Cosmic Queries – Strange Matter

What could we do to hide from the aliens? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions about human radio wave signals, strange matter, universes inside black holes, and other physics questions!

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, that was fun, getting those questions from all around the world.

• 0:02Chuck Nice?

  Always. We have the smartest listeners of any podcast in the world.

• 0:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like knowing how different people think from wherever they happen to be.

• 0:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, and we had the Netherlands, Mexico.

• 0:14Chuck Nice?

  Australia.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Arkansas.

• 0:17Chuck Nice?

  And there you go. The strangest of all places. No. We love you, Arkansas.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, this coming up, Cosmic Queries.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. Chuck, nice with me, Chuck.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir. What's up, Neil?

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we do Cosmic Queries today.

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But beyond category.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic grab bag.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Galactic.

• 0:57Chuck Nice?

  Galactic gumbo.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gumbo. Is gumbo really just trash that was left over when it was invented?

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, not when Yvon Gagné makes it. I told you I'm gonna get you some Yvon Gagné gumbo. Now, let me tell you now. Hey, boy, I tell you, I'm gonna crawl daddy in there, boy. Put my son little there, and you ain't wanna kill. And also, I'm gonna run deep.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I heard was gal. So this is just, so why aren't we sorting them anymore? They're just random?

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  No, because they like, you know, they're, sometimes they come in in such a way that, you know, that's how they just come in and they make, you know, they're good questions, just do them all together and let's do it.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll answer what I can.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, this is Girage Belangi, and Girage says, "Is it theoretically possible to develop a space drive that would have constant acceleration, hence creating constant artificial gravity?"

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's... What rockets do.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  Do, okay.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  But he means continuous, like, we're going to Mars.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 2:08Chuck Nice?

  And so you're burning the entire time that you're going.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you do that, you'll get there very fast. Like, so this nine-month journey that we talk about going to Mars, three days to the moon, nine months to Mars, you know what that is? That is aiming for where the object will be when you arrive.

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fire your engines enough so you don't fall back to Earth.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And you need enough energy to cross over to where your destination's gravity exceeds the gravity of Earth.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Right. So it's basically like, like that planet, when it gets to that, it lassos you and then starts pulling you towards the planet.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like climbing to the top of a hill and then you can just roll down.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  And then roll down the hill.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're climbing out of the gravitational well of the Earth. And it's getting weaker and weaker and weaker, but as you're getting towards the other object, it's getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a point where they balance, and if you cross over that point, you just fall towards your destination.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once you launched yourself with enough speed to get there, there's no engines firing.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And once you cross over, no engines fire, you just fall in.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need your engines again to not crash.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're accelerating all the way there by the action of the planet.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. That tape for to Mars, that's a minimum of nine months. If instead you accelerated the whole time.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you still want to slow down, so you'll accelerate till you're like halfway there, then turn around and then decelerate the rest of the time.

• 3:46Chuck Nice?

  Captain, we're approaching the planet. Fire the rest of our rockets. You gotta fire the rest of our rockets.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except this would be a sustained thing, and that way you would maintain a certain artificial gravity, because an acceleration of a rocket is an exact mimic of being on a gravitational surface.

• 4:03Chuck Nice?

  So the only sci-fi show I've ever seen that does, and I recognized it from you telling me exactly what you just said years ago, it's called The Expanse, and I had so much respect for them because.

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  They show a ship headed towards a planet. And the engines you see first firing toward as it's moving towards the planet. So it's like the entire time that they're showing you like, oh, they're headed to whatever planet.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:37Chuck Nice?

  And then they show you and it looks like the ship is going in reverse.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 4:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because but exactly why you said because they're firing the rockets to slow down.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To slow down.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  To approach the planet.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  So cool.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's another interesting fact here. While you are firing rockets, there is a force operating on you that you will not be able to distinguish from an ordinary gravitational force. This was deduced by Albert Einstein in what's called the equivalence principle.

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An accelerating rocket is indistinguishable from you sitting on earth with earth's acceleration or gravity. If the two accelerations are equal.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could, there's no experiment you can perform other than looking out the window to know if you're in a rocket or sitting here on earth in a, in a, in a box.

