Cosmic Queries– Exoplanetary Exploration with Dr. Aomawa Shields

Exoplanets? Low Mass Stars? Goldilocks zones? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Negin Farsad explore the universe of exoplanets, science communication, and acting with astronomer and speaker Dr. Aomawa Shields.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and today we're gonna do cosmic queries with my co-host, Negin Farsad. Negin, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:28Negin Farsad?

  Oh my god, hello, thank you so much for having me, Neil.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello. So you, you, you're getting around. First you had this book, what is it? How to Make White People Laugh? What was the name of that book?

• 0:41Negin Farsad?

  Correct, it was, it's called How to Make White People Laugh.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remembered it, that's right. That's because you technically are not a white person, you're something else.

• 0:51Negin Farsad?

  Yes, I'm just like this, uh, bag of ethnic is what I like to call myself.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bag of ethnicity, okay.

• 0:58Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were born where?

• 1:00Negin Farsad?

  I'm one of the, one of these nice Iranian-American Muslims.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and talking about white people.

• 1:09Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, that's what, looking at America and figuring it out.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, don't even try, because we can't even figure it out, I don't know. Um, and also you're a host of, wait, let me remember, Fake the Nation?

• 1:24Negin Farsad?

  Oh my gosh, Neil, your memory is so good right now. Someone's taking their vitamins, yeah. It's Fake the Nation, a political comedy podcast, which you have also been on.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have been on it, and it's on SiriusXM, if memory serves.

• 1:39Negin Farsad?

  Uh, we actually just moved over to HeadGum, but we think very fondly of those serious days.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay, very good, and I enjoyed my time on that, and I just know that I haven't gotten a second invitation, that's all.

• 1:53Negin Farsad?

  You know, it's a very exclusive club, Neil, and we'll get to you when we get to you.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, we have, for Cosmic Queries, one of my colleagues. And I love it when we have one of my colleagues, because whatever astronomy I know, we're bringing them in because they know more of whatever it is we're talking about. So they're like, they're boosters for anything I could possibly do in the show. And this is Aomawa Shields. And I, and I, please help me pronounce your first name. Aomawa.

• 2:26Negin Farsad?

  That's it, Aomawa.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get it. I get a B+ at least for that. Aomawa. It's been a delight. We haven't, I haven't seen you in, in almost 15 years. Great to have you on the program. And to learn that over that time, you've become an expert in the search for exoplanets and the possible signatures of life. This is really hot stuff. And anytime there's any progress in that field, I am glued to the research papers just to, to figure out where you guys are coming from, where you are and where you're going. And we've got a Cosmic Queries focused on that. So I think we're all in on you there. So just let me get, get a little bit of your background here. You're an associate professor

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. Very cool. Beautiful campus there, by the way. And you're specializing in Earth-sized planets orbiting low-mass stars. I think low-mass stars are like very popular in the galaxy, right? They're more, we've got more low-mass stars than any other kind of star. So you're hedging your bets there, right?

• 3:37Negin Farsad?

  Wait, so if low-mass stars were on TikTok, would they be the viral sensation? That's 70%, 70% of all stars.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 3:48Negin Farsad?

  Now I understand.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how, that's how they roll. And we will add to that the fact that before she went on to get her PhD in astronomy, she got a master's in fine arts, in acting.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acting, acting. And so, well, how do you combine acting and modern astrophysics? You can use that theater background to help communicate science. And this is what she's been doing. And you've got a website here, it's called risingstargirls.org. I love it. It's promoting sort of interest in science among girls of all colors and all stripes. Girls have been sort of underrepresented over the decades, not only in astronomy, but all sciences. And so, this is wonderful and it's great to have you here. Au revoir.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Neil, for having me here. It's really an honor and I'm excited to hear the cosmic queries and to talk about my background.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I'll dip in to see how your background can inform or enhance what we know or what education steps you've taken over your career. Because I'm very much interested in that. I'm a big fan of the arts, capital A. So, you know, painting, sculpting, performing, writing. And to have you-

• 5:15Negin Farsad?

  Notice, notice, he did not say comedy. Just to point that out.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need a really capital A for arts, if I'm going to include comedy.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, au revoir. How has your website worked? How does it work mechanically? Someone logs in and then they see material there? Take me through an encounter that a girl might have with your website.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yes, so the Rising Star Girls is a program that I put together. It's been about six years now since it was officially a thing. I had started back in grad school doing outreach to middle school girls of color. And I would always have some kind of interactive component. I would bring them to the planetarium at the University of Washington, where I was a PhD student. And I'd show them a planetarium show and then we might do some kind of a project together, like making their own little planetospheres, star charts that they could take with them. And sometimes I would do a theater game with them. And I found that they really enjoyed that. And I think part of that was they-

• 6:28Speaker 02

  They knew they couldn't get it wrong. Um, middle school is that age where girls start to get quiet. They start to raise their hands less often, they.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where you lose them. That's right. That middle school. Oh, my gosh.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, they become more focused on on their appearance and less focused on how they think and feel about the world. And so that's the crucial age. Um, that's what the literature says. And and then, of course, girls of color, they're in jeopardy. Because on top of the the the age group issue, um, there are also young women of color and um, there's just not any role models, there are not many, in STEM for them. And so, um, I thought, you know, how can I put my theater background that I had um, together with the astronomy background? And help these girls realize that there is so much more to them than meets the eye.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Um, and that what they think and feel about the world and the universe is actually not just important, but critical to their involvement in learning about the universe. We didn't just want to pummel them with facts. Or they would have to regurgitate in class. We actually wanted to um, help them to feel connected to the universe and to that star or that galaxy or that planet they were learning about. In hopes that if they felt connected, for example, like by writing a poem about that planet or that star or um, drawing a picture about an exoplanet that could actually exist, making up a name for it, making decisions about whether it actually

