Science and Art, with Carolyn Porco - StarTalk All-Stars

Carolyn Porco is back, and she’s brought her friend, “Bad-ass Science Groupie” Sean Ono Lennon. Together with Chuck Nice, they answer Cosmic Queries about art, science, and math; the Anthropocene Age; and the lack of civility on Twitter.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is StarTalk.

• 0:08Carolyn Porco?

  Hello and welcome everyone to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your All-Star host of the evening, Carolyn Porco. I'm a planetary scientist, which means I love planets. I'm the leader of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission, presently in orbit around Saturn, and a veteran imaging scientist of that fabled mission Voyager to the outer solar system in the 1980s. Joining me is my comedic co-host is StarTalk veteran, the very funny Chuck Nice.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  That remains to be seen.

• 0:37Carolyn Porco?

  Thanks for being here today.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Not so nice.

• 0:40Carolyn Porco?

  Thanks for being here today, Chuck. Last time we did this, you were such a champ. You came here and did two shows and you had a cold and the flu.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I had the flu.

• 0:50Carolyn Porco?

  And you're okay today.

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I'm not contagious. So, we are in much better position.

• 0:55Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, because today we have a very special guest with us, and that is Sean Ono-Lennon. Welcome, Sean. Hello.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  Howdy. Good to be here.

• 1:02Carolyn Porco?

  You are here.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. I made it.

• 1:04Carolyn Porco?

  You made it.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  In the humidity.

• 1:06Carolyn Porco?

  As I like to say, if you were alive and alert during the 1960s, and it would be forgivable if you weren't either, you will certainly recognize Sean's last two names. Yes, he is the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and I know what you're all thinking, but that is not why I invited him here today. He is, of course, a musician and has been for decades. Right? That's correct. He's just completed a tour with his new band called the Claypool Lennon Delirium, which is fronted by both Sean and Les Claypool. Most people will know Les as the lead guy in...

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Primus, right?

• 1:42Carolyn Porco?

  Primus.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Primus, yeah.

• 1:44Carolyn Porco?

  Refer to on Wikipedia, I'm sorry I had to do this, as a funk metal band. Is that an accurate description?

• 1:50Speaker 03

  You know, it's good enough for now.

• 1:52Carolyn Porco?

  Okay.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Wait around 10 minutes, it'll change.

• 1:55Carolyn Porco?

  But actually, none of that is why Sean is here today. He's here because I noticed, as I followed him on Twitter, that he's a serious, I called him badass, science groupie. He pays attention to what's going on in all sorts of arenas like planetary exploration and cosmology, artificial intelligence, technology, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and on it goes. He even wears glasses. That makes him official...

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  And there's no prescription in them.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24Chuck Nice?

  It's just for effect.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Well, looking this good isn't that easy.

• 2:31Carolyn Porco?

  And I found, I found he was enamored with Saturn, which was cool by me. And in fact, when he was a teenager, um, he painted a painting of Saturn that he recently sent me, which I think was adorable. Uh, and through all of this in the last few months and lots of email exchanges and discussions, I found him to have a really incisive intelligence, a gentle soul. Uh, and he's a staunch feminist to boot. So I thought he'd be perfect to have on StarTalk.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:59Carolyn Porco?

  Uh, anyway, it's a delight to have you.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  I'm really excited to be here, guys.

• 3:03Carolyn Porco?

  Okay.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  Excited to have you.

• 3:05Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, so there's so much we could talk about, but I wanted to begin with this. Uh, since you are a science groupie, what is it about science that draws you to it? You didn't become a scientist, although you told me you spent some time at Columbia. You actually went through three semesters at Columbia?

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Well, I was, I, at one point, I was interested in anthropology at Columbia, but then I kind of got distracted by a record deal and all this. And I'm not sure if I regret it, but I just left and went to do music, and I've been doing that ever since.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  I had a similar experience where I went to Columbia and they said, "Listen, you can't just be on campus. You actually have to go here." And then I had to leave.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:42Carolyn Porco?

  What do you mean, you actually, you have to go attend classes, they said? Oh gee, you didn't know that was part of the contract?

• 3:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm just like, what a cool campus.

• 3:48Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, um...

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Why didn't I go into science? Well, you know, I think when I was young, I was in a boarding school. It was kind of a strict British boarding school and, you know, they were pretty, uh, you know, they, they discouraged people who were, you know, hippie, you know, children like me. So, I don't know, I felt maybe that I didn't have the mathematic aptitude for science.

• 4:10Carolyn Porco?

  Wait, wait, wait, they discouraged people who were hippie children?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, there was sort of like-

• 4:14Carolyn Porco?

  What year are we talking?

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Well, you know, when I was, I guess, uh, between 12 and 15.

• 4:19Carolyn Porco?

  So you were like, this was the late eighties?

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I still don't know if I have the aptitude for real scientific work, or at least not the diligence. But I'm certainly a fan.

• 4:28Carolyn Porco?

  Definitely are a fan.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:30Carolyn Porco?

  I can tell you're a fan. You know, you think deeply, you wonder about the state of the world, like many of us do.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  I try.

• 4:36Carolyn Porco?

  The future of humanity, um, from where you sit.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:39Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, on Twitter, everywhere, whatever, wherever you look. Uh, what do you think are the biggest issues?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, um, you know, I think- I think we've all been really concerned recently, and I mean, you know, everyone that I know at least, with the state of the world, I mean, politically, you know, environmentally. And I remember growing up, and you've mentioned this before, the movie 2001, it seemed like we might at least be, you know, taking trips to the moon and living in some sort of utopic, you know, futuristic society. When I was young, there was a kind of optimism about the future. And I've noticed in the last 10 years, that that kind of inherent optimism has kind of been replaced by a real pessimism and negativity about, you know, the potential

• 5:25Speaker 03

  for humans to survive at all. So, you know, and I think that it's concerning because, you know, people tell me, oh, well, you know, there's always been people worried about Armageddon throughout any period of history, but it's the first time I've noticed that people, that scientists sort of unanimously talk about the Anthropocene and the human-caused extinction epoch as something we just sort of have to accept, which in essence means that we're bringing about our own demise and, you know, learning to live in today's world means accepting that demise as a given.

• 5:59Carolyn Porco?