• 5:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, what's that movie that had Moon Pirates?

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh, oh, that was called Ad Astra.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ad Astra.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  That's what's Ad Astra.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna use the phrase Ad Astra, you better get your stuff correct.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Ad Astra means to the stars in Latin.

• 5:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a, this is a deep phrase that we've been using in the space community forever.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And interestingly, it's on the state flag of Kansas.

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  For the tornado state, that makes sense.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dorothy, Dorothy.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense for the tornado state. I was launched at Astra. Woo!

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they would show these rockets.

• 6:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Firing and you go inside the ship and they were all weightless. No.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  That wouldn't work.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's this misconception that being in space.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Makes you late weightless.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, right, no, no. If you are drifting in space as our space missions do.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're sent in motion and you're drifting towards the crossover point and then you fall in. Oh, there you go. You're weightless that entire time. But as long as you have on rockets, you are not weightless at all.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  Super cool, man.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, yeah, so you could do it, but, oh, sorry, getting back to the question.

• 6:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need fill-in stations along the way.

• 6:40Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna drive straight from New York to LA,

• 6:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How big must your gas tank be?

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's, yes.

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you need, we have gas stations along the way. So if you really wanna accelerate to your destination through space, you need filling stations parked throughout the solar system.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you reload and keep going.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we're not there yet.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  Or, uh, like in Star Wars where they have the ship that is part of another ship. So there's one ship that gets you to hyperspace, but then when you come out of hyperspace, your ship leaves that ship, and then you can just ride, ride normal.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so something else did all the heavy lifting.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  Did all the heavy lifting.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  Cool, man. Very, very cool, Raj. Thanks for the question. Here's Ryan.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and just while I'm there.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're in orbit, you're freely falling towards Earth. There are no rockets keeping you in orbit.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  You're just falling around the Earth.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around the Earth, and so you're weightless there. It's not 'cause you are, there's no gravity in space.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, we have, it's a, it's a delusion, not a delusion. We've been misled

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to think

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that the act of being in space is synonymous with being weightless.

• 7:49Chuck Nice?

  No, it's synonymous when you're on that, uh, what's it called? The vomit comet? What's that thing called?

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vomit comet, yeah, yeah. The airplane.

• 7:56Chuck Nice?

  The airplane.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it goes into a controlled, into a, a parabolic dive.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you're falling towards Earth.

• 8:02Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's basically for that short period, for that short bit, it's sort of orbiting Earth.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you have physics in high school?

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Um, they, they taught it in my school.

• 8:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, should have. Did you, did you learn physics?

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes, those are two different questions.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the things you learn is that a projectile

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has a parabolic arc.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And there's a formula for parabola and you can solve how far neglecting air resistance, you can know how far a projectile will go.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  First use the computers.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in fact, it was for the military.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  For the military.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They want to know where the bombs.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  Where the bombs going to fall. You gotta be able to figure out the trajectory of mortar shells.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turns out, it's not actually a parabola.

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very close.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a parabola. It is the segment

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of an orbit, an elliptical orbit.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the entire mass of the earth were at its center.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's completely.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the mass of the earth.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Collects it to a point in the center and watch this go in orbit around.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Around that point.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around that point.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  That's right. That is so cool.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but it doesn't succeed because earth gets in the way.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the forces controlling it is what's the mass of the earth and what's its distance from the center of the earth.

• 9:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all that matters.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You collapse all the mass there and then you have it.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, even when you're.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  Even when you're like the space station, you're just falling around the earth.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Falling around the earth.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  Very, very cool. Very cool, man.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, here's Ryan A. Ryan A. said, hey Neil.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he witness protection there? He's Ryan A.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. He says, hey Neil and maybe Chuck, would you know something I don't know, Ryan? He says, hey Neil, maybe Chuck, Ryan from Toronto here. My question might be obvious, but time dilation has been messing with my mind.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it should. No one should be comfortable with time dilation, okay?

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. Once, you said that a photon doesn't experience time. It's born and immediately is destroyed. If a photon from somewhere in the galaxy is born and over time it redshifts as we know photons do, how can it both experience a redshift, but also be destroyed immediately after creation? Thanks. Love the show.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, that's a great question.

