Cosmic Queries – Galactic Grab Bag – Blue Steel

Terraforming mars? How do black holes die? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer questions about the moon, periodic table of elements, light photons, black holes and more! Originally Aired August 3, 2021

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. I got Chuck Nice, my co-host. Chuck.

• 0:20Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, what's happening?

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, this is Grab Bag.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  It is indeed. We used to call it the Cosmic Potpourri. We used to call it Cosmic Gumbo, which was my favorite. Galactic, not cosmic.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Galactic Gumbo.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Galactic Gumbo.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got to get that alliteration.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  And, but now we have a Grab Bag, which it makes me wonder, where does that come from? Grab Bag. You know what it means, just like an assortment of pretty much miscellaneous items.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes, the presence in the holiday season where you reach in and grab and you don't know what you're getting.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Is that really what it is?

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Santa Claus, why wouldn't it be?

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we call that Christmas.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been in my office, I have a Grab Bag in there that's a black hole.

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It actually says black hole on the side of it.

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, it is.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It says black hole. That's how you know it's a black hole, it says it.

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  Very nice, very cool.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That reminds me of, completely off topic, but the discoverer of Pluto. His name is Clyde Tombaugh. My boy lived into his, deep into his 90s. And, because he wasn't letting go of Pluto any sooner than he had to.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  He was hoping that, he was hoping that it would happen.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was, he was trying to keep it.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, on his deathbed, they told him, "You did it. It's a planet." And he was just like, "Oh, thank God."

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  And, "Why'd you lie to him? He's died, he's dead." "He's dead. What do you mean, why did I lie to him?" That's like somebody's dying and you say to them, "You know I never loved you."

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Long time to report that information.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. It's like, "He's dead, like, let him, you know, I loved you so dearly my entire life, I so miss you." And then they die and you're like, "Oh, thank God."

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he, so he was asked, "How did you, how, what did it take to discover Pluto?" You know, "How hard was that?" And he said, "Well, when I got the photos of the nice guy, it was really easy." Because there was an arrow pointing to it.

• 2:20Chuck Nice?

  That's hilarious.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every picture you've ever seen of Pluto.

• 2:24Chuck Nice?

  There is an out of that. That's funny.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there you go. Alright, so let's do this. Grab that.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything under the sun and above it as well.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's go for it.

• 2:35Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  This is David Brian Smith. And he says,

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  yes, this is really my name, not just made up. So, actually, you can pronounce it, Chuck. Oh, you jerk. I should read these in advance.

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  Alright, David, you got me. He says, can you explain the moon's wobble? And how it affects the Earth? Interesting. Okay.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, I don't think he's referring to the moon's wobble, because that's not interesting. What's interesting, there's something called a libration. Not libation, not libation.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Is that, is it anything like a liger?

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 3:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay. A libration.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A libration, right. You mean liger, like the cross between a lion and a tiger?

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you ever see those things? They're huge.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's not, this has nothing to do with that, Chuck.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I just heard lie.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A libration. So, what's happening is, the moon's orbit, again, I'm assuming that's what he's referring to, because the moon doesn't have a wobble that anyone cares about. So, that's why. But there's an interesting libration. So, what's happening is, because the moon's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle. Okay, it's an ellipse. It can get as close as 225,000 or so miles, and as far as almost 250,000 miles. So, there's a 25,000 mile range between when it's closest and when it's farthest. Okay. The moon is also tidally locked to Earth.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's always showing the same face. Okay? That's a natural phenomenon in the universe. And systems of orbiting objects naturally descend into that state relative to each other. So that's fine. No, nothing weird going on there. Here's the problem. Okay? If it were a perfectly circular orbit, you would only ever see exactly the same side. And it's locked. You'd only ever see exactly the same side towards you. Okay? Here's the problem. When your orbit is not circular, when it's elliptical, you are moving faster in your orbit when you're closer and slower in your orbit when you're farther away.

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the point is, if you are tidally locked and in a perfectly circular orbit, for every little bit around the Earth you revolve, you will rotate a little bit, always keeping that same face pointed. So everything works out. But if you're going a little faster than average or a little slower than average, that little bit that you rotate doesn't line up as it would if you were in a perfectly circular orbit. It lines up on average. But if you're, if you're sort of fast in your orbit, then that little bit that you turn doesn't quite compensate for how far you've gone around the Earth. And if you're slow in your orbit, you haven't quite turned enough.

