Cosmic Queries – Physics All Around Us

Did you know there are physics at work all around us? Join your personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice as they answer fan-submitted questions on the physics of life, big and small. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-physics-all-around-us/ Photo Credit: Offnfopt (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons).

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I hail from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City, where I serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. And today, we've got a cosmic queries edition of StarTalk with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil!

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you here.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Good to be here.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and I am the director of parts of my home on certain days of the week.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even then, only in certain hours.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Certain hours of certain days. That's all I get.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think today is, the topic is the physics of everyday life.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, love me some physics of everyday life.

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  I know you do.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  I've been around you long enough to actually hear you speak on the physics of everyday life, whether I want you to or not.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's good about learning physics?

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a satchel of facts.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be regurgitated. It is an understanding of the operations of nature.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  That's great. I was about to say, it is actually the understanding of your own experiences.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that, or even things that are not your experience, things that transcend your experience.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics is there waiting for you.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what makes it so cool. I mean, there's...

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but what it means is you don't have to learn every single example of how physics manifests in the universe.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  Well, thank God.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can learn the foundational things and then apply that knowledge to what you see.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's the beauty of it. And that, that's why physics books are not the fattest books on the shelf. Accounting books are fatter than the complete works of physics.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, because they what, they get to change accounting? You can't change physics. Physics is what it is.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what it is and what it be like.

• 2:12Chuck Nice?

  What it be like is what it be like. But you can change accounting all you want.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's so many other fields where the books are just so fat and thick.

• 2:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Books on human physiology, you gotta learn every little. Of course, there are some systems that you learn about, you know, the circulatory system and the endocrine system and this sort of thing.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's very helpful for new situations, but physics is the ultimate example of learning the basics.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That then apply to everything, stuff you've never even seen before.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  And even all of those different systems actually have some applied physics at work.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, let me take you there. Ready?

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's do it.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so biology.

• 2:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the extreme representation of chemistry.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Give me one second.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biology is chemistry come alive.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now that I'm just got it. It just gave me a little light bulb and I got it. That makes sense.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can have complex chemistry, but once you talk about life.

• 3:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's biology.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earned its own field.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  And life is really a, a, a collection of chemical reactions.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Have you ever seen the physics desk reference, physician's desk rep, the P D R?

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no, I have not.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a zillion pages and it is every single medicine prescribable in the world, or at least in the West.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  Is that really?

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and so.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  And everyone.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when the doctor, uh, looks back and you don't see what pages they turn, they're looking at the P D R.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  They're looking at the P D R.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's every company's medicine that gives what, you know, what it, uh, is supposed to heal.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the, what the contraindications are, the, you know, the side effects, all of this, it's in this book. So all I'm saying is, it's a reminder that we are basically sacks of chemistry.

• 3:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the point, where I'm getting that is.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  Which, I mean, it sounds so derogatory when you say it like that.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pass me my vitamin, please.

• 4:01Chuck Nice?

  Give it, hey, listen here, you sack of chemistry.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we all take vitamins or some pills for some purpose, most of us, or we eat certain foods to get the chemistry in the food that'll, uh, you know, you're drinking a cup of coffee right now.

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am, which was.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  It's having a chemical reaction in my brain.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Right. It turns off a little teeny part of your brain that says, go to sleep.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, there is no understanding of biology without chemistry.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there is no understanding of chemistry without physics.

• 4:34Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and there's a kind of audacious statement, which is really nasty, but kinda true.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, damn.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  That's a drop the mic type.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a drop the mic and it's, it's kinda like.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  You know who made that saying up? A physicist. Clearly.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your opinion.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so give it to me. We solicited these from our fanbase. I haven't seen the questions yet, as usual.

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  As usual. And of course, we always start with a Patreon patron.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Because if you support us on Patreon financially, we give you a preference to everything.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think they get more than that. It's not just they get their question answered. There's like a whole list of stuff they.

• 5:17Chuck Nice?

  There is. I mean, you know.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At one level, they get invited to our holiday party.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. If you, if you give enough.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right? Just verifying. Yeah.

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  If you give enough money, you get to invite it to the, uh, to the Star Talk.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you give a zillion dollars.

• 5:27Chuck Nice?

  Right. A kabillion.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kabil- a bajillion.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  A bajillion. Is that, is that a real word?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the biggest number ever.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  That's the biggest number? Bajillion?

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bajillion.

• 5:35Chuck Nice?

  Mmm, that's cool. I like it.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're, if you're eight, that's the biggest number ever.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  Bajillion! My god. And really, it's like eight, it's like, you know, there's, there's 16 of them.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Like, that's to a kid. It's like my son, I told my son I was 30, and he was like, "You're gonna die soon." Right? And mind you, I'm like, much older than 30. Why am I lying to my son about my age? I don't know.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't trust anyone older than 30.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's it. That's, there you go. Alright, so, uh, Renee Douglas from Patreon says this. "Why is the periodic table of elements not an exact rectangle? My OCD will not let this go." Missing elements or what? Who cares? It should be a rectangle! All of a sudden, at the end, she started sounding like, uh, Jerry Seinfeld. "What's the deal with the rectangle?

• 6:23Chuck Nice?

  Why? Who are these elements?"

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we should call it the periodic irregular table.

• 6:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so, I, I'm, I'm with her on this.