  Well, I don't, I don't know that I'm hearing scientists say this, but it's interesting that you think you're hearing them say that we have to accept it. I think the role that scientists are playing is to illuminate the facts that...

• 6:13Speaker 03

  No, of course, I agree with you, but the term Anthropocene means human-caused extinction epoch. And so if that's real, which essentially I feel...

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  I think it just means it's a... Is it, is it, is it, does it mean that that's a foregone conclusion, or does it mean that we have that potential? Because I think the Anthropocene age that we live in is, shows that we are in, we're on the precipice, that we can definitely bring about our own demise, but that it's up to us whether or not that happens.

• 6:43Carolyn Porco?

  Well, I'm not saying that we've... I don't, I don't think it means, I don't think it means, the term means that... We are going to bring about our own demise. The way it it just means that we are in a period of geological history now where humans are a

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  An effect.

• 7:00Carolyn Porco?

  Global effect.

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  An effect, right.

• 7:02Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, a major effect. It's not, you know.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  When you say, Carolyn, that all of those effects are pretty bad, and that's why the assumption is we're going to bring about our own demise.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  But also, aren't the epochs distinguished by extinctions?

• 7:16Carolyn Porco?

  Not all of them. I don't think the boundaries are all that way.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  No. I think basically.

• 7:22Carolyn Porco?

  Some of them have been.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Certainly, like, one species becomes more dominant after that. Isn't that true?

• 7:29Carolyn Porco?

  I forget. Maybe you know more about this than I do, but I, my rec-

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  I'm a comedian, please do not look at me.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Either way, I'm not saying that everyone agrees about what the Anthropocene is. I just mean that I'm hearing more and more legitimized scientists say that, you know, humans aren't going to make it.

• 7:49Carolyn Porco?

  Well, you know why? You know why? Because we are facing absolutely out of control, unprecedented problems.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 7:55Carolyn Porco?

  You know, it's one thing to be depressed that you're not going to, you know, have the job you want by the time you die, or, you know, any number of things we all get depressed about. But when you start being depressed, as I am, and I think there's a word for it, I'm sorry, I don't know, when you're actually depressed about the state of the world and not about, you know, your lover leaving you.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  And it's not a neurosis, yeah.

• 8:13Carolyn Porco?

  And it's not a neurosis.

• 8:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:15Carolyn Porco?

  I mean, to think that, you know, I thought, like, 2001 was horrible because you just wouldn't think a building like that would just, buildings would have planes flying into them and they would go away.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:25Carolyn Porco?

  You live in New York, right?

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was there.

• 8:27Carolyn Porco?

  New York skyline, change like that.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:29Carolyn Porco?

  Suddenly, things are not immutable.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Sure, but in my mother's generation, that happened to Tokyo, and, I mean, so it's arguable that that the world has, you know, always had challenges through every generation. But the question is, is there something distinctly different now? And I think-

• 8:46Carolyn Porco?

  Yes, it's environmental change that is is going to bring about all sorts of bad things, including- Geopolitical instability.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Exactly, but I've heard a lot of people say that it's not the environmental change is going to be nothing compared to just simply making most jobs obsolete through automation and robotics.

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Now, that's a very interesting point because when you look at the future of just the global workforce, there are a lot of people now calling for just universal pay, you know, where you just pay people to be so that as a means of getting rid of poverty because we're going to have a huge increase in the amount of poverty globally because of automation.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  It's hard to anticipate what's going to happen, but even when I go to the airport now and they force you to use the robotic kiosk, I remember the woman was like, "You gotta go use it." She was kind of rude to me and I was like, "Well, wouldn't you prefer you help me because, you know, these robots are displacing hundreds of people employed in your field?"

• 9:47Carolyn Porco?

  Did she buy it?

• 9:48Chuck Nice?

  You're one of them, lady!

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I was like, "Why are you so happy about, you know, promoting the use of these robots that are replacing you?" And she didn't even know what I was talking about, but I do find it ironic, you know, that these kinds of automation are being sort of, you know, forced upon us when we do have a choice. We can still employ people to, you know, work at the airport, but, you know, so I think that's just the beginning of it, but who knows how many jobs could be misplaced by automation and the potential for a division between the rich and the poor is so great. I mean, we think it's bad now, but it could be much worse in a hundred years. So, I mean, that worries me almost as much as the Anthropocene.

• 10:27Carolyn Porco?

  There are a lot of worrisome things. Maybe we should go to Cosmic Queries and see what they've got in store for us. Maybe they've...

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  See what other dark tales that we can glean from the internet.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  But I will recommend that book by Roy Scranton called Learning to Die in the Anthropocene because ultimately, he does have a sort of zen view of, you know, how we have to be motivated to have families and, you know, be ambitious and work and be productive, you know, in a sort of zen sense and just live in the moment and be happy to, you know, exist despite, you know, the potential for a meteorite impact in a hundred years or something, you know? So I do think it's a good book, but it did make me a little nervous, but I will say that it's beautifully written.

• 11:11Carolyn Porco?

  Okay.

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 11:12Carolyn Porco?

  We'll note it.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, we have queries from all over the internet, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or you name it, where people have written their questions to you guys on all of these things that we just talked about and more. So why don't we take our first one, which is from Patreon, a Patreon patron, and for those of you who don't know, if you support us on Patreon financially, we give you precedent. Basically, you have bribed us into reading one of your questions. (laughing) And we don't mind. We'll admit that. So, this is from Nick Sazafronsky, okay? Nick, I hope I got it right, alright?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm sure that's close.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Nick Sazafronsky says this: "With the Earth adding leap days to the calendar every four years," and Carolyn, this is probably more you than...

• 12:01Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, I'm worried already.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Are you ready? "Are we as human beings moving our perception of the seasons backwards, or is the hotter temperatures later in the year due to climate change?"

• 12:12Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, so that's a non sequitur.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay, thank you, because I thought maybe, and listen, Nick, by no means am I going to disparage your question, but the two really aren't related, right?

• 12:22Speaker 03

  It's pretty interesting, though. It's making me think.

• 12:24Carolyn Porco?

  Well, yeah, but, okay, so, yeah, I don't even know where to go with that. Okay.

• 12:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, he said he-

• 12:31Carolyn Porco?

  Leap seconds being added is just a way to bring about some kind of accounting of time.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Caesar was the first one to do it. Didn't he invent the leap year?

