Cosmic Queries – Infinite Quarks

What happens to quarks during spaghettification? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions about positrons, how we got the speed of light, where the Big Bang took place, and more!

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on StarTalk, yet another addition of the ever-popular cosmic queries. Of course, I've got Chuck Nice, and in there, like, we're gonna learn, is the speed of light constant? How do we even know what the speed of light is? By the way, there's like, a bunch of questions. I'm just pulling out some of my favorite. Another one was, if quarks fall into a black hole, what happens to them? Is it different from anything else? And if you're a beam of light, can you escape the universe? And could you see that? There's really good stuff coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. You're the grass Tyson, your personal panastrophe physicist. Got with me Chuck. Night Chuck, baby.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's happening?

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you got your little tablet out.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  Tablet.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what that means?

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  Means it's cosmic query.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic query.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Inquiring minds wanna know.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed, indeed. Cosmic queries. It's become one of our most popular formats.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's great, great, great.

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  I think people feel that they have a bit of control over the show.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why?

• 1:24Chuck Nice?

  That's what it is.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, otherwise we just run amok.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, so we're here back in my office at the American Museum of Natural History, the Hayden Planetarium, where I serve as a director.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right here in New York City.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  And I serve in the cafeteria.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Want fries with that?

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so just go right on in.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's jump into it.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's Grab Bag.

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  It is Grab Bag, which we used to call Galactic Gumbo.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why don't we call it that anymore?

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what happened to Galactic Gumbo. People probably got tired of me going, "Garou on TV."

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't he dead?

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  I don't know. I'm not sure, but he.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul Pudding, right?

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  I don't know if that's his, I don't know his name. All I know is he used to be on PBS. He wore suspenders.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He weighed about six hundred pounds.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Now, now, I got myself some crawdads.

• 2:21Chuck Nice?

  So did the dish, you know, we gonna add some blood on them.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every eighth word.

• 2:27Chuck Nice?

  He was like the James Brown cooking show. Hit him with those tigga. That little man, he's a shooter guy.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  They done done with him.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Then what, oh, no guarantee.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If James Brown were Cajun, there's no telling, there's no understanding. There's no understanding.

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  You wouldn't understand a word.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah, what I'm gonna get you. Yeah. Everybody knows so.

• 3:03Chuck Nice?

  Hit him with the.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  Wouldn't know one, not one song.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord, nice. This is Sarah coming from Austin, Texas. When we're talking about the age of the universe, thirteen point eight billion years, is the age of years in Earth years? Or is it the average time used? If it's Earth years, then wouldn't it be a different age of the universe depending on your location?

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's Earth years.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  It's Earth years.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not a unit of time we just all agree to.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that exists as a unit of time right now with or without the Earth.

• 3:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've defined it as a length of time measured by an atomic clock.

• 3:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if Earth got destroyed out of the solar system by some cosmic monster.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, that sounds like a good movie.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the, a day and an Earth would still be defined. Because we no longer rely on the rotation of the earth.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  It's not the rotation.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the orbit of the earth around the sun.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To reckon our, our accounting of seconds.

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  It's a standard unit of measurement.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, it's just earth years. And you will get a bigger number in centimeters than you will in inches.

• 4:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't mean the distance is farther.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  But the distance is the same. You're just measuring it in different terms. So it doesn't make a difference.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, yeah, so nothing to lose sleep over that.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  I like to use hands myself.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you ride horses.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly, that's the distance that I use.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know how big a hand is?

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four inches.

• 4:37Chuck Nice?

  That's a tiny little hand. Who would measure hands like that?

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, four inches. Four inches, that's about, I think, I think it's four inches.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  That's like this much of my hand.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's the width of your hand.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I didn't know that. Not that, I did not know.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You thought it was like a whole hand?

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  I thought it was a hand, you put a hand and then a hand and then a hand.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's sideways, yes.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Sideways hands, okay, well that makes a little.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's around four inches.

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Four inches, okay, there you go. That's how high you measure, horses used to be measured, from head to hoof. How, how, how many, how many hands high they would stand.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad you didn't know that, because that would give me even more evidence that you did not grow up in the city.

• 5:19Chuck Nice?

  I was born in the city.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. More I've learned about you, well, when I was in prep school and I played polo.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stables had many horses. I said, who is my co-host?

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  Who is this guy? All right. No, I.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My prep school chums.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  I did go to prep school, but that has nothing to do with my horse affiliates.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your horse ignorance?

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, fine.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  My horse ignorance is, comes from, I, I, I used to attend riding camp when I was much younger.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Anyway, um, but it's been years since I've been on a horse, and, you know, the truth is, I think they're disgusting creatures at this point. But they are delicious.