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the urge to want nature to be symmetric in its beauty.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And beauty in its symmetry.

• 6:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sentence is symmetric.

• 6:46Chuck Nice?

  That it is. Uh, yes, it is. It is symmetric and, uh, in a mirrored way.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'll give you an example. Um, when we were filming Cosmos, one of the scenes was in a forest in Northern California.

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm looking at the tree. I'm from the Northeast and we don't have California trees here.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our trees are kinda raggedy.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kinda gnarly raggedy.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to the mighty redwoods and other, you know.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  They don't see the trouble that our trees see. Our trees see a great deal of trouble here.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our trees are like.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Our trees are.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've seen the Northeast issues.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  That's right. They're grizzled veterans of Norristers and hurricanes and like harsh winters. You talk to a tree in the Northeast going to be like, "I'll tell you what I've seen." "I've seen some things."

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the old tree on the front porch in the rocking chair.

• 7:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Our trees are like the two trees in the two towers of Lord of the Rings, you know, just like, "I remember a time long ago."

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, slow down. You're too spark. You're talking too fast.

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  I know, that's true for those, right. And for the trees, yeah. Yeah, redwood trees are just like.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just badass. It's like, I'm here and nobody mess with me.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because they get to grow unfettered by anything.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, they have fireproof bark.

• 7:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You try to burn a redwood, it's like, there you go.

• 8:02Chuck Nice?

  That's sweet.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go on around, you know.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As you keep going, keep moving.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's nothing to see here.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fireproof.

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  They need to make all of California out of redwood tree bark.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Redwood bark, right. So, here's my point. Some of the trees, and I'm not, I'm not a botanist, so I can't identify what tree it is. The bark had striations that spiraled in one direction.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around the tree.

• 8:28Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm thinking, if nature itself were symmetric, that could never happen.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These things are twisting on their way as they grow.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In one direction and not the other direction, and nothing else was twisting in the other direction. It means at the molecular level, you have asymmetries in the foundations of nature.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's something I read, but I'm not a chemist, so I just read this, okay?

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The molecule.

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you taste as spearmint.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you took the mirror image.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  That's the double mint molecule. But go ahead.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take the mirror image of that molecule.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make that molecule.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you write down the chemical formula, it'll be the same. Because the chemical formula doesn't tell you how to build it.

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spirals in it, okay? It's just the same number of carbon, same number of hydrogen, same number of everything. If you build the mirror image of it and taste that.

• 9:27Chuck Nice?

  Taste like poop.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it tastes like caraway.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Caraway?

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so, this is an asymmetry in nature. You don't taste the same thing.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because of the mirror image of one molecule versus another. So, the universe is full of asymmetries. And you know our amino acids have a handedness to them. These are the building blocks of our protein.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  So, there's a left hand and a right hand.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All amino acids of all life on Earth is one-handedness.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? There is no life that's the other, but there's no reason in principle why you could not make it so.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's all, it would just be, we're right-handed, it'd be a left-handed, just the way it spirals in a mirror, okay? I mean, the way it spirals versus what it would do in a mirror.

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so this, um, it's intriguing because if you find life on another planet.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it has the other, it's called chirality. Then you know it didn't come from us. We had nothing to do with it.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  We had nothing to do with it, because it's a different handedness.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a different handedness, right?

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so what is the sound?

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what we're not sure about is whether if you eat the other life.

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's all we do is eat other life.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what, if.

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  I mean, if it's not alive and you're eating it, then you're probably gonna have a little trip to the hospital. Because it's Lego.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, the only thing we eat that was never alive is salt.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, everything else was once alive or derived from something that was alive, right? Um, so.

• 10:46Chuck Nice?

  Even pepper comes from a seed.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, pepper was a plant, right.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why salt and pepper are not really equal partners.

• 10:52Chuck Nice?

  No, they're not. No. Salt is cheating. Pepper was, pepper gave its life to be on that table.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On that table. Right, right, right.

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Salt just showed up.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just showed up for the party.

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  That, just like white salt. No, I'm joking.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  That is so white a salt.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, there's black salt. I got black salt.

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got black salt and red salt.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  And there's pink salt too, yeah.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's Himalayan salt, and there's Hawaiian salt.

• 11:15Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's pink salt, yeah.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, wait a minute, man. How racist are you that your salt is black? Seriously?

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I'm saying.

• 11:26Chuck Nice?

  Why are you saying this?

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and another asymmetry in physics, okay?

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you realize an electron is a positive charge?

• 11:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, negative charge.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  Negative charge, right.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Negative charge, okay. So now watch. I can draw field lines coming off the electron, and there'll be straight lines coming out. They call it the electric field lines, and that's fine. I have a formula that describes that. Okay, electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we have the word electromagnetic.

• 11:56Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electromagnetic. That's why we have that word.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if things were symmetric, I should be able to find just a negative pole of a magnet. Just the same way I have a negative charge on an electron.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  But you can't.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  Because the moment you have a magnet, you gotta have two poles.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So get yourself a magnet, bar magnet, horseshoe magnet, I don't care. There's a plus side and a negative side. Cut it in half. Now you have two magnets with a plus and a minus side. Cut them in half. You have four magnets, each with a plus and minus side. You cannot cut off the negative from the positive in a magnet. But you can in electricity.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That shows up in the formulas as an asymmetry in what's called Maxwell's equations. They are not symmetric.