• 8:04Speaker 02

  had life or not, um, that they could look up in the sky and say, that's my star, that's my galaxy, I wrote a poem about it. I, you know, to take actual ownership of what they were learning and that that in hopes that that would, once they and, you know, hopefully continue on in astronomy, that they would feel that connection and that that connection would stay put once the heavy math came in.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's been well known with, if you name something, it becomes a little more personal. And I, I I'm omnivorous and so, uh, when I buy a lobster and I'm about to cook it, I try to name it first. Just that I feel a little more deeply for it when I plunge it headfirst into the boiling water.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  This is exactly what I'm talking about.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is actually, it's the same thing. It's the same thing.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I was just thinking about that exact analogy.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but NASA, of course, names all their rovers and and there's a participatory dimension to that that I think goes very far in educational circles. But but wait a minute, you thought of, I read a little on your bio, you thought of making acting a career, but.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I did.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the universe.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  I actually kind of sort of did for a while.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean. Descended upon you. Oh, my gosh. So what pulled you back?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I always had a day job. I had, you know, I had started a PhD program right out of undergrad. And I sort of did that because that's what you did. And I didn't really, it wasn't really a conscious choice. That PhD program was in astrophysics and I had started it, did one year. But I was incredibly divided. I I um, I, people would talk about what movie they'd gone to see or the Oscars that were coming up and I was, oh, you know, I would perk up then. And but like the problem sets and the, you know, I was just, I I wasn't, I wasn't focused.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And. Weren't feeling it, weren't feeling it.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So and I didn't, I looked around and, you know, I did have an African American man who was my advisor. So there, I wasn't the only, the only person of color in the department, but I was the only student of color, the only woman of color. And I didn't see a lot of astronomers around who not only looked like I did, but sort of acted like I did. Like I had this thing where I really liked wearing makeup. I liked fashion magazines. I liked to wear nice clothes. I dressed pretty fashionably and I didn't really see that as much of a.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, the opposite, really. Just the opposite.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Really care about that?

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking it's kind of the opposite.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  So, so there were all of these things like, and, and, yeah, I.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Aomawa, what you did was you, you, you had a little checklist of all the things to make sure you didn't belong.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And I was looking, I was looking.

• 11:07Negin Farsad?

  I'm picturing you, I'm picturing like a Devil, Devil Wears Prada astrophysics edition.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  There you go. Oh, my God.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was always like, I was building a case from the moment I got there. And everything was like, yes, oh, yeah, check, check, check. These are the, these are the reasons why I shouldn't be here. And when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a stodgy, white, old male professor who said, "Consider other career options," I, I took him up on it. And it wasn't about it.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just to be clear, it's not that you intentionally did these things to be different. It's that these were part of who you were. And that identity did not have receptors in the environment where you were to get your PhD. And so that mismatch then sent you to an off-ramp. Is that a fair way to characterize it?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  I think that's fairly accurate. I mean, I can't blame it all on the outside forces. There was a lot going on internally that I take responsibility for. I think if I had known, really, really known the way I did 11 years later, what I wanted to do, there was nothing that would have stopped me from doing it. But I didn't, I didn't know that then. And I was very sort of on the edge of a precipice. Anything could have, anything could have tossed me over. And so I ended up going in the other direction and.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, okay, so you're, so you took this off-ramp and now you're a professional actor for a bit.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  But first I had to go to school.

• 12:42Negin Farsad?

  And let me guess, your parents love the idea of you going into acting?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Well, here's, here's the odd thing about it. They're both performers. They're both, they're both performers.

• 12:55Negin Farsad?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  And have been there entire lives, so, but the, but the answer is still yes. They were like, oh god. They didn't want that life for me. They were very excited about me having what they considered a much more dependable career as a scientist. Although it's certainly, as everyone who's a scientist knows, it's hard to get a job in science after you get your PhD. Um, those jobs.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if I, if memory serves, you also got romantically involved with an actor.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  I am, then there was no going back.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  There was no going back.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  But they were like, I think, I think they loved the idea of being able to say, even though they were performer, performer, having a daughter, they could say he was an astrophysicist was, was pretty awesome.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They gave him street cred at the parties. Yeah, very good. Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  But I burst that bubble and was like, I'm going back into the family business, so to speak. And I think that they were certainly fearful. You know, how's she gonna make a living? And, but they wanted me to be happy above all else. And so they've supported that. And yeah, I, I sort of, during that first year in that PhD program, I applied on the DL to MFA acting programs. I had done that during senior year undergrad.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the DL is on the down low.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  On the down low.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me. Okay. Just have, get, get the lingo. Okay, okay.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  But, and so I had applied to acting grad schools, actually along with astrophysics grad schools during, um, my last year at MIT, uh, in undergrad. But I hadn't got, I, I went for the fences with those. I applied to Yale, uh, The Globe at UC San Diego and, um, NYU.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So famous acting places, yes.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yes. And I hadn't gotten into those. And I was like, but I did get into astrophysics grad school, so I, I went. So when, the second time around, I, when I was like, I'm gonna apply again, I sort of spread the net more widely. And I rode these sort of secret buses to Chicago from Madison, Wisconsin.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the DL.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  On the DL. And um, applied and got into the MFA program at UCLA. And decided to defer from my PhD astrophysics program at Wisconsin Madison. And I moved out to LA and, and started acting school there. And I mean, I had like-

• 15:11Negin Farsad?