• 10:39Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I don't know that I have a good answer for that.

• 10:42Chuck Nice?

  I do.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's how it is.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Because that's how photons roll, okay?

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what he's saying is if the photon that's emitted is different from the photon that you've detected or destroyed at the end of its path, then something happened to the photon. So if something happened to the photon, the photon has to be temporarily aware of that in some way.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wow, you asked that question better than he did.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking that's what he means.

• 11:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, that makes sense.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pretty sure. So we see this. The question is, what does the photon think happened?

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, since it's emitted at one wavelength and detected at another,

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta think about that.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  That's something, huh?

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the photon would have to say, "I'm red shifting." But to even be able to say that, time elapsed for you.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  It's exactly.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you were something yesterday, something different tomorrow.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't have a good answer.

• 11:49Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who might have an answer is Jana.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Jana Levin.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A friend of the show.

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's a cosmologist.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

  I might call Jana.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got the hotline.

• 11:56Chuck Nice?

  Where's the Jana hotline, please? Can we get Jana on the phone, guys?

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a red phone at my desk.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  And that's, is that for Jana or is that for for somebody to put that mustache in the sky to call you?

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mustache in the sky.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Emergency.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  We have a cosmic emergency. Put the mustache in the sky.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, if this was 150 years ago, everyone would have a mustache and then no one would be talking about my mustache.

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  True, that's true.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd be like, you know, everybody in the Civil War had a mustache.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  And weird ones too, like with handlebars and all kinds of crap.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, listen, that's a very good question, Ryan, eh?

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  And who knows? Who knows what the answer is?

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to ask the photon. I'll get back to him.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  I'm Nicholas Costella and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Amar Shah. And Amar Shah says, greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, this is Amar from Sydney, Australia. Is it possible mathematically that our universe is on the other side of a black hole? And could there be more universes on the other sides of black holes? I think, does, does he mean our galaxy? Because-

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a book on the shelf that goes through the mathematics of what's on the other side of a black-

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Of a black hole.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you fall in, your time slows down relative to what you just came from.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold.

• 13:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As you go down and emerge, a whole other spacetime opens up in front of you.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mathematics of general relativity gives you that.

• 13:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one has tested this, but general relativity works in all these other ways. And this is a prediction of something that has worked so well. It's intriguing. Certainly worthy of at least sci-fi treatment.

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before we get actual data. So, the universe that has the most universes-

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the universe that has the most black holes.

• 14:21Chuck Nice?

  Right. Now, are those, is it a different universe? Or is it, or is it a residual universe?

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call it what you will, but there's no, there's no, you can't-

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  You can't.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go back and forth.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  Of course you can't.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So by our, by our operational definition of universe, you're in another universe.

• 14:35Chuck Nice?

  You're in another universe.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And don't denigrate it by calling it residual, or universe light, or dwarf universe.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got you. I didn't mean to, you know, didn't mean to PO the, the universe.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No telling what will happen.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's very cool. So mathematically, it does work out.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it does, mathematically.

• 14:54Chuck Nice?

  Mathematically. All right, cool. This is Eduardo.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The horizon of the universe.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has, this is beyond which you cannot see.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has all the same properties as the event horizon of a black hole.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so cool. So what, what we see is the edge of our universe that we can observe as all the same properties as the

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same mathematical properties as the event horizon of a black hole.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I didn't know that.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we would be living evidence of a universe inside a black hole.

• 15:25Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's freaky.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  That is

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  Somebody give me an edible.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently you didn't need one.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  It was sufficiently fascinating enough that I did not need

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't think

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  any assistance.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  And having my mind blown.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No assist fact.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  That's cool. All right, this is Eduardo Mansila. Hello, this is Eduardo writing from Mexico. What should I say? Hello, this is Eduardo. Writing from Mexico.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Now, normally I would reserve that for our friend from Monterrey, Mexico.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  It says

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you heard that, that dinosaur joke? It's a stupid

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  joke. So I was giving a public talk and I was describing the 65 million year ago event where Earth got hit by an asteroid. And we found where the crater is. It's off the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Of Mexico. And I thought it'd be cute and say, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, but that's not what the dinosaurs called it.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then someone in the audience, they called it Mexico.