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when you look at time-lapse photos of the moon, it is, it is striking to behold. The moon is like, it's, it's, it's like turning a little to the left to you, a little to the right. So we can see more than 50% of its surface over the duration of a moonth.

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Month.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. A, a, a moonth, I like that better. It's the month on a moon.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the original word, of course.

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  A moonth.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well, go ahead.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, and yes, to the extent that there's a wobble and anybody cares about it, um, that's true anytime you have a rotating object where it's not perfectly spherical. If there's a slight bit of mass off to the side, then there are extra torques on it and that'll sort of bob as it turns. We wobble on our axis, uh, because of forces that are tugging on us, like, such as the moon. As we rotate and as we go around the sun, so you do get this sort of wobbling and bobbing. But for me, the most, the fun thing is the libration. If you could just Google libration of the moon and, and look at the time lapse video. It's, it's, it's, it's striking because you don't get to see it that way.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause we see the moon once a night, you know, or once a day. And when you time lapse it for a month.

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  So it's, it's kind of like the face that it shows us just turns a little bit.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. I should, thank you. That's way easier. That's what I should have done. It got a little to the left.

• 7:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little to the right.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  So it's like, when it, when it's 25,000 miles out, it's like Latigre. And when it's like right close to us, it's like blue steel. So.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I even know what blue steel means. That's embarrassing. Okay?

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  Not really. That's, that's not really embarrassing. You were in the movie.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was in Zoolander 2. That's right.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I did do a blue steel imitation. I did. In fact, it's the very final thing you see in the movie. I, I am the last thing you see in the movie Zoolander 2.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  And anyone listening, please go look at that.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's all. Please don't look at it.

• 7:59Chuck Nice?

  Please go look at that because I believe you're wearing a fur coat too, which is.

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know it's, it's a, it's a, it's a shoulder wrap for, it's, it's not, I don't think it's a full coat. I think it was just something around my upper shoulders and neck.

• 8:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like a, like a, they called that a stole back in the.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stole. It was a stole. Right, right, right. And then I sort of turned my head and then I make, give the expression. Just to be clear, Chuck.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I've been in four movie franchises. Okay? And for three of them, there were no more movies made after I was in it.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty damn hilarious.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I, I was in, uh, I was in Ice Age 5.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the critics said, it's about time the series went extinct like all the creatures in it.

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh damn. Oh my.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought it was a pretty good movie though, because, because it had a lot of science in it. So I was, I was science biased. That's why I was one of the characters. So that was the last of the Ice Ages. I was in Sharknado 6.

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know there were five others, did you?

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, I did not, number one.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  And I'm so glad to hear that there's not a Sharknado 7. I'm just saying.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So unlike The Fast and the Furious.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  Could you please be in that? Please be in that.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but I don't want to kill the franchise.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  I do, and that's why.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why you want, oh, you want me to be with so that the franchise dies.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I just want the last scene to be you like cruising like, yo, we're not.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Keep looking up, but not while you're driving.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not while you're driving. All right, give me another question.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Zach Metcalf wants to know this. Good morning, gentlemen. Have anatomically modern human beings always lived under the same night sky? Have the stars had time to migrate and rearrange themselves in approximately 150,000 years that we've been looking up?

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that question. So first of all, the dude knows that however fixed the stars look like they are on the night sky, in fact, they are moving through space.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And obviously, the farther away something is, the less from day to day, you're going to notice that it's moving.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's true on Earth as well. This is what led to the old childhood concept where you say, mommy, daddy, why is the moon following me?

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As you walk down the street, because the trees go by and the buildings go by and the moon is just there. Well, if you kept walking for a million more miles, you would leave the moon far behind. So you're just not walking far enough for something that distant to reveal the fact that you're walking past it. So the farther away something is, the less obvious its motion is to you. Okay?

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the, so we have all the stars in the night sky and they're part of the solar neighborhood. How's that for a friendly phrase that we use?

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  You're now the, you're now the Mr. Rogers of the cosmos.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the neighborhood.