• 6:05Chuck Nice?

  Please do not write, these are jokes.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something interesting about a horse.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a human brain is about this big.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how big a horse brain is?

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About the size of your fist.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that, cause this-

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're way bigger animal with a much smaller brain.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you know, I don't, I don't need them to solve calculus problems. I can't, I'm, you know, my thing is like, pull this plow.

• 6:32Chuck Nice?

  That's what I need you for, okay?

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a horse is just fine with it.

• 6:37Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Alright.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, what else you got?

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  This is nobody. Hey, nobody from nowhere, Vermont. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a character in West Side Story called Anybody. Anybody.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. It's a tomboy called Anybody.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. She wants to be with the gang. She's got dirty face, short hair, wears pants, can fight, but they don't let her-

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Sounds rather sexy to me.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't, they didn't let her in because-

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  Because she's a girl.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's a girl.

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, back when things were quite binary.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  I wonder has gang, like, uh, protocol changed? Like, if you're-

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go to the High Council, like, yes.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  I wonder if they're sitting around, all the OGs and the young Gs, and just like, have we, uh, advanced to the point where we can let girls in here and shoot them as well?

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I?

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just wondering if Anybody's came from, from nowhere.

• 7:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. So there you go. If anybody came from nowhere.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This person's from nowhere.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  Nowhere, he's from nowhere, Vermont?

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nowhere, Vermont, okay.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  So it says, hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Is there any way for a non-physicist to correspond with a physicist about their papers without being a bother? Okay, I think this guy is angling to send you some discovery that he has, or he or she or-

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my, my email is no longer public.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's no longer.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  No longer.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was for a while.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  For people like nobody.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Because of nobody.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I don't want nobody talking to me.

• 8:14Chuck Nice?

  I don't want nobody talking to me. Now, if you're somebody, we might be able to talk.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Had he been somebody.

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  Had he been somebody.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From somewhere.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  From somewhere, he would've got your email right here.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But now he's nobody from nowhere.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  Nowhere, so you get nothing.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so almost every academic.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On their university page. Has their email.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Posted.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Practically everyone. What you wanna do, if you wanna correspond, if probably you have an idea. Would you do some homework first?

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  Make sure.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do some homework.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't go to them and say, "I have an idea that Einstein is wrong and that all of you don't know what you're doing."

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen to me.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes. And there, there are those out there.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you spent two hours watching a YouTube video.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this person spent their life and career studying that one subject.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just do a little homework.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Do a little homework. And what you don't wanna do, more than anything.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  Is email Chuck Nice and say, "Dr. Tyson is not answering my emails." That you do not want to do.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's how, they're, almost all of them, it's online. Almost all.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. Right.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Now, here's the thing. Correspond. Without being a bother.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, without being a bother. Do your, do your homework and ask an intelligent question.

• 9:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And don't tell them that you have a new secret to the universe and they have to listen to you. Otherwise, no, this, that is not humble. That is rather arrogant. That you, a non-professional, would know something more than the professional. So come to them a little more humbly. "I have an idea."

• 9:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "It might be correct. I've thought about it in this way."

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, "What do you think of it?" And, and don't send them 20 pages. They don't have time for that.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do your homework. Learn, buy some physics books.

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Learn some physics.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Right. It's like going to a restaurant and just saying, "Oh, please, may I have a word with the chef?"

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  You know? "I'm sorry, but what exactly did you season this with?" "May I suggest in the future?"

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no!

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  "Perhaps some truffle butter would help, sir." Like, yeah, no.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, my favorite reply to that is, you know, people say, "You eat a great dish," and they ask the person, "What's the secret?"

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know what the answer is?

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The secret is six years of chef's

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Great. That's a great answer, too. Six years of chef's

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're thinking something tastes good because there's one secret

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they put in, that you just learn that secret.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could duplicate what they did?

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give them some credit for

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  It's a catalog of knowledge.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give them some credit for

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Coupled with expertise.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Skill. Yes. Yes, you need the skill.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Skill. Right.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  All right. That's

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  That's great. All right, this is Mitchell Adkins.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you flip a fried egg with one hand while you're stirring something?

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  I can't even flip a fried egg, which is why I eat scrambled eggs.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It gets scrambled.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  It gets scrambled on route to being flipped. And I'm like, well, we have scrambled eggs now. There you go. I'm not even joking. This is

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what else you got?

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  This is Mitchell Adkins. And Mitchell says, hello, doctor and lord. Well, we're getting shorter and shorter, aren't we?