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  That's stupid.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was like stupid funny.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it is.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, clearly they spoke Spanish.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 16:53Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they would pronounce it correctly.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  All right, so Eduardo says, I saw a video on strange matter. But I didn't quite understand what exactly that is. Could you maybe talk a little bit about what it is and how it forms strange matter?

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I saw, I'm not up on the very latest there. But there's actually good precedent for having this mysterious thing happen in our particle accelerators. And we say, we can't explain this. There must be some particle we haven't discovered yet accounting for this inexplainable stuff. For this behavior of the other particles? They're responding to something that we can't see and don't know how to figure out how to detect it yet. So let's invent the idea of this particle. Doing that has enabled the discovery of multiple particles. Assume something's there.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would its properties be to cause all the confusion that it does?

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's look for it.

• 17:57Chuck Nice?

  And then look for it.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we found it. Okay, the neutrino was one such particle.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, there was a reaction of particles. And at the end, the charge all worked out, but the momentum didn't add up. So we have a law of conservation momentum has never been violated.

• 18:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, it was missing some momentum, way to go. All the same, we took account of all the particles.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And somebody said, a particle must have taken away the momentum. I don't know where, go look for it. And we knew it didn't have a charge, so it was called little neutral one.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Little neutral one.

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neutrino.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are things we cannot explain, dark matter, dark energy. There are these phenomena in the universe where we are kind of, I don't know, I want to say we're giving up. But we say, we don't know what it is, okay? Just call it anything, okay? So some new kind of matter, is it strange matter? Is it? Uh, and there's a whole catalog of names for these particles that are not yet discovered. And many of them are fanciful. Wow. So it's a fun, it's like a zoo. So is that like missing spaces in the periodical chart? Oh, very nice. Yeah, okay, cool. Very nice analog there. All right. Because that's complete now. It's right.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, on many things you can say, we got this. We got it. Move on to the next problem. Right. But we got this. Right. But there was a time when they had to leave a space. They left a space. Hey, we know something gonna go there. Right, and you know, one of them was discovered, I forgot exactly when. Um, but it was not discovered in nature, we had to make it. Oh, right on. Okay, do you know the word for when you make something? Uh, manufacturer? Yeah.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tech. Tech? Tech. Oh. Technology is you made it. Right. You didn't get it from nature. Right. We forgot that because it applies to everything today. Tech, okay, so it's called technetium. Technetium? Yep. We made that, we made that element. That's pretty cool. So of all these hypothetical forms of matter. Right. All right, uh, one of them has been named for a variety of quark. Okay. That we know quirks have fanciful names. Yeah. Okay, there's an up quark. Right. A down quark. Right. A strange quark. A charmed quark. Okay. Well, a lying quark. A lying quark? Quark. Oh, quark. Quark. Quark. Okay. Quark.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, and the quirks make up our, our, um, nuclear particles. Right. Okay, so, so there's an up, down, top, bottom, strange, charmed. Okay? Okay. So the up, down are the quirks that make up. Protons and neutrons.

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have heavier components in the universe that we find in accelerators, but we don't encounter them every day. So all the particles that we know and love have versions that exist at a higher energy level.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So our quarks are up and down. The next level quarks are top and bottom. Because they're, and the next level quarks are strange and charmed.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's three levels of electrons as well. Three different kinds of force carriers. So this is what we call the standard model. Yeah, we chatted about that with.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Brian Green.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian Green, right? It's been hypothesized that the strange quark, under certain conditions of pressure, temperature, would manifest and be the predominant particle in the object. So it'd be strange matter possibly making a strange star.

• 21:37Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but don't over interpret the word strange. It's just a word to describe a variety of quark. And you know where the word came from?

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Top and bottom quark?

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  The gay community.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cancel him, okay?

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  No, what are you talking about? I'm an advocate, okay? I don't care what you're talking about. I'm an ally, so cancel me.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The word quark comes from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, how so?

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we found that there were three quarks in the middle of the proton and neutron.