• 11:18Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Hello, neighbor.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're about to explode as a supernova. Oh, let me get the hell out of the neighborhood. Okay, that would be an interesting.

• 11:28Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're all orbiting sort of the center of the galaxy together, but even with that sort of community movement, there is movement among us. Okay.

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you go back 75,000 years, we were anatomically human. 100,000 years ago, you would not recognize most of the constellations of the night sky.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. That's right.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, not most. I would say about half. The nearby, the stars that are nearby us that trace out the constellations, they'd be in a completely different place.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Amazing.

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for example, the Big Dipper, which we know of as looking like in the, in, where is it? In England, is it called the Big Sauce Pan?

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  The Big Ladle.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Someplace, the ladle. The ladle is the Little Dipper. The Little Dipper, the handle bends the other way like a ladle would. Okay, and the Big Dipper. Point is, all the stars of the Big Dipper, believe it or not, are part of a coherent star cluster. We're just really close, so you don't think of them as a tight cluster. But so they're all sort of together, and they're moving in their own sort of orbits. And the Big Dipper would get flattened out, it turns out. We've done the math on this.

• 12:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just wouldn't recognize it as a Big Dipper at all. Okay, give me some more.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Um, Terasina, no last name, like Cher, just Terasina. And Terasina says, hey, Neil, hey, Chuck, why is Mercury the element? Okay, very nice clarification there, Terasina.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she's talking to an astrophysicist. She gotta, she gotta.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  You gotta make that clarification, yes. She says, why is Mercury the element liquid? The elements before and after it in the periodic table, gold and thallium are both solid at ambient temperature. So why does one proton make such a difference?

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I love that question because I have no idea why.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'll get to that question when we return after our first break on Startalk Cosmic Queries.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Thinky Baroque Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck with back cosmicarius.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Grab bag.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Questions coming from everywhere.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Yep, that's right.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From left field, right field, behind home plate.

• 14:15Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's when you know a fan is mad.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, if it comes from behind home plate?

• 14:19Chuck Nice?

  If it comes from behind home plate.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, if they throw it at your head, then they're mad.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this last question was from Tarrasina. Well, who was this?

• 14:27Chuck Nice?

  Yep, Tarrasina, who says, "Hey Neil Chuck, why is the mer- why is mercury the element liquid? The elements before and after in the periodic table are both solid at ambient temperature, so why does one proton make such a difference?"

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I can answer that. Um, I don't have a good idea. I don't, I don't know.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I mean, I can fumble through an answer, okay? I will give you an answer, but it will be wholly unsatisfying because I don't have a deep understanding of it, but I can give you an answer and here it is. You ready?

• 15:02Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:04Chuck Nice?

  Because I said so.

• 15:07Chuck Nice?

  Because it's nature.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Chuck. Next question. Thanks for helping me out.

• 15:13Chuck Nice?

  That cleared it up for you? It's nature.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crystal clear.

• 15:18Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, go ahead.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, the, we say, "How could only one proton in the nucleus make such a difference?" Because you're comparing what was to the left of it and to the right of it on the periodic table, and the periodic table is an ascension of proton count in the nucleus of atoms. That's what that is. And you go from hydrogen at number one, one proton, up to uranium, 92 protons, and then the elements we create in the lab goes up to, I forgot where they're up to now, 120, something like that. So, so it turns out remarkably, what we learned from applying quantum physics to the periodic table is that

