Live at the Bell House (Part 1)

StarTalk Radio brought science in the house at the 4th annual Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival, with Kristen Schaal, Scott Adsit, Eugene Mirman and our very special guest Alan Alda.

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. This week, we're featuring our first show performed in front of a live audience at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York.

• 0:36Eugene Mirman?

  It is now my very great pleasure to introduce the host of StarTalk, ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Hayden Planetarium from the Museum of Natural History, Neil Tyson!

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eugene, you've got your guests.

• 1:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, from Flight of the Conchords and The Daily Show, Kristen Schaal.

• 1:10Eugene Mirman?

  And from 30 Rock, Scott Edsitt.

• 1:20Eugene Mirman?

  And Neil?

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now Eugene, I was not going to go into this empty-handed.

• 1:23Eugene Mirman?

  I know.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want you to know. I would like to introduce you to my special guest. This person really needs no introduction. Join me in giving a very warm welcome to Alan Alda.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  You know, they're...

• 2:03Speaker 02

  They're yu-yulating.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they know when they're in the presence of royalty.

• 2:09Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I gotta tell people what this guy's been up to. We all remember him as like Hawkeye on MASH, of course. But, the guy has devoted like, half his life to trying to bring science to the general public. He hosted Scientific American Frontiers for PBS.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's written and performed in plays that involve science themes. You even performed as Richard Feynman in a play.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's audacious!

• 2:39Speaker 02

  It was wonderful, yeah.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, most recently, you wrote a play about Marie Curie.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Right, that's gonna open in Los Angeles in November.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you wrote that play?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I wrote it, yeah.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, you're not Marie Curie in the play.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  I'm not Marie Curie.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's got a great title. Tell me the title of this play?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  The title of the play is "Radiance."

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Radiance, that's good.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  "The Passion of Marie Curie."

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is beautiful.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Because she was passionate about science and about the men she loved. And it's an extremely dramatic story.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's get started. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. We are broadcasting live... From Brooklyn.

• 3:24Eugene Mirman?

  You briefly didn't know where you were. You were like...

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I was trying to say "live from the Bell House," but no one would know that from like around the world.

• 3:32Eugene Mirman?

  They will now.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will work my way, live from Brooklyn, at Bell House. Yes.

• 3:40Eugene Mirman?

  In beautiful, super-funded Guanas.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, let's just go right off the bat. Let's just talk about aliens, okay? I've been angry with Hollywood aliens. Because they've always had like, two arms, two legs, a torso, a neck, a head, eyes. Maybe they have four fingers instead of five, or antennae, but they still look humanoid. And we have life on Earth with whom we have DNA in common that looks less like us than Hollywood aliens do. That's how you know Hollywood does not have the creativity that the actual universe does. And so if somebody-

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Have you ever seen a movie written by Pluto?

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Of course not, no wonder. The way you talk about it.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you think I diss Pluto?

• 4:34Eugene Mirman?

  There's a movie, I think from the 80s, where a cat crash lands on Earth. Is that at all what you mean?

• 4:41Speaker 03

  There's also... I think there's another one about a duck, not from here.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the problem.

• 4:53Eugene Mirman?

  Go on.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The aliens always have faces. And a face is a vertebrate thing to have. Did you know this?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  A face is a what?

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a vertebrate thing to have.

• 5:06Eugene Mirman?

  Is that good or bad?

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so all vertebrates-

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, what does your spine have to do with your face?

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's a good question. Everything that has a spine, has a face.

• 5:16Eugene Mirman?

  Is there more life on Earth that has a face, or doesn't have a face?

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's way more life on Earth that is faceless. Worms, trees, uh-

• 5:24Speaker 02

  All the stuff under the Earth. There's way more stuff living under the Earth than on top of-

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The latest calculations have shown that there is more biomass, the total mass of living things that exist below our surface than crawls around on its surface.

• 5:39Eugene Mirman?

  How many of them have gone into space on purpose?

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just curious. Okay, uh, none, yeah, that's right. So... Zing!

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might argue that in order to build a spaceship...