• 12:41Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as a physicist, you gotta get over that when you first learn his equations. So getting back to the woman's point, the periodic table of elements has a remarkable and profound level of symmetry in it. The reason why it wraps around to another row.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And certain elements line up.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In columns is because the elements that line up in columns. Have the same mating properties with other elements.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you're.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  So you can combine them.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so take carbon, for example, we are carbon-based life.

• 13:11Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've read, if you're a science fiction fan, you'd think about silicon-based life. You ever hear about silicon? Did they just pull that out of their, the ether? No, silicon sits below carbon on the periodic table, directly below it. It makes the same families of molecules that carbon does. So they're saying, if we're carbon-based life, why not swap a silicon atom in with the carbon? And make all the same molecules.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you have life based on silicon rather than car. The periodic table of elements captures this fact in its structure and in its form. As you get to heavier and heavier elements, things get more complex. They get, um, and so you have entire groups of elements that all behave in the same way.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how you, you can't, you're gonna shoehorn them into one column? You can't, because now they're next to each other. So you have these things that spread out underneath. There's the, the tufts of the lanthanide series and the, uh, I've, so just go back to your periodic table. You'll see these two, uh, rows of elements not sitting in with the other rows of elements.

• 14:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're still discovering elements, so.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  And sometimes creating elements.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. And we're creating elements.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are better at creating elements than nature is.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:23Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why, so we've got like 20, what are we up to? Yeah, uh, no, about 30 artificial elements now.

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're real.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're made, electrons, protons, neutrons, and they're sitting there, yeah.

• 14:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at us playing God. Mm-hmm. Now, well, that was a great answer to a really cool question.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a long answer, too.

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  Who cares? It was fascinating, that's all, no.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm saying.

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  We're about quality, not quantity.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so it's, uh, if you have issues with asymmetries in nature.

• 14:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you're in the wrong universe.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  You're in the wrong universe, right. But I'm sure that there is a, uh, someplace in the multiverse that is just right for you, Renee Douglas.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, just a quick thing.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, Isaac Newton was a big fan of God.

• 15:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As, as everyone was in the day.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not isolating him in particular in this regard.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But everybody was a God fan back then.

• 15:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he was.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  God, dude, such a fan. Oh, God, what's up? Such a fan, dude. Love your work. Friend me.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, love your work, right? So, a lot of Newton's writings, he's extolling the beauties of nature.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As the handiwork of God.

• 15:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in one place, he comments about the beautiful symmetry that the human form takes.

• 15:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Left and right.

• 15:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he has to then say, but only on the outside.

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

  Only on the outside, right.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because the inside.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  The inside is all messed up.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, there's not, it's, there's some things that are symmetric, but not really.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Right down to your heart, where one side is bigger than the other.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One side is louder than the other.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You only have one liver, and that's.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the inside of your body kinda looks like Jeff Bezos' eyes, you know?

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying.

• 16:06Chuck Nice?

  He's got like one tiny one and one big one.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, your organs are sort of mildly symmetric, and there's a lot of.

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  His eyes are so weird.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're not 50% left-handed and 50% right-handed.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  No, we're not.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so there's some asymmetries going on, that's all I'm saying.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he had to sort of accept that from his praise of God.

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he assumed that God was.

• 16:25Chuck Nice?

  That there's a plan.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And God planned, and the plan would be symmetry. Same with the Vitruvian Man that is widely associated with.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  What's Da Vinci?

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Da Vinci, right?

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, with the man with his hand sticking out.

• 16:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Left and right, centered on a circle. So, the idea was, your belly button, because if we're divine, then our form would be geometric. So, your belly button would be the center of a circle that you could trace with a compass.

• 16:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then your arms extend and your legs out would further trace the circle.

• 16:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this was the perfect human form.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  Had, had Da Vinci ever met a human being?

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Because there's no one who fits that.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the, he drew it, but he didn't come up with it.

• 17:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It long predates him.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so, uh, from what I've read, it long predates him. But, uh, so my point is, when you actually do that with actual people, belly buttons are not in the same place. People have longer arms, shorter arms.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, relative to their height.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you want it all to be perfect, because you have a philosophical urge for nature to be symmetric and perfect.

• 17:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that's what's driving you, history tells us, you're just gonna get the wrong answer.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, get over it. So, in physics, we get over it early when we first learn Maxwell's equations.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  Sweet!

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, that was a whole segment on one.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  On one question.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man, that ain't right.

• 17:45Chuck Nice?

  But that's why the show is good.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't right, okay.

• 17:48Chuck Nice?

  We could do cosmic queries forever.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, oh. You could do cosmic queries forever.

• 17:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's the one answering the question?

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad you think.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  Why do you think we could do it forever?

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad you think we could do it forever.

• 18:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's nothing for me.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more cosmic queries, the physics of everyday life.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Unlocking the secrets of your world and everything orbiting around it. This is StarTalk.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries. In this edition, it is the physics of everyday life. Chuck, I'd love me some physics of everyday life.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, so do I.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:43Chuck Nice?

  This is really good stuff.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do you have?

• 18:45Chuck Nice?

  Let's jump right back.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it right back.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  And this is Rafael Kadabak from Facebook.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You been practicing, Chuck? I'm very impressed.