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vertically on the table, elements have properties, chemical properties, similar to each other. So where you find carbon, for example, you look directly, what's directly below it? It's silicon. And so we're carbon-based life, so everyone is eagerly looking for silicon-based life. If carbon can make life in all these molecules that comprise life as we know it, silicon sitting right below it makes the same families of molecules as carbon does. And so, so elements in vertical columns, we've learned how and why that's so from quantum physics, has similar chemical properties. But the prop, but the melting point is not a chemical property. It's actually intrinsic to the element itself.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so what happens when you change it, then the charge changes in the nucleus of the atom. And that changes the electron orbitals in response to it. Not orbits, but orbitals, we call them. Inspired by the orbits of planets, by the way. Because we thought maybe you have solar system with the sun in the middle and planets in orbit around it. As we start poking the atom, we say, it's got a nucleus, and it's got electrons. Maybe it's the same thing, but just little. And it's not.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whole other laws of physics apply there. And that's the realm of quantum physics. So, point is, mercury melts at about 40 degrees below zero. And so it's liquid that all degrees above that until it evaporates. And that, that's a unique property. So many elements on the periodic table have unique properties relative to everything around them that it's one of the reasons to celebrate that it exists at all. And it's a testament to the genius of chemists and physicists who go into those elements and say, this has this property, so I want to do this other thing with it. This conducts electricity. This does not conduct electricity. This is brittle.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is flexible. This is gaseous. This is liquid. And so, we've gone all into the periodic table and basically constructed civilization based on it. So, I don't have a good answer for you because I don't know what to tell you about why that's liquid and nothing around it is, left or right or up or down. But I can tell you, being liquid is not the most it's not the most different thing about an element that you can find among elements on the periodic table.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, if we lived in a world that was 50 below zero,

• 18:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you wouldn't be asking this question. Mercury would be solid like every other element. Okay? We can go to a warmer environments and you'd find some things that then become liquid and you might be asking that about those other elements. So, the fact that we are okay in these quote room temperatures has consequences for which elements on the periodic table are solid, liquid, or gas.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's me dancing around the fact that I don't actually know the answer to that question.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so for somebody who I'd hate to know if you knew the answer.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  God, we'd be here till next year if you actually knew the answer.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I'll do is I'll do some homework on it and I'll come back and see what I can tell about the relationship of one mercury atom to another and why it is that at this temperature, unlike every other metal on the periodic table, that they don't make a solid lattice. I'll find out and I'll get back to it.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  All right. Well, thanks, Terasina, for giving Dr. Tyson some homework.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's, here we go. This is.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, there's an element, and I forgot which element, forgive me. I'll dig it up the next time I return. There's an, in the UK, the ambient indoor temperature, lab temperature, is slightly lower than in the United States or in Germany or in France. And so, when the UK folks made their periodic table, there's an element that they listed as liquid. But in the United States and France and everywhere else, it was listed as, I'm sorry, listed as solid, but for everybody else it was liquid.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Wow. And just from a slight variation in the lab.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just because the ambient lab temperature in England is about, you know, five degrees cooler than the ambient lab temperature in other sort of industrialized states at the time. So the point is, if you want to think of the periodic table as some deep fundamental truth about the universe, then you should not be distracting yourself about whether it's solid, liquid, or gas at your laboratory temperature. Because the universe doesn't give a rat's ass about your laboratory temperature.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not a fundamental truth about the element, whether it's liquid in your lab.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there you go. Don't you know who I am? I'm the universe.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  You want me to think, what? What'd you say? You're cold? You need a sweater? I'm the universe. Are you kidding?

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. Yeah, so, yeah.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  You think this is cold? I'm at an absolute zero. Well, a couple degrees above it all the time.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know the methane that comes out of your stove if you use a gas stove?

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, on Earth, that's gaseous. You go to Saturn's moon Titan.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has the right combination of temperature and air pressure to liquefy methane.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  Mmm. Swimming in methane? That just sounds like a dream.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the water, it is so cold that the water has frozen so solid that it's basically the bedrock on the planet. There are boulders and it's just ice. But that, those are the rocks. And think about it, inside a volcano, what happens to rock?

• 22:03Chuck Nice?

  It melts.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It melts. So if, if we're in an environment that's as hot as a volcano, you would not think of rocks as anything solid. You say, oh, that's a liquid. Let's take a bath. And so, so these conditions that you happen to live in are not themselves fundamental to, to what's going on on the periodic table.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you go. All right, Terris, you know, we got more out of that than I ever thought for somebody who said that I don't know.

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  Only physicists and astrophysicists answer questions that they don't know for six minutes.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Here we go. This is Jordan Belikanas. Uh, he says, hey.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, wait, wait. One other thing.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are places on Mars where the temperature... And the air pressure, the atmospheric pressure are just right. That water, if you live there, water would freeze, melt, and boil all at the same time.

• 23:09Chuck Nice?

  Um, what?

