Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Things You Thought You Knew – Magnetic Cores & Flipping Poles About this episode Is your compass actually wrong? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore magnetic fields, why clocks go clockwise, and how phone numbers got their area codes.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Chuck Nice? For the rest of this day, I'm just going to be playing out The Gang Rats of New York. Every Rat Mafia movie, you know, Rat Corleone. You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding.
0:18 Chuck Nice? And you ask me for this cheese.
0:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, a Things You Thought You Knew edition, which abbreviated is T Y T.
0:49 Chuck Nice? T Y K.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? T Y T Y K, Things You Thought You Knew.
0:53 Chuck Nice? There you go. Things You Thought You Knew.
0:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Chuck, good to have you here. There's just stuff you might have known about, but maybe didn't know everything you could have known. And it's something that I know, something that maybe you didn't know, and I'm just putting it out there. That's all.
1:06 Chuck Nice? There you go.
1:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's some of our most popular segments have come from Things You Thought You Knew.
1:12 Chuck Nice? Because most people don't know anything.
1:16 Chuck Nice? That's fine.
1:19 Chuck Nice? Chuck. Don't know, you don't know nothing.
1:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, the thing is, you don't know what you don't know. That's the real thing.
1:25 Chuck Nice? Yeah, there you go.
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the, that's the struggle, so, all right, here we go. I was thinking the other day about compasses.
1:33 Chuck Nice? Oh, it came with its own little like, you know, little sharp stabby thing on the end of it. It was a great way, you poke somebody in the butt with it, it's awesome.
1:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
1:44 Chuck Nice? Yeah, man, it's awesome.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you were carrying Instruments of Math Destruction?
1:54 Chuck Nice? Yes.
1:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, that's not that compass I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind that where you find your way. Okay?
2:04 Chuck Nice? Okay.
2:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, that's all I'm talking, sorry.
2:06 Chuck Nice? That's why I did not become an astronaut.
2:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you flunked geometry.
2:13 Chuck Nice? That's right, he is a hazard.
2:17 Chuck Nice? To the math department. He's a math hazard.
2:23 Chuck Nice? Okay, go ahead.
2:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so, um, you may know that Einstein, as a child, was fascinated that this compass and this little needle would always find its way north. There was some magic force with no strings attached that moved the compass. Okay, the compass needle. And he was intrigued by this.
2:49 Chuck Nice? Yes, was that during his time at Hogwarts?
2:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, actually. So we've known for a while that Earth has a magnetic field. Okay?
3:01 Chuck Nice? Right.
3:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there was lodestone, which is a naturally occurring variant of iron that is basically a magnet. And the people just experimenting with it, playing with it, would notice that it aligns without anybody touching it. Okay? We would ultimately perfect this into a compass. And the compass points north. So there's a little needle with an N on it. And that little needle points north every time. So, a couple of facts, just to consider. Okay? In magnetism, opposites attract.
3:38 Chuck Nice? And in love.
3:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Well, opposites attract, and the north pole of the needle of my compass points north. That means Earth's south magnetic pole is north.
3:59 Chuck Nice? Hang on for a second here.
4:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
4:02 Chuck Nice? Because that one might have hurt a little bit.
4:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It hurts the brain.
4:12 Chuck Nice? That hurt just a little bit. So you're saying the needle itself.
4:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is magnetized north and it points north. Which means.
4:22 Chuck Nice? Right.
4:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's finding the south pole of Earth.
4:26 Chuck Nice? It points north.
4:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you take it up to any magnet, there's a north and a south pole. Bring the compass near it. That north pole is gonna point to the, of the ma, of the needle is gonna point to the south pole of the magnet.
4:38 Chuck Nice? It's gonna point to the south.
4:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, because opposites attract.
4:41 Chuck Nice? Right, absolutely. Okay, I got you. That's gonna point to, cuz that's what attracts it.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so therefore, Earth's.
4:48 Chuck Nice? Okay.
4:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? South magnetic pole is in the north.
4:51 Chuck Nice? I got you. And that still hurts.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Well, let's keep going. All right. Uh, the south magnetic pole, which is in the north.
5:06 Chuck Nice? Which is in the north.
5:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Does not align with Earth's geographic pole where Santa Claus is. It does not align. They're not in the same place. Okay? All right.
5:20 Chuck Nice? Okay.
5:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I was growing up. The north magnetic pole, which contains the south pole, right? So let's just still call it the north cuz it's easier. That pole.
5:34 Chuck Nice? Right.
5:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Was in northern Canada. So if you were south of that pole, your compass would basically point north. But if you were north of that pole, between our magnetic pole and the geographic pole, your compass would point due south. Geographically south. And if you were anywhere to the side, it would bend it inward. So good Boy Scout books would give the correction for where actual, cuz you don't at the end give a shit where the magnetic pole is. You care where Santa Claus is. The geography is what you care about, not the magnetism. There's nothing for you at the north magnetic pole. Okay? So they would give.
6:20 Chuck Nice? Plus, we don't, we don't want Santa to be Ca, a Canadian. That's a disaster, you know? So you want a truck, eh? Is that what you want, a truck, eh?
6:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sorry. So the only Canadian joke I know is when they're learning how to spell Canada and they said, "Well, how are you gonna spell it?" And well, we just, we think, "C and D." That spells it. Uh, it's C A and N H D A.
6:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how the As got into the. N A, D A.
6:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how the As got into the spelling. I've never heard that one before. That's how they, that's how they end up spelling it. Not bad, not bad, not bad. Alright, so, uh, they would give corrections. So if you knew what latitude you were on Earth, no, what longitude you were, and your latitude, you know how to correct the angle for it. Alright. So, here's my point. The North Magnetic Pole is on a mission. It is moving. In fact, it moves a little less than a mile per week. Wow, that's a lot. Yes, yes. Thirty to fifty miles per year due north.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Since my childhood. Okay? Wow. So I'm an old fart. So over the last sixty years, there it is. It started like in the, in middle Canada somewhere, and it started going north. It, it is passing the North Pole en route to Siberia. Holy crap. Yes. Your compass has never been more accurate before. Because it's by, it's coming along the left side of the North Pole, uh, so it's close to the North Pole, north, geographic North Pole, than it's, than it's ever been in like recorded history. Okay? Wow. And so it's gonna, it's gonna go all, all its way over to Siberia.
8:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is because Earth's core, which has iron in it, that's molten, that conducts electricity as it convects, is something called a dynamo, where if you have a magnetic material that can move, the movement of that electrically conducting material, such as iron,
8:49 Chuck Nice? Right.
8:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? will induce a magnetic field that'll take over the whole planet. That'll be manifest across the planet.
8:57 Chuck Nice? Nice.
8:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, but that is, if it, the fact that things are moving means it's not perfectly coupled to the rest of the planet. So the core can rotate at a slightly different rate than the whole planet does. And it could sort of process back and, it can do things. And right now, what it's doing is, is it's twerking its north pole, which is really the south pole, out of Canada, by the north pole, and it's en route to Siber, making a beeline for Siberia.
9:27 Chuck Nice? Now, did you say it's twerking?
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I didn't.
9:31 Chuck Nice? Was that what I heard? So strange. I mean, I, I don't, I don't blame anybody for trying to make a living, even in a magnetic field. I'm just saying.
9:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's not, the words should be more familiar than it is, but it's torque. Yeah, auto mechanics know the word torque, but no one else, and physicists, but nobody else does. A twerking is, you, you grab onto something and set it to rotate or not. Uh, so it's, twerking is a force that instead of putting something into straight motion, puts it into rotational motion. That's a torque.
10:07 Chuck Nice? Okay.
10:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a cool word. T O R Q U E. Yeah.
10:10 Chuck Nice? Okay.
10:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So, this is what's going on with the magnetic field. I just wanted to update you on that.
10:16 Chuck Nice? That's pretty cool, actually.
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and there's no requirement that the magnetic field exactly align with the geography.
10:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact.
10:25 Chuck Nice? Well, it it makes sense that it wouldn't because, like you said, it's, you know, the the core is spinning inside of, you know, this kind of liquid.
10:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, exactly, exactly.
10:37 Chuck Nice? It's all it's all fluid.
10:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's fluid.
10:40 Chuck Nice? It's all fluid.
10:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it is some coupling, but it's not tight coupling, so.
10:44 Chuck Nice? Right.
10:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's so it's wandering, it's wandering and so so by the way, planets that have solid cores don't have magnetic fields. So the moon is solid all the way through, no magnetic field. We think Mars is solid all the way through, it's got hardly any, barely any magnetic field. So but Earth, we know has an active core. And by the way, there are stars in the universe, neutron stars, that have magnetic fields
11:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? that if the magnetic field is steeply angled to the rotation axis, that means when the thing rotates, it swings past your field of view, the north pole or whatever its poles goes
11:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? like that. And in so doing, it can accelerate particles and give off radio waves. But these radio waves will pulse past your field of view. These dead stars. So we call these stars pulsars.
11:50 Chuck Nice? Pulsars.
11:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
11:52 Chuck Nice? What? Get out of here, that's amazing.
11:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A pulsar is a magnetic neutron star with a magnetic field axis is tipped so that as it rotates, it swings it past your field of view. So nothing is actually pulsing.
12:08 Chuck Nice? Right.
12:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's just, it's like a lighthouse effect.
12:11 Chuck Nice? Right, yeah, that's so cool, what a perfect way to light house.
12:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:15 Chuck Nice? Now, when I was a kid, a pulsar was a watch, that's all we knew.
12:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they got their word from us, just so you know. We got it first. We got there first, okay? So, and we got there first with a whole lot of vocabulary, like antimatter, that's us first, okay? Oh, come on, that was Star Trek. You know you stole that from Star Trek. You know you stole that from Star Trek. And, and half the stuff that, that they didn't steal, they made up and doesn't exist. Like dilithium crystals, right? I guess, exactly. There's lithium, but there's no dilithium. There's no dilithium. Definitely no dilithium crystals. There's flux, and there's a capacitor, but there's no flux capacitor.
12:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's your kid's body!
13:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Anyhow, I, so, and this magnetic field, oh, by the way, there are times where the, where our magnetic field has flipped. Okay? And the people read about this and they worry that when they say, oh, the axis is gonna flip, they think it's like a physical axis. And they're worried that that'll be the end of the world. But no, the magnetic axis, what'll happen is the dynamo slows down, dies. Dies, it, it fades, then the magnetic field disappears, and then it reappears, but flipped from what it was before. So, in that future, the actual magnetic north pole will be in the north, and compasses will then all point south.
13:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When that happens. Oh, by the way, you know something? That happens to the sun every 11 years. That's cool. Cause the sun rotates once, once a month, okay? That's pretty fast for something a million times larger than the earth. And so, it has a magnetic field, that magnetic field, um, slowly dissipates, goes away, comes back, and resets itself, pointing the other direction. And all sunspots come in pairs, and the sunspot pair is a positive and negative of a magnetic field. So magnetism is everywhere. Oh! It's very cool. That's, that is more than cool. I didn't, I never knew that. And when the sun's magnetic field is getting weaker and weaker, and before it flips, all the sunspots go away.
14:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's pretty wild. So this magnetic thing, it's not just a, I mean, it's an active force operating on this world and others.
14:47 Chuck Nice? Excellent.
14:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just thought I'd tell you.
14:49 Chuck Nice? I love it.
14:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
14:51 Chuck Nice? This was a good one.
14:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
14:54 Chuck Nice? This was a good one.
14:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. By the way, if you happen to still have one of those bar magnets, take a string with a thin thread, tie it exactly in the middle and just dangle it there and it will align it. You don't, it doesn't have to be inside of a compass vessel. It'll just, it'll find
15:13 Chuck Nice? Find its way.
15:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Magnetic north. Right now it's pretty close to Santa. Yeah.
15:17 Chuck Nice? Nice.
15:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
15:18 Chuck Nice? There you go.
15:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And one last thing before we call it quits. At Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
15:26 Chuck Nice? Yes.
15:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the subway.
15:28 Chuck Nice? Yep.
15:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the floor.
15:31 Chuck Nice? Okay.
15:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is a compass rose.
15:34 Chuck Nice? Oh yeah, that's right.
15:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there's no compass.
15:37 Chuck Nice? No, there's nothing, there's no needle on it, but there is the actual.
15:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's pointing the north that's real on the geography of the world.
15:45 Chuck Nice? That's right.
15:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, and that's in the subway. So it's just, it's getting you ready.
15:49 Chuck Nice? It's inlaid, inlaid into the floor.
15:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Inlaid into the floor. You got it.
15:52 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
15:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Last I, last I checked, it was there. There's been a lot of subway construction.
15:55 Chuck Nice? And, and plus you never know what the rats are gonna do. Sometimes you decide to, they're just like, we're gonna redecorate. We're sorry. We're tired of looking at this.
16:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this paint was tasty. Let me lick it off. No, no. Know what it is? I got it. I got it. Cause the compass rose has all the directions, right? So the rats from the east show up. And they sit, they sit at the east point. And then the rats from the south of town, they come in and, and that's the, you know, that's where all the dons are having their.
16:31 Chuck Nice? The gang rats of New York.
16:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That the rats from Brooklyn, alright, who called the meeting?
16:44 Chuck Nice? I'm sorry, man. I am no good now. I'm, for the rest of this day, I'm just going to be playing out, you know, uh, The Gang Rats of New York. Every Rat Mafia movie, you know, just, you know, like, uh, Rat Corleone.
17:03 Chuck Nice? You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding.
17:11 Chuck Nice? And you ask me for this cheese.
17:18 Chuck Nice? You come and take my pizza.
17:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, everything you ever wanted to know about compasses, there it is.
17:29 Chuck Nice? Yes.
17:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, dude, we gotta take a break, but when we come back, more TYTYK.
17:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On StarTalk. We'll be right back.
17:49 Speaker 02 I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
18:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. Things You Thought You Knew Edition of StarTalk. So, do you know why clocks reckon time clockwise?
18:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That sounds like a no.
18:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah, that's a big no. Cause see, what I was about to do was try to think of something quickly, but then immediately I went left to right. But that is clocks came about before left to right. So, you know, in terms of we read left to right, but we're not the only people that read left. So, you know, I mean, we're, there are people who read up and down. Some people read right to left. So, you know, that doesn't make-
18:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And just to be clear, all the hands of a clock also go from right to left when they are between the three and the nine.
19:01 Chuck Nice? Right. That's right.
19:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to be clear.
19:06 Chuck Nice? There you go. Alright, so that's not, that's, that's not it. So-
19:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it ain't that.
19:12 Chuck Nice? Okay, so clockwise, that's just the way they did it. And then all of a sudden, we just started calling it clockwise.
19:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
19:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, Chuck. Alright, so-
19:31 Chuck Nice? Okay.
19:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The, the reason is simple and complicated at the same time.
19:36 Chuck Nice? Okay.
19:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the equator, the sun rises due east and sets due west every day of the year. And it is the only place on earth where that happens. Alright, and so the, and the sun goes high overhead, giving literal meaning to high noon. And then it goes over before it sets.
20:02 Chuck Nice? Dips down on the horizon.
20:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As you hike north, the arc the sun takes in the sky goes farther and farther south. It's no longer goes directly overhead. It's just that the arc going from east to west just sits lower and lower in the sky.
20:24 Chuck Nice? Okay.
20:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Until you hit the Arctic Circle, where the sun is like, is practically horizontal to the horizon as it goes all the way around.
20:35 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
20:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But we're, we're here in New York City, we're middle latitude. So the sun's path through the sky is sort of in the me, in between somewhere. Okay.
20:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That means uh it's basically almost always south of you.
20:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just think about that. If on the equator, it's to your left and above your head and to the right. As you walk north, the sun's arc dips behind you, and behind you is south. Okay. Okay? It's south. So here's the point. In the northern hemisphere, if you were ever facing the sun, you will never be facing north. It is never north. Oh ho. Ever. This and and where does the moss grow on the tree? On the north side of the tree. Right? The sun never hits that side of these objects in the northern hemisphere. Wow. Okay?
21:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the southern hemisphere, it's the opposite. And they would grow moss on their southern side. Okay? Because the sun would always then be north of where they are. And it's fun when I visit the southern hemisphere. I'm always just rethinking all of this. It's just a fun thing to reconstruct the geometry of Earth in space relative to the sun. Okay. All right. So civilization as we know it began in the northern hemisphere. Okay? All right. Uh, what was the one of the first timekeeping devices people used? Uh, sundial. Sundial.
22:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So a sundial has all the hours of the day on a flat surface. And there's a thing sticking up that actually has an official word. I would just call it a stick, but the official word is gnomon with a G. G N O M O N. Gnomon. Gnomon. Gnomon. Gnomon. Gnomon. So the gnomon.
22:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When illuminated by the sun casts a shadow on these numbers and you calibrate this depending on what latitude you're in on Earth's surface. You need a different sundial if you're at a different latitude. Each sundial only works for one latitude. Okay?
23:16 Chuck Nice? Okay.
23:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So picture this. Okay, I got my sundial. And I got my gnomon and the sun rises in the east. Okay, and as the sun rises up, the gnomon casts a shadow on these hours that are carved into the brass plate.
23:41 Chuck Nice? Right.
23:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we can ask, what direction does the gnomon's shadow move?
23:48 Chuck Nice? Right, yes.
23:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the sundial. Gnomon's shadow moves clockwise.
23:56 Chuck Nice? There you go.
23:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, all the way until the sun is in the west and it casts a shadow far over on the right-hand side of the dial. If you're facing south.
24:06 Chuck Nice? And then nighttime comes and gnomon knows what time it is.
24:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'd be facing north in my example. That's right. So sundials are completely useless at night.
24:19 Chuck Nice? Like Spider-Man in the middle of a meadow.
24:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now you should.
24:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where did you come up with that? You could outrun Spider-Man.
24:28 Chuck Nice? Exactly. Stop, F you Spidey.
24:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So I never thought how to outrun Spider-Man. That would work. So if you're gonna now make some kind of physical clock that is inspired by this amazing timekeeping device called a sundial, then it makes sense that you would track time.
25:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the same direction the sundial tracked time. Exactly. So our clocks are emulated sundials. Mechanical sundials. That is so cool. Correct. Alright. But that also means, so this is evidence that civilization that invented sundials did it in the northern hemisphere. Because if it was the southern hemisphere. All clocks would be running backwards. Clocks would be going counterclockwise. Correct. And then we invented digital timekeeping where there's just numbers. And I remember when that came out, because that's how old I am, I said, wow.
25:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't have to think about what time it is by looking at hands on a clock. Yeah. The digits just tell you. And what I found is people started forgetting how to think of time geometrically.
26:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so if it's 12:30, and it said it, you would say it's 12:30. Or 12:33, alright, whatever. In the old days, you'd say, oh, it's half past 12. Right. Quarter till. A quarter to. Ten of. No, no, quarters and halves are geometry of a circular dial. Right, yeah. Okay, and so that's why we think 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour. Right. Yes, it's also that in digital time, but you're not thinking that way. Right. The way you think of a quarter of a pizza or a quarter of a circle. So we've lost the power to think about time geometrically. I mean, some people have retained it, but by and large not. But it also gives a false sense of precision.
26:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I say, what time is it? You say, oh, it's 12:33. Did I really care that it was 12:33? Really? Was that what I was after? I just wanted to know. It's about 12:30, right? Well, not if you're trying to catch a train. No, okay, fine. But otherwise, okay, otherwise, it's, I'm just saying, it's a.
27:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Often when you want it, when you ask someone the time, you just want to know the approximate time.
27:12 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But when it's handed to you digitally, you end up reporting it digitally.
27:16 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's, and it becomes unnecessary precision in the moment.
27:21 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
27:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know, I have an analog wristwatch. And, and of course you see even the digital watches today, you can put it in analog mode.
27:28 Chuck Nice? Yes.
27:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where you can see the hand, which I like.
27:30 Chuck Nice? So I have a, I have a digital watch that, that you can change the face of. I mean, and I have several different watch faces on here. And, and most of them are analog. But it's funny that you just said what you said about the digital precision. I don't use them because when I look down, I want to see numbers.
27:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want to see numbers.
27:57 Chuck Nice? I want to see numbers.
27:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, it turns out today, everyone does have the exact time as each other. Right. And I tweeted a few months ago, I said, in the era of the smartphone.
28:08 Chuck Nice? Right.
28:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gone is the scene in heist movies where people gather in a circle and say what?
28:17 Chuck Nice? All right, let's synchronize our watches.
28:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Synchronize our watches.
28:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so anyone in modern times say, why would you do that?
28:26 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
28:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Aren't they already synchronized with GPS? So, so that is such an antiquated, prehistoric moment in a heist movie.
28:36 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
28:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That it's, it's almost quaint. And I say, Dan, I am that old.
28:39 Chuck Nice? Yeah, well nowadays it'd be like, all right, let's synchronize our watches. And they'd be like, what's a watch?
28:47 Chuck Nice? What are you talking, you mean our phones? The phone already has the time on it, man. Phone's got the time on it. What you talking about?
28:55 Chuck Nice? What's wrong with your phone, man? Why's your phone not have time on it?
28:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You go back into the other movie. We're gonna need you.
29:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But a little known fact to the young'uns out there that Accurate wristwatches would lose or gain a minute a day?
29:13 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, the accurate ones was a minute a week, couple of minutes a month. So you were guaranteed to not match the time of other people if you're about to commit a crime.
29:23 Chuck Nice? And that's why you would have, people would say, what time do you have?
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
29:29 Chuck Nice? What time do you have?
29:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not what time is it?
29:31 Chuck Nice? Not what time is it? Yes.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What time do you have?
29:34 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that way, that's the time, your own little world and your own little watch.
29:38 Chuck Nice? Yeah, be like, oh my God, it's 4:30, I'm late. Oh, wait a minute, I'll just go in the kitchen, it's only 4:15 in there.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I had, I had a friend in college who kept her clock 20 minutes early. And I say, why do you do that? Oh, so that way I'm never late. Don't you know that it's 20 minutes early?
29:58 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
29:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but I still, and I, I couldn't, I, I'm too
30:02 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
30:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? analytic to embrace that, I just let it go. I was not gonna have a conversation about that. It'd be something different if she had someone randomly each morning set it ahead.
30:14 Chuck Nice? Yeah, you set my clock ahead, I won't know what time, how many minutes or whatever. It could be two minutes ahead, it could be 10 minutes, it could be 20 minutes.
30:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
30:22 Chuck Nice? Right, but when you do it, you know, it's like hiding your own Easter eggs, come on.
30:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And one last thing, in the old days, when they made chronometers that they would send out to sea, which had to be able to resist the rocking of the boat and keep accurate time, otherwise you don't know where you are on Earth's surface, by the way. If you built a very careful seaworthy chronometer and you sent it out and it lost a minute a day,
30:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? you would not take it back to the shop to fix it.
30:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You had a formula correction for it.
30:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you would not mess with it. So after three days, it would be slowed by three minutes and you'd correct for that. And so that's how, how you got a clock and took it with you, the clock and the correction formula. So you would always, you would always be on, on, on time and on cue.
31:13 Chuck Nice? Oh, that's, yeah, that, that's, thank God for the phone.
31:22 Chuck Nice? Because that sounds like a nightmare.
31:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or jet planes, right?
31:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I just wonder, in a hundred years, and say, oh, those poor suckers back in 2023, they only had GPS, and they only had this, and they only had that. I think I lose sleep over wondering how primitive it is, what's going on with us, that when people a hundred years hence will look back and be glad they're not alive back in these backwards times.
31:51 Chuck Nice? Or they'll look back and realize, God, those guys were actually alive back then.
32:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They still had some semblance of civilization?
32:04 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
32:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that true, mommy, daddy? Is that?
32:08 Chuck Nice? Tell us, tell us about the before four times, Dad.
32:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Before we became pets for AI.
32:18 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
32:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But before?
32:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah, man. Who knows?
32:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Children, there was a time when humans controlled artificial intelligence.
32:27 Chuck Nice? What? You're just making stuff up, Dad.
32:33 Chuck Nice? No, it's true. We invented them.
32:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, that's all the time we got for this segment, Chuck, but we got another segment on the other side of Things You Thought You Knew. So stay with us.
33:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, we're back for the next segment of TYTYK, Things You Thought You Knew.
33:11 Chuck Nice? Yes.
33:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you know, before a certain time, if you see phone numbers in old timey TV shows, they only gave seven numbers. They didn't give an area code. And because area codes had to be sort of formulated and figured out by the phone company, that if you were going to dial on your own, that they needed a way to direct the call to the proper location instead of calling the operator. The operator, get me something sort of in New York or in Los Angeles or in, right? So now you can dial it directly. So this was a big advance in people's ability to communicate without the help. of a telephone operator. Gotcha. So now, let's go back to the dial phone. The dial phone. The dial phone. Okay.
33:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, okay. All right. So in the dial phone, you stuck your finger in the hole, and you rotated the dial all the way to this little finger stopper. Right. You pulled your finger out, and then it clicked all its way back.