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is Mitchell from Cincinnati, Ohio. I heard an old episode of yours where you talked about the spaghettification of particles at a black hole. You said that this continues all the way down until everything is ripped apart, which would make sense. However, quarks are held together with asymptotic freedom, meaning that the strong force holding them together increases the further you pull them apart. Would there theoretically be a point where the gravity ripping quarks apart would balance the strong force of asymptotic freedom and actually end up balancing and creating some kind of equilibrium?

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, so let me tell you something about quarks.

• 12:06Chuck Nice?

  This guy is good.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might not know. I'll tell you something about quarks, okay? Uh, we've never seen an isolated quark.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They come in pairs. Pairs or more.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Uh, so let's try to create an isolated quark, okay? Quark. So you go down there and you get like a quark pair and they're stuck together.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You begin to pull them apart.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  No! No!

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  No!

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're being a pull.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  No!

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the soundtrack.

• 12:38Chuck Nice?

  You're killing us!

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you pull it apart.

• 12:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the, the force holding them together gets stronger the more you pull.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the greater is their distance, the stronger is the force. No, it's not that mysterious.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name something every day that, for which that happens.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Um, magnets? No.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they get weaker. They get weaker.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Something, something that you pull apart and it gets stronger.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  That happens every day.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get it every day.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Every day, as you pull it apart and it gets stronger.

• 13:11Chuck Nice?

  The absence from my children.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with yes.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, a, a rubber band.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You pull it harder, it's a stronger force.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  And it creates more tension.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the closer you're in, the less, the less force there is. And a, and a spring.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  Right, a spring, there you go.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and mathematically, there's a, you can represent that with a very tidy formula.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and the spring is what's called a spring constant. It tells you how, how tight it is.

• 13:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how much energy that takes. So, uh, so we think of this as a spring. At, but here's the catch. As you pull them so much apart,

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  at the moment it snaps.

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have pumped so much energy into it.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Pulling it apart.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pulling it apart, that that energy in that instant becomes two more quarks. Now you have two pairs of two quarks.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  Yo.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that's, it's diabolical.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Crazy.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's diabolical.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  That is crazy.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's diabolical.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  The energy that you put into separating a quark.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Equals mc squared.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right at the moment, there's enough energy for each one.

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  To create another quark.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It, it snaps.

• 14:23Chuck Nice?

  And now, once again, you got two.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got two quarks.

• 14:26Chuck Nice?

  You got hydroquark. Nice.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got two quarks on each one.

• 14:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so quarks are diabolical in this way.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, as you're falling down, the tidal force is gonna stretch you.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's give an energy to the quark.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's wondering if there's some balance point down in there.

• 14:43Chuck Nice?

  But now, here's the thing, though. As the quark gets pulled apart, okay? What happens is there is, there is a point of breaking. So wouldn't you just start making infinite quarks?

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It kinda seems that way.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  Because that's really.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, it kinda seems that way.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  We're not looking at equilibrium. We're talking about the creation of the quark. So what you would have is two quarks.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four quarks.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Four quarks.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eight quarks.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  Eight quarks.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be a runaway.

• 15:13Chuck Nice?

  And that would just keep going because it would continually.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the quark would take over the universe.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 15:18Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Damn.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  It's your world, I'm just a quark living in it.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, what we do know is there is no known force that can resist the gravitational collapse to a singularity.

• 15:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what to say.

• 15:42Chuck Nice?

  So at some point, yeah. At some point, the immovable force meets, I mean, the, whatever it's called. You know what I'm saying. What is it?

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moveable object.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  The moveable object. It meets the irresistible force.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, I don't have a good answer.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seems to me you would have a quark runaway.

• 15:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's really.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta talk to some people about this.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  That's just freaky.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta talk to some people about this.

• 16:06Chuck Nice?

  Freaky, man.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have a good answer for you.

• 16:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck just said the quarks will take over the universe, and I don't have a good rebuttal for that.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's so cool, though. I mean, what a great thing to think about. All right, here we go.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Let's see, this is Bobden. Bob, Bob Dan or Bobden, okay?

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he?

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  B O B D A N all together.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bobden.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  Bobden.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bobden.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not Bob Dan, unless the parents were lazy because they.

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to name him after grandpa and grand.

• 16:42Chuck Nice?

  Even though Bob Dan is a great name when you're mad. Bob Dan?

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Bob Dan?

• 16:50Chuck Nice?

  Tell me tell us if I told you.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bob, damn it, come on over here.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I say, why are you so angry? No, that's just my name.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  So, um, why are the origins of big bangs and universes still a mystery? It seems logical that the big bang births a new universe. Spacetimes are simply black holes of other universes and spacetimes. Mystery solved, right?

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next question.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  There we go.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Bob Dan.

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So back on my shelf, I got a book by Stephen Hawking.