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can have, you can have a bowl of water with ice cubes in it, and the water is boiling, and that's stable.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's pretty, okay, I don't, I was gonna say that's hot, but it's not, so.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  And I was gonna say it's cool, but it's, okay, that's hot and cool, and that's everything.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's everything, if to say, it's not hot, it's good, it's not tepid, right? So that it's called a triple point, and water has a triple point of atmospheric pressure and temperature where all states, three states of matter, can coexist happily. And so, yeah, that's why you can say water is liquid. No, water is only liquid when you make it a liquid, okay?

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, it's solid or gaseous.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right, Jordan Belkanis. Uh, yep, he says, hey, Dr. Tyson and Chuck, what's happening? I never have been able to understand the thought of terraforming Mars. Considering, listen, here's the real thing. It's a dead planet with no magnet field. It seems solar wind and extreme UV would strip the atmosphere and kill any life anyway. Can you please help explain how this would ever work?

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so he's, he's two steps ahead of someone who might have only just now heard of terraforming. So terraforming is you take a dead planet, and then you, you, you seed the, the atmosphere with, with aerosols, or you, you introduce microbes that will thrive on the carbon dioxide and might output oxygen, and then you step back and let it run its thing if you put in the right cocktail, and then out comes an arable, green planet that you've just terraformed. That's not an impossible dream.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's not, I mean, Earth was terraformed early on by Earth itself, right? So the question is, can you do it like fast? If you have to leave Earth, you gotta find another place.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  And they did in the one Star Trek movie.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did, in the movie, yes, yes, it was the Genesis.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  The Genesis, that's what it was called.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Genesis Project, right. They took some pod or something and sent it down and it.

• 25:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I think it was a pod. No, no, no, the pod was somebody's dead body that then came back to life.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Spock, yeah.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was Spock, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:43Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Jordan is worried that because Mars does not have a magnetic field, which would then shield it from, uh, uh, solar wind, whose energy can break apart molecules, or have ozone that would protect it from ultraviolet. All of these, without these protections, life on Earth, we don't know how you would sustain it. Okay, that's fine. Consider that if you're living underground, none of that matters.

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shield yourself from the sun, none of that matters.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  Martian Morlocks.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Martian Morlocks, that's what we got.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, first of all, you can just shield yourself from it. Second, if we have the power of geoengineering.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To turn Mars into an arable place, I don't see why we couldn't figure out some way to deflect the solar wind. Or to, or to block out UV. I'm not worried, that's like an engineering challenge. And engineers tend to solve problems when given the task. Um, and so I'm not, I'm not worried about that. Uh, it's the rest that is way more complex. We know how to block UV. We know how to block the solar wind. We don't know how to, how to, uh, send in microbes and come back 10 years later and, and have a forest. We just don't know how to do that. That's where the challenges are right now.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  Got you, got you. So we got the sunscreen covered.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 27:08Chuck Nice?

  That, that part's good.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, we good, we, we good.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, all right, well, there you go, Jordan. I mean, at least you're thinking two steps ahead of anybody else who's talking about terraforming. Good for you. All right, here we go.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, if you can, if you can, if you have good geoengineering, you might find a way to stir up the Martian core. So that it can then generate another magnetic field. I mean, what's stopping us?

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  That, right.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but Earth gets its magnetic field from our iron core.

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  From the iron core, the spinning inside of us.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, inside of that is, has this moving iron, which is conductive. And when you have a conductive, moving material, it can generate currents and currents generate magnetic fields. So Mars, that's all stopped long ago, but why not, if we can control planets, go stir it up again.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. See, Mars, that's why nobody finds you attractive.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  Because you don't have a magnetic field.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just don't, don't.

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  I just made that up, come on, man!

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, you don't have to test it on this program.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go to open mic night and see how people do.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god!

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  Damn, oh my, oh my.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boy, that was, that's a good comedic dig, though.

• 28:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh my goodness, damn.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck is wiping away his tears now.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, because you got me with that one, man. You ain't got to test it out here.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Test it out on my show!

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, I need some Visine now, Jesus. All right, here we go.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, we gotta take a quick break.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, all right.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back to segment number three of StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Grab that, be there.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Chuck, you're tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, thank you, sir, that's correct.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do indeed follow you. I don't follow many things, I follow you, just let you know.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's great. I followed you first, so.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't top that, sorry.