• 12:40Carolyn Porco?

  You always ask me these questions.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I'll say that it's true.

• 12:44Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, no, okay, just assert that it's true.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Caesar invented, yeah, he invented the modern calendar.

• 12:48Carolyn Porco?

  Uh, yeah, okay.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  He did.

• 12:50Carolyn Porco?

  You know who knows a lot about this is Neil. He loves the whole-

• 12:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he loves-

• 12:53Carolyn Porco?

  Loves the calendars.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  You know what's very interesting in terms of the calendar is that you can memorize which months have less than 31 days. If you start with January is F on a piano keyboard, and then the sharps, F sharp, G sharp, and A sharp are the less than 31-day months, and it actually corresponds-

• 13:10Carolyn Porco?

  So what, F is January?

• 13:12Speaker 03

  All the 12 notes correspond exactly to the numbers of days in each month.

• 13:16Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool.

• 13:18Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, that's weird.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  I like it.

• 13:20Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, but starting with F, F is January?

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Yes, F would be January.

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  I am going to learn to read music, just so I can put that to work in my life.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  And then C would be December.

• 13:28Carolyn Porco?

  I like, you know, Thirty Days Has September, April, June, and November. All the rest are thirty-one.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  That's harder to remember for me as a musician, because the piano keyboards in my head.

• 13:35Carolyn Porco?

  All right.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  But it's interesting that it corresponds, I mean, I think this is an interesting segue to the intersection between art and science, because, I mean, the diatonic scale was started by Pythagoras.

• 13:46Carolyn Porco?

  I told you, we wouldn't have any trouble with this guy.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  No, but it's interesting, because also, there's seven days of the week, you know, and Monday is Moon Day, Tuesday, Monday, Mer- Mer- Monday, Mer- Mars Day is Tuesday, Mercury is Wednesday.

• 14:01Carolyn Porco?

  That's Mercury.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Mercury is Jupiter, right, so they're named after the spheres, and as you know, the diatonic scale was also related to the music of the spheres, because in those days, they believed that the harmony of the ratios that they found in the octaves, which is, you know, he plucked a string, added a weight, and doubled it, and then a third, was actually the ratios of fifths and thirds that are the diatonic scale. And he thought that corresponded directly, well, not just Pythagoras, but they all did, to the music of the spheres, which was a sort of planetary symphony that was the music of God or something. But I find that to be interesting, in that you find these same ratios, at least, you know, and Fibonacci can be found in the music scale as well.

• 14:43Carolyn Porco?

  Are you talking about the golden mean, which I think is the coolest thing, the Greeks used the golden mean?

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, so there are these sort of mathematical connections between music and mass, and, you know, I actually, this morning, I was trying to think about the topic of, you know, what is the influence of science on art? And I was actually trying to figure out, well, when did actually, when actually was the separation of science and art? Because I think, early on, I mean, if you think about, you know, Babylonians, Egyptians, even Greeks, art and science were totally intertwined, and I think it was probably all-

• 15:17Carolyn Porco?

  But is that right?

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course, because mathematicians were musicians, and music was made by a mathematician, and, you know, the people that built the pyramids were craftsmen, I would call them scientists, because they were masons, they understood, you know, astronomy. And so, what I mean is, I think even all the way up to the Renaissance, scientists were artists, basically. So I'm just trying to wonder, when did that actually, when did, when did the separation happen? Because I think fundamentally-

• 15:43Carolyn Porco?

  It could have been when, I'm just gonna take a guess, it could have been when scientists no longer were- Supported by a benefactor.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:51Carolyn Porco?

  You know, you could apply for grant money from the government.

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say this.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Maybe, but I'm.

• 15:55Chuck Nice?

  And the specialty.

• 15:56Carolyn Porco?

  We only have two minutes, you know.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that, man. We really got off on it, didn't we?

• 15:59Carolyn Porco?

  We did.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 16:01Carolyn Porco?

  Sorry to be the wet blanket, but do we need to ask? Sorry, we need to ask.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's get to another question, but that was, that was great stuff.

• 16:07Carolyn Porco?

  That was fascinating.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Well, I did want to tell you one quote. You can edit this out, but um.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  What? No.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  James Sylvester, uh, he was the Oxford scientist who taught Florence Nightingale, who basically invented modern nursing. And he said that, uh, "Music is the mathematics of sense and mass is the music of reason."

• 16:23Carolyn Porco?

  Hold it. Say it again? Music is the mathematics of sense.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yes, and mathematics is the music of reason.

• 16:30Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, wow, interesting.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  Nice, very nice.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I find that to be true.

• 16:34Carolyn Porco?

  Who said that?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Uh, his name is James Sylvester. He was the Oxford, uh, scientist who was the tutor for Florence Nightingale, who invented modern nursing in the Victorian era.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  There's a beautiful, uh, reciprocity there that works wonderfully. I like that. All right, we're, we're almost out of time, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna get one.

• 16:51Carolyn Porco?

  We are, one minute and fifteen.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  We got one minute, so I'm gonna get one that Carolyn, that maybe you can knock out for us in a minute.

• 16:55Carolyn Porco?

  Let's hope.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Uh, Rodney A. Morrison Jr. from Facebook wants to know this. Hey, so Carolyn, what in the world is at Saturn's core? Could it be some kind of dense liquid that's not molten? Or is it just boring old rocky material? Thanks a lot.

• 17:13Carolyn Porco?

  It's boring old rocky material.

• 17:14Chuck Nice?

  Is it really?

• 17:15Carolyn Porco?

  Saturn has a boring old rocky core. And then, um, it's got a thick outer layer where you go from atmosphere to, um, uh, uh, oh god, fluid i- uh, ionized, uh, hydrogen, helium, and then you get into metallic hydrogen, and then you go into the core.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  You go into the core.

• 17:35Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, it's pretty.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Is ionized hydrogen just plasma?

• 17:38Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, you're too damn smart.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Well, at what point will the?

• 17:43Carolyn Porco?

  I don't understand why you didn't become a scientist.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  But at one point.

• 17:46Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, we got, wait a minute.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 17:48Carolyn Porco?

  Stop right here. We have to take a short break, and we'll be back shortly. And I need a break, too. Talking more science here on StarTalk All-Stars.

• 17:58Carolyn Porco?

  Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. I am your host for today, Carolyn Porco, and we have the always humorous Chuck Nice here today.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  Ah-ha.

• 18:07Carolyn Porco?

  Thank you.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Good to be here.

• 18:09Carolyn Porco?

  As well as our in-

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Less humorous.

• 18:11Carolyn Porco?

  Our in-studio guest who regards himself as less humorous, but I don't. Science groupie and musician Sean Lennon. So, thank you both for-

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Howdy.

• 18:23Chuck Nice?

  And we're finding out that Sean is extremely science literate, like, too-

• 18:28Speaker 03

  That's not exaggerating.

• 18:29Carolyn Porco?

  And well-informed.

• 18:30Chuck Nice?

  Well-informed.

• 18:31Carolyn Porco?

  Well-informed, man.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Super cool, man.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  I'm just Googling under the table.

• 18:34Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, okay, well-

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  Wouldn't that be hilarious, though? If you had, like, a little phone right here?

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Exactly. I'm like, really? It was actually 13 atoms in aluminum.

• 18:42Carolyn Porco?

  So, we were talking about, you know, the Anthropocene and all the awful things that are happening, climate change and-

• 18:49Speaker 03

  All the good stuff.

• 18:51Carolyn Porco?

  Great inequities, all the things that really are concerning people today. And they come with a bigger punch than usual because they really seem, like, catastrophic, right?

• 19:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Carolyn Porco?

  Like, you know, we're on an exponential-

• 19:04Speaker 03

  We're not defined by science.

• 19:05Carolyn Porco?

  We're on an exponential curve to the end. So, I- this is something that Sean and I talked about over email, and even when I went to see you, I went to see his show, Boston-

• 19:17Speaker 03

  It was very nice of you to come to that.

• 19:18Carolyn Porco?

  Boston, it was a rockin' show. I hadn't been to a concert in god knows how long.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  She got to play my guitar.

• 19:23Carolyn Porco?

  I have a picture of me with his sparkly green guitar, and I thought, well, for a moment there, I was infinitely cool.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Carolyn Porco, rock god.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  God, yes, I think.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  I don't believe in terms for that.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  That's genderist.

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  God is god.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Sorry, I didn't mean to be sexist.

• 19:39Carolyn Porco?

  So, we're- so, anyway, we're thinking of, you know, I think, about how horrible our stewardship of the planet has been, how we have behaved collectively with no regard to animals and animal life, as if they are there for us or against us, depending on- You know, what we deem important. And even if we can find optimism in technological achievements and progress that comes from that, I wonder, you know, our fundamental nature seems to be angel and devil together in the same package. And it seems to be to our evolutionary advantage to kill, or at least regard with great suspicion, everything that is alien to us and to protect our own.

• 20:24Carolyn Porco?

  Will we ever be able to get beyond this?

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Is anything on the planet Earth really alien to us, though? That's an interesting question.

• 20:31Carolyn Porco?

  Well, no. In fact, you know, and I love when I'm talking to people or on Twitter, I always love to regard, talk about anything we show on Twitter, an animal, a bug, you know, anybody, it's another Earthling.

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:45Carolyn Porco?

  It's really just, let's reset the perception. But this is a serious question, you know, it's, we have both. Both are the reason why we have become so successful, right? We kill things that let our genetic material.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Advance into the future.

• 21:01Carolyn Porco?

  Advance into the future. Is that going to be the thing that kills us? Where is, and where can, how can we be optimistic? Where is there that we can find optimism?

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Aren't there examples, there's so many examples in nature of sustainable systems, though, that's the thing. So I feel like we could easily benefit from natural resources without destroying them. Because there are a lot of examples in nature where it's a symbiotic relationship, where, you know, that we are happy to, you know, live in our gut.

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  Without them, we would die.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  We're happy to give them ice cream, you know what I mean? So I feel like it's possible to have a sustainable society. But what I really want to ask you is how do you feel about the potential of, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that I'm sure your audience likes to hear about anyway. I mean, how do you, everyone's talking about colonizing Mars, like Elon Musk is talking about getting there. I mean, if we can't even terraform Arizona, what are the chances of us terraforming a planet that has no magnetic field, no continental drift, I mean, no protection from, you know, the radiation of the sun? And we can't even, you know, terraform Arizona? So I don't, I don't really see what the realistic, you know, thinking is there.

• 22:10Carolyn Porco?

  This is how I view this whole topic. First of all, I'm a big fan of human. Exploration, that is, as opposed to robotic. I'm a big fan of both. I think they go hand in hand. There's a place for both.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Or like cloak.

• 22:24Carolyn Porco?

  Glove to glove.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Glove, yeah, exactly.

• 22:29Carolyn Porco?

  Human exploration for, you know, the practical reasons, like it takes, it would take a human, you know, an instant to be walking around on the surface of Mars and identify a rock that was of interest. It would take a long time, longer, for a robot to do it, because the robot's got to be in touch with the ground, and maybe you could train them to recognize it. But, you know, we've, we've had, you know, billions of years, or, yeah, billions of years of evolution to work off of, to get to where we are. We're pretty good at that. So that's good. But I also think human exploration, I'm digressing here, is important for the inspiration that it allows people, you know, seeing someone do something that is on the very edge of what human, is humanly possible.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:12Carolyn Porco?

  But I don't think that for people, that people should be thinking, we're going to take seven billion people, or nine billion people, and move them to Mars. That is not going to happen. We, the, the analog that I think is applicable here is one where we are going to set up the equivalent of scientific research stations on Antarctica. We've had for decades now a continuously inhabited research outpost on Antarctica, and valuable things are done there. And I think that's what we'll do in the solar system, but...

• 23:45Speaker 03

  That's a much more realistic view then, but I've, I've read a lot of, you know, books, even Michio Kaku, when I was young, I read a book of his that was talking about this Russian scientist who has qualifications for a phase one society, phase two society, and I think it was your friend Carl Sagan who actually just made more distinct, like a more, smaller distinctions between the phases, but that essentially if you survive a nuclear age, then you get to another phase of, you know, of, of a possible extinction threat. But then you can eventually build a geodesic dome or something, or a Dyson, Dyson sphere around the sun, and you get all this energy, and then you can make wormholes, and you can essentially populate the universe. I just feel like a lot of people use that

• 24:29Speaker 03

  kind of theoretical thinking to sort of justify... The survival or the optimism that we might survive as a species if we actually populate the solar system or, you know, elsewhere. And I just feel like it's so unrealistic because we, as you said, we're not very good custodians of our own planet. So how could we possibly make a place as inhospitable as Mars ever?