• 5:57Speaker 02

  You need a face.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need a face.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  First of all, you might point in the wrong direction.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you need like fingers and a face, you're saying.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  I mean, you got this worm that keeps like trying to get into outer space and he keeps going deeper and deeper.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He got the wrong direction, he doesn't know, right.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  I think Star Trek has taught us that the only difference between us and other intelligent life forms is forehead design.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Prove me wrong, right now.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what is odd is how many people across the galaxy who are not human that Kirk could have sex with.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  He would have sex with that worm you were talking about.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, we've actually tried to make contact with aliens. The very first effort to do this was the Pioneer spacecraft, launched in the early 1970s. Why would that be distinguished to among all others? We gave it enough speed to leave the solar system entirely and never come back. Given that that was the first spacecraft for which that fact was true, we, the people who did it, we, we, my people, my community of astrophysicists... NASA?

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the side of the Pioneer spacecraft was a plaque with sort of iconography of who and what we are, and it included the return address of our solar system.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  That's the dumbest thing we ever did. That's like putting on your Facebook page, "I'll be away for the weekend."

• 7:30Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, when people visit, in our brief experience on Earth, if a community is visited by other people, the other people are the ones who colonize you.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's kinda how that happens. I did it to Brooklyn.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask you guys, are you guys worried about giving our return address to aliens?

• 7:58Eugene Mirman?

  That guy is.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm alright with it, as long as, you know, if they're not gonna have a face, maybe they can just be like light beams.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  That'd be cool.

• 8:16Eugene Mirman?

  I feel like if there's someone who comes here, it's not gonna be because we wrote like, "We love the Doors," or whatever we did in the 70s.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, actually, wait, wait, actually...

• 8:26Speaker 03

  And if they can figure out an address, which is like weird.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would, it's kinda weird. It was actually our coordinates measured by the distances that we are from all of the pulsars in the galaxy.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Oh, that's accurate. They will find us.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to know that we were pointing to pulsars.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  You know, that accounts for the address you gave me to get here tonight.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I gave him the wrong address.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  I went to the whole other place, and I didn't know. I should've judged it by where the pulsars are.

• 8:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, Union Hall was like, "Alan, all those ready to party?"

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sent him to Union Hall by accident.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  You know, it wasn't just the Doors. We didn't put the Doors on it.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'll tell you what happened. So, so this experiment was so well received that the next two spacecraft to exceed the escape velocity of the solar system, that's what that's called, the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts, we not only reprised the return address, we also cut an album on the side of the craft. An album, uh, these are, it's a disc with grooves in it. And...

• 9:35Eugene Mirman?

  We're all DJs we know.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so on that album, it contained sounds of our species. The heartbeat, the sounds of whales, whatever they do.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  My whale has a cold.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For all you know, you could've just like pissed off a whale with that sound. You know, you have no idea what you just said to them. So, so it had all these sounds. It was an attempt to bring some of our culture to them. It even had Beethoven and Chuck Berry on it, yes.

• 10:16Eugene Mirman?

  Were they jamming together?

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's...

• 10:19Eugene Mirman?

  It was the first mashup.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're trying to be nice. And that project was spearheaded by Carl Sagan and his collaborators. So, Carl Sagan, the man.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  These aliens are not gonna come here. Because the first thing that they saw or heard were our ra- First of all, they got all our television shows. Would you come here?

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to say- So, what he's saying is, he's got it right. Our radio signals, the ones not sent on purpose, the first ones to leave Earth were our TV signals.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And they've been out there for years.

• 10:53Eugene Mirman?

  So, they might get here and just say, "Where is Hawkeye?"

• 10:58Eugene Mirman?

  "I want to meet Hawkeye."

• 11:01Speaker 02

  First of all, the first thing they heard was Orson Welles' radio show about the War of the Worlds.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  And they'd listen to that. They're not gonna come here. They think the place is overrun with tourists already.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's also out front there is Howdy Doody and early episodes of The Honeymooners.

• 11:23Eugene Mirman?

  And they're probably not afraid of Mikhail's Navy.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot all about that show. How do you?

• 11:33Eugene Mirman?

  You're welcome.