• 17:30Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is large, is the large scale structure of spacetime.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got some title like that.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  All right, all right.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in it, it's describes the physics and the mathematics inside the black hole.

• 17:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as you go through, it basically opens up an entire spacetime. So inside a black hole is effectively a whole other universe. Which leads us to wonder whether our universe is just inside of somebody else's.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  Somebody else's black hole.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have a horizon that you can't get out of.

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's stuff beyond it, but you can't see it. So there, there are some strong similarities between thinking of the universe as a black hole and a black hole as a universe.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's poetic.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, here we go. This is Colin's talk. Uh, will a photon, from its frame of reference, be able to reach galaxies beyond our event horizon? Should a photon see time stop for the rest of the universe at the speed of light and therefore not experience, listen, the expansion of the universe along which it is traveling?

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Damn, people-

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People are getting-

• 19:21Chuck Nice?

  They're getting in.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're getting in.

• 19:23Chuck Nice?

  They're going in.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going all in.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  I'm telling you, because bringing up a lot of stuff here, there's, there's, that's a layered question.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so we have to be careful here.

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We will never see the photon exit the universe. That's the whole point of this, what's going on here. The photon will move away, and it gets swept up by the expansion of the universe, and the energy coming back towards us against the expansion of the universe, gets diluted until it disappears entirely.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can't, at that point, it's beyond our horizon, we can't see it. All right.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As far as the photon is concerned, it's just happily doing its thing.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  It's there, right.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just, it doesn't even know.

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  It has no idea.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No idea.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  It's just happily being.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's like the famous question with Albert Einstein, I said, if you're in a car driving at the speed of light and you turn on the headlights, what would you see?

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, you can't go the speed of light, but let's go 99.99999% the speed of light. You do that, you put on headlights, you see-

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  You see headlights, because that's it? It's going out in front of you.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything is relative.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  At the speed of light, it's relative.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative, you don't even know you're going at the speed of light.

• 20:28Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As far as you're concerned, everybody else is passing you by.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which made the awkward joke, I told you, when Relativity was published, that was at the New York Times, somebody made a joke that, "Hey Albert, what time does Grand Central Station arrive at the next train?"

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that, that's the same thing.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  That's the same.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're the photon and you're at the end, you- When you're at the edge, that's not your edge.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're at our edge, it's not your edge.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any more than a ship going to your horizon. That's not that ship's horizon. It sees beyond that.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and it'll, like I said, and a photon will be absorbed in the same instant it was emitted in its own reference frame.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  I love thinking about it like a ship. Because that's so easy to envision. That you know the horizon.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know the ocean goes beyond your horizon.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  Right, unless you're a stupid flat-earther. In this case, fall off the edge, big dummy. What you are, what you see beyond the horizon is your own ignorance, your stupid ass. Anyway, anyway.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, this is a free country, people think whatever the hell they want.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I don't have an issue with flat-earthers, I just don't want them to become head of NASA. Or something like that.

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plenty of jobs for them, okay, if you want to think Earth is flat.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  Right, cleaning toilets is not a bad job. There's a lot of dignity in that, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, this is Tassos Sures, who says, greetings, Dr. Tyson. Tassos from Greece here. How would a civilization living in a planet that is surrounded by black holes from all sides perceive the universe? Will we, from the outside, be able to see them? Will they live their own slowed acceleration timeframe? So, a couple of different questions.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so, the closer you are to a source of gravity.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The more time-dilated your life becomes.

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you think you're living a normal life, people from outside see you living more slowly.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we will see you living more slowly if those black holes are relatively near.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's first point. Second, if you look out, you will see light bent around black holes. So, you'll see all these rings.

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These light rings. Because that's what, that's what the geometry of spacetime does. When you have a source of gravity and light passes around it. So, uh, so that's the main difference, the, the night sky will be these rings.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Einstein said, he, he first predicted the existence of rings, they're called Einstein's rings. And then he thought... Things will never be so perfectly aligned to get a perfect ring. They will never get a ring. And we get some rings, but generally what happens is if it's exactly aligned, you get a ring. If it's slightly off center, it splits into two, two parts.

• 23:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then if it's off a little more, you can get four parts and then six. And so, um, but in the limit of a perfect alignment, you get a ring. And so, yeah, now that would be dangerous if you're surrounded by black holes. I don't know how stable that orbit would be.

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, exactly.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Cause you're, you're in a pinball machine at that point.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At that point, you know, as they say, there's no such thing as gravity. Your planet sucks.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The black holes suck.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suck you in.

• 23:49Chuck Nice?

  Right, alright. Very cool, thanks a lot there, Tassos. Um, this is John Bitford, says, "G'day, Dr. Tyson."

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  G'day.