• 22:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, three. And there's some rhyme in Finnegans Wake that says, "Three quarks for muster mark." And so Murray Galman, who's one of the original physicists to think about what the particles are in.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  In the tiny, tiny stuff.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the tiny, tiny particles. He had that phrase in his head. And then he says, "Three quarks for." For muster mark and so it was three.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Number three.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Three where there's a max.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except there's more than three. There's like, you know.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the two varieties times three, there's six, six kinds of cork. So the numbers in the end don't match up.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, he didn't, he didn't know.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't know. He just started.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just began the investigation. But the word quark stayed.

• 23:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. It's a dumb name. All right.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you can't say, what does it look like? Right?

• 23:10Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, in my field, we see a nebula that looks like a tarantula. We call it the tarantula nebula.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We see another nebula that looks like North America. It's called the North American nebula.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  That's so crazy.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you see a quark, what are you going to say it looks like?

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  Well, there is nothing that says.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  There's nothing to say it's.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's nothing.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  You can't.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:29Chuck Nice?

  Right. Oh, that's cool.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  I take it back.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We do have that problem.

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  Mustard mark.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you ask me, how big is the universe?

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, how big is the universe?

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's as big as. End of sentence.

• 23:40Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  Because how could you know?

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. You can't.

• 23:46Chuck Nice?

  It is the biggest.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't compare it.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there's nothing to compare.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can tell you how many feet will go across it, but that's.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Still doesn't make it.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no, there's no reference.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  There's no reference. Right. Okay.

• 24:09Chuck Nice?

  Let's move on to Maurice van der Linden. He says.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he from the Netherlands or something?

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it could be.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Van der Linden.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  Van der Linden from Rotterdam. Hello, this is Maurice van der Linden from Rotterdam.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't speak like that.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what they speak like.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 24:26Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I've been there several times, so I still don't know what they speak. They speak Dutch, so you know, you know, they sound, you know. Anyway, he says, Dear Cosmos connoisseurs, Maurice from the Netherlands here.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, from the Netherlands.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  And he was from the Netherlands. Uh, wanting to know more about gas giants.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Why are they named that way? Oh, come on, Maurice.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come on Maurice. No, maybe he's, listen, keep reading.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna keep reading, alright. Don't they, uh, okay, look at you, keep reading. Don't they have a solid core and gaseous atmosphere, the same as terrestrial planets? Love the show, keep it up. So in other words, why can't we just call them, um, you know, uh, bigger atmosphere planets?

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  It would go.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  No, when you get the, when you get the Tyson.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't make me, don't make me do this.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  You know, you about to get read, here's why. Just tell you why.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The difference is.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Earth. Earth's atmosphere is. To the solid planet.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the skin of an apple is to an apple.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas on the gas giants.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their atmosphere is to their solid core. What a peach is to its pit.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  I got what you're saying. Cause I mean, we have.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or small, or small.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Our atmosphere is gas, so.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is gas.

• 25:58Chuck Nice?

  It is still gas, but.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ain't much of it.

• 26:00Chuck Nice?

  But it has nothing to really do with what we are, if you were to really look at it.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, structurally.

• 26:05Chuck Nice?

  Structurally, yeah.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It matters for our life and our ecosphere and everything.

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  No, no, I'm saying if you were to take it away, we would still be a giant rock floating in space.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. You take away the atmosphere of the gas giants.

• 26:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be unrecognizable.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  Nothing, right, you're correct.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a peach to its pit, or smaller than a pit.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm trying to think of what's a good analog there.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Like an apple to a seed.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but that's more seeds and after then.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  Seeds, I know what you're saying.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 26:30Chuck Nice?

  You're such a scientist.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was thinking, ah.

• 26:32Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean, seriously? You just can't let an apple have one fricking seed. Okay, everybody know what the seed of an apple look like. You will not, no, you're like, no, you cut the apple open. And you got, uh, you got six seeds in there, so I, we gotta have one seed.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm educator man.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've had some avocados lately. They had really small pits. So somebody's breeding them things to be little. Yeah. Like when we grew up. No, they were giant. Giant. Yeah. So maybe avocado one day would just have a tiny little pit and it'll all be flesh on the outside. That'd be like the gas giants. Right. Yeah. So he's right to think, yes, they have a solid core. Right. But it's a tiny thing way down in the, way down inside. Right. Mm-hmm. And then let me ask this on a For all of them. Follow up from Maurice, no though. Is that tiny core solid because of all the pressure that the gas makes?