• 11:36Eugene Mirman?

  No, I remember things from before I was 10.

• 11:40Eugene Mirman?

  Not a lot, that's pretty much it, actually.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you wanna do aliens right, maybe you just shouldn't show them at all. And that's how the film 2001 and the film Contact. They had aliens in it, they just didn't show them. They admitted that they were not creative enough to invent what the thing might look like. Although I happen to like the beam of light idea.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 12:01Eugene Mirman?

  Here's a question. What do you think the chances are that aliens have a face?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  One in a thousand.

• 12:07Eugene Mirman?

  Let's go around the room and each say-

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One in a squillion, yeah. Like I said, most creatures on Earth don't have faces. But the question was, maybe you need a face to have some face travel. I have no rebuttal to that. Now, another question is, how do you define life? If a beam of light came across and it was life, we would probably not define it as such.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  No, we would just bask in it.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this could be an invasion right here.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These floodlights here.

• 12:38Eugene Mirman?

  We would bask as it secretly got us pregnant.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had light, baby.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do you think we've been visited? I don't think the evidence is compelling. Can I tell you why?

• 12:49Eugene Mirman?

  Well, go ahead.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I think if an alien came, we wouldn't know it. I mean, it would not be, "Look at the fuzzy photo and listen to the eyewitness testimony", which is the lowest form of evidence in the court of law. Somebody says, "I saw it", you say, "Okay, but come back when you got some real data. Come back when you got an alien carcass. Then we can have the conversation. Until then, keep hunting them down."

• 13:12Speaker 03

  But didn't we lose like a trillion dollars in our government and no one knows where it went?

• 13:17Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Here's the thing.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  I think we could lose an alien.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Neil, I'm concerned that you want a corpse instead of a living being.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Now, wait a second. I saw the Republican debate the other night. I think the aliens are here.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And their takeover plan is already underway.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Oh, it's underway, yeah.

• 13:45Eugene Mirman?

  We'll come as handsome southerners. No one can stop us now.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  We're irresistible.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk Radio, we will continue with our live broadcast from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing with the broadcast of our first show in front of a live audience at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival at the Bell House in Brooklyn. In addition to Eugene, our panel included the comedian Scott Adsit and Kristen Schaal, and our very special guest, Alan Alda.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We learned in the early solar system that Earth sustained a period of heavy bombardment from the leftovers that hadn't quite yet made it into the planetary bodies. And we call that period the period of heavy bombardment. We learned only recently that an asteroid hits, surrounding rocks can be thrust back into space in recoil with sufficient ferocity that they can escape the planet altogether. Put a pin in that. Now, we look around Earth and find life thriving in places that would kill us posthaste. Life that is doing the backstroke in boiling water, high acid, high pressure, low pressure, high temperature. These are what we call the extremophiles,

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  lovers of extreme environments. So, what we have found is that if you have a rock with nooks and crannies, and if that planetary surface is rich with life, and that rock escapes the planetary surface, it can have stowaway microbes that can survive the vacuum of interplanetary space. And this rock moves through space and lands on another planet. And we have a word for it, it's called panspermia. Which means...

• 15:44Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, we know.

• 15:50Eugene Mirman?

  We get it.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I had an uncle who believed in that.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which, which means...

• 15:59Eugene Mirman?

  We send rocks to have sex with planets.

• 16:03Eugene Mirman?

  And on them, we put only the bird flu or something.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so here's the thing. Evidence shows that Mars, as a planet, had finished its heavy bombardment before we did. And so, we think it was wet and fertile earlier than Earth was. That being the likelihood, a rock from Mars could have been infused with microbes from there, landing on Earth, spawning life as we know it here on Earth. Which would tell us then that all life on Earth are descendants of Martian.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  We're aliens.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Which is, which explains why I have this funny thing for rocks.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  So aliens have faces, is what you're saying?

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Logically, I cannot refute that comment.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Now, let me ask you something. I talked with a scientist once who got me really upset because his idea was that we need to be able to get off of Earth eventually and colonize another planet, and we can't breathe the atmosphere on Mars, so we should pollute the atmosphere on Mars until it is breathable to us.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  Wow, that sounds exactly like a human.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  It sounds like us, doesn't it?