  Can I just say, it's just, you also seem like, I mean, what it sounds like so far is that you've been to a crap ton of school. Is that an accurate assessment?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  I'm collecting degrees.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yes. So now it's like, there's PhD, there's an MFA, and I think you do the terminal degrees. So you don't put the SCV out there.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but before we take a break, I just want to know, was it the North Star that called you back? What, what cosmic force said, uh-uh? Or was it, "Come back to us? We want you." Was it? The whisper of the wind through the trees in the, in the, in the moonless, cloudless night? As the universe poured from the sky back into your veins?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  It was smog.

• 16:06Negin Farsad?

  What?

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I handed you a poetic thing, you could have said, "Yeah, that was it." And we could have moved on.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Being able, I'm driving through the streets of LA to, you know, odd, audition after audition in these like, cold fluorescent lit, fluorescently lit rooms, casting rooms. And, and having my like, day job at, working for a cultural nonprofit. And, and every once in a while, my eyes like crane up through the windshield. And I try to see through, through the smog, through the clouds. And sometimes I'm able to see a couple stars, and sometimes nothing. But like, when I was able to see a couple stars, it sort of like, shot me back in my seat. Like, oh, that was another life.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  And then I pretend I hadn't seen it and just get back to like driving in gridlock and, you know, trying to get to my job and put my flyers for different cultural programs around the city and but I kept that kept happening and I thought someone asked me, a friend asked me like, did you miss astronomy? Because you could probably get a better paying day job doing that than your little cultural arts nonprofit or your temp jobs. I once pulled staples out of paper for a year and a half for a music publishing company that had to have all of their contracts scanned. They had to have them all scanned. So they had they hired three temps to sit in a room and pull staples out of the contract.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't scan documents that are stapled together.

• 17:45Negin Farsad?

  You just can't. Yeah, you just can't. That's great. You know, I just want to say as a still a comedian and actor, I still go to auditions and sometimes I look up into the sky and then I think to myself like I could really eat a burger right now. So very similar.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a different thing. But I still like the fact that you you had applied to premier acting schools and they rejected you. So I guess I'll have to go to astrophysics graduate school. I just love that. It reminds me there's a Gary Larson comic where Einstein was playing basketball, right? And the caption is, Albert Einstein was going to be a star basketball player until an ankle injury turned him to physics and then he became a physicist.

• 18:35Negin Farsad?

  Oh, my God.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got to take a quick break, but when we come back, more with Aomawa Shields and her the story of her life. And we're going to bring in some cosmic queries that tap her expertise on planets around other stars and the possibility of life on StarTalk.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. I've got my co-host, Negin Fassad. Always good to have you here, Negin.

• 19:44Negin Farsad?

  Oh, so happy to be here.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and we have with us Alma Shields, a colleague of mine at University of California, Irvine, and she specializes in planets orbiting stars in the search for life. And to me, that's the hottest topic in all of science, not just within astrophysics. And Negin, you've collected Cosmic Queries for her.

• 20:11Negin Farsad?

  Yes.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And I'm here to either just not say anything, or because this is all for you. But if there's something I think I can contribute, I will, but probably not. So let's jump right in.

• 20:27Negin Farsad?

  Well, we, actually, before we get into some of the more sciency questions, Giraj Petrovic on Patreon just asked, he wants to know, he talked about Alan Alda dedicating a lot of time and money and effort into educating scientists about how to communicate with the general public, and asked of you, how has your acting training helped you communicate with your students and with the general public about your research and discoveries? And has it helped any way in getting funding for your research?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Hmm, I love that question. Thank you for asking it. You know, when I first came back to grad school, so the second time around, I had, it'd been 11 years between my PhD program in astrophysics, the first one, and the second one, which I started in the fall of 2009. And I had my MFA in acting by that time. And, you know, I-

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're actually 70 years old.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  My dermatologist is fantastic.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  I had a trifecta of issues that made for fertile soil for the imposter syndrome to take root. I was an African American female in a field dominated by white men.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, the imposter syndrome is where you are actually qualified to do what you're doing, but your confidence doesn't measure up to that.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're left uncomfortable in that setting. Did I capture that right?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  That's right. So I felt like at any moment I was going to be found out for the fraud that I was. You know, African American female, older returning students. I was 34 years old the second time around, starting a PhD program with everyone else was straight out of undergrad. So they were like 22, 23. And I was a classically trained actor in an astronomy PhD program. And that last part is why that's the connection to this question because I thought at first that I had to sort of sweep that unseemly foray into the humanities under the rug. People in the department were like, they thought it was really cool lunchtime talk. Like, oh, you have this MFA in acting. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm here for astronomy.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  My very first journal club talk, a journal club talk is when for grad students, usually you present someone else's paper. So a paper that someone else has written about some astronomical phenomenon in like a 20 minute talk. You kind of do an overview of the paper, maybe show a few of the figures from the paper and then take questions. And my first talk, the first one that I had to give, it was like I went completely deer in the headlights. It wasn't the presentation part. That part I was fine with. I was a classically trained actor. I was used to getting up in front of people and talking. But what I wasn't used to was people talking back to me. Asking me questions. There's this thing in the theater called the fourth wall,

• 23:30Speaker 02

  which is an invisible wall between all of us performing up here on stage and the audience. And nobody breaks that fourth wall unless they're invited, like in some kind of call and response. So the fact that in a science talk, people can ask questions during a talk, after the talk, even before the talk.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Negin, let me just clarify here. What she's saying is people are up in your face.