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  Not at all. You know?

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what do you have?

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it probably says Smith there, as far as I know. But anyway, if we were visited by a more advanced alien race, what do you think they will admire most about humans? And with regards to our current scientific knowledge and understanding, what particular theory or law do you think they might disprove?

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's interesting.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  That is a very, that's a great question.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd like that, so.

• 19:23Chuck Nice?

  It would have to be.

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I may be cynical.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Cynical?

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May I?

• 19:26Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only with your permission.

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, go please, I'm all about, it's rare that I see you actually admit to being cynical.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think aliens more advanced than us would be impressed how far we've come.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  For being such dumbasses.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For being such.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  For being such dumbasses. You were trying to find out a very diplomatic way.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How far we've come. In spite of ourselves.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. That's what I said.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think they would have said, "We never thought you'd get there."

• 19:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you all been on Earth for thousands of, you've had what you call civilization for thousands of years.

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it took you 10,000 years of civilization before you even visited the moon. You could have been there a long time ago.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, um, but let me just be happy with what you did achieve.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  Um.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine if we'd landed on the moon 2,000 years ago.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm imagining right now.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine if the Romans had rockets.

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but I'm, no, I'm imagining right now, just where we are.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine if the Egyptians said, "Let's leave Earth."

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Well, they did. They were aliens.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's true. They were born aliens. They and aliens had a thing. I saw Stargate. Stargate.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Right, exactly. They, they had a wormhole, so we can't really, but anyway. No, think about it. Look at all the technology that we have right now. And if we were to take all of the energy that we put into trying to destroy one another and keep one another from advancing one, uh, uh, and we were to take all of that energy and just pour it into humanity.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not just pure physics energy, but intellectual.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  Intellectual, uh, you know, the political energy that we spend, that we expend.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A cultural, political, and financial capital. That we've used to destroy one another.

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine.

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  If, just take that.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine.

• 21:08Chuck Nice?

  And it was all pointed at the propulsion of the human race in a positive direction.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want me to quantify this?

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  You've been thinking about this.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. In today's dollars, you know what it costs to go to the moon in total?

• 21:23Chuck Nice?

  No, I don't.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hundred billion dollars.

• 21:25Chuck Nice?

  Who are you, Dr. Evil?

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Evil.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we went to the moon on a hundred billion dollars. The entire US interstate system is a hundred billion dollars.

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A hundred billion is one-sixth a single year's allocation of the military budget of the United States.

• 21:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's disgusting.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 21:57Chuck Nice?

  Ugh.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  You should have never told me that.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I used to judge that, but I stopped judging it. You know why?

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  How could you not judge that?

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you why.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Please do.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you why.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  Please, you should be judging that.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you why.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you tell me, because.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling you.

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  That's deserving of judgment?

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling you.

• 22:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are we, in sixth grade? I said it first. So, where does the budget come from? It comes from Congress. Where does Congress come from? We vote for Congress. So, so, well, what does it mean? What does it mean? That's very funny. That's what I'm saying. As an educator, I- Oh my god, I gotta stop judging it now. That's what I'm saying. Ugh. Dude. We are such a- The collective representatives of the electorate allocates this money. Oh my god. And they all agree to it. Raphael, you sent us the most depressing question ever. Well, wait, but I didn't finish answering. So I think they'll be happy. Yeah, we would have been on the moon 4,000 years ago. Right. Right, it would have been like cavemen next- Right. Chapter two. Right, we would have been on the moon just going, "Mm, ah, mm."

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fire. Right.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rock. Yeah. Okay, that's A. B, I think they would be impressed with our engineering ingenuities. Okay. So, because that's not the laws of physics now. Because they would, they would know all the laws of physics that we know. Absolutely. And then some. Oh, by the way, the laws of physics is not later shown to be false. When we demonstrate a new theory of the universe, it's because it has been experimentally verified multiple times by competing factions, and we say, "This is how it is. We're moving on from here." Okay. What can happen is you have a deeper understanding of the world that encompasses this smaller understanding that you have that works. That can happen, it happens all the time. Right.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all of Newtonian physics got subsumed into Einsteinian physics. Right. But Newton is not all of a sudden wrong Right. in all the regimes in which it was tested. So, I think they'll say, "Not that you're wrong. Oh, you think this is the full story, there's a bigger story. You got the Big Bang starting the universe? No, we got multiple bangs. We have higher dimensions. Right. We got this, we got that, and you're just one little cog in this much larger wheel." That would be highly enlightening for us. Right. On, on a scale of learning, and this is an unheralded point of discovery in the history of my field. In the 1920s, 1920, the year. Okay. Going into 1921, we did not know whether spiral fuzzy things in the night sky were just spiral fuzzy things in our galaxy

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  or entire other spiral galaxies in the universe. Wow. There are people alive today who-

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're alive before we knew that our galaxy was one of only a hundred billion in the universe. So, the idea that you're not alone in some concept, we've been hit with that multiple times before.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the astrophysicist, we'd be ready for it. We'd love it to death.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, there's some people who are kind of happy with their contained knowledge of what is and is not.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just have to get over it.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  Don't, don't make me think about something other than what I already think about.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other than what I already can think about and already can grok.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I've actually, I've actually accepted this.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This, correct.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. So, let's go to, um, okay, I'm gonna read this anyway. Uh, Kevin Miller from Facebook wants to know this. Assuming the Earth is flat. That's a big assumption, Kevin. I just love any question that starts off with, "Assuming..."