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying we're already doing that on Earth?

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Except we're making it so we can't breathe it, so once we fix it so we can't breathe here, the idea is to fix Mars so you can breathe there. Now, I thought, when I heard this, of what you just described, of life bouncing around from planet to planet, and I wondered, how do we know that Mars isn't some sort of crucial cog in the machinery of an interplanetary ecology?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Oh, Alan, don't be a Mars hippie.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kumbaya!

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Oh, sure, sure, go destroy that planet. Go ahead. If you do, I'll get Pluto.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars has no representation in Congress.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  I know, you're right. I mean, how do we know what we're doing?

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think Mars is part of a interplanetary...

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I don't either.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1960's colony. I can't...

• 18:23Speaker 02

  You think we're finished getting what we need from Mars? We just toss it aside like a mistress?

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 18:29Eugene Mirman?

  We should hold on to our mistresses.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I'm saying...

• 18:33Speaker 04

  You're saying that we know everything we need to know about Mars right now?

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, all I'm saying is, there are people who want to terraform Mars, that's the word.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Change the atmosphere, yeah.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And turn it into a place that we can then breathe...

• 18:44Eugene Mirman?

  Have parties!

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Is that a good idea?

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it is unrealistic for the following reason. First, we cannot predict next week's weather on Earth.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for anyone to say we're gonna terraform Mars so that it is habitable to us, they're just deluded, okay? Second, if we had that power, then we would be powerful enough to just fix Earth. Yeah. Okay?

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's terraform Earth. Let's get little buttons. Right, yeah, terraform it back to something we can do.

• 19:18Eugene Mirman?

  I'm happy to sacrifice Australia to do some tests.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  New topic. Death and destruction, all the ways the universe wants to kill us. So many people talk about, "Oh, Earth is a haven, Earth is beautiful, the universe is just right for life." So, if you wanna understand the facts, most of the universe, if I dropped you butt naked, you would be dead some seconds later. You would freeze for having been too far from a source of heat. You would vaporize for having been too close. You would suffocate because in the vacuum of space, there is no air. Which means, not only can you not breathe, no one can hear you scream. On Earth! If I dropped you butt naked in 70% of Earth's surface,

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you are dead approximately 15 minutes later. You are eaten by sea creatures, you are frozen in the Arctic. The conditions under which you have become immersed are wholly hostile to life. For god's sake, let's go to Mars.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  The radio audience can't see this, but Neil's face is getting happier and happier with each description. And he's kind of singling out people in the crowd.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just giving the facts.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what we do is, we create situations in which we are comfortable. We wear clothes, we build shelters, we have air conditioning, we have heat. We can live in cold places, hot places, but we continue to enclose ourselves in a very narrow range of temperatures. And yet, we say that somehow life on Earth is a perfect match. I'm just saying. What do you want from us?

• 21:05Eugene Mirman?

  I'm sorry we have houses?

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's talk about ways to die. So...

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In five billion years, the sun will exhaust its source of hydrogen in its core. That is its fuel tank. When that happens, its energy output will actually increase because it goes to fuse helium instead of hydrogen. And when it does, the energy can't get out unless the star expands. The star continues to expand, and it gets so large, it engulfs the entire orbit of Mercury. It keeps growing, and engulfs the orbit of Venus, and continues to grow until it engulfs the orbit of Earth.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as this happens, Earth's surface rises in temperature. Our oceans come to a rolling boil and evaporate into the atmosphere. And the atmosphere evaporates into space.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Earth becomes this charred ember orbiting within the surface of our dying star. Have a nice day.

• 22:23Eugene Mirman?

  Do you have a plan for this?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  I have it on good authority that as that's happening, the Earth's actually gonna turn inside out and protect us.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know who your authorities are.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what is true is, if it gets hotter at the orbit of the Earth, what we'd wanna do is move farther out in the solar system. It might be that at that point we need to make amends with Pluto.

• 22:56Eugene Mirman?

  You think by then we'll be able to push the Earth towards it?