• 23:56Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, so what I'm hearing is-

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just sitting back. It's like, wait a minute, is that-

• 24:02Negin Farsad?

  What I'm hearing is that acad- Right. Academia, this is what it sounds like. It sounds like a comedy club on a Saturday night at 10:00 PM where you got a lot of drunk hecklers. That's what academia is sounding like to me right now. Is that accurate?

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mine is the alcohol, I think.

• 24:19Negin Farsad?

  Were you essentially being heckled by astrophysicists?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  That's how I took it. That's how I took it. I had no, I see, and this is like, I came so far over the course of that five years because now what I see a science talk is, is it's a conversation. It's a discussion. People ask you questions because they actually care and are interested and care about what you've presented. In fact, not getting questions is worse than get, than, than, it's so much worse because that means people probably fell asleep or they just want to get to lunch. So it's actually-

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Negin, if someone finds an error in her work, first of all, that's good. Second, you want it to happen there.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Yes, for sure.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With people who are actually your, your local colleagues, right? And not out in the-

• 25:10Negin Farsad?

  So I take it there isn't a bouncer at the lecture halls that like ejects people who are asking too many questions?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no one that-

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There should be.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  There's no one that, that will protect you, you know, and, and I, and I certainly felt it felt like a verbal assault when I was new, when I was, you know, when I didn't, when I wasn't able to see the, the other side of it. And so I, I remember talking to a professor later about it and he was like, you know, take a moment, take a breath when someone asks a question. Take a breath. Let it land. And then if you have information, if you have something to contribute, say, you know, say it. If you don't, say, I don't know, I can look that up and get back to you.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  End of story. Like, it didn't have to be the big deal that it was in my head.

• 26:01Negin Farsad?

  Right.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  And so now, so many years after that, what I can say is this. My acting background absolutely does not only contribute, but it. It makes me such a much better scientist than I would have been without it. Because not only can I communicate. The significance of my research results and I can do it in ways that. People who are not scientists would understand. Without talking down to them. Without assuming they know things that they may not have decided to learn yet. Um, I know how to do that. Because of the acting background and I also know how to network. Cause that's all that acting is, is like you have to like introduce yourself at parties and like.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  I knew how to be a marketer and as a scientist, you actually are a business person. You gotta market yourself, you gotta get out and. Shake it, so to speak, and um, to get that next job or that next. You know, that.

• 26:57Negin Farsad?

  So wait, Neil. Neil, are you inspired at all to get an MFA in acting, hearing all of this?

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so here's what happened. I've been asked on occasion to give like cameo appearances and like, I'm actually, I'm in. Six, is it six, five or six? Feature-length films in very small cameo roles, playing myself or someone. Very uh, approximating myself. And if you look at the early ones. Uh, I suck. It was like, there's this gap between my first couple appearances and the next time. Cause people said, we're not invited in back at all. So, but, but this sign of baptism, rather than a formal training. I think I've gotten better at this over the years. And I have to agree with Omaa. It's, it is definitely infuses. Every aspect of how you interact with people and how you communicate.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your facial expressions, your body language, your, your gestures, how you're thinking about how the person is. Thinking about what you're saying. All that an actor has to think about when they're performing. And so, yes, I, I, I have to agree, but Omaa has, has got it. The formal training where she can dig deep into that far deeper than any place I ever have to go in my own profile. But let me add something because the question started off mentioning Alan Alda. I don't know how many people know, but Alan Alda used to host Scientific American Presents. It might have been Science Channel or Discovery Channel. And so he was, he liked science and he's always liked science.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he would walk into a lab and be just like a regular person asking blunt questions. And he noticed that scientists had a hard time figuring out how to communicate back with him. And he said, he wants to change that. And so he co-founded an entire school at the State University of New York Stony Brook on Long Island where their, their whole purpose is to train professors and graduate students how to communicate the science that is their profession. And, but, uh, Aoma was like doing this from scratch. And so you're the OG.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Well, I love, I love his center. I've spoken with, um, with people at his center. I love the, what they're dedicated to. Um, it's very close to my heart and it's, you know, there's a course that I teach now here at UC Irvine that's communication skills for physicists and astronomers. And it's, you know, not just how to put a talk together, but how to deliver that talk to a broad range of audiences. And the same thing, like Neil was saying, you have to, when you give a science talk, there's an objective, just like an actor in a scene on stage or in a movie. And it's not just say the lines.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  The objective might be, you know, to get the person to give me the money, to get all the way to the other side of the bridge. Like you have, in, in acting school, we learn you have to have an objective with every scene. It's the same thing as a scientist. What do I want to do in this talk? Do I want to inspire? Do I want to?

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, are you saying it's real when actors say, what's my motivation? That's a real thing?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  It's a real thing.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't want to believe that was a real thing, but you're telling me that's a real thing.