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? By the way, each one of those clicks was itself an acoustic instruction to the phone to dial that number. Ooh. If you, which I owned at the time, something that just simply makes clicking sounds. You can just pick up the phone and attach it to the microphone, you know, the bottom part of the phone. And then you can click your phone number into the phone system without actually dialing. Okay. But that was like short-lived, because then we had touchtone in this. But let's go back to the dial phone. So, the number one was all the way at the top. Right. And had the shortest distance to go to get to the finger stopper. Mm-hmm. So you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,
34:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? and then, what came after nine? Zero. Zero, or O. O for operator. For operator, okay? Right. So that one, you bring it around, that was like ten clicks. Okay? All the way around. All right. So the phone company, by the way, I worked for AT&T Bell Labs when I was in college. I had a summer internship there at Murray Hill, which was the research headquarters in New Jersey. I sold weed out of a phone booth once.
35:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're so much alike.
35:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We should be friends.
35:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So anyhow, so that sensitized me to the history of phones and the long lines and why long distance calls were so expensive. Because they used that, the profits from that, to pay for everything else. Which is why making a normal phone call was not very expensive. So, in the day, you'd make a long distance phone call. You told the people you were calling long distance. "I'm making, you know, I'm calling long distance." They would drop everything to accommodate you. Because everyone knew that that was costing some real cash. This guy's got some money. No, that's not what they were thinking. They're saying, "We gotta, we gotta help out so that my bell doesn't end up with all our money." All right? That was the collective understanding here. All right.
36:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, time to make area codes. It's time for area codes. All right. Well, they already had a set of digits that were reserved for certain tasks. So 411, if you typed 411, that was reserved for information. You dial 411 and you'd get a human telephone book, basically. What is the number of Johnny Jones, whatever, or Mary Smith, in this, at this address? They'd look it up, and sometimes they'll dial it for you, or they would just tell it to you and you'd write it down. All right. Wow. Okay? Yeah, this is like forever ago. All right.
37:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, um, so that's one way you would use the operator. Okay. Um, so now, another way is 611. So 611 would be if there was something wrong with your phone and you needed repairs. Okay? So they say, "We'll be by tomorrow to look at the phone line," whatever. So they had a few of these that all had a one in the middle. Okay. However, those were established after...
37:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Area codes were established, okay? Now, they knew we're not gonna have a phone number beginning with a one, nor a phone number beginning with a zero. Those are off limits, okay? So start there. Now, what city has the highest population in the United States?
38:04 Chuck Nice? New York City.
38:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? New York City, okay.
38:05 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
38:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the highest population city, New York, they wanted that to be where the area code can be dialed the quickest, because the most number of people would be dialing it.
38:23 Chuck Nice? That's right.
38:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you don't want to burden so many people with waiting around for the dial to finish dialing.
38:33 Chuck Nice? That's right, cuz you're going with the finger thing.
38:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With the finger thing.
38:36 Chuck Nice? So you can't have 211, so you gotta have 212.
38:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 212 is the shortest time dialed area code on a dial.
38:48 Chuck Nice? Yo, that's cool.
38:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so now, what city has the next highest population?
38:53 Chuck Nice? Probably Los Angeles.
38:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Los Angeles. What is the area code of Los Angeles?
38:59 Chuck Nice? Uh, what is Los Angeles?
39:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 215?
39:02 Chuck Nice? 3. No, 213. 213?
39:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the next low. That's why you have this, okay? Okay, what's the next most populous city?
39:13 Chuck Nice? Probably Chicago.
39:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chicago. What's the area code of Chicago?
39:17 Chuck Nice? I don't know it, but I'm sure it's 214.
39:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no. I can go lower than that.
39:22 Chuck Nice? What?
39:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 312.
39:24 Chuck Nice? Oh, 312. That's right, cuz you're staying in the little...
39:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You stay in the zone.
39:30 Chuck Nice? You're staying in the thing. You're staying in that little...
39:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're staying in the zone.
39:34 Chuck Nice? That three-finger hole zone.
39:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. But those three main cities, you get the point.
39:42 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
39:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of this. And they wanted to minimize the time you would spend dialing in a long-distance call people who are in these most populated cities. They were looking out for you. These are smart people, physicists, engineers, developing the future of communication.
40:02 Chuck Nice? And they got so smart, they were like, "Why the hell don't we just have pushbox?"
40:12 Chuck Nice? We should just have push buttons.
40:18 Chuck Nice? Somebody was like, George is right.
40:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so push button, it don't make any difference anymore.
40:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
40:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Makes no difference. And so, and then the population went up, not ju- not only did the population go up, but everybody now has three or four phone numbers associated with themselves. You have your home phone number, you have your cell phone number, you have your work phone number, if you work and you have a desk, that's at least three, and so...