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, let's go there, let's, let's follow.

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  Assuming the Earth, but I know you're the-

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's follow, let's follow the reasoning.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  One of the things I like about you is that you'll take these and do something with it. Alright. "When the ice melts at the poles, where is all the water going to go?"

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no idea.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, because the Earth ain't flat!

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seemed to me it would spill off the edges.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  The edges, right? I mean, seriously, if the Earth were flat, it'd be like a table, you know, so...

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you spill some on a table, it goes, spills off the edge.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  It spills off the edge, yeah.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking, unless you build a dam.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Ah, so now the Earth is not flat, it's more like a pie dish.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:05Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got edges to it.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  It's got edges, mm.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "And beyond there be demons."

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Why do I feel like Jack Sparrow right now? "And beyond there be demons."

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Far, beyond far limits.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Alright, well, there you go, Kevin, there you have it. Alright, that's, um-

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pie plate.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  It's a pie plate, bro. That's, that's, that's all we could do for you. Let's move on to Nader's, uh, 19872 from Instagram. "How far away would a black hole have to be in order for our solar system to fall into it?

• 26:41Chuck Nice?

  I also have another question. Why are you so awesome? I love StarTalk and you are just one of my heroes."

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, yeah.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  No, that, that last part was for me, man.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Chuck.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know, did he really say that?

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm serious. That's, he was talking to you. I was joking, yes. He's, he's saying you are one of my heroes and I really love StarTalk.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, we appreciate that. And let the record show that you were reading that question, whether or not he appended it with that sentence.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, he didn't write it to me, so you don't know the questions.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't boost questions up just because you're like saying nice things.

• 27:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, we do boost questions up if you're saying nice things about Chuck Nice, because I'm the one that's reading the damn questions. You know to me, but...

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, thank you for those kind words.

• 27:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The...

• 27:30Chuck Nice?

  Now, the question, after the kind, or actually preceding the kind words, was how far away would a black hole have to be in order for our solar system to fall into it? I, I think what he means is that of how far, how close?

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so...

• 27:42Chuck Nice?

  Would it have to be is what he really...

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same, same idea.

• 27:45Chuck Nice?

  Same thing.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's not how black holes work.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Black hole is not some giant sucking machine.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Like my career.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm sorry, I'm laughing at my own...

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We love you Chuck.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you're a hero on our podcast, no matter what else is happening to your career.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  No matter how far in the toilet your career may be, Chuck.

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you get booed off this comedy stage last night?

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  No, actually, really good show.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A good show, very nice. Very nice.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  So, anyway, it doesn't work that way.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should a comedian be the one who judges whether the comedian has a good show?

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  No, yes, the comedian is always the one who judges. Because here's the great thing about being a stand-up comic.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Oh, you know.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you always know. And you can, you, you can...

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 28:30Chuck Nice?

  And I love young comedians, because they get off the stage and they immediately lie to themselves. You know, and they get off the stage and they look at you and they go, "Yeah, so that felt good, right?" And I'm like, "Why are you asking me? It felt good, it felt good. You don't need my permission for it to feel... You know you suck. You know you suck. What is your problem?"

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, the mentor.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No wonder no one comes to me for advice. Alright, anyway, back to Nader's 1987. Black holes are not some giant sucking machine. Okay. So, they have a gravity commensurate with their mass, like anything. You have gravity. Yes, I do. The moon has gravity, Earth has gravity, the sun has gravity. Anything with mass. Anything with mass or energy has gravity, because energy and mass are the same. Ah, that's right. So, you can ask, how much mass does, how much mass does the black hole have? And if it has a planet's worth of mass, it could just hang out in our solar system like another planet. Right. If it has a star's worth of mass, it might accrete planets to orbit it. If it has. Interesting. So. It could even have a galaxy's worth of mass. A galaxy's worth, we have a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you don't want to get too close to it, because there are places where they're no longer stable orbits. Then you'd fall in. Then you fall in. But, you can calculate what that distance is, and it's not too hard to stay away. Right. It's not that hard. Right. If we turn Earth into a black hole, it'd be like the size of a plum, last I calculated. So, and it would send it, and the moon would still orbit it. The moon wouldn't care. Wouldn't care. It's only responding to the, the mass and the gravity that it ex. So, what makes black holes interesting is that you can get really close to them, and get ripped apart and spaghettified. Okay, you can't get closer than Earth's surface to Earth's center of gravity. Okay? Okay. You'd have to shrink Earth. Right.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get closer to it, shrink it down to a plum, now you've been spaghettified. Wow. So, all the interesting stuff that happens with black holes is because you can get really close. Otherwise, you're hanging out where you've always been, you are perfectly safe, don't have nightmares about it. It doesn't do anything to this, like it never? Now, now, if, now, if I had Earth as a plum, if I took another planet, take Venus, made a black hole and brought it here. Right. And let go. It would fall through the earth and eat earth swiss cheese style as it bounced back and forth and it would systematically dine upon all the physical contents of the earth until earth plus venus became one.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  A big, right. So you'd have the merging of those two.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and it'd become like the size of an orange or something.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  So the black hole would actually increase in size itself.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physically.