• 29:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what are the questions you got for us? We've got one segment left. Let's see how many we can squeeze in.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Let's see what we can do here. This is Abinav Yadav. Hello, Dr. Tyson and Sir Nice. I'm excited to be asking my very first question. Now, you have spoken about the, about moon disrupting observation time.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  Are there places in the solar system that are much better for it? Where this doesn't exist, somewhere we can just send telescopes and observe? Love the show.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that, that's, there's a lot going on in that question. So let me just unpack it briefly. So first of all, the full moon at night is crazy bright.

• 30:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, it's something like six times brighter than a half moon because of the way the laws of reflection work.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think it'd only be like twice as bright. It's like even brighter. So on a moonless night, you, the unaided eye can see a couple of thousand stars. If the moon is out, you can see a couple hundred stars. So it drops it by a factor of 10. So if you're trying to see the deep universe, we have what's called dark time at telescopes. And it's highly competitive to gain access to a telescope while the moon is not up. Okay, it's called dark time. And then people who are on the brink of the detection of things will ask for dark time. So then we learned, well, why be on Earth at all? Why, okay, but if you go into orbit, the moon is still there, okay? Now, the sky is not as bright,

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but it's still kinda, you don't want to look near the moon. They have scattered light into your telescope beam. So how about a million miles on the other side of the moon? How about that? Well, that's where the James Webb Space Telescope is going.

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, yeah, so it's far away from Earth and from the moon. And so, yeah, we're doing our darndest to get rid of the interference that we're now experiencing. But let me stay at it. There's radio interference and we have radio wave telescopes.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what are we gonna do about that? There's all this talk, whole conferences given, unto putting radio telescopes on the far side of the moon.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the moon only shows one face, so if you're on the far side, you will never see Earth, ever.

• 32:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that famous photo of Earth rise over the moon by Apollo 8? Okay, Earth doesn't rise on the moon.

• 32:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It never does. It's either always there or never there. Because you're either on the side of the moon that faces Earth, or the side of the moon that faces elsewhere. And so the reason why that's called Earth rise is because they were orbiting the moon.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you're orbiting, then the sky rises and sets, and so they caught the rising Earth on the lunar landscape. So it's legitimately Earth rising, it's just highly misleading.

• 32:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  It's like Moon Haiti and Moon Dominican Republic. So, just same island, just one side is Haiti and the other side is Dominican Republic.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it really? The first, I'm talking the universe here, and you're talking geopolitics?

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  Man, I need a vacation.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's evidently.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  I'm really just thinking about tropical places, that's all.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, but they are the same island, somebody just cut a line right down the middle.

• 33:06Chuck Nice?

  Cut a line, that's it?

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, alright.

• 33:08Chuck Nice?

  Well.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so we are thinking about that, and it is a big problem. And so wherever the electromagnetic spectrum is noisiest, we try to do our darndest to avoid it. And sometimes it means going into space to the far side of the moon, and even into deep space itself.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow, cool, man.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:28Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so, okay, now, what probe?

• 33:32Chuck Nice?

  Just got out of our solar system. And will we be able to receive, so I'm just thinking about telescopes.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're talking about Voyager.

• 33:40Chuck Nice?

  Voyager.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  Will we be able to get, retrieve any information from that ever?

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle, but the cost of maintaining that relative to other things. We have what's called a senior review of projects that are growing long of tooth that have been going for a while, even if they're giving trickles of data. You say to yourself, it costs this much. What is the incremental knowledge we're gleaning about our state of the universe relative to this new project that is looking for C funding to discover something new and exciting? And so sometimes you gotta turn off the switch. Voyager, we turn off the switch after it exited the influence of the sun. There's everyone thinking, oh, the solar system ends at Pluto. No, solar system keeps going.

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and one way to think about it is, as long as you're near enough to the sun to feel its sort of magnetic field and other effects, you say, I'm part of the solar system. But the galaxy has a magnetic field also.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you start getting farther and farther away from the sun, the strength of the sun's magnetic field drops and the strength relative to the strength of the galactic magnetic field. You reach a point, oh, by the way, it's not just magnetic field, but the particle stream emanating from the sun.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative to the ambient particle stream in the galaxy. You reach a point where you can no longer tell the difference between those two. Bada bing, you've left the solar system.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how you think about that.