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  That's what he says.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds very Aussie, okay.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh, John Bitford here from Bolton Massachusetts. "The Big Bang, did it disperse matter in all directions somewhat equally? If so, and the universe is expanding in all directions? What happens in the space where the Big Bang happened?"

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac Newton, my man.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think I have a finger puppet of him back here. Never understood finger puppets, cause it's like...

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, now you got to finger up Isaac Newton's iris. That's basically what happens, just...

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking you can't control the hands or the face or the expression, so it's kind of...

• 24:41Chuck Nice?

  It's the lamest puppet.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lamest puppet.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  Even a sock puppet has more emoting than, emotes more than a finger puppet.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, I think this is, and not William Herschel. I should check. But anyhow, they all look alike back here.

• 25:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a colonial era.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, right.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all look colonial.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Put a powder wig on him. Who knows the difference, right? Just put your powder wig on and your buckle shoes and get to work.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Isaac Newton argued that the universe must be infinite after he discovered his laws of gravity.

• 25:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Must be infinite because if it's not, all the matter will find a center to fall to. And it would all fall to form one great heap of mass.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but if it's infinite, then there's no, one place is not more special than another.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, he didn't imagine that you can live in an expanding universe. That was outside of his worldview. Expanding universe, you're not all gonna fall to one spot because there's a force preventing that.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In our case, we call it dark energy. So with, uh, so with that, that place where the center occurred.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No longer exists in space, it only exists in time.

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the timeline, if you go back to the beginning of time, on that axis, when you get there, all the matter will be in the same place. You go forward, the expansion of the universe, you don't have access to that point in that space. So I'll give an example, I'll give it. So you have a balloon and you're inflating the balloon.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You start out, the balloon is like tiny.

• 26:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's the art, that's the Big Bang, okay? Or the whole balloon is in one spot right there. Now you start blowing on it, it expands away from that spot.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that spot on the surface of the balloon? No, it's in the center of the balloon. How do I get to the center of the balloon? Turn back time. The balloon gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Now you're back at the center.

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  You'd have to shrink the universe.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By going backwards in time.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  By going backwards in time.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So the center exists, but not in the space coordinate, it exists in the time coordinate.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  That's really.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deal with it.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow, this is, these people are asking really good questions, man, I gotta tell you.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is not up his ass. It's a, he's got a jacket. He's got a red coat on.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I don't know what jackets you wear, but at the hem of my jacket is my rectum.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you ruined finger puppets for me.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't wanna play with finger puppets anymore.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, what else you got?

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is-

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're getting through a lot of questions today.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  We are.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than usual, okay.

• 27:37Chuck Nice?

  This is Ilias Ciametis. Ilias Ciametis.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That does not sound right, but we'll go with it.

• 27:43Chuck Nice?

  Um, yeah.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can put a little flavor in it.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ilias.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Ilias. Ciametis.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go.

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Tyson Lord Nice, Ilias here from London. Would it be theoretically-

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  London, Ontario, London, Connecticut, London-

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  Hey man, it just says London.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Is there a London, Ontario?

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  I don't know.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It kinda feels like there would be.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  It feels like there's a London everywhere.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it feel like it?

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what that is? That's lazy ass Brits coming to the new world.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Where did we come from? We came from London. Where are we now? Uh, London? Why not?

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, let's call it New London.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  New London. Now you have it.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so he says, "Would it be theoretically possible to break the bonds between atoms of something and reconfigure them into something else? Let's say manipulate the billions and billions of carbon atoms in a wooden chair and make a table instead." Strong emphasis on the word theoretically.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's not interesting, though.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To turn a wooden chair into a wooden table?

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  Well-

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not really manipulating atoms. You're just reassembling the macroscopic wood.

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's all you're doing, is taking the wood and moving it around.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're moving the wood around.

• 29:03Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's it.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you wanna change molecules, do something fun.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take your molecules and rearrange them and make an alien.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's still alive, but it's not you, it's some other thing.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do something interesting. If you're gonna have power over molecules and atoms, then- Now, what chemists do is, 'cause we don't have tools to pluck atoms and reattach them, we put them in vats- Of other chemicals that make that happen.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  Make a reaction.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make a reaction.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are called catalysts.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? I want this molecule and I got that molecule. Put in a catalyst that makes that.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Boom.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And does that natively and naturally. So that's how we're doing that today.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, do something better than a chair to a table.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, yeah, but in principle, you can turn into anything organic. Because if you use the molecules of life, that's organic chemistry. Why not make something else organic?

• 29:53Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, cool.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  I love the idea. Okay. Well, there you go, my friend.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Aaron Turetsky says, "Hey, Dr. Tyson Lord Nice, Aaron here from Staten Island, NYC."