• 30:21Negin Farsad?

  Meanwhile, you ask Elmoa, what's your motivation at any point? And she's just gonna say smog, you know?

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. See, that was what motivated the whole thing.

• 30:32Negin Farsad?

  The motivation.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to get another question.

• 30:36Negin Farsad?

  Let's get it. Okay, so we have, actually, Zeki Majed Bradwinter and Chase Kimes from Patreon all asked about terraforming. And so basically, the question is like, how possible is terraforming with our current technology? Do we have enough public interest to actually pursue it?

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it.

• 30:52Negin Farsad?

  What do you think?

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it. And tell us what terraforming is first.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Well, my understanding of terraforming is that the principle behind it is that we would change, or we would be dedicated to the action of trying to change a planet, an existing planet's environment, atmosphere, ecosystem, to be more amenable to life as we would want it.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  So perhaps creating an environment, in the most extreme case, which I, you know, out of a Mars or a Venus, you might want to create an Earth. And how would you go about doing that? And so that you could create a planet where life could actually survive and thrive.

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way you began your answer there, it sounds like this is not in the near future.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's...

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You began saying, it's kind of, we think it could be like, maybe this is what we might think of doing. It sounds like this is not around the corner.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  The tentativeness that you picked up in my voice is more related to my, to be honest, moral stance on the concept of terraforming than any sort of scientific...

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you all getting Star Trek on it? Prime Directive do not interfere with...

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's more of a, it is more of a should we than could we question for me. And there are, beyond Star Trek, there actually are other scientists, Lucian Wolkowitz, who has an excellent TED Talk about this, this whole question of let's not use Mars as a backup planet. This idea of, yes, let's go explore, let's go explore so that we have environments as backup in case we screw up the Earth too badly to be repaired. And that is

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this like, is this like a dog peeing on all the trees that, that are out there? Is this the same thing?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I

• 32:53Negin Farsad?

  I feel like this is when I buy a pair of pants that are like clearly two sizes too small and I'm always like, I'll get there. You know what I mean? But I know I'm never really gonna get there. I just wasted money on a pair of pants, you know?

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's wishful thinking. But, but, but what is the morality if the, the, okay, wait, so let's unpack this. It's one thing to say, why are you making Mars a backup plan? Why don't you just tend to Earth as we should? So that's one moral posture. Another posture is, uh, these other planets, they might have life of their own and we're just taking over. But if you confirm that they don't have life of their own, what's your, what's your problem? What, you got any problem? You got a problem with that?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Hmm, interesting question.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if, if the planet is sterile, then who cares if you pitch tent there?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd have to think more about that. Uh, there is an entire planetary protection department at places like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's JPL, that is devoted to this, this, like, that question of, we make sure that we don't, we don't bring life with us to someplace where we're looking for life and think, oh, we found life, but the life we found was the life we brought with us.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, somebody sneezed on the detector. Right, right.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  And also if we got there to make sure that, you know, that we're, that our detection equipment is, um, robust enough to be able to pick up on the life that we would imagine might be there. But here's the thing, how would we, how could we be sure that a planet absolutely, unequivocally was completely sterile and had no life or promise of life evolving on that planet?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Such that we could then shape it and mold it however we want.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you could just sterilize it yourself?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one way. And you know, actually, I mean, I have people very close to me feel feel quite differently about this. My husband and I have debates about this all the time. I think he would take that stance of like, yeah, if there's not life on there, why? But the thing is, life as we know it might be very different from other life. Life that doesn't have water as its primary solvent. Everything on Earth, everything from the tiniest microbe to the largest elephant, everything requires water.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw a cool comic where two aliens crashed in the desert. And they're like crawling along the dunes and they're saying, ammonia, ammonia.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, there could be some other, other kind of solvent that we would have no way of or had not even thought about, much less thought about enough to form formulate a plan to create a detector that might be able to pick up on that in some way or as, you know, spectrum, spectrometer or something. So I, I think it'll be very difficult.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're no fun. You just want to fix Earth. You know, that's not fun at all.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Well, I'd like to fix Earth and I'd like to explore for the sake of exploring, not for the sake of changing to fit our standards or what we, what we think we would need.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Nikki, we got to take another break. When we come back to our third segment, we might have to go into a lightning round so we can get more of those questions in. You're watching or listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries. And this is all about the search for life on exoplanets when we return.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Jacob Fisher, C O C U A Hufganga, and Thomas Cochran. Guys, without you, we couldn't do this show. So we are very grateful. And anyone listening who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Startalk Cosmic Prairie Edition. We're talking about exoplanets and the possibility of them harboring life with one of the world's expert on that very subject, and it's Aomawa Shields. Aomawa, welcome to Startalk. And Nagin, of course, my co-host, my guest co-host for this. And you've got all the questions with you. But before we go into that, Nagin, how do people find you online?

• 37:39Negin Farsad?

  Oh, my gosh, you can find me at Nagin Farzad, N E G I N F A R S A D. And

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything separating your first and last name?

• 37:47Negin Farsad?

  No, just right through on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter. And oh, oh, the fun you will have reading through my things.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be the judge of that. Okay. And Aomawa, what, what, other than your website, where you're, you're encouraging girls to rise up to their fullest potential, how else might we find you on social media?

