Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Spirit of Exploration, with James Cameron About this episode Investigate the convergence of exploration, innovation, and imagination with Neil deGrasse Tyson and filmmaker and explorer James Cameron. Featuring comic co-host Chuck Nice and astrophysicist and StarTalk All-Stars host Charles Liu.
NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/the-spirit-of-exploration-with-james-cameron/
Photo Credit: Mark Thiessen/National Geographic.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to the hall of the universe. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight we are featuring my interview with explorer and filmmaker James Cameron. Yes! He was the director of epic movies like Titanic, which was the highest grossing movie of all time, until Cameron broke his own box office record with Avatar. And he's the co-designer and pilot of the first solo submarine down to the deepest place on Earth. We discussed this crazy convergence of exploration, innovation, and imagination. So, let's do this.
1:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My comedic co-host tonight Chuck Nice. Hey Neil! Chuck, give me some five, some fist bump. And also joining us, a StarTalk All-Star, from our stable of All-Stars, my friend and colleague astrophysicist Charles Wu. Charles!
1:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're a professor at the City University of New York, Staten Island. That's right. So, there you go. So, like, Charles, we're discussing my interview with film director, underwater explorer, James Cameron. A remarkable individual. Yeah, so we sat down recently in a one-on-one chat at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society in Washington DC for the Explorers Festival. Oh, that sounds really fancy. It was fancy, and we had a whole audience there, so let's check it out.
1:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jim, I was gonna say welcome, but you're an explorer in residence here for National Geographic. So did they ever let you out if you're in residence?
2:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, the ball and chain kinda chafes a bit, but explorer in residence is an oxymoron.
2:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, very much so, I think.
2:10 Speaker 01 You gotta kinda get out of your residence to see anything.
2:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Explorer, now get the hell out of here. Find something to explore. But I love learning from people who have been so impactful on culture, on society, with a force of inspiration on others. Were there some such forces of inspiration when you were a kid, scientific or otherwise?
2:31 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I mean, my heroes were not musicians, rock stars, sports people.
2:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you were a weird kid?
2:37 Speaker 01 I was a weird kid. I actually started the science club at my high school. Because I used to get beat up a lot until I got the biggest guy in the class to be my bodyguard by doing his math homework.
2:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, there you go. That's the...
2:51 Speaker 01 And then it was just like, "See that guy over there?
2:55 Speaker 01 Take him out."
2:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you were a geek kid?
3:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was a total geek, exactly. But, you know, I admired scientists, I admired astronauts. I admired people who were exploring. Jacques Cousteau, the Sea Lab program, Man and Sea program, all that sort of thing. I was fascinated by up and down.
3:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Up and down. Now, back then, in those years, it would've been sort of easier if you're just reading headlines to be touched by space, because of the Apollo program and the rest. So was it primarily Jacques Cousteau and his programs that got you thinking down as well?
3:30 Speaker 01 At the beginning, yeah, sure, absolutely. You know, he was bringing wonders into the living room that we didn't even know existed. And of course, National Geographic magazine was doing the same thing. So between those two points of, you know, as a view into the ocean... Because I lived landlocked. I was 500 miles from the ocean. I'm not one of these surf kids that grew up with a snorkel in his mouth. So I was so fascinated, I made my father put me into a scuba program in February in Buffalo.
4:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, did he...
4:01 Speaker 01 In a pool, in a YMCA pool.
4:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did he know you could die from doing this? Did you?
4:06 Speaker 01 I don't think he cared that much.
4:10 Speaker 01 Kids, you know, we got to do what we wanted to do.
4:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's true.
4:13 Speaker 01 As long as we were back by dinner, you know, so it was all good.
4:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Chuck, you know more science than most comedians that I've ever met. So I want to know, were you a geek in school?
4:27 Chuck Nice? Yes.
4:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or were you a geek bodyguard?
4:29 Chuck Nice? I was a double agent.
4:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
4:31 Chuck Nice? I knew all the cool kids, but I was definitely friends with all the geeks. And so I would try my best to take the heat off the geeks by befriending the cool kids.
4:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
4:43 Chuck Nice? But if the geeks ever really needed help, don't call me.
4:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Charles, how about you? Charles, who'd you admire when you were in high school?
4:53 Charles Liu? Unlike James Cameron, I admired athletes, musicians, and rock stars.
4:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you became none of the above?
4:59 Charles Liu? That's right.
5:01 Charles Liu? It doesn't matter where inspiration comes from, as long as it comes from somewhere. You know, for me, being a scientist, or a mathematician, or an academic was a matter of course. Of course, this is what people do. So I didn't have to be inspired by them, I was just gonna be one of them. It was the things that I wasn't actually good at yet, or focused on, that I admired greatly. I would love to be able to throw a 50-yard touchdown bomb, like, you know, Terry Bradshaw, or something like that.
5:24 Chuck Nice? Oh, don't worry, I'll teach you.
5:27 Charles Liu? Thank you, sir, I appreciate that.
5:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's get back to my interview, and find out how his early interest in science in school led to filmmaking. Let's check it out. So after high school, then what?
5:38 Speaker 01 Well, then a couple of years of college, but I was working as a truck driver, machinist, high school janitor.
5:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're another billionaire college dropout. Just say that. Just come out and say it.
5:49 Speaker 01 Pretty much, but not a billionaire.
5:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating how many people, whatever was the cause, be it the organization and the ossification that can and does happen in college, versus whatever else, if you're truly creative, sometimes that's not for you.
6:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, it was the creative part of it. I was writing and painting and creating characters and all that, but I'd also be perfectly happy, you know, going and studying. A plasma rocket engine all day. You know, and drawing it out, seeing how it all worked and that sort of thing. So it's a combination of curiosity and I guess creativity. And I just didn't kind of know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I just started working full-time. I figured maybe if I want to be a writer, I should see a bit of life, you know? So, you know, I got married, got a house in the suburbs and I'm talking like 23, by the way. So I was over pretty much life by the time I was 24 and started thinking about it. Maybe I should do something else.
6:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rocking chair on the porch.
6:52 Speaker 01 Okay, that's enough life. Let's get back to science fiction.
6:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Charles, I just wondered, if he was a little more focused in school, might he have invented a warp drive instead of...
7:04 Charles Liu? Oh, easily. But remember, it's a matter of what you want to do, right?
7:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
7:09 Charles Liu? Clearly, he could have done any or anything that we would want him to do, but he wanted to make films and though that's what he did, he wound up changing history of filmmaking.
7:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting that he has this physics background.
7:20 Charles Liu? Mm-hmm.
7:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because physics is not as highly valued by so many people. I gotta take biology because I'm a living organism.
7:26 Charles Liu? Yep.
7:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And many people don't know how fundamental physics is to all other knowledge that derive from it.
7:31 Charles Liu? Clearly, James on this...
7:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As said by two physicists.
7:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just, I'm just saying.
7:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Comedy is the most fundamental thing in the universe.
7:42 Charles Liu? Comedy, comedy about physics.
7:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From which the expansion of the universe derives.
7:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Cameron, you know, his first really big surprise, it was Terminator.
7:53 Charles Liu? Yes.
7:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he wrote, directed that, and... I'll be back. I'll be back. The best line ever.
8:00 Charles Liu? No, the best line ever is when he didn't say anything and just ripped the heart out of that person.
8:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're a dark man.
8:08 Charles Liu? Biology versus physics, come on.
8:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, he did that because he wanted the clothing that they were wearing. And that was the appropriate thing to do if you're a Terminator.
8:15 Charles Liu? Give them to me now.
8:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your clothes, give them to me. Yes. You know who he beat up there? It was three thugs. Fighting over a telescope at Griffith Park, Los Angeles. So, the Terminator landed in front of a damn planetarium.
8:31 Speaker 01 Nice.
8:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice. It was very cool. Very cool. So, went on, he directed Aliens.
8:35 Speaker 01 Right.
8:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Abyss.
8:37 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They got some underwater action there.
8:39 Speaker 01 Right.
8:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, Titanic, of course. And then Avatar. And so Titanic and Avatar are the two highest grossing movies of all time. Number one and number two. We'll get to Avatar a little later, but first, I asked James Cameron about the depths of his inspiration that led to Titanic. So, let's check it out.
8:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could have just read the Titanic book and then made a movie on it, but I'd love knowing the depth of inspiration that is behind a project.
9:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I don't know how many people who saw and loved Titanic, swayed by the love songs and all the rest of this, I don't know how many of them knew you went to the bottom of the frickin' ocean.
9:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And found the thing.
9:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. I didn't find it. Bob Ballard found it, but we, but of course, every dive, you have to find it.
9:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, okay.
9:25 Speaker 01 You know, it's not like there are street signs on the bottom pointing to Titanic.
9:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
9:28 Speaker 01 You get down there.
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You hang a left at the, at the.
9:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At the octopus.
9:32 Speaker 01 You're 12,500 feet down in the middle of the North Atlantic. There are no signposts. You get to the bottom and it's like, I think it might be that way. And you're looking on the sonar. So, every dive, you find the Titanic. But, uh, no, but how I got into it was, first of all, my love of the ocean, which had never lapsed, and I was a scuba diver and all that, uh, when Bob Ballard found Titanic, there was a lot of stuff about ROVs. So, I got very interested in ROVs and I wrote a movie called The Abyss. And I got to work with real.
9:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, ROVs?
10:00 Speaker 01 Uh, remotely operated vehicle, right? So, it's like a camera, self-propelled camera. Uh, so, I thought, these are fantastic. Underwater robots. To me, they were characters. You know, I'm thinking like a, like a movie guy. And so, I started working with real ROVs for that film. So, you know, that was my first baptism into the real world of, of, of deep ocean exploration. So, that was in 89. And then I thought, it, it wasn't such a big leap to think, well, wait a minute. Why don't we just get some ROVs and go to the Titanic wreck for real? And make it part of a movie and get 20th Century Fox to pay for it.
10:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, it was all a ploy?
10:38 Speaker 01 It was a ploy. It was exactly a ploy.
10:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh.
10:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then I had to write this love story. Cast some actors.
10:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The movie was incidental
10:48 Charles Liu? Yeah
10:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? to your prime directive.
10:50 Charles Liu? The stuff you do to be an explorer.
10:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh.
11:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, some of the great scientific discoveries are made on expeditions that had nothing to do with the science to begin with. And there was Charles Darwin on the Beagle.
11:10 Charles Liu? Okay.
11:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And...
11:12 Charles Liu? The dog, right?
11:14 Charles Liu? He rode a dog all the way around the world.
11:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the dog that floated him to the Galapagos, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that voyage was not for him. He was piggybacking Stowaway practically on that ship. We also, the moon voyage?
11:30 Charles Liu? Yeah.
11:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All but one of them who went to the moon was like a military pilot type person. And the science was incidental. We know the history of the moon and how the moon formed just kind of because they brought back some rocks. Not because the whole mission was conceived around productive science. So, Charles, you think Hollywood movies should continue to be used as excuses for this?
11:51 Charles Liu? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. In fact, most of them are already. They're wonderful vehicles for us to express science to everybody.
12:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So, we will explore the alien world of Avatar.
12:07 Charles Liu? Oh.
12:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cameron's science fiction mega hit Avatar combined his passion with exploring outer space with his passion for the undersea world. And I asked him about that intersection of inspiration and creating like an audacious world in Avatar. Let's check it out.
12:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To me, you were in space, but to an oceanographer,
12:31 Charles Liu? Yeah.
12:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? you were underwater.
12:32 Charles Liu? Yeah.
12:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, tell me about these inspirations.
12:34 Charles Liu? The profusion of life, the colors, the patterns on the animals, some of the animals themselves, like there's a...
12:42 Speaker 01 A lot of people think of it as a plant, but it's actually meant to be an animal. This thing that looks like a Christmas tree worm, except, you know, two orders of magnitude, five orders of magnitude bigger. You touch it, it goes down like that. That's actually based on a real polychaete, you know, that lives in the reefs. And any scuba diver got the reference. And they say, "Oh, I know those colors from certain reef fish," that sort of thing. So, again, it's the underwater-
13:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were showing off your scuba street cred in that movie.
13:09 Speaker 01 I think I was just, you know, I was such a fan of the imagination of nature. People, everybody has a different relationship with the ocean, and scuba divers do all kinds of different things. But sometimes, just on a night dive, just sitting and looking at a little, kind of one square meter of reef can keep you occupied for the entire tank of air.
13:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I think you captured that in the main character's first encounter with this life form.
13:35 Speaker 01 Right.
13:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's in his own exploratory mode.
13:37 Speaker 01 Exactly. He's just curious. He's a curious monkey. He's got to touch everything, and it all lights up, so it's kind of an interactive world. Like, and that's all just from, you know, if you're on a night dive and there's a lot of bioluminescent algae, you just move your hand like that, and it all sparkles, you know, behind it. It's pretty amazing. So I just took that and ran with that idea.
13:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you put it all in space.
13:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
14:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when I think of, "How might we imagine an alien?", let's start on Earth.
14:06 Speaker 01 Right.
14:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And look at all of the extinct life forms, or the undersea life forms that are so unfamiliar.
14:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's all here. The aliens are all here. They're either back in time, or they're deep, or they're shallow on a coral reef, and they're just a different scale. You can do every alien you'd ever need for every science fiction film for the next thousand years. All exists right here, just change the scale. So that's where we got all of our inspiration from nature itself. And sometimes it was a thought process. "Okay, on Earth, we're all on a tetrapod platform, essentially. Everything is pretty much four-limbed, even birds are just, you know, an adaptation of a four-limbed platform."
14:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, that's how you know you have a legitimate- A legitimate dragon, because it has to forfeit the front limbs to be the wings.
14:45 Speaker 01 Right, exactly.
14:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so you have to know that that's a constriction that nature has placed down.
14:50 Speaker 01 Right, because nature will take your pinky finger and turn it into a 20-foot wingspan on a tyrannodon.
14:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
14:56 Speaker 01 But it doesn't just make it up out of whole cloth.
14:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
14:59 Speaker 01 So we based everything in Avatar on a six-limbed platform. And the theory there was that it was a lower-gravity planet with a high atmospheric density. And so to get traction running from a predator or running after something, you needed an extra pair of limbs. Kind of like the Mars rovers got six wheels instead of four wheels.
15:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
15:18 Speaker 01 Because your interaction with the ground is constrained by the low gravity. So, except for the Navi, because I debated having six-limbed characters.
15:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would have just been too weird.
15:30 Speaker 01 It would have been cool.
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sex with a six-limbed thing, that four-limbed having sex with six limbs. No, no, no, don't go there, no.
15:40 Speaker 01 Dude, I'm a science fiction fan, that's not a big problem for me.
15:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're already blue, okay, isn't that enough?
15:47 Speaker 01 They're blue and twice our size.
15:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Twice our size.
15:49 Speaker 01 I'm, I can work with it.
15:55 Chuck Nice? Oh, oh my goodness, oh man.
16:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What?
16:01 Chuck Nice? James Cameron is a freak.
16:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Freakazoid.
16:05 Chuck Nice? Freakazoid!
16:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Charles, he says we've got all the inspiration for animated life here on Earth. You agree with that?
16:13 Charles Liu? Nope.
16:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, neither do I, actually.
16:15 Charles Liu? Nope, I don't.
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I don't agree.
16:16 Charles Liu? I agree with this statement that we have enough here on Earth to power science fiction films for a thousand years.
16:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
16:22 Charles Liu? But, really thinking about stuff beyond Earth is the next level, we have to do that.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, because the, plus the limb thing, we have, you know, the eight-limbed thing, they're not vertebrates, but, you know, the octopus.
16:34 Charles Liu? Octopods.
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and.
16:35 Charles Liu? Of different kinds.
16:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We do have the six-legged folks, the insects.
16:39 Charles Liu? Yeah.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, but I agree, if you're gonna be from another planet. Without any Earth DNA and possibly no DNA at all. You need to look more different than Earth-like looks from itself.
16:53 Chuck Nice? But is that possible? Because when you think about it, look at all the different forms of life that we find here on Earth.
17:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you have DNA in common with an octopus.
17:03 Chuck Nice? That's what I'm saying. How much further can we go? I mean, I have DNA in common with some slug that's like just like amorphous and slamming around in the dirt. Wait, that's my uncle.
17:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it is true, though, that, of course, the diversity of life on Earth offers some pretty weird-looking creatures. We gotta admit that, Charles.
17:26 Charles Liu? I will admit that.
17:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alien to our sensibilities.
17:29 Charles Liu? Pretty amazing.
17:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so.
17:30 Chuck Nice? And that's a good thing.
17:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Especially in the deep sea. And it's some weird-looking stuff.
17:35 Chuck Nice? I'm so glad you mentioned that because that brings us to a little game show I want to play with you guys. And it's called Outer Space or Underwater. So here's what's going to. Yeah.
17:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
17:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Here's the way it's gonna work. I am going to describe to you guys a creature and you're going to guess whether it's not. It's from either science fiction or is it an actual creature from under the sea?
18:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
18:00 Chuck Nice? Okay? Here we go. The first one is, these creatures can be seven feet long. It doesn't need sunlight and it doesn't need to eat. Is it from outer space or from underwater?
18:12 Charles Liu? Underwater.
18:13 Chuck Nice? Neil?
18:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It depends how you define eat. It will certainly need energy. Perhaps it gets it from some other source. So I will say, okay, underwater.
18:20 Chuck Nice? Look at that. You're both right. It's called a tube worm.
18:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Was it seven feet long?
18:29 Chuck Nice? Seven feet long. And by the way, adorable.
18:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He just wanted to pinch his cheek.
18:36 Charles Liu? Yeah, no, they live at Black Smokers down at the bottom of the ocean.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they're getting geothermal.
18:40 Charles Liu? That's right.
18:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Energy sources.
18:42 Chuck Nice? Here we go. These creatures lay eggs in the stomachs of other creatures which hatch and kill their hosts. Are they from outer space or from underwater?
18:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I saw that movie. It was called Alien.
18:56 Charles Liu? Yes.
18:57 Chuck Nice? Yes, you're right.
18:57 Charles Liu? It is outer space.
18:58 Chuck Nice? It is outer space, and it is the movie Alien.
19:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, there you go.
19:03 Charles Liu? But the tarantula hawk actually attacks large spiders, injects them with a poison that paralyzes them, and then lays their eggs in them. The spiders stay alive until the eggs hatch, and the eggs eat their way out of the spider.
19:19 Chuck Nice? That's nasty. That's kinda cool. All right, let's move on to our next one. Is this from outer space or underwater? This creature can make objects in their vicinity float, and their extremities light up. Come on now.
19:34 Charles Liu? Underwater, bioluminescent creatures.
19:35 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
19:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You just have to be neutrally buoyant to float, so that wouldn't be too hard underwater. So I've given underwater.
19:41 Chuck Nice? See, this is how you trick scientists. You give them something that sounds like it should be underwater, and it's outer space. It's called E.T. Aww. Ah, see? Gotcha!
19:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so I had an issue with Avatar, because I get the scientific inspiration for the creepy crawly things, and the animals and the plants.
20:03 Charles Liu? Okay.
20:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But those floating mountains, it was like, you know, come on. Now, I don't know, is there anyone who hasn't seen Avatar? Because-
20:13 Chuck Nice? Spoiler alert!
20:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because in there, there's a moon around an exoplanet.
20:18 Charles Liu? Yes.
20:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exoplanet, planet orbiting another star. A moon around it is called Pandora.
20:23 Charles Liu? Pandora.
20:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that moon has a rare element in it called-
20:28 Chuck Nice? Unobtanium.
20:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Unobtanium. Earthlings, we Earth people being Earth people, of course, we want to invade that place and mine it for unobtanium. And apparently, these floating mountains have high concentrations of unobtanium. But I had to ask him about the scientific explanation for the floating mountains.
20:48 Chuck Nice? Oh.
20:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let's check it out.
20:50 Chuck Nice? Oh, this is gonna be good.
20:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you have a way to explain to me how they were floating?
20:55 Charles Liu? Okay, so-
20:59 Speaker 01 Don't ask a question you don't want the answer to.
21:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I can hang, alright.
21:04 Speaker 01 Electanium is a naturally occurring room temperature superconductor, type 2 superconductor. And, you know, with flux pinning, you know, the Meissner effect, you can actually suspend a room temperature superconductor in a strong enough magnetic field. So the planet has very powerful magnetic field. So, these, or...
21:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, no, it's good. I'm with him.
21:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I give him a B+ so far on that, but go on.
21:31 Speaker 01 You have to assume that a room temperature superconductor can exist, but we haven't found 95% of the mass in the universe, you guys.
21:41 Speaker 01 So don't talk to me about floating mountains till you find the rest of that mass.
21:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I guess here then was my question. Because I was ready to accept that, alright, strong magnetic field, you float things if it's highly magnetic. But if they are then primarily on obtaining,
22:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then why did the military have to get it from under the tree? They could just lasso a mountain.
22:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I struggle with that, but here's my explanation. The, what we call the flux con or the flux concentration is so powerful that it messes with the electronics. And so their big mining machinery doesn't really operate very well. All the robotics that they need to extract it doesn't work very well there, so they go...
22:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He got out of that one. He looked pretty good.
22:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Charles, these mountains floating.
22:34 Charles Liu? Yes.
22:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How plausible was his explanation?
22:38 Charles Liu? I would say...
22:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that a scientific account?
22:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I was gonna say, the look on your face told us how plausible it was.
22:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But he mentioned the Meissner effect.
22:46 Charles Liu? Yeah, yeah.
22:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I remembered seeing it briefly in physics class.
22:50 Charles Liu? Yeah, superconductors, right? You've seen maybe on YouTube channel, or maybe you've seen a movie where you have a beaker of super cold, superconducting stuff, and then you have these little bubbles kind of floating in midair, it seems, right? That's because of the Meissner effect, you have superconducting things going on. But it's this little tiny scale, alright? His explanation of trying to create this whole mountain caused by that and flux density and blabbity blabbity blah, no.
23:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you don't think we can get a moon with sufficient magnetic field strength to levitate mountains?
23:19 Charles Liu? Well, if we did that, then all those helicopters would be flying off into space.
23:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh!
23:23 Charles Liu? Right. So...
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's right. It wouldn't... Right, right, right.
23:27 Charles Liu? Right. Given that, it's really alright. As long as it's self-consistent, as long as there's something internal, we're okay with that. And then, and I think his line of what he said, that we still don't know what 95% of the matter in the universe is, is actually very telling, because all you have to do is to bridge that gap. Take that little tweak up in that unknown, and you're okay.
23:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, up next, we talk to James Cameron, Avatar director, about his solo submarine dive to the deepest place on Earth's surface, on StarTalk.
24:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with film director and explorer James Cameron. And his film portrays worlds on epic scales. But he says the devil is in the details, not only in his movies, but in his passion for underwater exploration. Let's check it out.
24:33 Speaker 01 People want detail. They want, they want a world that they can immerse in.
24:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We want to know you've thought about it.
24:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. I, I always think that if you, if you have 10 times more detail than you actually want in the movie, what you do leave in the film feels like it's, it's right. You may not know why, but it's there for a reason. It's like, here's a good example. The Lunar Lander, right? The LEM. You've got 20 Hollywood films done before that where we're landing on the moon in pointy rockets with tail fins. And they all look the same. And then the Lunar Lander came along and it looked like a bug. You know, what the hell? But that's because it was based on certain engineering principles, not Hollywood design ideas.
25:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's not just your interest in the oceans or space? You've touched and been touched by engineering and technology.
25:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there was a lot about the cameras used for Avatar, but you go farther back than that.
25:24 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I just, I just love engineering. I love, I love solving hard engineering problems. And I love working with really smart engineers in a room and trying to do something that hasn't been done before. Like, you know, make a sub and that can go to extreme depth. You know, there were materials problems, electronics, batteries, all sorts of things that had to be developed that were actually hard problems. And, you know, I just, I just like that.
25:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Charles, he likes solving problems.
25:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he would have made a good scientist.
25:53 Speaker 01 He would have made a good scientist, he would have made a good engineer, he would have been a good, just about anything.
25:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He could have been somebody.
26:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that got me wondering, okay, what kind of preparation, what kind of thinking must have gone in to motivate him in 2012 to make the first solo descent to the deepest place on Earth? In a submarine that he piloted and co-designed.
26:27 Speaker 01 Wow.
26:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you know where he went? What's the deepest place on Earth?
26:29 Speaker 01 The Marianas Trench.
26:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Marian, Marianas Trench.
26:31 Speaker 01 Thank God, I thought you were gonna say my fears.
26:36 Speaker 01 Almost seven miles down.
26:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Seven, almost seven miles down off the coast of the Philippines. And so I asked him about that record-setting dive. Let's check it out. So what motivated you to go to the bottom of the ocean, bottom of Earth?
26:49 Speaker 01 You know, the funny thing is that I've been asked that a lot. And it occurs to me that a kid would never ask that question. Because a kid would know, you just gotta go.
26:59 Speaker 01 Why wouldn't, a kid-
27:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He just so dissed me in that moment right there.
27:02 Speaker 01 No, no, it's just that we, as a culture, we start to think like-
27:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I wanna be a kid again.
27:08 Speaker 01 I know, exactly. So a kid would say, why wouldn't you go?
27:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, of course.
27:11 Speaker 01 It's there and, and you haven't looked yet, so why wouldn't you build a, you know, a sub and get in it and go and look?
27:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you went by yourself.
27:20 Speaker 01 Um, that was kind of a constraint. I mean, I would have built a two-man sub or two-person sub if, uh, but- We had to evolve beyond the trieste that went down there in 1960, which was had to be towed out there and it had a big mast or a tunnel that you went down to get into the sphere. So it was very much like a military sub. But we wanted to use the paradigm of modern research submersibles. You go out on a ship and you put it in the water. So it had to be a certain weight. And it all scales up around the size of the sphere. So we thought, alright, let's just, we're gonna do this down and dirty. We're doing it privately. It's not big institutional money. It's not a Navy project. So let's start with the smallest sphere that we can cram a human into. And so then that instantly, pretty much on day one, was a one-person deal. So I was gonna dive and then my-
28:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so you-
28:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, kinda sitting, kind of about like, about like that, with the back of the sphere there, or about like that, if you will. About 12 hours-
28:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's spookily like how you had to get into the Mercury capsule.
28:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they were, the Mercury capsule was not some lounge chair, you know?
28:24 Speaker 01 It was tiny.
28:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They, yeah.
28:26 Speaker 01 But I figured guys in F-16s fly 11, 12-hour sorties with refueling in the Middle East. They do it all the time. And, you know, so it's really not-
28:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Humans have subjected themselves.
28:38 Speaker 01 Humans do this. They do this.
28:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, alright, so just to be clear, why the shape of the vessel has to be a sphere?
28:45 Speaker 01 Okay, well, yeah.
28:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tell us-
28:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is the leading question, because you know the answer. The sphere is the most elegant shape in nature, because this, you know, it's just like a bubble in water. Nature naturally tends to get these isotropic pressures forming a sphere. So it's like your bubble is just made out of steel. Any other shape will tend to fail. You'll have what's called stress risers, where the stress fields will peak at a certain point, like a corner if you're building a box or whatever. So sphere is the elegant shape that resists pressure. And so you start with a sphere. Then whatever other shape the vehicle appears to have is usually about the flow dynamics over the vehicle.
29:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
29:23 Speaker 01 You put the flotation up high and the heavy sphere at the bottom, and that's how you start.
29:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, you're going down headfirst.
29:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, or tumbling, which would be even worse.
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Yeah, then you get like seasick. You don't want that.
29:34 Speaker 01 No, you don't want that. Trust me.
29:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh yeah, I trust you.
29:37 Speaker 01 Been there, checked that box. It's not fun. But as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, I'm thinking, if you want people to be interested in hadal research, you have to go there.
29:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The hadal?
29:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, hadal is anything below 6,000 meters, which is abyssal depth, right? All the way down to the deepest spots, which are close to 11,000 meters.
29:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the takeaway from that is below that, you die even faster in a failure.
30:01 Speaker 01 You died pretty fast at 6,000 meters, actually, but I think it's a very fine degree. You know, I always figured it wouldn't hurt, because by the time the pain impulses got to my brain, it wouldn't be there anymore.
30:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your brain wouldn't be there, right, right. You'd just be crushed.
30:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To a pile of goo.
30:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pretty mu- pretty much.
30:20 Speaker 01 Pretty much, yeah, yeah.
30:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Charles, is my calculation accurate? He'd be a pile of goo.
30:28 Charles Liu? You would be a pile of goo. Every 32 feet that you go down in the ocean, every 32 feet you go further down, you're increasing again the same amount of pressure that we're experiencing now on the surface of the earth.
30:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So 32 feet is one atmosphere?
30:40 Charles Liu? That's right.
30:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
30:41 Charles Liu? So we're going down 35,000 feet, that's equivalent of more than 14,000 pounds per square inch on your body. Imagine if this entire Hayden sphere were smushing you.
30:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's 7 tons per square inch?
30:54 Charles Liu? Yeah, 7, 8 tons per square inch down the bottom there.
30:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's a quick pile of goo.
30:58 Charles Liu? Oh yeah. The problem is, you won't turn-
31:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's not the problem.
31:01 Charles Liu? Oh yeah.
31:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay. There's some other problem neglected here.
31:04 Chuck Nice? The problem is the cleanup.
31:07 Charles Liu? If you went from you to goo immediately, you wouldn't feel it. He's right, right?
31:11 Chuck Nice? By the way, that's the name of the next Dr. Seuss book. From you to goo.
31:18 Charles Liu? What will probably happen is, your ship will start to creak, it'll break, water will start coming in, you will suffer before you become goo.
31:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's not an instantaneous thing.
31:28 Charles Liu? That's right.
31:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a slow death.
31:30 Charles Liu? That's kind of the problem.
31:31 Chuck Nice? Well, that's pretty cool, though. I mean, since you're a scientist, and this is a fascinating conversation about, are there any other, like, really great ways to die in science?
31:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There is no end of great ways to die in the universe.
31:45 Chuck Nice? Really?
31:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Charles and I could just trade back and forth. Charles, you go first.
31:48 Chuck Nice? Okay, go ahead. I would love to be destroyed by a gamma ray burst.
31:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
31:54 Chuck Nice? Okay, when you say ooh, like, I don't know what that would be like, what is it?
31:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a very high energy flow of particles and light. That would vaporize him quickly.
32:04 Chuck Nice? Okay, but what would it actually do to me? Like, to my, would it just break me down into like?
32:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's high enough energy to completely break apart all molecular bonds in your body.
32:14 Chuck Nice? Okay, now that is cool.
32:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, it'll just completely disassemble you, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, then atom by atom.
32:21 Chuck Nice? Then atom by atom.
32:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
32:22 Chuck Nice? Oh, wow. That doesn't even sound right.
32:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got one.
32:26 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
32:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, asteroid strikes.
32:29 Chuck Nice? Asteroid strikes.
32:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, so you want to be right where it hits, so you die instantly, and you get to watch it come in. That would be cool. If you're not right where it hits, you will die, but later, slowly. Yeah.
32:40 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay. All right, how about this? Because I read this from you, uh, spaghettification.
32:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, love me some spaghettification.
32:47 Chuck Nice? Death by black hole. Death by black hole.
32:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, death by black hole.
32:52 Chuck Nice? Death by black hole. Death by a black hole.
32:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I give him a B+, that's it on that one. Yeah, you fall into a black hole, you, that's my way to die. If I had to pick one of them, forget the gamma ray burst. It'd be cool to re, to become atoms again, but still, falling into a black hole. Uh, you get to a point where it starts pulling on your feet faster than it's pulling on your head.
33:18 Chuck Nice? Okay.
33:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you're in a stretching. Now, you'll stretch, you know, we all like a stretch.
33:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
33:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right?
33:25 Chuck Nice? Oh, this feels good.
33:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Until it stretches you so much that tidal forces, this is what they are, these stretching forces, exceed the intermolecular bonds of your flesh. And then you snap into two pieces, likely at the base of your spine.
33:41 Chuck Nice? Okay.
33:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then those other two pieces continue to fall, and they feel the same tidal forces. And then they snap each into two pieces.
33:49 Chuck Nice? The ultimate chiropractor.
33:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so you go from one to two to four to eight to sixteen, you bifurcate your way down into the abyss. You are extruded through the fabric of space, like toothpaste through a tube.
34:05 Chuck Nice? Nice.
34:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so we have a word for that, spaghettification.
34:10 Chuck Nice? Nice.
34:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is. Coming up on StarTalk, I ask James Cameron about exploring oceans on other planets when we return.
34:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with movie director, inventor, explorer, James Cameron. And his hit film Avatar is set on a fictional alien moon of an actual planet orbiting a neighboring star. And moons like this might be the best place for alien life. And so, we discussed my favorite moon for the search for alien life, Jupiter's moon Europa. Let's check it out. Europa has an icy crust and very likely ocean of liquid water, which we expect has been liquid for billions of years,
35:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? kept warm by a pulse of gravitational energy sent to it from Jupiter and surrounding other moons.
35:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, tidal pumping.
35:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, tidal pumping. So it's outside of the traditional Goldilocks zone. And which is fun because in our search for life in the universe, it broadens the net.
35:29 Speaker 01 Oh, hugely, hugely. Yeah, in the ice world could be, if it's got gravitational pumping, could have thermal energy, could have a liquid ocean, could have life.
35:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this is orgasmic for you because it's space and an ocean.