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  He goes, "My question pertains to the way that we visually display Earth in globes, maps and elsewhere."

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  "Since magnetic poles flip."

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:18Chuck Nice?

  "And the Earth's land masses are constantly shifting."

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  "Is there any scientific reason that we decided Antarctica would be at the bottom of the South Pole? I understand that human civilization happens to exist while the majority of the land is in northern hemisphere."

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  "So our maps are northern biased."

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  "But what does science have to say? For example, if an alien civilization was to look at the Earth through their telescopes, is there any reason they would know that Battery Park is at the bottom of Manhattan?"

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  "And not the top?"

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow. My man got a problem with globes.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, he mentioned Battery Park because one way to get to Staten Island is to go to Staten Island Ferry out of Battery Park.

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was not a random reference that he-

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but who wants to go to Staten Island?

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's talking?

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  Come on, man.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop. Let me save you from yourself here.

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the, uh, so what does science have to say about it? First of all, at the beginning of the film, Happy Feet.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where does that take place?

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  Uh, at the-

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Penguins, so there's only one place it could take place.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  South Pole.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  South Pole. Antarctica.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  Antarctica.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The camera moves in on the Earth.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 31:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, North Pole is up and South Pole's down. But this entire movie takes place at the South Pole.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as far as they're concerned, that's where the action is. So you know what this, the, this movie does? Instead of going down to the South Pole, the entire frame rotates 180 degrees.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you go straight on in to Antarctica.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a point of view shift.

• 31:56Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you know who did that movie?

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this guy who wrote us?

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the same guy who did Mad Max, George Miller. The same guy who did Mad Max.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  A little departure from the Mad Max.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got, he's got range.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, certainly does.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyhow, so scientifically.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we use the right hand rule.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so stick out your right hand.

• 32:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Open palm, palm open.

• 32:21Chuck Nice?

  Palm open.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now make a, curl your fingers, keep your thumb up.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Thumb up.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, any object that's rotating in the universe.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you curl your fingers in the direction it's rotating.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your thumb is the, it's the north pole.

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  That's the north pole.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, for any object, anywhere.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you want your thumb to stick in the direction of the pole, you have to use your left hand.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's okay. So the right hand rule is right hand, thumbs up.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how you know what north pole is. And if you know what north pole is, you know what south pole is.

• 32:51Chuck Nice?

  Know where south pole is. Okay, gotcha.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so yes, of course, we are north biased, but there is at least consistency with all maps show north.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  North up.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  It's pretty cool. I'm gonna tell you the truth. I don't care.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by, he mentioned the magnetic pole.

• 33:10Chuck Nice?

  Now that's.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I grew up, how old I am, magnetic pole was in the northern territories of Canada.

• 33:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's been shifting.

• 33:16Chuck Nice?

  It's been shifting, right?

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz the north pole is a, is a wandering thing.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And right now it's passing the north geographic pole.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just closer to that than it's ever been before, and it's headed towards Siberia.

• 33:28Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Cuz so it's, it's actually where it belongs, where we say it is.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right now, at this moment, it's near. It's near the north pole.

• 33:35Chuck Nice?

  It's near the north pole.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Putin is gonna have control over the north pole.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Well then, say goodbye to the magnetic field, people.

• 34:02Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Milay Nukovsky. Speaking of Putin. Okay, Milay says this. "Hey Neil, hey Chuck, my name is Milay. Uh, I'm from Macedonia, Balkan, Europe, world."

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that, okay.

• 34:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's very cool. He says, "We see a lot of matter goes into energy in the universe, but do we see the other way around? Energy becoming matter?"

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, in the sun, in the center of the sun.

• 34:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's thermonuclear fusion. Hydrogen nuclei merge.

• 34:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, here's what happens. You ready? Uh, hydrogen only has one particle in its nucleus.

• 34:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A proton. So, there's just protons there. So, one proton meets another proton.

• 34:56Chuck Nice?

  Hey, how you doing?

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  What's up?

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. How you, how you doing?

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  How you doing?

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Protons have like charge.

• 35:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, like charges do what?

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  They don't like each other.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They repel.

• 35:06Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in order for them to get close together, they have to be moving so fast that their speed overcomes their repulsion.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Mm.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're so close to each other.

• 35:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That a whole new force that's strong has to kick in. You know what we call that?

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  An arranged wedding.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's... We call it the strong force.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  The strong force.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sensibly titled, "The Strong Force." Okay. In that moment, the, one of those protons becomes a neutron.

• 35:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It transmutes.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you have a proton and a neutron.

• 35:38Chuck Nice?

  I don't need that woke atom in my life.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what? Transitions.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Transitioning atoms, who needs that? Oh.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, we started with a positive charge.