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, that's an interesting point.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  That's a great point.

• 23:01Eugene Mirman?

  Just coming up with solutions, people.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's a more realistic point than Earth turning inside out.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Okay, wait a minute.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On which was which. But if we could tow planets around, yeah, sure. I mean, why not?

• 23:13Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  I mean, look at the horsepower of our vehicles. I'm pretty sure

• 23:19Speaker 03

  if we get all of the oil in the Earth, we could build a tow ship.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In five billion years? Yeah, for sure.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  We'll be dinosaur oil by then.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you hear what she said? She said, "We will be dinosaur oil by then." Because, in fact, the oil we are extracting from the ground came from a period of Earth's history called the Carboniferous Era. And in that period, there was heavy vegetation all around the Earth. In fact, the carbon dioxide level was much higher than it is today. And the plants thrived on this, and it grew rampantly. When that period ended, all that vegetation sunk below. And over time, pressure and heat, the carbon molecule... In fact, did you know you can make more molecules with carbon than all other molecules combined? It is the most chemically fertile of any element on the periodic table.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the people who say, "Why don't we make aliens out of the element right below carbon on the periodic table?" Those of you who remember your chemistry might remember that columns on the periodic table have the same valence electrons, which means they actually combine with the same elements. Yes, yes, we know that. Go on.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in principle, every molecule you can make with carbon, you can make with silicon. That's the element right below carbon. The problem is silicon bonds are not flexible. They're not... Are you saying they're prudish? I'm saying they bond and they kind of bond forever, removing the experimenting phases that carbon goes through that enables the diversity of life. It's like getting married in college.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's exactly like...

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk Radio, we will continue with our live broadcast from the Bell House. Bell House, shout out.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's only after one drink.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to The Bell House, live in Brooklyn.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. Let's talk about black holes.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  I love them.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First advice: Avoid them, at all costs.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Well, why not? What if something awesome is on the other side?

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you could go visit it.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  It's a clunk comeback.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be the last thing you ever did.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  How do you know? You've never done it.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I can calculate it.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm gonna be over there having the time of my life.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now...

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's find out what shape you will be in while you're having the time of your life.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  I'll be a light beam.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes don't discriminate. They suck light beams just as much as they suck matter. So, as you fall towards a black hole, the gravity that you experience begins to grow. Well, that's obvious, because you're getting closer to its center of gravity. But a more diabolical thing happens as this unfolds. The gravity at your feet starts becoming greater than the gravity at your head by ever-increasing margins. In other words...

• 27:05Speaker 03

  I'm gonna get taller.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna get taller. Exactly.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Okay. Not swayed yet.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, but this is okay to a point. This force, it's called the tidal force, is stretching you head to toe. This will be okay at first, but it rapidly becomes unpleasant. Because the force will eventually exceed the intermolecular bonds that keep your flesh together in one human form.

• 27:39Eugene Mirman?

  I had this exact argument last night with someone.

• 27:44Eugene Mirman?

  Are there tiny black holes all around us, changing our brains?

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very tiny black holes don't live very long. They evaporate.

• 27:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but even a few seconds is enough.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but you have to find a way... You have to find a way to make them. And they don't just sort of show up.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  But aren't they being made routinely because of cosmic rays colliding? Don't you often get little black holes?

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to answer that.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  No, I thought that was one of the arguments...

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're absolutely right. In fact, I'll get to that after I kill her in a black hole.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we'll talk about the mini-black hole.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Black hole already dead, 'cause I'm in a lot of pieces, right? 'Cause it shattered all my molecules. But I'm still going for the ride.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here you go. You're going for the ride. So, your body bifurcates. Your body snaps into two pieces.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 28:31Eugene Mirman?

  You don't have to swear.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How often do you bifurcate? Yes, in private, only. I saw that on "Seinfeld." So, your body splits in two, and you'll probably separate at your lower spine. This is the likeliest place where that would happen. Meanwhile, this force continues, this tidal force, and the two halves of you will continue to stretch. And so, your upper half will split into two, as will your lower half.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  And they will battle each other.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  For dominance.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are now four pieces in a train going down. And this continues to split. Four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two.