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  Physically, the physical black hole would increase in size.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  If you would emerge two black holes.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It turns out to be linear with mass, so a black hole that's twice the mass will have twice the diameter.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turns out, if you do the math.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the diameter is the diameter of the event, event horizon.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got to say that.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  That sounds cool.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're out of time for that segment.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay, once again.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more cosmic queries on the physics of everyday life. Start talking.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, the physics of everyday life edition. 20 half.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on. This is...

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totalnerd52. Love total nerds.

• 32:13Chuck Nice?

  Total nerd.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Proud of it.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, as opposed to his...

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Partial nerds.

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yes.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or weekend nerds. I want the total 24/7.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I want a total nerd, not a quasi-nerd.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Uh, here we go. What degree can you do more with? A physics degree or a mathematics degree?

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics degree.

• 32:32Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Chuck Nice?

  Now, are you, are you biased?

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some things are objectively true in the world.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's say it another way. In spite of what it might seem like to your parents, if you choose to major in physics or math, both of them are highly employable by people who know and understand the brain wiring that emerges for having done so.

• 32:57Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mathematicians and physicists are problem solvers.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Engineers are problem solvers.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can see problems in ways others have not. And it's just that physics has more places to plug into the operations of society than does a mathematician. That's all. But in either case, you don't see either mathematicians or physicists as on the street begging.

• 33:28Chuck Nice?

  Begging, right.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll find artists, you'll find musicians.

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

  We'll calculate for food.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. We'll cite digits of pi or... Right, no, no, so...

• 33:37Chuck Nice?

  For pie.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For pie. Haven't had pie all day.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  Pie all day.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just can't you do.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's a reminder that there's certain professions that fundamentally plug in to civilization. And others that become a part of civilization because we choose it to. So we embrace music. We embrace art, the kind of art that is not otherwise self-sufficient. So I'm not talking about pop music.

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm talking about orchestral music that generally is performed in institutions that require...

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  Funding.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funding, yes.

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  And that funding normally comes from someone who gives a great deal of money to make that happen.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Because it can't sustain itself through the appetite of the public.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet, the city in which you find those offerings of art boasts that they have those offerings of art.

• 34:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in the catalog.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have this Philharmonic Hall.

• 34:36Chuck Nice?

  A Boston Philharmonic.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have this art museum. And we have all these institutions.

• 34:40Chuck Nice?

  That's what makes us a cosmopolitan destination.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So it's an interesting difference that we have art and science in the same phrase. I went to the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of whatever. Arts and Sciences go way back as a paired thing. We have Leonardo as the epitome.

• 34:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, actually combining the two.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And combined, so he's one of the greatest examples of that. So, I'm just saying, a society has to want to embrace its artists in order for them to manifest as a fully expressed, employed community. Whereas, financial forces can drive your interest in having an engineer or a physicist on staff.

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, Mayor Bloomberg.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Former Mayor Bloomberg.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, successful businessman.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Very much so.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very much so.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  Billionaire.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Multi-billionaire.

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  Like a real billionaire, not like some other people.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some other people you earn.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  I'm very rich, very, very rich. Now, when people tell you they're very rich, they're me.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They ain't.

• 35:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, they're me. Like, yo, don't look at that, I'm very rich.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's the thing, when he built his company.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could have hired MBAs who know their business, but that's not who he hired.

• 35:53Chuck Nice?

  Who'd he hire?

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He majored in physics and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He hired mathematicians, physicists, and engineers.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And would teach them the business side of the world, but he needed people who

• 36:06Chuck Nice?

  Problem solvers.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would go with gnashed teeth.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And attack a problem they've never seen before.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my wife was one of those earliest employees.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Get out.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She has a PhD in mathematical physics.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, I knew that, I didn't know that she worked for Bloomberg in the early days.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When she was there, Bloomberg had 100 employees.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  She got more money than you. Now I know.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, she was early in on that, and he recognized what she could bring to the table.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As others that she worked with, yeah.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, all right.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, go for it.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  Go, go, go, go.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either, do either. Do, if you're gonna pick one of those, pick the one you love and do it.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  And do it, okay, cool.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll be better at it than others, and people will beat a path to your door. All right, give me some more.

• 36:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Why haven't there been a greater number of advancements on solar energy, given it's literally a constant free source of energy?

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the source of the energy is free? But the devices to convert it into useful forms.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given the economics of what is going on right now.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has not yet reached that tipping point. So, right now, sort of the wealthy class that has the luxury of being green without regard to its impact on your pocketbook.

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're the first adopters of the electric cars and the electric this and the solar panels and the like. What is missing from the equation is how much our tax money throughout the last century has subsidized the oil and gas industry.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we built the roads, bought the car that now we put their gas in the... they didn't build the roads.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, the question is, can and should society subsidize the solar energy universe in the way we have subsidized?

• 37:57Chuck Nice?

  The fossil fuels industry.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fossil fuels industry.

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in doing so, would that tip the economics in the favor of solar panels and solar energy?

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  See, that's a great point, man.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, by the way, that was George, uh, Zeno Fatos, who actually, uh...

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that name, Zeno Fatos, oh, man.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  Uh, and by the way, yeah, tan... getting a tan is free. Uh, solar power is not.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so the sun's energy is basically limitless.