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are made out of the same ingredients as we are. Oh. Let me be precise. Okay. Okay? All right. The original nebula that formed the sun and the planets. Okay. It's gas. Right. Mixed with heavy elements. Right. But they're just gashes heavy elements. Okay. The gas giants, when they form, where do the heavy elements go? To the center. Thank you. And they make a solid mass there. Uh-huh. The lighter elements go up to the top, especially the hydrogen in the helium. And it has enough gravity to hold on to them. They're moving fast, but they're not going to escape because the gravity is strong. That's it. For Earth, where do the heavy elements go? To the center.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about the gas? The lighter gases, the two lightest gases are hydrogen and helium. They're moving the fastest at any given temperature. It's a fascinating law first discovered by James Clark Maxwell. Okay. We should do, we should talk about that. Oh, James Clark Maxwell? No, to put his Maxwellian distribution of velocities. Ooh. Let's do an explainer on that. We will. No, it's very cool. All right. Really cool. I'm about it. Okay, you got it? Cool. Okay, put a pin in that. Okay. All right, good. So, we're here, we're trying to hold on to the hydrogen and helium. Right. The way Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune did, but we can't because our gravity is charged. And it all just escapes back out. Goes out. Okay? That's really cool. So we're stuck with the heavy gases, oxygen, nitrogen. Right. And carbon dioxide. Okay, so that's how that works. That's how that works. Excellent. Yeah.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, that was great. Okay, cool. I like when we do the simple stuff. And of course, within the solid core. Mm-hmm. The heavier stuff is in the center of the solid core. Right. Right? And what's in our solid core? We got iron in it. And iron is heavier than Everything.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's heavier than the rocks.

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rock and float.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Compared to iron.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to iron. Yeah, alright.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Super cool, man. This is Vasco Vukov. And Vasco Vukov says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Mr. Nice. Uh, this is Vasu Vukov from Sofia, Bulgaria.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  We're trying to find Ailey. But if we want to hide from them, what should we and could we do even if they point their sensors straight towards us? How stealth could the earth possibly be?

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that. Okay, so no watch. Okay.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Uh, let's go back in time.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TV signals.

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The reason why you, this old timers, everyone else just won't care what I'm about to say.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the day, you could get radio stations from cities that were far away, but you wouldn't get TV stations.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TV waves, you have to be in a direct sightline to the television transmitter.

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to have a transmitter everywhere for TV.

• 30:13Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So TV was very local in the day. Radio waves, okay, especially short wave, but also AM radio, its waves had the right frequency to reflect off the ionosphere of the earth.