40:45 Chuck Nice? Don't forget your Google phone, you gotta have that phone number, you know?
40:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, so, once the phone numbers proliferated, then the municipalities needed more than one area code, and then, then, and then with push button, it all bets are off, it just didn't matter anymore.
40:59 Chuck Nice? Yeah, it doesn't make a matter of...
40:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now you have area codes that sound like the beginning of a phone number, because they started all area codes, so, with a one in the middle, then they put a zero in the middle when you had touch tone, and that sort of sounds, smells like an area code, seven, three, seven oh seven, two oh four, two oh four, right?
41:15 Chuck Nice? Now you got everything, nine seven three, nine one seven, you got six four six
41:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
41:20 Chuck Nice? Is an area code, you know, four five zero, yeah, that don't make a difference.
41:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's all I want to tell you.
41:26 Chuck Nice? Ah, well, that was fun, who knew?
41:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's all. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago.
41:33 Chuck Nice? Chicago, nice, there you go.
41:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they just don't want you to wear out your finger.
41:38 Chuck Nice? That's it, that makes sense, you know?
41:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, oh, oh, so, I got one for you. Uh, so, what is the area code of Cape Canaveral?
41:53 Chuck Nice? Cape Canaveral?
41:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I need Jeopardy music here.
41:59 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I would have no idea.
42:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, are you ready?
42:04 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
42:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The area code of Cape Canaveral is three, two, one.
42:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of duh, of course. They launch rockets at Cape Canaveral.
42:18 Chuck Nice? Right.
42:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is three, two, one, and they, they worked hard to get that. That's not a chance thing. They, they worked on that.
42:23 Chuck Nice? They, they, they lobbied for that.
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They, they, they, they, they got that. And who's gonna say no? Who's gonna deny that, right?
42:28 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
42:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of course not.
42:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of course not. Um, and so there was an episode of Seinfeld when area codes were proliferating, where they created a social class around who had a two, one, two area code. Remember Seinfeld took place in New York.
42:45 Chuck Nice? Oh, yeah.
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? New York City.
42:46 Chuck Nice? That's a good deal.
42:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And someone said, oh, they're like ready to date? And they said, well, what's your phone number? And he says, oh, it's six, four, six. And what? Where do you live? I don't, I don't trust you. Who are you?
43:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it created this social rift between those who were like in and those who weren't. And to this day, there are New Yorkers with cellphone numbers, some of which are two, one, two.
43:14 Chuck Nice? Yep.
43:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so that, those are badass, long, old timers that-
43:17 Chuck Nice? Nobody wants to give up their two, one, two.
43:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that's right. They might've had cellphones back when they were shoulder mounted, you know?
43:22 Chuck Nice? Right, exactly.
43:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what I liked about the New York, uh, so they, they isolated the two, one, two area code to just Manhattan.
43:33 Chuck Nice? Right.
43:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then they introduced seven, one, eight for all of the outer boroughs. So Queens, Brooklyn, uh, and the Bronx and Staten Island. And then initially, cellphones were all nine, one, sevens, and then they added six, four, sixes. So New York City has at least four, there's a fifth one, three, four, seven, I think it is.
43:52 Chuck Nice? Three, four, seven.
43:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so we have five area codes in the-
43:55 Chuck Nice? Five area codes.
43:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And just the New York City area. And that's just because people do a lot of damn talking.
44:00 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm, there you go.
44:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is what that is. So I, so-
44:04 Chuck Nice? Now you're in the know for the area code.
44:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and it's a very, it's just a slice of history. When dial phones was a thing, right? And you realize solutions to some problems are rendered obsolete by later advances in technology. But at the time, they were quite clever. And I'd like to just give a shout out to people who were trying to make life better for us all.
44:27 Chuck Nice? That's very cool.
44:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
44:29 Chuck Nice? That's very cool.
44:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Frozen in time and in space.
44:32 Chuck Nice? Well, my cell service, I might as well have a rotary phone, so. This meant a lot to me.
44:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Chuck, I enjoy these. We should do more of them, I think.
44:42 Chuck Nice? Yes, the TY PYT's.
44:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, PYT's? That's a Michael Jackson song.
44:49 Chuck Nice? That's Michael Jackson, I'm sorry.
44:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just look it up, PYT. It's totally Michael Jackson. All right, guys. This has been StarTalk, Things You Thought You Knew Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.
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