• 38:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the, um, also, you have to be able to transport energy.

• 38:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Move it from where it is to where you need it.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And solar power exists when the sun is out.

• 38:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's daytime, you know, so, where are you getting your energy at night?

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, you have to develop batteries with it.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, battery technology is still, is a century behind other technologies.

• 38:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's a, there's still some, uh...

• 38:46Chuck Nice?

  But wouldn't you see a proliferation of new battery designs and an improvement in battery life if you were to see the same burgeoning, uh, of, of, of solar power? I think one would drive the other.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly, except we already have a huge demand for bat... we're using more batteries today than ever before.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It used to be, I need a battery for my motor car, and so you go buy the battery, and then the battery would leak or run out, or you leave it, leave it on. The, the buying of batteries was a major thing in the day. Now, anybody's house has thirty batteries laying around.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And the batteries last longer than ever, and our... Machines, our, our devices that use batteries.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  Use them more efficiently.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Use them more efficiently.

• 39:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So we've, so batteries, we think batteries are improving at a higher rate than they actually are.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the demand, the, the energy demand.

• 39:35Chuck Nice?

  The energy demand.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even our flashlights are LEDs.

• 39:38Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Which means that they're using much less juice.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Okay. Well, listen, man, I, I can only hope that, uh, George, that, uh, what, what you wanna see actually happens.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, yeah. And, and so like I said, it's, it's an economics thing.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the day that economics tips, everybody will have solar panels on every horizontal surface in their life. It'll, it'll happen practically overnight. Cause that's how these things work. And in a free society, you, you, there's a limit to how much you can beat someone on the head to get them to, to spend more money for something that's almost as good or not quite as good as what they already have.

• 40:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or even if it's a little better, but if they can do it cheaper. So, most people wanna save the buck.

• 40:19Chuck Nice?

  That's true. That's, yep. That's why I don't mind that.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, right now, you can't give away an incandescent bulb.

• 40:25Chuck Nice?

  No, you can't.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  Because they, they cost you more money. I mean, if you're smart enough to know what you have.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no. So, so, so incandescent bulbs, so, no, the, they were, I think they're cheaper than a thing, but if you do the math on it.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  They cost you more money.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They ultimately cost you more money.

• 40:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you gotta throw them away. And it, and so, and they get hot, and everything.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Uh, well, they're really a heat source, not a light source.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. They give off more infrared than they do visible light.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  That's correct. Yeah, yeah. I, I think I learned that from you.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm just, that's how long we've been working together.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're primarily a heat source.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they're primarily a heat source. Yeah.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 40:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, Marco Blackwell from Facebook wants to know this with the advancements of science. Has there been any attempts to change any of the established rules, laws of physics? Laws of motion, thermodynamics, et cetera? Or is it once that it's a law and it's established that it just cannot be changed? So in other words.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were like 10% Captain Kirk on that one.

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  It just cannot be changed.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  Tell me, Spock, what is it with the laws of thermodynamics?

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once, once, okay, in the old days, we used to call them laws, back in the 19th century, classical, the, the, the pinnacles of classical physics, Newton's laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics. 20th century, we've loosened the word law, we don't use the word law anymore. Not because they aren't laws, just because we're a little more candid about the fact that what we say is a fundamental property of the universe may be a small part of a bigger understanding of the universe.

• 41:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas law implies, there we go, and but what we are discovering that is experimentally verified is not later shown to be false.

• 42:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a misconception that so many people have. They say, oh, there's a theory of, of, you know, quantum theory, that means that we won't be different. No, it is working, baby.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got this, okay? There's still some other things we can understand about it. There's still some frontiers. It may plug into a larger understanding, but the quantum theory that we have established, experimented on, and works, we are good to go. So, no, it does not change. It only expands.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  Ah, there's the, there's the rub.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  It expands.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our understanding can expand on that understanding.

• 42:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it doesn't swap out that understanding, once it has been experimentally verified, and that's, and so, and it, at that point, it elevates to the level of theory.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why I'm trying, I, I may lose this battle, but I, I'm trying to get people to not say, when they say, I have a theory about, no, you have a hypothesis.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  And it's probably not even a hypothesis. You have a feeling.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. You say, I have a theory, no, Einstein had a theory, you got a hypothesis.

• 43:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right, because a hypothesis, the-

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you have a feeling, that's another, that's another level. I got a feeling.

• 43:14Chuck Nice?

  I got a feeling, right. Because people say, I have a hypothesis, and I'm like, really? Is it educated?

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you really thought it through?

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  Have you really thought it through? Because that, yeah.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we've got two minutes left. What, how many, what do you got?

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, here's one. This is Haney, uh-

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You laugh in advance of the question. That's embarrassing for the person who asked the question.

• 43:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm not laughing at the question, I'm just laughing at that, okay, I'm laughing at the question. Uh, Haney Larm says this.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where?

• 43:38Chuck Nice?

  From Instagram.

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  What causes thunder?

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thunder, very good.

• 43:44Chuck Nice?

  I know, but it just seems so weird to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  Because you're an astrophysicist and there are so many-

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's physics dude!

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  It is physics, but I'm just saying, you're like, there's so much that you are associated with in terms of your expertise.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe this person knows everything else.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the only gap left in their knowledge.