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it could move, it could send a signal beyond earth's horizon.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Some would leak, but others would bounce back.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Point is, these modes of communication had leakage, especially television waves.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, someone eavesdropping on earth, and they're, let's say, 80 light years away, they're getting the earliest radio signals that have been emanating from earth at the speed of light.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. Dateline.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other, there's Howdy Doody. Right. There was, uh, and then the TV signals would start coming in. Early TV, the honeymooners. Uh huh. If they want to decode our civilization. Right, they think that we're all abusive. Who like to threaten our wives with violence. Violence by, to the moon. To the moon. And, and that's when people laughed at that. Right, exactly. Right, I think they left because she was defiant, even in the face of that. Exactly. Threat of violence. Oh my god, you are so funny, you gonna beat your wife, huh? Right, right, right. It's crazy, it's crazy times. It's been crazy. Crazy, crazy times. So, that's how they'll learn how men and women interact. That's their benchmark. So this continues throughout all the sitcoms and all the TV. That, and, and they'll see the war, the war broadcasts and everything.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they get right up to Puff Daddy and he goes, nothing has changed. They get to the 1980s. Mm-hmm. And signals start disappearing. Uh-oh, what the heck is happening? People are using cable. That's right. Okay, so one of the earliest shows, which I feared would be first seen by aliens, but I think we're protected, is Beavis and Butthead. Right. That was MTV, and you got that via cable. Right. Okay, that was not transmitted into space. Oh, that's a shame. You want the aliens. Let me say something, the one thing I want the aliens to see is. Are you threatening me? I am the great.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a lot of what's happening today is protected from leakage. Right, right. Because it's. Because it's a closed system. It's a closed system, it's all, it's cable. Right. Okay? Gotcha. Uh, so, that's my first point. Second point, here's just an interesting fact. If you're communicating through space and you have a signal. Mm-hmm. You don't want anyone to intercept it. Okay. You want to encrypt it. Right. Okay? The perfect encryption.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is so well encrypted that it is indistinguishable from the din of radio noise in the universe. Oh, that is, now that is awesome. It is completely, because think about it, think about it. You're using the.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about it. If there was something about your signal that was different, then I would know somebody created it. Exactly. Okay, so you need something to encrypt it so that it looks like noise and you have the noise decoder on the other side. Look at that. Okay. And when you say noise, you're talking about the cosmic microwave background. I need the, all of the radio noise in the universe. In the universe. Okay, if you take a radio antenna, point it anywhere, there's like noise. Right, of course, yeah. Okay. That's the. Static, it's the static, okay? So if I see something that doesn't look like the static, there's a signal there. Even if it's, even if it is encoded. Right. I know there's a signal there. Yeah, because it's different. It's different from the static. Right.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the perfect encodings would be indistinguishable from static. So if a, if a planet wanted to hide Right. from alien eavesdropping, they would make sure that all signal transmission was so thoroughly encoded that it was indistinguishable. That it looked like the noise of the universe. Correct. That's great. Yes. That is really great. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, yeah, and now it's a little tough because you might have more noise here than somewhere else. Right. That could give you away. Right. Right, there's the background in and then there's a bright noise spot here. So there's an anomaly of noise. Of noise, yeah. Right.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to figure that one out too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. That's cool though. Yeah, it's very cool. Another way to hide from aliens? Yeah. You get one generation. Of astronomers to send a plaque out into space.

• 34:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Intended to be read by aliens. This is a plaque from Pioneer 10 and 11.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which was launched in the 1970s and some of this iconography was also used for the Voyager missions.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But notice at the bottom, there's the solar system.

• 35:12Chuck Nice?

  There's the solar system. There's the sun and then Mercury, Venus, Earth.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Earth, there's a line coming from Earth.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That shows where this spacecraft came from. Because this is a, this is a life size of the spaceship relative to the two human figures. Okay. So you get one generation to try to talk to aliens innocently, not knowing the aliens are evil, that they're gonna come and suck our brains out.

• 35:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let them show a nine planet solar system.

• 35:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This one has Pluto.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're gonna come looking for us because this, this is their return address, by the way.

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spider diagram, that's our distance to pulsars in the galaxy. You can triangulate on that and come right back to our vicinity.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Why would we do that? Why would we ever do that?

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know you wouldn't give your email to another human stranger in the street.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  It's like going on vacation and putting all your plans on social media. Hey, guess what? We're leaving on the 10th and we'll be gone for two weeks. That's the perfect time to come rob my house, people.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so now they come back looking for a nine planet solar system and ours is not that.

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the reason, why would they not think it? Because Pluto is represented in this.

• 36:33Chuck Nice?

  As a planet.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a planet, as the same size as like Mercury and other, other objects here. And it's just not.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Guys, uh, we only see eight planets here. We got the wrong one.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  At the wrong solar system.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing to see here. Keep going.

• 36:47Chuck Nice?

  Right. Except for that one planet with all the trash out on his front lawn.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is this?

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  What's going on there?

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No sign of intelligent life. Returning home.

• 36:58Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The planet Zebula.

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Letitia Davis. She says, uh, hey, this is Letitia Davis from Conway, Arkansas. So, how many early cosmic discoveries were made by curious observers with no formal training? Is the frontier still within the reach of amateurs, or has science advanced too far for a layperson to contribute to the cosmic perspective?