• 35:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's how you think about it. All right, cool.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how we know.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  And since we're talking telescopes here, when you talk about observation time earlier.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:21Chuck Nice?

  If you're an important.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you asking a question now?

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  No, this is. You know, this is still, um, uh, Abenov. Yeah.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I was just, you know, because you've got to become a Patreon member if you're going to ask me a question, that's all. I'm just checking. Go on, because you, you got all the data there, so.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm also, I'm also lying, but hey.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  No, here's what I want to know. If you're an important scientist, do you get bumped up in your, your request for observation time? Are they just like, Jimmy, please, you're really, that research, get out of here.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, your seniority has nothing to do with it. It's how brilliant is your idea? And that's why on our research papers, we don't put their, your earned degrees next to your name. All right, so a, an undergraduate, you know, one of these sort of precocious, research-interested graduate students could have their name right next to someone who's highly senior or even a Nobel laureate. No degrees are put there, no, no such distinctions are made.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, it's the masked physicist.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Instead of the masked singer, it's masked physicist.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we, we don't, and I think that's one of the, um, that's an important feature of the entire enterprise. Now, if you have an idea that's a little crazy, that it's not getting past any reviews, the director of the telescope has what's called director's discretionary time. And they can say, you know, I want to give this, this a shot.

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they can grant the time and it won't have to go through the, the peer review to be given the time.

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But ultimately, the research you do based on it would have to be peer reviewed if you're going to publish it.

• 37:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's a great system, by the way.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by, it is, it is. And by the way, the very famous Hubble Deep Field, do you know that picture that has just galaxies in it?

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it's beautiful.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a couple of stars, but everything you might think is a star is an entire galaxy.

• 37:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was allocated on director's discretionary time.

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it became one of the most significant images ever taken by the telescope. And you know who received that discretionary, that director's discretionary time?

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The director, he gave it to himself.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  No!

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  Get out!

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's tremendous.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, is that badass?

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  He was like, you know what, man?

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's gangster.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  You know, I'm, I wanna look out into nothing.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's nothing you could, you can't stop it.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Why would you point the telescope that way? There's nothing there. Because I can, alright? I'm the director.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  I'm the HDIC, the head director in charge, bitch! Okay.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the funny thing is, you, you're absolutely right. The Hubble Deep Field was a spot on the sky that was the least interesting spot you can possibly find. There were no interesting stars, no previously discovered interesting galaxies, black holes, right? Nothing! And he says, "Let me take the most potent, powerful telescope in the world and aim it there, and hang there, and let those meager photons accumulate, and let's see what's lurking in the dark." Thus was born the Hubble Deep Field. It may have been the most significant image taken by the telescope itself. And so, we allow for that kind of creative thinking that might not otherwise get through.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  That's, by the way, what a great story.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling you, I love my people. These are my people.

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

  I mean, seriously, that's probably equally as exciting as the discovery itself.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Alright, uh, this is Dale Buin. And Dale says, "Hey Neil, photons don't experience time, they don't ever decay. Would they decay, uh, wait a minute, would they decay if they did experience time?"

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so decay means you are this...

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This form of matter in one moment and later on you're a different form of matter. And you can time that out and there's usually some variance there. But there's a very tight average that we give for like it's called the half-life. Uh, for example, carbon 14.

• 39:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, any radioactive element has a half-life. Well, if all the atoms know that they're supposed to convert within some statistical timeframe, then they must have a measure of time. There must be some kind of clock going on within them. All right. Photons moving at the speed of light, time stops for them. So if you have no measure of time, then you cannot know to turn into anything else later in life because there is no later. If photons did happen to experience time, it means they would not be going at the speed of light. Okay. And they would not be pure energy as they currently are. And then they would have the ability to transform into another kind of particle.

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  That is so trippy, man. Oh my God, that is so trippy. Okay.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they would know how to keep time. And if you know how to keep time, you would have some clock. And you say, you know, in one year, five years, three seconds, a tenth of a second, I want to turn into another particle. Now, just because you have a clock doesn't mean you will turn into another particle. The other conditions have to be right. But if you don't have a clock, there's no reason or understanding we possibly have for why you would change into another.