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sure, so the, yeah, right, yeah. They know all about red shifting, but they don't know what thunder is.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay, by the way, I am not trying to disparage you Lauren at all, okay?

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  I mean, Haney, and that's his name, Haney.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so-

• 44:18Chuck Nice?

  What is thunder?

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here you go, okay? So during a thunderstorm-

• 44:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A rainstorm, a vigorous rainstorm.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water falls out of the clouds.

• 44:28Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And generally, those water droplets have a net charge associated with them, a net negative charge.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it is separating negative charges out of the cloud and putting it in the ground.

• 44:38Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a limit to how much of that you can get away with.

• 44:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the charges say, "We want to rebalance."

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  We need more charge.

• 44:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we want to un-

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, we want to uncharge?

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uncharge!

• 44:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? You are stripping negatives from positives, and that's not how they want to be.

• 44:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 44:56Chuck Nice?

  They want to be balanced.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They want to be balanced, so this builds up enough imbalance and it says, "I'm coming back to you, Elizabeth."

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Elizabeth!

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I'm coming to join you, honey."

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  "I'm coming back."

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I'm coming to uncharge." Okay, so those charges rise up.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they come out of the ground and they create a visible arc of light that we call lightning back up to the cloud.

• 45:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all lightning-

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  Comes from the ground.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -is either cloud to cloud or ground to cloud.

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not cloud to ground, all visible lightning, okay? So, up comes this, this very hot, extremely hot-

• 45:34Chuck Nice?

  Arc of light.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arc of light, okay? It is so hot-

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  That when you open and look into it, your face melts. It's beautiful!

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's beautiful!

• 45:44Chuck Nice?

  It's beautiful!

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beautiful!

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh god, we are such nerds, dude.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Such Raiders nerds here, okay? So-

• 45:53Chuck Nice?

  So it's so hot-

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is so hot that the air, the air catastrophically expands.

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. That's what happens in the cartridge of a bullet. Right. It gets hot. That's why it makes a bang. And so, and it expands catastrophically. The bullet comes out the side, the shell drops to the ground. Right. Okay, so anytime you rapidly expand, rapidly heat air, that's how a bomb works. Right. Rapidly heats air. That's how the nuclear bombs work. You rapidly heat the air, the air knows only to expand catastrophically at that point, and it's a shockwave. A shockwave. So it's not just, "I'm getting louder!" No, it's boom! Right. And it's that expanding air that you then hear as thunder. After the lightning. After the lightning. Right. And it moves at the speed of sound. Which means the lightning you always see first.

• 46:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I forgot, was it seven seconds a mile or something? It's some, some number of seconds per mile? So you can count how far away the lightning is and how far away that thunderclap was from you. And that lets you know how close the storm is. By the time delays. I saw a documentary once. Uh huh. And he's very concerned about the accuracy of the thing, and he had a thunderstorm out in the distance, and you heard the lightning exactly with the thunder. So at the end, the filmmaker was there in the room. I said, "Uh, why did I hear the thunder exactly timed with the lightning?" I first said, "Do you care about accuracy in your documentary?" "Of course, of course! Accuracy is everything." So I said, "Why did the light..." "Oh, well, we shifted the sound because it was too weird." Right, it's too weird to have them, right. It looks like it's out of sync. It looked like it's out of sync.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's because it is out of sync, dude. Nature made it out of sync. You know what's really cool? Uh, if you go see a, uh, well, a shuttle launch. Right. Uh, go back in time. I was gonna say, yeah. Or watch any launch. Any launch, okay. The, that's a catastrophic heating of the air. It's thunderous, and the closest you can get if you're a civilian is like three miles away. Mm-hmm. So you just see this thing take off, and it's total silence. It's total silence. Nice. And you see the shockwave, the front wave of the sound move. This is Florida, so there's a lot of, um, water. Water around here. So you see this ripple, moving towards you, and birds coming up. You still don't hear anything. It's still silent. Then you hear boom!

• 48:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it comes to you. So it's just fun to watch the sound come to you. Nice. It's just a fun thing to do that. But anyhow, so that's what thunder is. And because the arc is not a straight line. Right. It can bend. It'll take the most electrically expedient way back to the cloud. Makes sense. And it's not always a straight line. Right. It could be because it's wetter here and water absorbs, conducts electricity better than dry air does. Okay, so, um, so what you have here is you, if there's angles to the lightning strike. Mm-hmm. It's possible for you to be at the focus of two of those angles.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in other words, if there's a straight segment off to your right and a straight segment off to your left, then you have sound coming to you from two different directions. Ooh. And if they hit you at the same time, you get the snap, that crack of the thunder. Like it sounds like a paper tearing or the sky is tearing. It's an extra. Yeah. Magnification of the sound. It's my favorite thunder sound. Because you get multiple sound paths coming to you at the same time. Oh, I love it. Rather than just one, one. It's like.

• 49:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's this, that, that, all these different angles coming to you at different times, some of them hitting you at the same time. Cool. Chuck, we gotta end it there. Aw, man, that was a good one. Dude, always good to have you, man. It's always gonna be here. Love you, man. Love you too, man. Love you, Chuck. Love you, Chuck. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this brings an end to our Physics of Everyday Life, Cosmic Queries. As always, I bid you to keep looking out.