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that. Wow, look at that. Very good, very good. All right, Letitia. So, let me give something that's not an answer to that just yet, because I just want to put it out there. I wrote an essay many moons ago called Stick in the Mud Astronomy. I think it's online. Stick in the Mud Astronomy. If you have a stick and you put it in the ground, what can you deduce about the operations of the universe from just a stick in the ground? Okay, you could invent a sundial. You can track rising and setting points of the sun on the horizon and the moon and all of this. Okay, so you can go, you can do quite a bit. It was an homage to ancient peoples who didn't have telescopes. There's a whole essay on

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that called Stick in the Mud Astronomy. All right, without access to frontier telescopes, you're not going to discover dim things. Right. Because you're not, you're just not going to ever see them. Can't see them. However, there are more amateur astronomers in the world than there are professional astronomers. Right, yeah. And they all have like backyard telescopes. That's fine, very accessible. They're looking up all the time. Amateur astronomers have famously and historically discovered comets. Right. Discovered supernova, although we have supernova surveys now that are very efficient. You might not be in line for that. But if you see something, say something. Okay, we have a clearinghouse because phenomena

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that comes and goes, we don't know about. Right, right. We can't, we, we, I have a telescope for one night and I'm looking and I go, that's why we have the Vera Rubin Telescope, which is basically going to be, basically going to be taking video of the universe, of the whole sky. So you can watch in case something shows up and goes away or disappears. You know what else we'll discover? Every one of Elon Musk satellites coming across. That'll contaminate the data where we're trying to find out if there's an asteroid with our name on it. So I'm a little worried about that.

• 39:19Chuck Nice?

  So like Elon. So like him.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what else you can do is... You can, and there are coordinated groups that invest this effort. There are asteroids, we don't know how big they are.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We don't have good sort of radar to asteroids.

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if we think an asteroid is gonna come in front of a star and blot out its light, and you have people lined up on Earth to watch this. Because how big are asteroids? There's 100 meters across, few kilometers across, mile across, whatever. It's not thousands of miles across.

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you line people up on Earth, and some will not see the light of the star dim.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other people will.

• 40:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On each side. So only a narrow path of people will see the light dim. And that can tell you the size of the asteroid.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you can, we don't have enough amateur astronomers to do this. So everybody's gotta line up, watch the object, keep good time, and do this. So yes, there's still things to do. But also, we have this citizen science projects. We're awash in data.

• 40:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we say, "We're looking for this, help us." I mean, we might put AI on it, but sometimes the human touch matters.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, because not all AI is human yet. And so, yes, there are ways you can still contribute.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Very cool. There you go.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, last one, real quick.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Sharahi Rahi, who says, "Greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, currently reside in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I am a researcher and a graduate student in astrophysics. What possible aspects of our current model of the Big Bang Theory do you feel will be revised considering the contradictions to the same by the latest James Webb Space Telescope observations?"

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, the Big Bang is supported by so many different lines of evidence that if our galaxy models don't match what we see... Chances are it's a problem with the galaxy.

• 41:29Chuck Nice?

  The models.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  Right. Not the big bang itself.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the big bang itself.

• 41:32Chuck Nice?

  It's the way we've modeled the models.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The galaxies are embedded within a much larger matrix of observations and data that have been affirmed by measurements over decades. So, we, we think we understand galaxies. The whole point of the, of the James Webb Telescope was to observe galaxies being born.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we don't fully understand that process. If we take what we think galaxies should be like, and they don't match it, you don't say toss out the whole big bang. You say maybe our understanding of galaxies is flawed.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, saying our understanding of galaxies is flawed is very different clickbait from, we need to rethink the big bang.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that's what we're all caught up in here.

• 42:14Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Okay, yeah.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clickbait.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  Right. That's, that's it.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what we expect.

• 42:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's.

• 42:19Chuck Nice?

  It's the same as the Bat Boy, uh, headlines, you know?

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, from the old days.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Remember from the old days? Bat Boy Found! It's like, a boy, half-boy, half-bat.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So I forgot all about those, yeah.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  That, that was the original clickbait.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 42:35Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so that's all we had time for, Chuck.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  Alright, well that was fun.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Knock out another one there.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  That was fun.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, glad from all over Sydney.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Everywhere.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the Netherlands, the Netherlands.

• 42:44Chuck Nice?

  We're, we're global, baby.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, I'm liking it. Always good to have you, man.

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, this has been a StarTalk Cosmic Queries from my office here at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.