35:42 Speaker 01 Almost literally.
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get to fly in space and go to the bottom of an ocean.
35:53 Speaker 01 I know.
35:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And look for life that's alien.
35:55 Speaker 01 Well, it could be cooler, yeah. Yeah, if they discovered, you know, an immortality drug tomorrow, I would be very happy because I would live long enough to get to go to Europa.
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For no other reason.
36:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, a couple other.
36:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I joke about Europa because if we do find life forms there, there's only one thing we would be forced to call it. They have to be called Europeans. I'm pretty sure. Just saying. Just saying.
36:24 Speaker 01 I hadn't thought of that.
36:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
36:26 Speaker 01 But Enceladus is good, too.
36:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
36:28 Speaker 01 Because in Enceladus, you've got, you've got active venting right now. And they think that there's actually an exposed interface where you could theoretically fly down a crevice or a crevasse and get to the bottom and see boiling water. Not boiling because it's hot, but boiling because there's, it's in a vacuum, so it's...
36:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It changes the boiling temperature.
36:46 Speaker 01 Boiling, yeah, exactly. And so it's, so it's just, it's just vaporizing. And you're looking at seawater that is then in communication due to, you know, convective currents with some kind of hydrothermal activity. And the, and what I'm intrigued by is they flew Cassini through a plume and they picked up some...
37:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, by the time this airs, Cassini will be dead.
37:08 Speaker 01 I know.
37:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let may rest in peace. Yes.
37:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's on a death spiral right now into...
37:12 Speaker 01 Into Saturn.
37:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I don't know if Cassini was Christian, as you just put across. But whatever religion it was, let it...
37:19 Speaker 01 Did it get burned at the stake, maybe? He probably did.
37:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's on a death spiral into Saturn. Now, to get it out of, so that it doesn't accidentally crash into one of these moons.
37:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where there could be...
37:30 Speaker 01 Where it could contaminate it and screw up our chances of being able to tell life from life. But, yeah, so they found silicon nanoparticles, which can't, which they believe can only form in the plumes of hydrothermal vents. So literally, you've got, you've got water that's being brought down, heated up by this, these tidal effects, squirting up into the ocean, boiling around for a while, getting to the surface and then evaporating, going out into space, getting picked up by a human spacecraft and analyzed. That's pretty...
37:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Without even having to land.
37:59 Speaker 01 That's pretty frickin' cool.
38:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
38:01 Speaker 01 Now, if they fly around long enough, they might hit a fish.
38:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I got something cooler. Ready? So, in that same vein, we know that the frozen ice of Europa has cracked and refrozen because you see, you see patterns that are shifted.
38:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
38:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like, like a puzzle shift.
38:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, like it... Like, that went to there.
38:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so, if that's the case, that means there are crevasses that come and then refreeze. And so, if there are fish that get caught in the upwell of this water, the fish is now frozen near the surface. So you can have astronauts landing there and not having to drill the kilometer-thick ice sheet. They can just dig into these frozen karaf sections and then have like a freeze-dried fish, like right on the spot.
38:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, or bacteria or whatever it is, but that's the...
38:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Fish, I want fish.
38:50 Speaker 01 That's the low... Alright, fish like a sturgeon.
38:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes!
38:56 Speaker 01 Is that European caviar is expensive?
39:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Charles, what would you visit first, based on your knowledge of the solar system?
39:06 Charles Liu? Europa, for sure. I gotta tell you, a few years back, I had the great privilege of flying over the North Pole in the daytime. And the ice pack there, the part that wasn't melted, looks so much like the crust of the surface of Europa. I just swear, I feel it in my bones, there's something alive down underneath there.
39:24 Speaker 01 Ooh.
39:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Jim Cameron is a really curious guy, that's obvious. And, so I asked him if he had any questions for me, as an astrophysicist. So, I solicited this from him, let's check it out.
39:39 Speaker 01 Alright, I'm gonna do this just to mess with you.
39:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
39:43 Speaker 01 No, but I wanna hear your answer to a question that I think everybody asks, and I've never heard a succinct answer that makes any common sense. If you're not a higher mathematician.
39:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
39:55 Speaker 01 The observable universe is 13.5 billion...
39:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yep, 13.8, last...
40:00 Speaker 01 13.8 billion...
40:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Light years.
40:02 Speaker 01 Light years, sorry.
40:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa, whoa, sorry.
40:04 Speaker 01 Light years.
40:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 13.8 billion years old.
40:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, years old, and therefore we can...
40:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The horizon that we have access to...
40:10 Speaker 01 The microwave background or whatever.
40:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When that light was sent to us?
40:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, right.
40:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was 13.8 billion years ago.
40:16 Speaker 01 Right.
40:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, yes, the...
40:18 Speaker 01 Alright, so it's a bubble around us with a radius of 13 billion light years, right? What's outside the bubble?
40:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We know.
40:28 Speaker 01 Mathematically?
40:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, no, I got this.
40:30 Speaker 01 Okay, alright.
40:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, imagine the universe is infinite, just for the moment. It turns out that assumption is not terribly important. But just imagine it's really, really big. And here we are, in some spot. And I see you, I see you not as you are now, but as you once were, five billionths of a second ago. When the light left me. When the light left you. Yeah. And you look marvelous over that time. As you look farther out, you will see light that began from the object farther back in time. Yeah. From the moon, 1.3 seconds. From the sun, 500 seconds. Yeah. If you plucked the sun from the middle of the solar system now, we would not know about it, we would continue to orbit, we would continue to feel the rays. For like eight minutes.
41:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For about eight minutes and 20 seconds. Yeah. And then we would fly off at a tangent and plunge into an icy depth, never to be noticed again. Yeah. Okay. So, we continue this to the nearest star to the sun, that's four years. Yeah. Across the galaxy, 100,000 years. The nearest large galaxy, 2 million years. You keep doing this. Since we know the universe had a beginning, that we call the Big Bang, there will be a point where there will be an object who sent us its light, right when the Big Bang was happening. Yeah, right after, yeah. Okay? So, that creates a horizon in space. I look this way, I can't see farther away than 13.8 billion years. Yeah. Because
42:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? that's the beginning of the universe. Every direction I look. So my horizon, like the horizon of a ship at sea, that's a two-dimensional horizon, that's just a circle. The same distance in every direction. When in space, your horizon is a three-dimensional circle, which we call a sphere. So now...
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Suppose there's an object fifteen billion light years from us. The universe isn't old enough for its light to have reached us yet.
42:34 Charles Liu? Yeah, yeah.
42:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's still universe beyond this horizon.
42:38 Charles Liu? Yeah.
42:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the way that there is ocean beyond your horizon when you are sailing at sea. And the day you want to worry is the day the evidence of the big bang begins to just disappear. And no longer is this horizon expanding at one light year per year. No longer does that wash over any more matter that's out there. That would be a physical edge of the universe.
43:04 Charles Liu? And what's beyond that?
43:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Didn't I thought I satisfied him?
43:10 Charles Liu? No, no, no. You're just defining the terms. I'm talking about what's outside that.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so the real question is what's outside of the universe? And I'm delighted to be able to answer for you. We have no idea.
43:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Top people working on it.
43:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, we ever gonna get there, Charles?
43:30 Charles Liu? Sure. We already know what's beyond the cosmic horizon for us. It's more universe.
43:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I just said that.
43:36 Charles Liu? Yeah.
43:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. But...
43:37 Charles Liu? But you have no idea what's over there. Well, it's basically the cosmological principle which says that everywhere is basically the same.
43:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So... No, I get that, but that you'd have to assume it's infinite.
43:49 Charles Liu? Not necessarily. Right. If I go ten billion light years in this direction and ten billion light years in that direction, both those points are within my cosmic horizon, but each point is not within the other's cosmic horizon.
44:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
44:01 Charles Liu? And as a result, since we look in every direction and the universe appears on large scales to be homogeneous and isotropic, that means that the rest of the universe is that way.
44:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Expeditions.
44:10 Charles Liu? That's what we have to do.
44:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then bring back the info.
44:13 Charles Liu? Precisely.
44:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Coming up, more on the intersection of exploration and imagination with director James Cameron. StarTalk returns.
44:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To start off, featuring my interview with one of the world's most successful and innovative filmmakers, James Cameron, and his passion is underwater exploration. But I wonder if he had aspirations to actually explore the frontier above us as well. Let's check it out.
44:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do we need to send storytellers into space? Or do we just need you to tell stories here that you've invented out of your head?
44:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, look, those are two totally different kinds of stories. One being, I always think of Avatar as a fantasy. It's an allegory for the way where you, it's set in space, but it's really meant to be about our planet and our relationship to nature and so on. But do we send a storyteller to go along on a Mars mission?
45:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
45:15 Speaker 01 Let's say, you know, I mean, in the NASA worldview, no, you don't, because you need that person to be something else. But what I...
45:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because payload matters.
45:24 Speaker 01 In my worldview, you have to select your astronauts not only for their ability to perform the mission, but for their ability to come back and tell us what it felt like. I think that's critical. I think they, I'm not saying you send, you don't like...
45:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that's a storyteller.
45:39 Speaker 01 That's a storyteller, exactly. I mean, they're an astronaut first, but they're a storyteller second, because they have to tell us what it felt like. And Buzz Aldrin was great at it, and Neil Armstrong, who I revere as a god, you know, but he was a terrible storyteller. In fact, he wouldn't even talk to the press.
45:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it was just basically private citizen.
45:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, he didn't feel that that was part of the job. And I feel it is. And look, I mean, we all, Neil's a national hero. And I don't want to get thrown under the bus for dissing Neil, but he didn't, he didn't do that part of the job. And I think that it's critical to, that when we send our, if we're going to send humans, which is kind of a dumb thing to do. Robots are going to do it better, cheaper, go farther, be more resistant to radiation, all that sort of thing. But they can't tell you what it feels like. And they can't tell you what they were thinking. They can't tell you what the spiritual journey was. And, you know, when the first time somebody, some small group of people is standing on the surface of Mars, they better goddamn well come back and tell us what it felt like.
46:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Charles, you got any parting thoughts here?
46:48 Charles Liu? Albert Einstein once wrote that the origin of all great art and science is the same thing. It's the sense of wonder and mystery. Whether or not James Cameron is a practicing scientist, he's drawing from that origin and he's helping us all see that.
47:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, first, I agree. And maybe, were we to do this all again, we wouldn't say, "Who are we gonna send into space? Let's send military pilots that all sound the same." Maybe we would send a cross-section of people who create civilization. And every civilization we reflect upon, what is it that rises up above everything else? It's the architecture, it's the science, it's the art, it's the writing, it's all the things that we value. The expressions of creativity in the human species. So, to say, "We have all that creativity here on Earth's surface,
47:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? but we're only sending this one dimension of kind of people into space", I think that underserves our capacity to be curious and our capacity to explore. So, perhaps, in a next generation of exploration of space, you don't say, "Oh, you have to be useful and then be a storyteller in addition." Maybe the fact that you're a storyteller is the most useful thing about you on that mission. And the fact that you are an artist is the most useful thing about you on that mission. Because now you can take the full depth and range of human emotion
48:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? and apply it to places yet to be experienced by human emotion. And these are the people who are uniquely placed to carry us, not only intellectually, but emotionally, into a future we so desperately seek. You've been watching StarTalk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice! Charles Liu!
49:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
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