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  You know, the other, the antithesis of what you're saying, or the flip side more than the antithesis, the flip side of that is perhaps that's how we are here. It is not really about us populating other places as in colonization, but in seeding other places the same way that we seed each other to send our DNA into the future. That's why we have sex and we have kids.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  You want to impregnate Mars.

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, we just, I just want to impregnate Mars, is what I'm saying. I'm gonna knock you up, Mars. That's what's happening right now.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  I want to watch. I'll pay to see that.

• 25:23Carolyn Porco?

  He wants to watch.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  I want to watch.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  I'll pay to see that.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Bow, she can bow, wow.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. Mars is getting sexy. Maybe, yeah, but, yeah.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  But yeah, you understand what I'm saying?

• 25:32Speaker 03

  I do.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  So maybe it's not about colonization, maybe it's the survival, you know, the same way on a cellular level, we survive because we send a single cell to a single cell and then boom, that's how life is.

• 25:46Carolyn Porco?

  I'm just saying this is the expression of the base need to just survive.

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. It's an expression of a base need to survive.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  That's a good question because I just read an article that said if humans will go extinct or we actually face the extinction of life on the planet, do we have an obligation then to seed other exoplanets with, you know, Earth-bound DNA? Like should we send rockets and do our own anthropenspermia project to spread life if we, if we're looking at our own extinction? Do we have a duty to do that or is it bad to do that?

• 26:19Carolyn Porco?

  I don't know.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Violating the prime directive?

• 26:21Carolyn Porco?

  These are moral questions, but isn't it just an incredibly fascinating question to ponder?

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Carolyn Porco?

  Well, you just, like you could spend an evening drinking a glass of wine in front of a fireplace, thinking about all these things and have a really good time.

• 26:34Chuck Nice?

  Did you send bottle?

• 26:35Carolyn Porco?

  Should we do?

• 26:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let's get into another. Let's switch gears here. Let's switch gears. Because, you know, you guys kept bringing up Twitter. So we have some questions where people want to talk about Twitter and, um, let me see who this person is. Oh, Kevan or Kavan Kutaie.

• 26:55Carolyn Porco?

  That's all right, don't apologize, you did, you gave it your best shot.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  I did the best I could, I think these people are sending me fake names just so I can struggle, I swear.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  That's right, people call me Seon every day.

• 27:05Carolyn Porco?

  Seon!

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Every day, every day, I get Seon, I do.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so here's what Kevan wants to know. Social media has a representation for disseminating false and misleading information, but since people are also being exposed to the collective knowledge, wisdom, education, and expertise of other users, aren't they getting a more stimulating and meaningful experience than they would from just watching or reading news about more, by more traditional means? So, i-is that collective knowledge that is represented on a base like Twitter or Facebook, is that greater, or is it more harmful in that you could have more people just believing wrong stuff?

• 27:47Carolyn Porco?

  Well, here's, you know, it's the yin and yang of everything.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  But it's not either.

• 27:52Carolyn Porco?

  The older I've gotten, the more I realize just about everything you can think of has a good side and a bad side. To me, the good side of Twitter is that, first of all, you are accessing the knowledge of lots of people that you wouldn't have, otherwise have access to, I mean, it's out there. Sometimes I've sent things out on Twitter and I realize, oh my god, that's, that's wrong, I'm sorry, I just hit the send button. Three seconds later, someone's back and saying, that's not right, you know, I've got smart people following me, that's great. It's also great that it bypasses the, the, what's the word here, the guardians of the news.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  The standard, the standard bear gatekeepers.

• 28:36Carolyn Porco?

  The gatekeepers, I mean, aren't we finding that the regular news media are just...

• 28:41Speaker 03

  It's all sensational, it's tabloid now.

• 28:43Carolyn Porco?

  It's tabloid, they are doing it for profits, they're not doing it to convey accurate information. This whole business of setting up a false equivalence between someone who's knowledgeable, someone who doesn't know jack, but just for the sake of making it look like they're having a reasonable discussion.

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  It looks like it's an intellectual tennis match, and it's not.

• 29:03Carolyn Porco?

  So I like that about social media a lot, but the downside is that you're also accessing people who have no self-control, and they don't really know how to engage in logical, reasoned discussion, and they think the purpose of Twitter is just to let it all hang out, meaning their anger. You know, even if it's misdirected.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  I've been contemplating the ugliness of Twitter, you know, a lot recently because I'm I'm pretty active on Twitter. And, you know, I think at first my criticisms were of the medium of Twitter. And then I started to realize that really it's more of a cross-section of people and it's my my my issues have to do with with us, with people. I think it's just people expressing what they think. And I think normally we wouldn't be exposed to such a cross-section of society. But, you know, Twitter is just us and what we see on Twitter.

• 29:53Carolyn Porco?

  But it's depressing how many people don't I they don't know how to engage. They don't know that you could criticize something they've said.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:03Carolyn Porco?

  And not criticize them.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 30:05Carolyn Porco?

  They take it personally.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Personally.

• 30:07Carolyn Porco?

  And then and.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's a lack of critical thought right there.

• 30:09Carolyn Porco?

  It is a lack of.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  It's a lack of critical thought when somebody takes a disagreement as a personal attack. You know, and and so many people do that on Twitter.

• 30:17Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, but so many people just do that.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  Period.

• 30:20Carolyn Porco?

  And that's, you know, I I really do think people need to be trained. They need to be trained in critical thought. They need to be trained. People need to be told how to vote. I don't even think people know how to vote.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  No ad hominem, no straw man arguments. I mean, you know, it's easy to, I mean, these, you know, if you actually spend a little time, you can learn how to debate, you know, with civility. But I think, again, the ugliness of Twitter is just the ugliness of people and the beauty of Twitter is the beauty of people. So but I would say the biggest problem to me with social media, since that's, you know, the topic, is that I think a generation of kids are learning how to represent themselves through a two-dimensional Facebook page very well, but they're not learning how to represent themselves to real, physical human beings in a relationship with them in a room and in their lives. And I think.