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, you can find my faculty website at just Google UCI and my name. You can put in my first name only, Aomawa, and I should come up.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good. That'll find you anywhere in the world.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A O M A W A.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aomawa. Yeah, that's all. So you can just drop your, drop Shields. Who needs Shields? We have, we have like Prince, Madonna, Cher.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  I've thought about it.

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aomawa. Negin, let's start doing, that's how we'll do it with her from now on.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Okay. And then my Twitter handle, my Twitter handle is also my first name only, at Aomawa.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it should be. Okay. So Negin, let's, let's see how many of these we can knock out in this third and final segment. And by the way, I think all these questions, we're now only taking questions from Patreon, from our Patreon support. So if you want to be able to ask a question, you know, jump on in.

• 39:06Negin Farsad?

  Join the Patreon. Well, Michael Mayne, one of your members, asks, "It is my understanding that volatile magnetic fields of red dwarf stars periodically cause large star solar flares, which adversely affect planets within the star's Goldilocks zone. Is it possible for life to survive on these star-blasted worlds?" I didn't understand that question at all. This is where you're training as an actor.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I was gonna say, my response is gonna say, "Take that, Omar. What do you think of that?" Because you're studying low-mass stars, which are cool and red, and they're very susceptible to flares and things. So how do you get out of that one? I think we backed her into a corner, Negin. So let's see what happens.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do my best.

• 39:50Negin Farsad?

  Oh, I feel it.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  This is a very popular question that I get at science talks, which I now welcome instead of fear, as we talked about before. I love the questions. And yeah, so the one thing about these low-mass stars, these red, cool M-dwarf or red dwarf stars, they have a lot of advantages. They're 70% of all stars. It's easier to detect planets around these stars. They live forever, like even forever, forever compared to regular stars.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like trillions of years.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Trillions. So no red dwarf stars have ever died. That's how long their lifetimes are. Their lifetimes are longer than the current age of the universe. So no stars, no red dwarf stars have ever died.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it seems to me you could evolve some badass creatures if you were around for that long, right, on a planet.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's the other, another advantage is that they would permit long time scales for both planetary and biological evolution. But when they have these long lifetimes, that means that this, like, so all stars are really active when they're young. And think of this as like a terrible twos phase for those who have kids. I have a daughter who's three and a half and like, yeah, her terrible twos phase is still going on. But the terrible twos phase for red dwarf stars can last as long as a billion years. That's some terrible twos phase. And during that time, the planets around these stars in

• 41:32Speaker 02

  this so-called Goldilocks zone, habitable zone, that region around a star where a planet could be not too hot or not too cold for water to stay liquid on the surface. That's what we call the Goldilocks zone. Planets in that zone could be pelted by all of this high-energy radiation during this terrible twos phase. And that could threaten the atmospheres of these planets. It could threaten biology. We know that, for example, UV radiation is harmful to biology. That's why we wear sunscreen. But think of it as like UV radiation on steroids for life on a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. And that could be, but I'll say that,

• 42:15Speaker 02

  so that could be bad, for sure. And that's certainly one of the largest disadvantages that people have brought up for life orbiting.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I feel a butt coming.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  But if you're, we know that there's tons of life in the ocean. So you could still have life doing its thing and being nice and sheltered from UV radiation if it was at the bottom of the ocean, or even just a couple of hundred meters below the surface. And, you know, there's that terrible twos phase, even though it lasts as long as a billion years, it doesn't last forever. And it could be that atmospheres are thick enough, for example, to withstand that radiation. And we've done some studies to show that, under certain circumstances, you might not, for example, deplete an entire ozone layer by

• 43:05Speaker 02

  that high-energy radiation pelting the atmosphere. You could still have some leftover. So it depends, is the short answer to that question.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So it's not as bad as, so it is real that these are threats, but those threats don't exhaust all possible ways you could survive them.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Keep it going. Negin.

• 43:30Negin Farsad?

  All right, Charles Malouf asks, "If Earth was about to be destroyed, and you had to board a ship bound for another planet where you would spend the rest of your life, which destination would you choose at the ticket counter? And you should assume there's already a habitable facility there and travel speed is a significant percentage of C, so you don't age much from the journey."

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They got this all figured out, huh? They sure do. They sure do. So, Aomawa, what is your favorite planet? That's really what that comes down to.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, it does.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  I have a soft spot for a planet called Kepler 62F.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  And I say that wistfully because this planet is 1,200 light-years away. And so it's very unlikely that...

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're leaving the solar system for this destination. Was that allowed, Negin, in this setup?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  We'd have to, we'd have to. We're going to another... Oh, I kept thinking exoplanets, but it could be...

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because you have exoplanets on the brain, but that's okay. We'll take it.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  They said, okay, so it could be, I guess it could be within our solar system, like a... Yeah, it's still a good one.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, give me both answers. So in the solar system, what would it be?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Well, Jupiter's moon Europa is certainly a place that everyone is excited about, and I've always loved because we're fairly certain that there is an ocean there. Except the ocean is below potentially kilometers-thick ice. So a very, very thick ice shell on top, and then a globally salty ocean.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Aomawa, you're thinking about, you're thinking like a scientist, all right? You're thinking, you go there because that'd be cool to study it. It sounds like he just said, "Where do you want to go to live?"

• 45:07Negin Farsad?

  Yeah, where are we hanging out?

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where are you going to hang out?

• 45:09Negin Farsad?

  Where are you brunching? Like, where are you doing girls' weekends? Like, what, you know?

