Extended Classic – Cosmic Queries: The Space Race

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on the Space Race, the global impact of the Apollo program and John F. Kennedy’s political influence. Now extended with more questions on time travel, wormholes, asteroids, and more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/extended-classic-cosmic-queries-the-space-race/ Photo Credit: NASA.

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?

  I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. And for this episode of StarTalk, we're doing what we call cosmic queries, where questions come to me from our social media. And, but I don't read them, I don't even, I don't even know what they are until I walk in and sit down at this microphone and I get help today from Chuck Nice.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, what's happening?

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Ah, good to be here, man.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, welcome back.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, thank you, sir. Always good to be here.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, you, you're gonna read, what are these questions? What is today's topic?

• 0:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, today's topic is the space race.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think I know a little bit about that. A little bit about that.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  I hope so.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this, okay?

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  I hope so.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But actually, just so you know, this may sound like a cheap plug, but it's just, so I wrote a book called Space Chronicles.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Facing the Ultimate Frontier. Came out two years ago. Do you know why I write books?

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, because you can.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna tell you why I don't write books.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't?

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. And I know my limitations.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I write books so that I never have to talk about that subject again.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I compile it all in there, and someone said, "Tell me about that." I just hand them the book.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  And here's a book.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I go, and I walk away.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  My god.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I, you, now you're just, you're resurrecting this in me when I'm trying to think about other stuff, but fine.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, I'm sorry to do that. Oh my god, I can't believe you just said that, that you write a book so you don't have, you remind me, this is the household I grew up in. This is what, so I would ask my mother or my father, "What does this mean?" And they would say, "Go look it up."

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, whoa.

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  And I'm like, "Yeah, that's what you're for."

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what may have looked like evil parents at the day turned it, turned you into an independent researcher.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Actually, yeah, I, you know, I'm kind of, I'm, and now it's funny because I do the same thing to my children. They're like, you know, my son, he'll say, "Dad, do you know what?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I do know. Do you?" We'll find out and come back.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that works whether or not you actually know it.

• 2:24Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. There you go. See? All right, let's jump into our Cosmic Queries and of course, we always start off with a Patreon Patron question, and if you support us on Patreon, we will give your questions priority here at Cosmic Queries. Okay, Patreon, where we basically buy your loyalty.

• 2:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Matthew Massanon from Calgary, Alberta, says, "In your opinion, Dr. Tyson, what was the most significant thing that the Apollo program achieved with the exception of landing on the moon?"

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's a, that's a good question when you think about it, because everybody, you say Apollo program, it's moon landing, bang, that's the end of it, that's it. But he's saying, "Give me something that is just as significant that we don't think about."

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tang.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, beginning in 1970, a little earlier, but in 1970 was the first Earth Day nationally, and then it became a rapid international hit, if you will.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because Earth Day is global now.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's global now, and it's a significant global celebration of our home planet. And around that same time, so nineteen, whatever, what else happened? 1971, 2, and 3, we would see the passing of the Comprehensive Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act. In 1970, NOAA was founded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to monitor our climate and our oceans and our weather. And not only that, the Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970. By the time 1973 came around, leaded gas would be banned, DDT would be banned, the catalytic converter would be introduced.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of this happened during the years we were going to the moon. At a time when we had a whole lot of other stuff distracting us, like a cold war with the Soviet Union and a hot war in Southeast Asia and campus unrest from anti-war protests and the civil rights movement and assassinations, 1968 would see two assassinations on domestic soil. And so, so why am I saying all this? Because while we had all these other potential distractions, we nonetheless paused to reflect on our relationship to our home planet. So I submit to you that though we went to the moon to explore the moon,

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  upon getting there and looking back, in fact, we would discover Earth for the first time.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so it's like I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's exactly that.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So can you put a dollar figure on the fact that seeing Earth in the sky from the moon

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was like a firmware update in our sense of awareness.

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  And who we are.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the importance of Earth and our relationship to it.

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay, that's, that's actually, that's a bit more existential than I was expecting for an answer.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  I have to say that's a damn good answer because it's more of, um, the, the, it's more of a collective conscious enlightenment.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and I don't think anyone started the program with that expectation.

• 6:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that is clearly a consequence of it.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, um, and remember that TV commercial with the Native American standing on the, on the, and there was a tear in his eye?