• 35:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, now, there's a neutral charge. What happened to the positive charge? You can't just pocket that.

• 36:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, a particle comes out carrying away that charge.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the antimatter version of an electron.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called a positron.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Positron.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now, this is a soup of ionized atoms. And when you're ionized, electrons are flying everywhere. If you're a positron.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're antimatter positron? Right. If you see an electron, that's all she wrote. You annihilate. Look at that. Instantly. Instantly. Creating energy. In the center of the sun. Look at that. That's one of many ways the sun is generating energy in the core. Wow. That happens every moment of every day. Two.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two particles of matter coming together and creating pure energy. Positron and the electron in the core of the sun. That is amazing. So yeah, but it doesn't happen around the house. No, no. But it would. If you had a son. A son, S U N. Right. Yes, so now watch. Not that lazy guy that's on the couch. Playing video games all day long.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what your son does. That sounded too close to home Chuck.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your seventeen year old son. Yeah, exactly. So, so here's the thing. Light that we use, visible light. Visible light. If you look up how much energy a red light photon has, or a blue light photon, just look up how much energy that is. There is no particle

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that can be made with that much energy. Because it's not enough. Okay. So light, visible light stays visible light its whole life. Wow. Increase the energy up to beyond ultraviolet. Ooh. Into X-rays. X-rays. Ooh. Now ask yourself, what is the energy of an X-ray photon? It's about the energy of an electron. Ooh. So you can have a field of X-ray photons with electrons spontaneously being created within it. Oh. Okay. Okay. Now, but you can't just create a particle out of nothing. You also have to have the antiparticle.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you create electrons, you're also creating what?

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  The positron.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Positron, there you go. So that's energy becoming matter.

• 38:20Chuck Nice?

  Matter.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 38:22Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the inverse of that that he was asking me about.

• 38:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they find each other again and they become matter. This soup was going on in the early universe in every cubic centimeter of the universe. Matter going, going back and forth. Until the universe cooled.

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where none of the photons left had enough energy to make particles.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Lord, I'm so tired.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's tired. And we froze out the total number of particles in the universe in that moment.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No longer could you make more particles.

• 38:51Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 38:53Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like the first three minutes of the Big Bang.

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  That's so, that's a lot going on.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Three minutes.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the first three minutes.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Look at that, that's amazing.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So i- in my book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, the first chapter, it was something like "in the beginning" or something, or it begins with that.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I take you through those details. The conversion of matter, energy, and it cools down, all that's happened.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  It's very cool, very, very aggressive, the title "in the beginning." Just saying that association is a...

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, where else am I gonna begin the story but "in the beginning"?

• 39:32Chuck Nice?

  This is true, you know? I'm just saying that those words kind of bring to mind something else.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an old joke from elementary school.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you know God was a baseball player? Love baseball?

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  I've never heard of this.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he began it in the big inning.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  That's a, that's a rough one, man.

• 39:56Chuck Nice?

  Even God is just like, "Let me handle the humor."

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  He's like, "Stick to prayer, humor's my thing."

• 40:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sit this one out.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, all right.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we got time for like one more, I think.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's uh, let's go with Andrew Coffey.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  And Andrew Coffey says, "Good day, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Wishing you a wonderful wisdom from a few fine fellows. Andy C. here from British Columbia."

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  I've always wondered.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be Canada.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  I've always wondered, how did we first calculate the speed of light in a vacuum? And how do we know it's a constant? Is it possible we could be wrong?

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speed of light in a vacuum?

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, Galileo is the first one known to try to measure the speed of light.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. Wow.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he put somebody on-

• 41:02Chuck Nice?

  What an ambitious dude he was. That dude was ambitious.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, my man.

• 41:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's my man, Galileo. He put, at night, he put somebody on a mountaintop with a lantern and a little shutter.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and some, uh, he was on another mountaintop-

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  Another mountaintop.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a lantern and a shutter. And, and they said, "When you see one-"

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  Give it back to me.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me the light, the signal back with the shutter. And he concluded, I'm paraphrasing, he concluded, "Light, if it's not infinitely fast, it's faster than we can measure, okay?"

• 41:39Chuck Nice?

  Nice job, Galileo.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just tell it like it is.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you know.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's it. That's what we know right now.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't tell more than what you can know.

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, the coolest measurement of the speed of light, do you know the distance from Earth to the Sun?

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  Ninety-three million.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so twice that is?

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  A hundred and eighty-six million.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Million miles, okay? Keep that number in your head.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? That's the baseline of Earth's orbit around the Sun.

• 42:07Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A guy named Ol Romer.

• 42:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ol Romer, he's got one of those umlauts with the O E, okay?