• 45:16Speaker 02

  On another planet.

• 45:18Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  I always think about that on our planet. It's funny, I...

• 45:25Speaker 02

  I, ever since I had a child, it's like I don't want, I don't, I wouldn't wanna leave. Like, I wouldn't wanna leave to go to-

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring your kids with you! And then, and if you can survive them saying, "Are we there yet?", you know, then it'll be fun.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm gonna choose, I'm gonna choose Neptune, cuz it's my daughter's favorite planet. And she, she loves it cuz it's blue.

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  Um, and we haven't talked about ammonia and how that does that and all that, but just because it's blue, and I think that'd be fun. Um, and then-

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would take any moon of Saturn, cuz then you can look up and see Saturn in the night sky.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, gorgeous, gorgeous.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's gotta be beautiful. So tell me more about Kepler 62L?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Kepler 62F is this-

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, F?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a 1,200 light-years away. It's one of a five-planet system orbiting this, this K star. So a little bit, a little bit cooler than the sun, not as cool as a red dwarf star. Um, and it's really, it's one of the first planets that we were able to, my team was actually able to look at how the gravitational interactions between this planet and, and its siblings. So this planet is not alone in its system. It's got four other siblings that are also revol-, you know, going around Kepler 62, its, its parent star. How those interactions, how they can push and pull on each other, and how that affects the climate of this planet.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  And that's what I study, is how the, the climate of exoplanets, um, is determined by a myriad of factors, including how planets push and pull on each other. And so this was the first time-

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're biased cuz like you studied the damn thing.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  I did.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You take ownership. You've already planted the flag, the Aomawa shields flag. That's why. Okay.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so I'd love to be able to go and see and test some of the theories and predictions we made, um, on this planet.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. Again, thinking like a scientist, not just hanging out on the beach.

• 47:25Negin Farsad?

  How much would you, I know, that's all I'm thinking about. How much would you age though going to that planet, to that exoplanet?

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, we're assuming this question said a few percentage, a few percent of the speed of light. I mean, if we, if we were somehow able to obtain light speed, it would still take us 1,200 years to get there and 1,200 years to get back. So we'd be pretty-

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you wouldn't age, but we'd all be long dead and all you, everyone would have forgotten about you if you come back to Earth.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  That's true, that's true, yes.

• 47:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just go and just don't come back and you're, you're cool, you're fine.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Negin, keep them coming.

• 48:05Negin Farsad?

  Here we go. Chaz Jenkarelli says, "When looking for other habitable planets, do we also look for signs of other life that's not carbon-based? I know silicon-based life has been talked about, but curious of the signs of other-based life is easy to scope out." I love this question because I'm always like, are you looking for carbon and then also like gummy bears and also like what, I mean, what is the list of the things that you're looking for, you know?

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and how biased are we in this, in these criteria?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  We're very biased. I mean, our, our N, in scientific parlance, our N is one, meaning we have one example of a planet that we know is habitable. Earth, that's it. And so we're, we're using everything we know life needs on Earth as our metric for where else to look for life, what to look for on those planets. But that's all-

• 48:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is where the water bias comes in, right? Because we all need water.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's three-

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're saying, well, we need water, so clearly everybody else needs water.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yep. And there's three things, there's three fundamental requirements that we've identified that life needs on Earth. And it's liquid water, it's an energy source, and in some cases, that's the sun, in other cases, it might be just chemicals for life that's underneath, at the bottom of the ocean and doesn't have access to sunlight. So stellar or chemical energy and some sort of environment to form complex organic molecules from like

• 49:39Speaker 02

  elements essential to biology like sulfur and phosphorus and oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and hydrogen.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that environment would have to be like the right temperature and the right pressure to sustain big molecules to experiment and make anything complex.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  This is why water is the most critical of those three, because-

• 49:57Speaker 02

  A terrestrial planet by nature has some kind of energy source and the basic building blocks in some form that are needed for life, but what isn't as common is liquid water. And you can see that really in our own solar system. And that's what we know all life on Earth needs is liquid water. And so we, we use that as our, you know, as our criterion. But as this question points out, it is limiting, because there might be other ways. And there are astrobiologists, and an astrobiologist is someone, it could be an astronomer, but it could also be an oceanographer, it could be a geologist.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Astrobiologists are very interdisciplinary. They're using their primary field of expertise to address questions related to life elsewhere, to answer the question of how, you know, are we alone? What's the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe?

• 50:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Negin, I want to find a planet that doesn't depend on water, that it, that it depends on wine. That would be interesting.

• 51:06Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And grapes are a big industry there. Well, actually, wine is mostly water, of course. So I, I kid. I kid. So Negin, we got to go, it's serious lightning round now. So, I'll, I'll, you've got to answer questions in one word or one sentence at most.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. Yes.

• 51:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Negin, go.

• 51:27Negin Farsad?

  Shayna Briscoe asks, is the event horizon of a black hole static, or does it vary with an object's ability to produce thrust away from the singularity, like singularity? Basically, are they all wobbly, or are they perfect spheres?

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Um, I'm a planet person. Thanks.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I can address parts of that. If the black hole is rotating, the event horizon is not a sphere. It takes on other shapes that in some cases resemble a donut. So that's all. It's the rotation that will alter the shape of the event horizon. Otherwise, it's just going to be a perfect sphere around the singularity.

• 52:09Negin Farsad?