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Single tear.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The single tear and people throwing garbage out the window. That didn't happen until this period, until we were going to the moon. We, we were total garbage out the window people for long before that, right?

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  I never got that about us. I mean, seriously. Garbage out the window, uh, pretty much all through human history.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All through human history, and in fact, that was great for anthropologists. They can find stuff along the Roman Via.

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, that people, "Oh, a McDonald's cup."

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Boy, McDonald's would have been around."

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but you, you, it was, we didn't start thinking of it as a, as a, as a cultural, environmental problem until that, that period.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay. Wow, that's, hey, hey, Matthew, I, uh, you know, I hope you're satisfied with that answer, because it was a, a completely, uh, curve, complete curveball with that answer.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then there's Tang.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That and Tang a close second.

• 7:15Chuck Nice?

  Very close second. There you go.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay, here we go, our next question.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-oh.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  Abhijit Manet.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Let's hope. I'm sorry, Abhijit, I'm sorry. Uh, from Facebook wants to know this. The space race was, in a way, an extension of the Cold War arms race. But also, the resolve of President John F. Kennedy, who pledged that we'd get there in 10 years. Do you know anyone today in the political sphere who could do the same? What kind of politician would be ideal in this regard? We go to the moon because we choose to. It's that and the other thing we do because, no, nevermind, forget it.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that was your worst impression ever.

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And normally, you're good.

• 8:06Chuck Nice?

  I know, but you know what? I'm not even doing Kennedy. I'm actually doing Mayor Quimby. From The Simpsons, you know? Vote Quimby.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, you, you imitate a tie fighter from Star Wars.

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Even though you.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought Kennedy would be easy after, after that.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yes.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, so here's, there's an assumption built into that question that the political will and charisma, perhaps, of Kennedy was a significant force operating.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In how and why we got to the moon. And this is commonly thought, but I I'm contrarian in that regard. Well, good. Right? No doubt Kennedy had charisma. No doubt, uh, he had a sort of way with rallying people behind an idea. No doubt about that, but I submit that if we were not at war, all of that would have just been empty rhetoric and nobody would have signed the check. Congress, because Congress is not as swayed by speeches as the public is. Absolutely. All right, and so it's Congress who writes the check. That's right. At the end of the day. So, consider nineteen eighty-nine, the twentieth, July twentieth, the twentieth anniversary of the moon landing. Who is the then sitting president?

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I don't know. Herbert Walker, George Herbert Walker Bush. George Herbert Walker Bush. Goes to the steps of the Air and Space Museum, delivers a speech not fundamentally different from Kennedy's speech. We're Americans, we're explorers, Columbus set sail, this is our time. We will put men on Mars and have a space station. We'll have us build a space station and we will, this, he was trying to give a Kennedy speech. Right. Okay, fell flat on his face. Now, why? People said, well, because he's not Kennedy. I beg to differ. Okay. Not that he isn't not Kennedy. Right. That sentence makes sense? That's correct, because he isn't not Kennedy. No, he, well, he isn't Kennedy.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't work not because he isn't Kennedy. Right. I claim it didn't work because, do you remember what happened in nineteen eighty-nine? Uh, I don't know. Peace broke out. Ow. Peace broke out in Europe. That's a terrible thing. That is the collapse of the Soviet Empire. That's right. That is the, the tear, tear down the wall. The wall came down in nineteen eighty-nine. All of a sudden, our motivation for our military might, the very thing that drove who and what we were as the carriers of freedom and the American way in, in the face of evil communists, it all evaporated. Ah.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That year, and he's trying to give a speech to get people to go to Mars. In the absence of a mortal enemy.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, we would have either needed Martians. Uh.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be the best.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  That would have been the best.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best.

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  Right. We either needed Martians.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evil Martians.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Evil Martians.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not E.T. like E.T.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, yeah. We're not, yeah.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wouldn't it be cool if E.T. came out, guns drawn?

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  That would be awesome.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he shot Elliot or whatever the hell that was.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  That's the way it ends. You know what I mean? E.T. go home. Hmm. Yeah, but first.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We must test our ray guns on you.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. So, yeah, so really the competition, no competition.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not only competition because you can do that, yes, and still succeed, but the greatest competition our species knows is the threat of death from someone who might out-compete you in a way that would kill you. So, I claim that the biggest reason that failed was not because Bush lacked the charisma of Kennedy. What happened is he lacked the Cold War.