• 29:12Eugene Mirman?

  That you can't go higher.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quick, two to the tenth power.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1,024. Give this man a drink over there. That's right.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, at one point, you will be two to the tenth pieces as you continue to bifurcate. Now, that is not the worst that will happen to you. Because as you go down, the black hole is much smaller than the fabric of spacetime that you previously occupied. And as you come down to the point that is the center of the black hole, your body funnels down into a narrower and narrower zone.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  That's a good time for all my pieces to come back together again.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, no, no, okay. They will come together left to right, but not top to bottom.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  That's fine, I'm back together.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're in a long skinny, so what, so you have been extruded through the fabric of space, like toothpaste through a tube. And we have a word for death by this manner.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  How many people have died this way?

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called spaghettification. That is what it's called.

• 30:35Eugene Mirman?

  And if you wore a helmet, this would still happen.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, Alan, you worried about these mini black holes? There was talk about that the supercollider.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  I'm not worried about them, I just was mentioning that I thought I've read that they do occur.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Eugene Mirman?

  I'm worried.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, we got it. So, the supercollider over in Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider, creates energies at the sweet spot, where there's a chance it could create some black holes. And some people worried that it would consume the Earth and end all of life as we know it.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Silly people.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so they're worried about this, and you can do the calculation and show that that's not likely to happen. By the way, if it did happen, you would never know it. Because you won't be able to travel faster than the black hole's act of eating the Earth. So, the message can't get to you.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Right, but what about that they're happening anyway?

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. So, the reason why we know this is not a danger is that the greatest particle accelerator in the universe is the universe itself. And there are particles of extremely high energy getting accelerated from the centers of galaxies, streaming towards Earth, colliding with our atmosphere, producing just the kind of reactions that we're creating in the particle accelerators. And if we were ever gonna become eaten by a black hole, it would have happened long ago.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Well, aren't those particles, aren't they time traveling?

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, actually, yes, they are. They're, they are, they are moving into...

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I've got a whole section on weird relativistic phenomena. Can you wait that long, or do you need a little...

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Oh, I can relax. Can I? I'll travel ahead and find out.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll see if she can wait that long. I have a whole segment on that.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Oh, good. Okay. I can't wait.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gene?

• 32:28Eugene Mirman?

  I'm waiting.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. You were like bated breath there.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I'm traveling to that time when you're gonna say it.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We will.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alan, that looks like something else. He's making this face.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alan is making a...

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to time travel.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A face that needs digestive tract medicine.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  There's a cut in the radio show right there.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I forgot to tell you is, if you spin a black hole, then it loses the singularity in its center. So when you fall towards it, you don't go to the singularity. And it's possible for the spinning black hole to create an entire other dimensional universe within it. And if you go in at just the right trajectory, you will slingshot into that other universe. So Kristen, just do that.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  That's what I was sort of getting at.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah!

• 33:29Speaker 03

  But then you split me up into like eighty pieces.

• 33:34Eugene Mirman?

  All she has to do is spin a black hole and she can go party.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the case.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, with my space toe, I'll grab the edge of the black hole and I'll spin it around.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. If you can find a place to grab, yes.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  What do you mean if you spin a black hole? How could you possibly spin a black hole?

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you find one that's already spinning.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Ah, and then you jump inside?

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you jump inside. You can, in principle, survive that and end up with an entire other universe inside the black hole.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  I can see myself stepping out of the rocket ship saying, "This should work in principle."

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right. But do shop around.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  You don't think that there's an edge of a black hole at all? Like, a little rim there?

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not a rim, for sure. It is a hole. It's a three-dimensional hole. Like, normally you think of a hole as a hole in the floor. In space, you can fall in from any direction. And you go in, it's whole universe inside of that.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's very cool.

• 34:31Eugene Mirman?

  Like a space window to death.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's if you want to name the movie.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  So wait, how is the universe gonna end? You got us all excited.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Why not look into it?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  You are obsessed with death.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Everything you've mentioned is about how you want an alien corpse. Here's how the different ways you're gonna die. Here's how the Earth will die. Tell us, individually, how each one of us is gonna die.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Because I think you've got like a chart on your wall at home.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why are kids fascinated with dinosaurs? Because dinosaurs can eat kids. So I never really grew up. My-

• 35:07Eugene Mirman?