  Okay, Heidi Wagamans asks, "Are we able to get to other habitable planets if the universe expands so fast?" By the way, Heidi is from the Netherlands.

• 52:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Yes, the universe is expanding. However, we, especially because of recent times, we now have a new mission, a relatively new mission, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. We call it TESS for short. It's the successor to NASA's Kepler mission, which stared at one patch of sky for about 10 years and just kept taking pictures, looking for planets that passed in front of their host star from our viewing angle. And we actually looked, we saw little dips in the light of the star when the planet passed in front of those stars. So TESS is actually an all-sky survey, and it's looking at stars in the nearby

• 53:07Speaker 02

  solar neighborhood. So because of that, we're finding a lot more planets, first off, around these cool, small, red stars, because they're the most abundant stars in the solar neighborhood, anyway. And those planets are much closer to us. They're going to be easier to follow up on, to look at with next-generation telescopes, and hopefully, one day, to try to journey to.

• 53:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that wasn't a one word or a one sentence.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  I couldn't figure out how else to do it.

• 53:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, the expansion of the universe, our galaxy will hang tight for a while, even in the expanding universe. So I think we're okay. And it's great to hear that we're discovering many more that are nearby, in case we're going to make that escape list.

• 53:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Round up the billionaires and we'll escape.

• 53:58Negin Farsad?

  Keep the beach destinations in mind when you're putting together that list, you guys.

• 54:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's get one more.

• 54:03Negin Farsad?

  One more. We have from Ashley Kozdorff, a Floridian. I've been wondering what a black hole does for the universe from a circle of life aspect. Most things on Earth are recycled, however, black holes seem to only consume.

• 54:20Negin Farsad?

  They're not, yeah, black holes aren't recycling. What's up with that? Are they, are they the, like, the landfill of the sky or what? Did I, is that accurate?

• 54:31Speaker 02

  That is so funny. I just watched, I was just watching Loki, the Marvel show Loki, the other day. And there's this whole-

• 54:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Loki's Thor's brother.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Thor's brother, yeah, the god of mischief. But he's sort of taking a moral turn in this. I won't give it away. But there's this whole notion of like what comes after and, and this creature that, this void that kind of consumes all matter. And I mean, I think the answer, my, I guess it's my three-word answer would be, I don't know, and I believe we don't know.

• 55:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so the two I don't knows that a scientist can utter, one of them is, they don't know. And the other I don't know is, no one knows because we don't have the answer yet at all, no matter who you ask, so.

• 55:14Negin Farsad?

  But I love how like basically this was a real, this is really judgmental towards black holes. And we haven't, I haven't heard very many approaches to black holes that are like, you know, they just consume, consume. They don't care about anybody else, you know?

• 55:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I think, so here's the issue.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Selfish black holes.

• 55:34Negin Farsad?

  Selfish black holes.

• 55:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's how they win the day. The reason why we recycle is because we don't want what we just use to, to litter the environment. That's the only motivation to recycle, as in addition to whether the material is, is, is renewable, right? But that's why, if it's, if it's not renewable, you get to use it again and you don't, and you don't discard it on the, on the, on the shoreline. A black hole- Eats it, you will never find it on anybody's shore after that. You won't find it anywhere. It's not in landfill. You're right, and again, it is its own landfill.

• 56:12Negin Farsad?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's, smells don't come out. It's not unsightly. It's not a, not in my backyard thing. In fact, everyone should have a black hole in their backyard.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Well, and there's a black hole at the center of every galaxy, right?

• 56:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe that's, that's it. Oh, my, here's what we do. So when we have galactic federations, that's the garbage chute for all the trash that we collect in the galaxy. I like it.

• 56:41Negin Farsad?

  Can I also just say, we don't know that if in black holes, there isn't like a giant Etsy shop that's selling repurposed, repurposed from stars, cute handbags.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Are you sure you wanted to throw this away?

• 56:57Negin Farsad?

  You know?

• 57:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, some models for the interior of black holes have them open up an entire other space-time continuum so that, in fact, things that fall through intact could emerge on the other side, separate from our universe, entering a whole other universe created by the black hole itself. And I'm surprised that, I, I, there's not as much science fiction that has exploited that understanding of black holes as I think should. But anyhow, guys, we've got to call it quits there. I, I, oh my, this, you've been away too long, okay? And delighted to have you. This is a very popular topic, and we have a lot of interest, deep interest in this, and maybe we can get you back on and continue it.

• 57:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially when, when Tess, is Tess, what's the status of Tess right now?

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Tess is flying, and they've actually found many potentially habitable planets now.

• 57:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe we can get sort of an update on Tess. Yeah, because we didn't specifically talk about Tess in this episode, but transiting Explorer Survey Telescope?

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

• 58:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think we'd welcome just an update on what some of the findings are from that next generation of our search for exoplanets. So, oh my, thank you for being on StarTalk.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me, everybody.

• 58:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and Negin, always good to have you.

• 58:25Negin Farsad?

  Oh my God, thanks so much for having me. I learned something today.

• 58:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's what this is about.

• 58:30Negin Farsad?

  I learned that black holes are like real jerk-offs. That's what I learned.

• 58:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Negin, the way you said it, so other times I did this, I didn't learn a damn thing. That was kind of, you copped an attitude there, admit it.

• 58:45Negin Farsad?

  Well, Alma really used her skills on me. I really, you know, I really felt like I got something.

• 58:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.