• 11:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, he proposed, you know what it was? You know what it was? He said, "This'll be a, what, 25-year, I forgot the exact time interval, 25-year plan." And, uh, and it would be, you know, 25, 30-year plan, and it'll cost a trillion dollars.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so people freaked.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, and that was the end of that, right there.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, or half a trillion dollars, half a trillion, half a trillion dollars.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's better.

• 12:21Chuck Nice?

  No, listen, half a trillion, I'm like, "All right, okay, we can work with that."

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here's the thing, if you took NASA's budget at the time, which is between 15 and 20 billion dollars in today's annual budget, and then you multiply that over 30 years.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get half a trillion dollars.

• 12:38Chuck Nice?

  A trillion dollars.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we already are allocating half a trillion dollars to NASA over that same amount of time.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, to say that's D.O.A. because it's too much money, that's a false argument.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA was all, you might have to retool NASA with its budget, but it was a false argument to think it's too much money. That's all. So, so, so I'm unconvinced by people saying that George Herbert Walker Bush

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was absent the charisma of Kennedy. So, so, I don't, so I don't think it has anything to do with politicians.

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has to do with whether we think we're gonna die.

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there, and there you have it. Uh, by the way, just to let you know, you are gonna die.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, sorry.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  So we should, uh, we should do it irrespective. Uh, I think that if we really wanna go to Mars.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Die by unnatural causes.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  There you go. We, but if we really wanna go to Mars, we should, um, we, scientists should get together. And, um, in a, in a, in a, uh, this, in a somewhat conspiratorial way, uh, tell the world that there's oil on Mars.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but then we'd be, we'd be lying.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but we go to Mars.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know why there's oil?

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Or that there's terrorists on Mars.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why there's oil on Earth? Cause we have life on Earth, right? And so maybe, okay, maybe there was a period, there's an episode of Mars where there was life.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All that life sunk down and then it made oil. So that'd be cool.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  That would be cool.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go to Mars and get oil.

• 14:05Chuck Nice?

  And we'd be there next week.

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I, but what I joke about is we should go to China and go, pssst, go tell the leaders of China, pssst, can you leak a memo? Don't, don't be true. Doesn't have to be true. Just leak a memo saying you wanna put military bases on Mars.

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  Boom, that's it. Yeah, we're done.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 14:19Chuck Nice?

  We're on Mars.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're on Mars. In ten months.

• 14:21Chuck Nice?

  Ten months.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One month to fund, design, build the spacecraft, nine months to get there.

• 14:26Chuck Nice?

  We go to Mars, not because it is easy, but because it is hard and the Chinese. So, once again, awful, awful impersonation. All right, let's move on. Well, that's, uh, that's pretty cool. I, I'm, I, I agree with what you're saying. It's not about, I think people put too much emphasis on the importance of the presidency and they're unaware of how much power the president really has. Our whole system of-

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has or does not have, right.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  Our whole system of government is designed to keep power out of the hands of the president.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Precisely. So the president doesn't run away like a dictator.

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  So, you know, people often overestimate what the president can and cannot do.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  You know? All right, cool. Let's move on to-

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for a couple more questions.

• 15:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this segment, go on.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  In this segment, here we go. Isaac J. Kim of Facebook, thank you, Isaac.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac has a pronounceable name for you?

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, thank you, Isaac, from NYC. This is what, uh, Isaac says.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hometown, boy.

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  That's right. What kind of computing power did mission control and the shuttle have during the Apollo era?

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. I can only tell you what I've read about that, cause I didn't, like, calculate this myself. But there've been, there've been comments that the computing power, I don't believe this, but it was fun to, to read it and say it. The computing power of a singing greeting card?

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard that, because there's a chip in there.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  That's hilarious.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You open it up, "Happy birthday to you."

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Happy birthday to you." So, so, I, I, it may, it had to have been a little more than that. And I don't, I don't know the answer for sure. Um, because again, I don't know these questions, but I could have researched it, of course, before.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, well, you don't get the questions.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't get the questions, yeah. But, uh, uh, what is no doubt, no doubt, anything we're carrying in our hip pocket is greater than anything that was going on when we went to the moon.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute. Now, okay, I do believe that because of the microprocessors that we use in order to, to, to, to run our phones.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, but by the way.

• 16:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, the miniaturization of electronics.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is entirely driven in its initial stages by NASA.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had electronics filling, you know, so, so our parents, our grandparents.