  So can I, but nobody cares.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My grown-up counterpart to dinosaurs that eat children is a black hole. Can eat. I like relishing in all the ways a black hole will kill us.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I want to know how the universe will. I like, I want to know.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how will the universe end? Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Not in fire, but in ice.

• 35:34Eugene Mirman?

  It's very pretty.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're an expanding universe. It's a one-way trip. The energy density of the universe is dropping by the minute, which means the universe is getting colder and colder and colder. Every star that gets made, most of those stars will never return their gas to the galaxy from which it was born. So that even the gas clouds that give us these rich, beautiful images that we see brought to us by the Hubble Telescope, those will ultimately become locked into stars. Those stars will live out their lives and die. One by one, the stars will burn out in the nighttime sky as the universe expands to oblivion. Star talk.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when this happens, all processes grind to a halt.

• 36:28Eugene Mirman?

  We're gonna be in a spinning universe in a black hole.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd have to escape this universe, go to another, because that one has no hope for you.

• 36:33Eugene Mirman?

  That's my plan.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what we call the thermal death of the universe, where our temperature, remember this word, asymptotically, approaches absolute zero.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Now, that sounds like a curse, doesn't it?

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when the whole universe becomes absolute zero, there can be no machines, no motion, no nothing. Not only that, the very proton that is in the center of the atoms of the molecules of your body, even that decays. And all matter as we know it ceases to exist.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Man, I wanna write that down for lyrics for an emo song.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk Radio, we will continue with our live broadcast from the Bell House. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by the National Science Foundation. In this segment of our first show, recorded in front of a live audience at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival in the Bell House in Brooklyn, we talked about the dangers posed by asteroid Apophis, which is headed our way. In addition to Eugene, our panel included comedians Scott Adsit and Kristen Schaal, and also our very special guest, Alan Alda.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are in the path of bad asteroids. Yes, or somebody said no. The answer is yes, we are. There is an asteroid, discovered December 2004. That's the size of the Rose Bowl. You get a few images of it, you get its trajectory, you calculate using fundamental laws of gravity. And we learned that it was on a collision course with Earth. Upon learning that, this asteroid got the name Apophis, named for the Egyptian god of death and darkness. Had it not been headed for Earth, we would have just simply named it something else, something a little less menacing.

• 38:29Eugene Mirman?

  Ben Affleck.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ben Affleck, we could have done it.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or Bambi, or Tiffany, something that is not threatening. And so, this asteroid, on later calculation, we showed it was not gonna actually hit Earth, but it's gonna come really close. So, calculations show that on April 13th, in the year 2029...

• 38:50Speaker 02

  39.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2029.

• 38:54Eugene Mirman?

  I wanted Alan to be right so much.

• 38:58Eugene Mirman?

  Just to have you be like, "Okay, I got one thing wrong."

• 39:01Speaker 02

  No, because... I hope it's not 29, I have plans.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  I've had enough sinners for years.

• 39:06Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Is it gonna come close enough that we can like, touch it like Free Willy?

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, as he swam over, um...

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it would be my answer to that. I'll tell you how close it will get. On April 13th, 2029, which is a Friday, by the way, just works out that way, asteroid Apophis will come close enough to Earth to dip below our orbiting communication satellites. It will be the largest, closest thing ever to come by Earth, giving us a buzz cut.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  How far is that?

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How far is it? It'll come within 18,000 miles of Earth's surface.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  Has any advertising space been sold on it yet?

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Asteroid Apophis. Now, here's the kicker. We do not know the orbit well enough to answer the following question: Will it hit us its next time around, seven years later? Because we have a seven-year course of intersection. You can cross a street and not get hit by a truck, because a truck comes five minutes later, or you can cross the street at the same time the truck comes. We have asteroids crossing Earth's orbit all the time, just not while we happen to be there. Apophis currently is timed with us being with it in the same time, at the same place.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  So, why can't we figure out its orbit by watching how it travels before it enters?