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  They just called him Old Rome.

• 42:23Chuck Nice?

  Old Rome.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, what's up, Old Rome? We can't pronounce your name, we just call you Old Rome.

• 42:28Chuck Nice?

  Old Rome.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Ol Romer.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the time he did this, we knew that the Newtonian gravity not only described the moon around Earth, Earth around the sun, it described Jupiter's moons around Jupiter.

• 42:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you didn't have to be the sun to be the center of gravity for a system. It worked for Jupiter too. So this was a testament to the universality of Newton's laws. Because if it just works for the Earth and moon, maybe it's just Earth, moon. You don't know that it works everywhere else. It works everywhere else. All right. So you calculate when the moons pass in front of and behind Jupiter.

• 43:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What he found was that when Earth was closest to Jupiter, the eclipses occurred a thousand seconds sooner

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  than when Earth was on the opposite side of the sun from Jupiter.

• 43:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said, either Newton's laws are wrong, or we had to wait for the light to cross the entire orbit of the Earth to get to you.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because on the backside of Earth, it was a thousand second delay compared to the front of your orbit.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the formula for speed?

• 44:01Chuck Nice?

  Uh.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Distance divided by?

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  Time.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time. What's the distance?

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  A hundred eighty-six million miles.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the time?

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  A thousand seconds.

• 44:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the speed of light?

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  Uh, very fast.

• 44:19Chuck Nice?

  Very, very fast.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take those two numbers, you divide them, a hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. That was the first, now, we didn't have the diameter of the Earth. The guy had a long number for that, but it was the first.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the most accurate estimate of the speed of light yet to be made. Mm-hmm. And I think because we didn't have, there were some uncertainties in Earth's distance to the sun, but it was the right ballpark for this. That's the first measurement of the speed of light. That's cool, man. Just the delay in eclipses of Jupiter's orbits. Right. Depending on where you are in our orbit when you're taking a look at him. And the numbers turn out all nice and even, right? One hundred eighty-six million miles, thousand seconds, everything was clean and easy. Right. Now, uh, let's, now we're sophisticated, we can measure it in a laboratory. We can do what Galileo attempted to do. Sure enough, we get the same number. Look at that. Okay?

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every time we've ever measured the speed of light, we get exactly the same number. At all times. At all times. Correct. And we look in other parts of the universe where we see phenomenon happening,

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  speed of light's the same, right on up to the edge of the universe. So our evidence, and since as you look out in the universe, you look back in time, we can say with confidence that the speed of light is the same and unchanging across space and through the depths of time. Look at that. It is the most fundamental constant of nature we know. Yes. It is so fundamental

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that we define the length of the meter in terms of the speed of light. Wow.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So if we make an extra measurement of a decimal place in the speed of light, Okay. that affects the length of the meter.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how badass the speed of light is. Right. We, it's running the show. Look at that. So, a meter is how far a beam of light goes in one thirty-millionth of a second. Yep, it's the right, to twelve decimal places. To twelve decimal places. Wow. Yeah. That is super cool. Yeah, so that's, now, the speed of light is different in the air and in water and in a diamond, but in the vacuum, that's the speed. That's the speed, right. And one hundred eighty-six thousand, two hundred eighty-two miles per second. We're three times ten to the eighth.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meters per second, but it's really two, it's like twenty-nine million nine hundred ninety. We round that up. It's a nice rounding to three times ten to the eighth. So that would be thirty eight, no, three hundred, three hundred thousand kilometers per second.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you make meters and centimeters out of that.

• 47:24Chuck Nice?

  Out of that.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. And so, but it's really like two hundred ninety-nine thousand something. It's close, but we rounded up to three hundred thousand kilometers a second. Hundred eighty-six thousand, two hundred eighty-two miles per second.

• 47:37Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Chuck Nice?

  But the best measurement of it is Muhammad Ali.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. Take us out with Muhammad Ali.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  I'm fast, I tell you. Hmm, I'm so fast. I turn off the, I turn the light switch off. I'm in the bed before the room get dark.

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Muhammad Ali is faster than the speed of light.

• 47:56Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As evidenced by that, that very important data point right there. All right, Chuck, this is all the time you have.

• 48:02Chuck Nice?

  That was fun.

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, man.

• 48:03Chuck Nice?

  Lot of fun.

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, grab bag.

• 48:06Chuck Nice?

  Grab bag.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag.

• 48:07Chuck Nice?

  Or galactic gumbo.

• 48:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the cosmic crib.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're back live in my office.

• 48:15Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the Hayden Planetarium. All good here. All right, we're done with this latest episode of Cosmic Query. Thanks for joining us. Neil deGrasse Tyson, people.