• 41:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So photons are super gangster.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gangster. So it means the photon that we detect here that was emitted in the early universe shortly after the big bang, uh, as far as it's concerned.

• 41:17Chuck Nice?

  It's still the big bang.

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  Hey, let me tell you something, man. I'm a photon. I don't ride or die. I ride and die. I take the ride.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always dying and always living at the same time. So it gets, so it is detected in the same instant that it is emitted.

• 41:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  According to the photon itself. So that's fascinating. So life as a photon is, like you said, is a trippy thing. Yeah.

• 41:44Chuck Nice?

  God, I love science.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that is just amazing. Okay, let's get another one in here.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe we should slip in another one, yeah.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, this is Nicholas Lenson. Nicholas says, hey Neil, hey Chuck. Given that the black holes lose mass slowly, but thoroughly until they no longer exist, would there be a point in time where the mass of the black hole is no longer sufficient to trap light? So the surface of the black hole would become visible. And what would that look like? So wait a minute, did this guy just discover a way to look inside of a black hole?

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, in principle, yeah.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it turns out that any amount of mass, you can calculate how small it would have to be, how compressed it would have to be for it to become a black hole. So if you wanted Earth to become a black hole, you'd have to shrink it down to like the size of a plum. Last I did the math on that. So if you manage to do that, bada bing, you have an Earth black hole. The point is, a lower mass black hole is smaller than a higher mass black hole. If a black hole begins losing mass, it gets smaller and becomes the black hole size appropriate for the amount of mass it has.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's stuck being a black hole.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  Always gonna be a black hole.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 43:08Chuck Nice?

  No matter what the mass is, now that it has collapsed into a black hole, it can't be anything else.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  So if it continues to lose that mass, it will always maintain the properties of a black hole because it can't be anything else.

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it shrinks down, that's right. Now, if for some magic force of nature, the black hole evaporates according to Hawking radiation, which, which your guy clearly knows about, and somehow did not get smaller, there would be a point where the density would no longer allow it to be a black hole. Because it's about the density, it's not about the mass. The density would know it. And then the black hole would slowly reveal itself as a solid object. So yeah, it was a great question. And if one day we can manipulate the laws of physics, then we could reach into a black hole, somehow prop up its, its, uh, shape. So that as it got less and less mass, the density would drop and then we could reveal what's inside. But then, at that point, you're no longer looking inside a black hole, are you? You're just looking at a regular object.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. Because you really need that mass down to that small density in order for it to be.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know what happens? As the black hole continues to evaporate, the energy range that gets emitted becomes higher and higher and higher. So, large black holes are emitting like radio waves and smaller black holes will emit visible light. The tiniest of black holes will emit gamma rays. Okay? And it has to do with the size of the black hole, whether the wave that it emits can fit inside the black hole or not. That's the quantum physics of it. Hawking worked all this out. Point is, as it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, the very last bit, oh, by the way, the, as it gets smaller, the rate at which it gives off energy increases.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So, this becomes a runaway process where it gets smaller and smaller, faster and faster and faster. And the very last moment, it happens catastrophically and you get a little burst of gamma rays. So the original Hawking Radiation paper prompted people to look for little bursts of gamma rays, like in the universe, which could signal black holes dying, having completely evaporated.

• 45:23Chuck Nice?

  That is amazing!

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, we do see bursts of gamma rays, but they don't match the spectrum of a dying black hole. But, but there it is. This is our universe we all live in. It's a beautiful place. Chuck, we're out of time.

• 45:35Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Darn it!

• 45:39Chuck Nice?

  Darn it all!

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright Chuck, that was fun. So, this is another StarTalk Cosmic Queries. It's, uh, uh, just questions from Patreon members. It was a, a grab bag. And I, I wanna go back to Galactic Gumbo, cuz I wanna hear you imitate this.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I missed that. I missed it too. We can't call a grab back. We'll find, we'll, we'll figure it out on the next, on the next timeout. All right, dude, good to have you, always. Always a pleasure. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. As always, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, bidding you to keep looking up.