• 31:10Carolyn Porco?

  Totally different thing, isn't it?

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  Captain Sean, I totally disagree with you.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm joking.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. And but those are different skills. And, you know, in fact, you can get a very good job being a master of social media these days, you know.

• 31:21Carolyn Porco?

  Yes, I know that.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  But that's a skill in itself.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  So do you think that at some point in time in the future that we'll actually have training for people? Because when you think about it, we're still in the nascent stages of social media.

• 31:33Carolyn Porco?

  It's not just training for social media.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  If you take a logic and rhetoric class at any university, you're going to learn about ad hominem attacks and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's been a part of.

• 31:42Carolyn Porco?

  I think it needs to be almost like vocational. You you do it. You teach people how to interact with other human beings and I just don't think we are given enough of that.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  Well, the lady's out of fashion, though, that's the thing.

• 31:55Carolyn Porco?

  Well, we were saying that, you know, there's no empathy on Twitter. It's not, it's not cool to be compassionate. I actually, I won't tell you, it was the, it was the election season, I expressed compassion on some topic and the woman I was having this fight, this argument with, referred to my response as maudlin, because I actually expressed, like, you know...

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  You said something nice.

• 32:19Carolyn Porco?

  I said something.

• 32:20Chuck Nice?

  You said something that held compassion.

• 32:22Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, should we take another question because we're getting to the end of this segment?

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Maudlin's a good vocabulary word, though, kids.

• 32:28Carolyn Porco?

  Yes.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. All right, here we go. Um, let's go to, uh, Josefa Larry from Facebook.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  That was an easy one.

• 32:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that was an easy one, right? Okay. Art has evolved through time incorporating scientific advancements at every step. So maybe in the future, is it possible that animations or visual effects that we see now may be considered a form of primitive inspiring art?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Oh, of course.

• 32:57Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, that's kind of like a no-brainer. I think so.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  Well, I think, I think they're more talking about like the work that you do with your visual imaging. I don't, do you look at that as, as, as an art form as well?

• 33:10Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, I do.

• 33:11Chuck Nice?

  Do you understand?

• 33:12Carolyn Porco?

  I think that was the one thing I did as the leader of the imaging team. You know, we all, well, I'll speak for myself, I didn't want to do what other people who came before me had done.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:20Carolyn Porco?

  You know, with the images that we were collecting, I wanted to do something different, just to kind of add my mark. And I was always very disappointed, oh, we have to go.

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  No, it's okay, go ahead, finish your point. No, seriously.

• 33:32Carolyn Porco?

  I was always very disappointed with the way, for example, not to criticize because the Voyager project was like the best thing that ever happened to me and I think ever happened to anybody. But I just thought they didn't treat the images as well as they should have. They didn't present them as beautifully as they could have. It was all, get the science out, we're just making pictures for the public because we got it, we have a press conference coming up and we have to do it.

• 33:55Chuck Nice?

  No, that's fascinating.

• 33:57Carolyn Porco?

  I thought, I want, I want this to be the mechanism that takes the public along for the ride.

• 34:02Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 34:03Carolyn Porco?

  So we spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to present the pictures, how to get the colors right and so on.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Self-portrait Through the Rings of Saturn was such a beautiful classic. My mom is a big fan of that photo.

• 34:14Carolyn Porco?

  I know, and I loved it. Yoko Ono actually complimented the Day the Earth smiled, like, how cool is that?

• 34:21Chuck Nice?

  That is amazing. I mean, that's great that you bought, you bought artistic integrity to the science, thereby increasing the value of the science.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  And engaging the public.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  And engaging the public. That's fantastic.

• 34:32Carolyn Porco?

  Well, yeah, thank you. I'm very proud of that. So I guess we are gonna have to take a short break, but don't go too far. We'll be right back here on StarTalk All-Stars. Hello, and we are back with StarTalk All-Stars. I'm Carolyn Porco, your All-Star host, with Chuck Nice, my comedic co-host. That's right. Thank you for being here, Chuck. And joining us in person is musician and total science groupie Sean Lennon. Yes. Badass groupie.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  That's the most important part.

• 35:04Carolyn Porco?

  Badass groupie. So, so where do we go from here? Well, one topic we haven't discussed, I feel honor-bound and actually interested to, to get to this topic. I just caught you and Les Claypool and the gang at the House of Blues in Boston just a couple of weeks ago. It was great.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 35:24Carolyn Porco?

  I loved it. I hadn't been to a concert in a long time. I forgot how great it, live music is. It was wonderful.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Not always that great.

• 35:31Carolyn Porco?

  And he, he actually dedicated a song to me. I just felt so thrilled.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Astronomy Domine.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  It's a Zitbarret, Pink Floyd song.

• 35:38Carolyn Porco?

  Pink Floyd, and I got to take a picture with his sparkly green guitar, so I got a moment of, like, feeling what a rock star is like.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  The lyrics are Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda, and Titania.

• 35:50Carolyn Porco?

  Wow. Wow, you know what all those are?

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Well, you can tell me.

• 35:55Carolyn Porco?

  Go there later. So I want to know, is there something in particular that you feel you like to convey with your music? You write your own. And, you know, just go there. Do you have plans to take it in a different direction? How has it evolved over the years? It's all about you as a musician and, you know.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, interesting.

• 36:14Carolyn Porco?

  I mean. And one thing I will ask, I don't want to dwell on this. I promise we wouldn't dwell on things like this. But do you feel almost, is it like a calling because of your heritage? You know, your parents and so on. You felt a calling to be a musician? Did you feel almost, everyone's expecting me to do that, so that's what I'll do? How did that come about?

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, there were several phases to it. The truth is, I was playing music before I was conscious of what a career was or even what the public was. I mean, my introduction to the public kind of came when my dad was murdered because there was just crowds of people outside of the house.

• 36:52Carolyn Porco?

  And suddenly, oh, my God.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they were singing Gippi's A Chance every day. I mean, it was for, actually, years they'd always come back on the anniversary and stuff. So I think my introduction to him being a public person was through that. And I remember learning to play his songs on the piano when I was very young.

• 37:12Carolyn Porco?

  Very young being.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Kind of as a way of, you know, five, six.

• 37:16Carolyn Porco?