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Had radios the size of furniture in their living room.

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Correct. Where they would gather around and listen to radio shows.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen to radio shows. And was any of them saying, gee, I want to carry this on my hip. It's just a non-thought.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't mean they might not welcome it, but no one's even thinking that way.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, you're right.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA is saying, we need this technology and we need to launch it, and it costs $10,000 a pound.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To put anything in orbit.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  So, we gotta shrink this stuff.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shrink this down.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  We gotta shrink it down.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take this to the lab and shrink it down.

• 17:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, okay? So, this, this miniaturization drives, uh, a whole frontier that then be, then becomes commercial commodities.

• 17:17Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. I just had, uh, it's fascinating what you just said, be, uh, about grandparents and radio.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:24Chuck Nice?

  Sitting around the radio, listening to their programming.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  When I was a kid, we sat around the television. I never once thought, I want to carry that television on my hip.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  And guess what? I do. My phone is a frickin' television. I can watch the internet or any TV show I want on demand on my phone. I am carrying a TV on my hip.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Amazing.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 17:48Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and if you don't think about it, it's just TV is the thing you do when you get home and you turn it on.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 17:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but no longer. So, yeah. Oh, man, that's super cool. So, uh, so basically-

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would say, yeah. So, do you remember the movie Apollo 13?

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where they're trying to save the guys' lives and they said, "Here is the only thing they have available." And they dump out this bag onto the table. Okay, engineers save their lives.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they said, "Okay, but wait a minute." And they said, "Oh, we need this. The slide rule."

• 18:13Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we're do- now we got it, okay?

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we can do this.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Slide rule to the rescue!

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Hey!

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  Anybody got an abacus? We gotta save a life over and-

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, uh, so anyhow, yeah, yeah. So you would, it would blow it away.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Here's more of this week's episode.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you still doing stand-up?

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  All the time.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Pretty much every, you know, so here's the thing. I don't travel as much to, on the road, which I get a lot of requests, but, uh, two reasons. One, I have a small child.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Family, yeah, yeah.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  And so I'd like to be home and be-

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than one child.

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  I have-

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of them is small.

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  One of them is very small.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  Because I'm an idiot.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, we just had a new baby two years ago.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  Uh, did I say new baby? Like, there's such a thing as an old baby?

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had an old baby.

• 19:21Chuck Nice?

  We had an old baby.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five years ago.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I gave birth to Benjamin Button.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Anyway, uh, and the, uh, uh, but I always do stand up in New York City and surrounding area pretty much every weekend.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love your work. It just, and that's why we have you here.

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  Thanks, man. I always love being here.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We affirm that. All right. So what do you got?

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's get back into, uh, our queries.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Aidenastronomy from Instagram says-

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astronomy is in his handle.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that.

• 19:48Chuck Nice?

  You like that?

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People loving the universe and they can't help not tell people.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  They gotta let people know.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  So he says, "What was it like for the command module pilots when they went around the back-" Side of the moon. And why did the Soviet N one moon rockets all blow up? So, uh, and instead of what was it like, let me just say on the backside of the moon. What are you experiencing on the backside of the moon? That you're not experiencing on the front side.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so first, first, as you may remember. The Apollo missions all sent three astronauts to the moon. Two of them deployed down to the surface.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One did not.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stayed in orbit around the moon, eating their lunch, waiting for them finished driving the golf cart.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  That are known as the Uber driver of Apollo.

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I, I, I'm wondering if I would have just snuck in and been crammed three people into the lander. And, and you know, I, I don't know. You're gonna go travel that far and just not.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  And have to sit in a, hey, man, wait in the car, we'll be right out.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna walk around on the moon.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Walk around on the moon, do me a favor, can you just keep the car running? The car running, buddy, we're just gonna take a little stroll on the moon now.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the moon.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's the thing. When you go to the backside of the moon, you are one moon diameter away from the other two astronauts.

• 21:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the record for the loneliest person ever.

• 21:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's so cool because you're farther out than.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're farther away.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  By yourself.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next closest person.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that moment.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  Is one moon diameter away.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is farther than any other solo person has been.

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's just one little fact, that is the loneliest place we have ever found ourselves.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  That's a pretty cool little.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What makes it, what makes it extra lonely is when you're behind the moon.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the moon is between you and Earth.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the radio signals don't penetrate through the moon.