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We do, but the precision of that orbit isn't good enough to tell us whether or not the asteroid will thread what we're calling a keyhole. Of all the possible orbits it could have, from our uncertainty, there's a range of orbits the keyhole. If it goes through that keyhole, then Earth's gravity on the asteroid will be just right.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, seven years later, it will hit Earth.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  How fast can we get to Mars?

• 41:00Speaker 02

  I don't care what we do to that atmosphere.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, if it doesn't go through the keyhole, if it comes under the keyhole, it'll come short of Earth and miss us below. If it goes above the keyhole, it'll overshoot Earth. If it's through the keyhole, all the gravity conspires to hit Earth. The center of that keyhole is 500 kilometers due west of Santa Monica, California. And if it hits, it will plunge into the Pacific Ocean to a depth of three miles, at which point it will explode, cavitating the ocean to a width of three miles. That initial hit will send a tsunami wave spreading in all directions from that point. It will hit California first, it'll hit Santa Monica first, with essentially a tidal wave that's five stories tall.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's the kicker. Okay.

• 41:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, give us the bad news, Neil.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here goes. There's the manner of that hole in the Pacific Ocean. The water sloshes back into the hole, splashes into itself, rises high into the atmosphere and recoil to this hole, falls back to the ocean, cavitating it a second time, sending a second tsunami wave 45 seconds later.

• 42:18Eugene Mirman?

  Like a macro drop of water.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly, yes. But here's the thing, this sloshing will continue for about 45 minutes, which means the first tsunami wave that hits has to go back out to the ocean to feed the second tsunami wave. And so these 40 tsunami waves come and go. The first they come in, and then they go out, taking homes with them, expensive Malibu homes, all go with them. Then it comes back. Get them back! Yes, the homes come back. But in a slightly different shape than they were before. Come back. Okay, and so as this happens, all of our man-made stuff that was on the coastline becomes this ablative material

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that'll wipe clean the entire west coast of North America.

• 43:08Eugene Mirman?

  Are you saying we'll be fine, we'll be fine? It doesn't sound that bad.

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know approximately how far in the tsunami will go. You can set up a velvet rope and just watch this, because it has to go back out. It can't continue to come inland. It will go back out, but here's what you do.

• 43:24Eugene Mirman?

  Stand in Ohio giving it the finger and laughing?

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, nobody has to die because of the power of Newton's laws of gravity that enable us, empower us to calculate when and where this is going to hit. You just evacuate the west coast of North America.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you know what?

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I gotta tell you, two people will die. Two people will die.

• 43:46Speaker 04

  It's gonna be me, isn't it?

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two people are sure to die. Howie Mandel.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a guess. Okay, I will tell you.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We all know these people. The first one is... I know! Is the stupid surfer who wants to surf the wave in. Death number one. Death number two, the stupid weatherman who's trying to get closer to the storm. You know the guy who's trying to get the cameraman closer every time? Those are the only two deaths that we'll experience at that time.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  How big is this asteroid?

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is the size of the Rose Bowl. 300 meters across.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  So it's a dumb rock.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a bad rock.

• 44:31Eugene Mirman?

  In your opinion, how big is this Rose Bowl?

• 44:37Speaker 02

  I thought something the size of the Rose Bowl would do more damage than that.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More damage than pulverizing the entire west coast of North America?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:45Eugene Mirman?

  You said how the world would end, not how we would not have LA.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so that would not end the world. That would just be really bad for the coastal residents of the Pacific Ocean.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you guys told us to evacuate Manhattan because of the hurricane, and it kinda spit on us for about a half hour.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it just kinda went...

• 45:04Speaker 04

  So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm grabbing my surfboard.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  And we would have seven years to prepare for that if you see it going through the keyhole, right?

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so if it does go through the keyhole, it will hit us April 13th once again in the year 2036, but that will be a Thursday, just so you know.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We went so overtime at the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival that, in fact, we got two complete StarTalk broadcasts out of it. Tune in next week for the second half of our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. Until then, keep looking.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  To keep looking up.