  Five, wow.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Kind of as a way of feeling like I was, you know, getting closer to him. Especially after he'd passed away. It was a way of me sort of communing with him or getting a piece of him back, you know, learning music.

• 37:30Carolyn Porco?

  Sure, I can see that.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  So by the time it came to think about what is your career, I'd already kind of been doing music. And, you know, that's why I left school was to pursue music because it started taking over my life. So it was never really a choice for me. I was kind of thrust into it for personal reasons.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  But you know, I think.

• 37:50Carolyn Porco?

  That's a calling of sorts.

• 37:51Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, I don't think it's a choice for any musician. What you just described, I've heard so many musicians describe the same thing. My brother is a musician and he went from being a fund manager.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and doing that for a while and then just going, I can't take it anymore. I have to go do this.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:09Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? And it's, it's that same thing where it's like you're, it's, it's, it's. At first it feels like it's thrust upon you, but at the same time, you're, you can't live without it.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, it wasn't until I was nineteen or twenty that I started realizing there would be a public reaction to whether I should or shouldn't have played music in the first place. And, you know, it's been a learning process since then, but I mean, most of what I've learned is that I just have to kind of not think so much about what people, how people feel about me being musician and just focus on, you know, the work.

• 38:42Carolyn Porco?

  I imagine you have a very, you have the canonical burden of a child of a very famous person, right? You're, you're always gonna be compared. That must be like so painful and so irritating.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  And yet you're so delightful.

• 38:58Carolyn Porco?

  No, no, no, what I mean, I'm serious.

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  And handsome.

• 39:02Carolyn Porco?

  Can I, can I tell, okay, you said that, can I tell you a little story?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 39:06Carolyn Porco?

  Can I tell you a little story? Um, okay, this is.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  I'm not so sure, I don't know, can you?

• 39:11Carolyn Porco?

  This is not to embarrass you, but I'm walking to this studio, right? Cause I'm staying only on twenty fifth street. I decided to walk in the heat. Uh, and I passed two young girls, they look like they're teenagers or twenty years old. And I hear them talking about you.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Really?

• 39:27Carolyn Porco?

  They're talking about you and one says, yeah, yeah, I kinda like Sean Lennon. Yeah, I think he's really cute.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Oh, that's nice.

• 39:33Carolyn Porco?

  Isn't it?

• 39:34Speaker 03

  You met the two girls in all of America.

• 39:37Carolyn Porco?

  No, I don't think so. Anyway, so.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  So, it's very cool, though, yeah. Uh, well, listen, speaking of that, we, let's get to a, a cosmic query, uh, about kind of like art and science, since you kind of embody both. Um, and this is from Chris Emmett, and he says, "How does art inspire scientists to think outside of the box and vice versa?" So, for you, how does art push your boundaries, your perspectives, uh, further out? And for you, how does science push your artistic boundaries? Is, is, I know you did, uh, what was it, uh, Monolith of the Phobos, right?

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, Monolith of the Phobos is our record title.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so, like, I mean, clearly, there's an association there for both of you, so...

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, for me, for me, fundamentally, music is mass. I mean, you know, there's basically, uh, X, Y, Z axis of, of the time in which the note is placed, the pitch of the note, and then the, the volume of that note. I mean, timbre could be arguably a fourth axis, but, I mean, it's very mathematical. It's easy to chart music on a graph. And so, you know, I think any musician who stops to think about it would, would, would really, you know, think of, of melody as a kind of audio geometry, you know? So, I mean, it is mass, and most of the people that I know who are very mathematically-minded, uh, are huge music nerds, you know?

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Um, my friend Eric Weinstein, who's a famous mathematician, physicist, economist, you know, he, all he ever wants to talk to me about is like whether Robert Johnson is cooler than Roy Harper or something.

• 41:21Carolyn Porco?

  Well, for me, the, the, you ask, you asked me this question. Um, I know that, I, I'll just say that I love space art. I love space art. I love what space artists do, the scenes that they create, you know?

• 41:36Speaker 03

  You need them at NASA, don't you? Because often, you have to visualize illustrations that I notice when you, I mean, you can't take a picture of an exoplanet, but, but NASA releases these sort of illustrated, what if it, you know, what if we were sitting on, you know, Titan or something?

• 41:50Carolyn Porco?

  Right, yes, but I'm talking about the genuine space artists who just do it for a living, and I'm so, I'm, this is another one of those things I did that, you know, I'm very happy I did. I didn't, don't think anybody was doing it before I did, but on our Cyclops website that we set up for the public, that is, you know, me and the Cassini imaging team. There's a special section there that is devoted to space artists. You know, just what the scenes they've depicted of Saturn or we actually go beyond Saturn, but the rings and Titan and and I love looking at those and I love looking at, you know, just what the scenes on exoplanets because that's a way to be there, you know.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  There's a beautiful painting your friend did of the rings of Saturn, the view of looking at those irregularities that are like, how high are they?

• 42:36Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, they're fabulous. Okay, wonderful that you brought that up. Because we found in the rings, we found this incredible thing. I mean, the rings are only thirty feet thick.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  Okay. They're so wide, they're bigger than the Earth, like much bigger, right?

• 42:50Carolyn Porco?

  They would fit in from end to end between the Earth and the moon.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:54Carolyn Porco?

  So I love and then we found on the edge of the B ring and we also found a similar thing on the edge of a gap in the outer A ring. We found these mountainous waves of rubble that extend two and three miles high.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Is that the resonance with the moons, right?

• 43:11Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, it's a little complicated. In one case, a moon is nearby and it actually, because it's on an inclined orbit, it draws the particles out of the plane.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  It's not complicated, it's just like pushing a kid on a swing. And every time you push him, it goes farther.

• 43:24Carolyn Porco?

  Right, okay, except that what's complicated is because of that pushing on the swing, the orbits of the particles become eccentric. And that means in certain regions of the orbit, they get squeezed together and that has to push them higher.

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:38Carolyn Porco?

  On the outer edge of the B ring, these things of these rubble piles, these rubble mountains are very irregular looking, but they're high. So imagine this, you've got a sheet of material that's thirty feet thick, something coming out that's miles high. And I've often said in public, I love-

• 43:55Speaker 03

  And how fast are you spinning, like forty thousand miles an hour?

