, but we good.
36:40 Speaker 01 Okay.
36:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We good. Some years ago, I wrote an essay. It won an award from the American Institute of Physics, a writing prize award. And the title of the essay was, "In the Beginning." And you're in the chair that I won, and it's stenciled on the back. Plus, I got $3,000, which is totally cool.
37:01 Speaker 01 That's... $3,000 is always a good thing to get.
37:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except I don't have the $3,000 anymore, but I do have the chair.
37:06 Speaker 01 Because you bought this damn chair with it.
37:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, here's what I celebrated in that essay. In that essay, I celebrated the existence and the consequence of E equals mc squared on the arc of the universe.
37:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There is no understanding of matter and energy in the universe without that equation. Stars would not produce energy. They would have been no Big Bang. Everything we take for granted in this universe
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? owes its foundation to equals mc squared, the equivalence of matter and energy in the universe. For me, that was the greatest discovery because of how much it enabled us to understand. Combine that with quantum physics. Had a lot of good folks working on it in the 1920s. A watershed decade in the history of human understanding of the universe. Quantum physics is a theory of the small. Atoms, molecules, nuclei.
38:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Coming to understand how the universe works on its smallest scale made us badass.
38:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not only could we have now, well, bad, good and bad, bad. Take the word bad in both contexts.
38:32 Speaker 01 Right.
38:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because that empowered us to end civilization as we know it.
38:37 Speaker 01 Right.
38:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The foundation of the nuclear arsenal.
38:39 Speaker 01 The atom bomb.
38:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, exactly. Yet it gave us our deepest understanding of how the world works. And it is the foundation to the entire information technology revolution. There is no creation,
38:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? storage or retrieval of information in the IT universe without an understanding of the quantum.
38:59 Speaker 01 Now you're saying IT because I'm Indian and that's what my people excel at?
39:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's your, your people?
39:04 Speaker 01 My people, we excel at IT?
39:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Aren't you from Toronto?
39:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I gotta go back to India for my family.
39:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got fam in India?
39:11 Speaker 01 I do.
39:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, cool.
39:12 Speaker 01 Tunso.
39:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tunso, okay. So, uh, yeah, for me equals MC squared. That's, I think, the most profound
39:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? fact of the universe. There's some close seconds and thirds in that list, but I put equals MC squared at the top.
39:26 Speaker 01 So.
39:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what's cool is we learned that in like third grade. That's your first equation, right?
39:30 Speaker 01 Well, I, I was never a good student.
39:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah?
39:32 Speaker 01 I became more curious as I became older. I, I wanted, cause I always questioned everything.
39:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's all, that's, that, that's it.
39:39 Speaker 01 I know.
39:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't need anything else.
39:41 Speaker 01 So, wait, but did you find if, I, let's go off topic here, but don't you find it fascinating that? So Albert Einstein, he came up with E equals MC squared, right?
39:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
39:49 Speaker 01 Um, but it, in such a short amount of time, like it took us how many, you know, centuries?
39:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Millennia.
39:56 Speaker 01 Millennia to get there. And then from then to here, we just did so much in a short amount of time.
40:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
40:03 Speaker 01 Like, why were we so dumb before that?
40:07 Speaker 01 Like, what made us so stupid before that? And then all of a sudden we're like, oh, bam.
40:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Um, it looks that way. It only looks that way. Okay, I have books from five years before equals mc squared. That would have been the year 1900. Okay, I have books. You read those science books. Read those books and say, the discoveries of recent years are so vast and so amazing. We are lucky to be living in special times. Look at the steam, uh, steamships across the ocean. We're laying, uh, telegraph cables. We can now communicate great distances. We have the railroads across the country. The world is smaller than ever before. What a great time to be alive.
40:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what they're writing in the year 1900.
40:59 Speaker 01 Right.
41:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that, that's what you sound like today. What a great time to be alive. Look at all the discoveries we've made. All I'm telling you is when you're living in a great time, every year feels like you're living in a special time. Come back in a hundred years, we'll say, those idiots back in 2019? What the hell did they know?
41:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, yeah, you can go back to 1999 and be like, computer, it was, you know?
41:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, or, no, no, no, in 1999, uh, um, no one has any concept yet of a smartphone.
41:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, we had the Palm Pilot, I believe.
41:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I had, I had a Palm Pilot.
41:34 Speaker 01 I had a Palm Pilot and I thought that was pretty good.
41:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you thought it was, it was great. I remember, you, you only, I remember 1987 movie, Wall Street.
41:44 Speaker 01 Yes.
41:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, in that movie, there's Gecko on the beach in the Hamptons with a cellphone.
41:53 Speaker 01 Yes.
41:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's like shoulder mounted cellphone.
41:56 Speaker 01 Yep.
41:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, as he's, and I, I remember, cause I saw that movie in first run and I remembered, wow, that's cool. He could walk and there's no wires and he's talking on a phone. And any of us today looking at that and say, what the hell were we thinking?
42:12 Speaker 01 I remember my brother's first cell phone was about about the size of that book, that physics energy book.
42:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Big fat book on my table.
42:19 Speaker 01 It had a handle that's pulled out.
42:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah.
42:22 Speaker 01 It still had like a receiver to catch, like a
42:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh, uh huh.
42:24 Speaker 01 And the buttons were separate. It was
42:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it was portable.
42:27 Speaker 01 It was portable. I used to sit in my brother's car and talk to my girlfriend at the time, like 1988, 89.
42:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Showing off in front of your girlfriend.
42:33 Speaker 01 Because he had free minutes after like nine o'clock. So I would use it then. And it wasn't long distance, didn't matter.
42:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right. So, so the evidence you're living in special times is that at every moment you think you're living in a special time.
42:47 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, but okay, let's go with not just equals, let's say from like eight, the mid 1800s. To now, we made some big strides, but what was happening before that, that just we were not doing anything? It just seems like we were not being logical back then.
43:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the middle of the 1800s? We discovered and perfected and harnessed electricity.
43:07 Speaker 01 Right, that's what I'm saying. When all that started.
43:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Since, you want to go before electricity?
43:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, before that. Like, let's go 1700s.
43:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, oh.
43:14 Speaker 01 Like, we were just like, what were we doing?
43:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The steam engine.
43:16 Speaker 01 Okay.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Steam ships. Excuse me.
43:19 Speaker 01 All right, all right.
43:21 Speaker 01 All right, let's go 1600s.
43:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 1600s. We discovered that Earth goes around the sun. The Earth is not in the middle of the known universe.
43:29 Speaker 01 What was that guy's name again? That was Galileo?
43:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Galileo.
43:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, see?
43:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
43:33 Speaker 01 Okay, just checking.
43:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, no, there were discoveries.
43:36 Speaker 01 Making sure you're
43:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Making sure I'm on
43:37 Speaker 01 Making sure you're legit.
43:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm on
43:38 Speaker 01 Make sure this isn't just internet's trickery.
43:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is true that discoveries happened less frequently.
43:45 Speaker 01 Right.
43:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is less likely that there was an engineering discovery that would change your life at that time. That is true. But think of the mindset. If any discovery changed your life at that time, that was amazing.
43:58 Speaker 01 Right.
43:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because previously, it didn't change anybody's life. It would change it over generations.
44:03 Speaker 01 Right, that's when things were selling like hotcakes.
44:08 Speaker 01 What I'm saying is, people cared about hot cakes at that time.
44:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
44:12 Speaker 01 That was the best part of their day.
44:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you go later on, there are advances in medicine, and we discovered cures, and there was, uh, so...
44:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I mean, what I'm saying is like, they were all farther apart, you know, spread apart more, and they seem like...
44:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The seventeen hundreds into the eighteen hundred, we, we invent the chronometer that's seaworthy, so we can figure out longitude on Earth, which has precision navigation. This stuff, you think you live in special times, just go back then and you'll be celebrating that. I'm just saying.
44:46 Speaker 01 No, what I'm saying, what I'm saying is, is that I feel like every day we're discovering something new that's gonna change our lives. But now, there's so many things coming in, there's so many things that we're discovering that, that they hold back on us now, like, it's almost like, hold on a second.
45:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, this is too much for you, yeah, we gotta be nice, yeah, we gotta like...
45:06 Speaker 01 I was talking to a computer guy the other day, and he was telling me about technology that is about to be introduced to the public, he said, "But we've had this for over twelve years."
45:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, yeah.
45:14 Speaker 01 And now they're introducing it to the public, and they're making it seem like it's the newest, greatest thing, he goes, "But this has been around."
45:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they have a marketability of the other stuff, and they wanna get their money's worth out of it.
45:22 Speaker 01 Right, yeah.
45:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The R and D that produced it.
45:24 Speaker 01 Yes. So there's so much...
45:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're holding back, it's an interesting concept. So if, if we keep this up, we could be a century behind what we could be doing, just because they're trying to make a buck off of stuff that they invented a hundred years ago.
45:34 Speaker 01 Exactly.
45:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, interesting, this is an interesting conspiracy theory.
45:37 Speaker 01 I don't know if it's a conspiracy or if it's just a, a, a hypothesis.
45:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We only have a couple of minutes left, we're gonna go into lightning round, okay? So, ask me five questions and I'll give you soundbite answers to them, okay?
45:50 Speaker 01 All right, from these questions?
45:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They took my bell from me, we're gonna have to simulate this, okay, ready, go.
45:54 Speaker 01 Okay, here, ready? When the Earth and the Moon become doubly, double tidally locked, what effect could that have on tides and weather patterns?
46:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, excellent, so, the Moon is spiraling away from Earth at the rate of a few inches a year. One effect of that is that Earth is slowing down in our rotation, we have to put in leap seconds every now and then. You know what the Moon is trying to do?
46:13 Speaker 01 What?
46:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's trying to slow us down so that one day on Earth equals one month for the Moon. When that happens, we will always show the same face to the Moon. And when that happens, there will be no tides, at all, tides will end.
46:28 Speaker 01 Really?
46:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, well, moon tides will end. We'll still have sun tides, but the moon tides will end. Yeah.
46:33 Speaker 01 What are moon tides exactly?
46:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The moon's stre- the gravity of the moon across the earth
46:38 Speaker 01 Hmm.
46:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? stretches the earth. The part of the earth close to the moon pulls closer to the moon. Part that's farther away is farthest away, and it stretches, and earth rotates inside of those tidal bulges. You're at the beach and the tide comes in, the tide comes out, goes out. Nothing's coming in and out. You are rotating on the solid earth in and out of a tidal bulge caused by the moon and the sun on the ocean surface.
47:06 Speaker 01 Is it like when you're in a bathtub with water and you start rocking back and forth? The water starts?
47:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It'll, no, because in that case, it's the water that's moving.
47:14 Speaker 01 Okay.
47:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In this case, it looks like the water's moving, but it's not. It's you rotating into it. Hardly, hardly anyone knows that, because colloquially, we talk about tides moving in and out.
47:21 Speaker 01 Hmm.
47:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But we are rotating into the tidal bulge and out of the tidal bulge. And, and there'll be a point where the tides won't, the, the tide will just be static and they'll never change.
47:31 Speaker 01 So that is inevitable?
47:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it, it'll take longer for that to happen than the future life expectancy of the sun. So don't worry about it.
47:39 Speaker 01 Okay, so, okay. Well, that, that's a concern.
47:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was supposed to give a short answer to that question.
47:43 Speaker 01 Well, I know, but.
47:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One last one, go.
47:45 Speaker 01 All right, uh. How similar must an exoplanet be to earth in order to host human life?
47:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you know, I think we can handle a planet that's, has slightly less gravity. You know, if, if you go to a plant, uh, uh, an exoplanet with slightly less gravity and you weigh 190 pounds,
48:02 Speaker 01 Hmm.
48:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? you, you, you're not gonna complain. Slightly more gravity, if your heart is strong, and you weigh 230, 240, you're not gonna complain, so.
48:09 Speaker 01 Don't take me back up there.
48:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's a range. You, you won't be fatter, you'll just weigh more. Your weight is not only how many molecules you have in you.
48:17 Speaker 01 It's the density?
48:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's also what's the force of gravity operating on you. So you weigh more, but you won't look heavier. You'll just be heavier. So, so.
48:25 Speaker 01 So my mass will be the same?
48:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, mass will be the same, correct. But your weight can be less or more, depending on what planet you're on. In fact, it's less or more on earth. If you go to the equator and the equator's spinning, uh, at the equator, you're moving a thousand miles an hour.
48:40 Speaker 01 Hmm.
48:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, you weigh less on the equator than you do here in New York City. You weigh less on a mountaintop than you do in a cave.
48:47 Speaker 01 We should go to the equator, guys.
48:50 Speaker 01 They should have weigh-ins for fights at the equator.
48:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At the equator, at the equator. And if you had a mountain on the equator, you'd weigh less than any other place on Earth.
48:57 Speaker 01 That's it.
48:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You got that?
48:59 Speaker 01 I'm gonna propose it to the UFC.
49:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you have to ascend the mountain. And you'll lose the weight that you would have hoped you'd lose by being in a lower-gravity well just by climbing the mountain. So you're better off just... By the way, it's not all that much weight. You pee out more weight than you would lose by going to the equator. It's ounces, it's not pounds.
49:17 Speaker 01 Well, then I'd be pissed. If I went through all that.
49:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Russell, we gotta go!
49:24 Speaker 01 Why?
49:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dude!
49:25 Speaker 01 This is so much fun.
49:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thanks, we gotta do this again.
49:27 Speaker 01 Yes, please.
49:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next time you come through town.
49:28 Speaker 01 Yes.
49:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're a world tourist, you know, world performer, but...
49:31 Speaker 01 I come to New York all the time.
49:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? New York has gotta be in your soul somewhere.
49:33 Speaker 01 It's definitely in my soul.
49:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very good.
49:35 Speaker 01 It's my favorite place on Earth.
49:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Russell, great to have you. You've been listening to and possibly even watching StarTalk, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thank you to Russell Peters.
49:45 Speaker 01 Thank you.
49:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The one and the only. And as always, I bid you to keep looking.
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