• 43:57Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Right, and so you say you'd like to take a craft there one day, but are you just being hyperbolic? Because I mean, that sounds like a very dangerous place to drive a vehicle.

• 44:05Carolyn Porco?

  I don't care, I'm just, this is just like all in my mind's eye.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  But would it ever be possible to actually have a shuttle craft that close to these spinning debris rings, really?

• 44:14Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, that sounds like some serious extreme sports to me.

• 44:17Carolyn Porco?

  You could be over the rings, you know, and if you're really close to the rings, the rings would look like they extend to infinity to you effectively.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 44:25Carolyn Porco?

  Because you're so low. And imagine you're flying, you're flying, you're flying, and then you come across a wall of rubble that's two or three miles high. So I, the artist who did this, I think had heard me say that. And he wanted to paint it, so we went back and forth as to what it should look like and um it's

• 44:40Speaker 03

  You're in a Chevy Nova.

• 44:41Carolyn Porco?

  No, I'm kidding. No, Chevy Nova, no.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  Great name for the car, Joe, by the way.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're not sponsored by Chevy.

• 44:48Carolyn Porco?

  I love, I love the connection between art and science. I think they're just, they're two um, they're just like two products of the human soul and mind. So lightning round.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Da Vinci is a perfect example of someone who could be a scientist and an artist kind of at the same time. The confluence of engineering and art in his brain was, was amazing, was a harmony.

• 45:07Carolyn Porco?

  It's not only, it's not only that, it's I think they derive from the same wellspring. You know, the same kind of deep soul that loves to, you know, wants to make, this is how it is for me. Wants to make a connection with the natural world. I mean, a deep, like, almost high priestess kind of connection.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:24Carolyn Porco?

  And science is the only way to do it and music is, I should say, shouldn't say the only, but music is another.

• 45:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's why music is beautiful, because we recognize harmonies which are, you know, harmonic geometries that are, you know, the same reason that numbers describing the universe can have their own beauty to them. And I think it's exactly the same thing.

• 45:43Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. All right, speaking of beauties, let's get to the rest of our questions. We're gonna move to a lightning round right now.

• 45:49Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, I hope I do this right.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  As many questions in as possible in the short period of time remaining, okay?

• 45:53Carolyn Porco?

  Make 'em good.

• 45:53Chuck Nice?

  Here we go, let's make 'em good. Here we go. Uh, this is from Michael Wo- Woja- Wojetas, who says, uh, "Do you see how virtual reality and augmented reality can influence art and architecture?"

• 46:06Carolyn Porco?

  Do I see how?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  It already has, it already has, with very ugly buildings in Germany.

• 46:09Carolyn Porco?

  Okay.

• 46:10Chuck Nice?

  Bing, there we go. John Allen would like to know this. "Do you think that social media spreads more information, misinformation than information is a net gain or loss for our understanding of science?"

• 46:22Speaker 03

  It's impossible to measure, come on, it's either and, not either or.

• 46:25Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, both and.

• 46:26Carolyn Porco?

  I like that. I was gonna say the same thing. It's gonna be a wash.

• 46:29Chuck Nice?

  It's a wash. There you go. Boom. Let's move on to David Connolly. David Connolly from Facebook would like to know this. The oceans are expanding, so maybe we should consider returning to the water. Under the sea.

• 46:41Carolyn Porco?

  That'll take too long, so let's just stay land lovers.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Do dolphins return to the water after being a pig-like mammal?

• 46:48Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, they still breathe air. So, okay. Let's go to Stephen B., who comes to us from Twitter, who says this. Hi, Carolyn. What would be the social and religious impacts of the discovery of a more advanced alien civilization?

• 47:05Carolyn Porco?

  Oh, my God. Catastrophic.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  It would confirm all of religion. No, I'm kidding. It wouldn't.

• 47:12Chuck Nice?

  It would. World peace.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Why do they have to be more evolved than us? I mean, just even equals or early.

• 47:19Carolyn Porco?

  No, but I just like, I think the person is getting to the issue, like, would we be so freaked out we'd run for cover? Right? It would be great. I hope I live to see it.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Great answer. Amen.

• 47:30Chuck Nice?

  There you go. This is Solidamion from Instagram would like to know this. Do you think that social medias are getting or making people dumb?

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Oh, what?

• 47:53Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This one is from Hubert. Oh, I am not even trying. I'm not trying. I'm sorry.

• 48:01Carolyn Porco?

  It's Hubert.

• 48:01Chuck Nice?

  Humbert Togafrost, whatever.

• 48:05Chuck Nice?

  He wants to know this. Do you consider cheating to use technology to create arts? This is for both of you. Is technology cheating?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  No. Is a paintbrush cheating? No.

• 48:16Carolyn Porco?

  Uh, I don't know, I'm passing.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  A guitarist's technology, obviously that's not cheating.

• 48:20Carolyn Porco?

  No, but I mean to do, to have no, for human inspirational input into it?

• 48:25Speaker 03

  You mean like the Deep Dream Bot that made all those weird surrealist Google Images? I mean, even Dream Bot was programmed by people, so then, you know, we have yet to have art created by no one.

• 48:34Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, we have to wrap it up, we've got only nine seconds left. Thank you. To all our wonderful listeners for all those great questions. You can get more StarTalk by following us on Twitter @StarTalkRadio. Chuck, where can the people get more of you?

• 48:48Chuck Nice?

  My living room, I'll be there this afternoon. Please come by, come by! No, I'm on Twitter @ChuckNiceComic and that's where I interact with most people.

• 48:57Carolyn Porco?

  Okay, and Sean, I know you are at @SeanOnoLennon because that's where you and I met up.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yep, that's me.

• 49:04Carolyn Porco?

  One of the really good things about Twitter for me, and you can find me at @CarolynPorco, all one word.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  My record company is Cameramusic.com, if you're interested in music.

• 49:13Carolyn Porco?

  Yeah, and go see CL, they can't see you anymore, right?

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, The Claypool Lennon Delirium is my band. No, I'm playing in October and we're about to make another record, so yeah, check us out.

• 49:24Carolyn Porco?

  Another record, great, okay, looking forward to that. So, thank you Chuck for co-hosting tonight and to our special guest Sean Lennon for geeking out with us tonight, even though he doesn't think he geeked out. I am your host Carolyn Porco, until next time.