• 21:46Chuck Nice?

  So you're.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're also radio silent.

• 21:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. You're alone and alone.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you're double alone.

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  You're double alone.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're alone squared.

• 21:55Chuck Nice?

  You can't communicate with anybody either.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. This is why in the future, when we're thinking of moon colonies, and you want to inhabit the far side of the moon, the far side never faces Earth.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon is, its rotation is what's called tidally locked.

• 22:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where it's actually rotating, but at the exact rate that it takes to go around the Earth.

• 22:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's always turning its one face towards you, no matter where it is. It's called, it happens, it's a very natural thing in the universe.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't think too much about it.

• 22:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now I'm thinking about it. Let me tell you something, as I'm thinking about it.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh, what a coincidence. Is that just for us? I'd do that. Just chill. It's a, it's a natural thing.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so when we're thinking about moon colonies, if you're gonna pitch tent on the far side of the moon, you're gonna still want communication channels opened up.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a whole separate conversation about radio transmitter repeaters that are on the edge of the moon.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where signals can come from the backside and then work their way back over to the front side and then make it way back to the Earth.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  So you send the signal to the booster, the booster sends it over.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. And so it's a repeater, whatever, whatever is the mechanism.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so.

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  Can you hear me now? I'm sorry. Let me move over here. Sorry, I'm on the backside of the moon. Let me just move over. Uh, can you hear me now? How's that? Ah, Jesus, I'm roaming. I can't believe this. I'm roaming, dude. I'm sorry, I'm on the moon. I can't talk, man. This is costing me a fortune. Okay, sorry.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I give a, like a weirdly perverse version of that?

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So I was on a, on a, on a presidential commission.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To study the, the, the, the climate of aerospace around the world relative to here on Earth.

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  Uh-huh.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A climate, I mean, the, the business climate.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so in one of our trips, uh, we go to China. And China has these have they've got plans to go to space. All right, this is before they launched their first Tyconod.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is what they call.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Their astronauts are Tyconods.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their Tyconods. And so, so there's this, this underbelly of advanced technology that we're reading about and hearing about. And I always wondered, you know, is it real, is it there? So I'm on the Great Wall of China.

• 24:08Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, there it is, just like the photos, going to the horizon into the mist. All right, you can't, there's no end in either direction you look. I do not see any technology at all. In any, there are no antennas, there's no, nothing made of metal, there is just the wall.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, let me try something. I pull out my cellphone.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a flip phone at the time. I call my.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  Star-Tac.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I call my, it was in fact, the Motorola Star-Tac. And I call my, cause it's.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  How did. Come on.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I call my mother in Westchester, New York. She said, oh, hi, hi Neil, are you home already? That's how good the connection was.

• 24:55Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, it was crystal clear connection.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  You certainly didn't have Sprint.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was one of the best connections I've ever had in a cellphone ever, from the Great Wall of China with no visible cellphone towers. And I, and at that time, you would walk past a tree in the United States, and so I'm sorry, I lost my signal.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me get out in the open here, away from the blades of grass, whatever. So, so that's how I knew China was gonna make whatever they want to happen, happen.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moment.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that moment.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  That, right, that's, that's actually a very good story and really telling, because it makes sense.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 25:30Chuck Nice?

  Like, you don't see anything and.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's there. Now, why did I even say that? I was somehow related to this question.

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, we were, we were talking about, you know, just, just the dark side and the, the actual repeater and all that kinda stuff.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but the guy with, with, well, the, the, the command module pilot, there was a question. What was the question?

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, it's just like, uh, you, no, um, I'm sorry, now I lost.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think I answered the question, I'm sorry. All right, so what is it?

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh God, Jesus Christ, where.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just, you just mentioned God and Jesus in the same sentence. You must be in a really bad situation. Okay.

• 26:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh God. No, you did answer the question perfectly.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was the question?

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  Wanted to know what it was like for that pilot.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the pilot. Yeah, that's what it was like.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  And that's exactly what it was like for him.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eating a sandwich, waiting, just...

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, I'm gonna say that is the lonely existence ever. Not just because of where he is, and not just because of his isolation, but because of the context of that isolation.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  You are alone, and your friends are walking on the moon.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's triple. It's like, I'm alone, I can't communicate with anybody, and I'm keeping the car warm, and they're on the moon. Yes, getting all the glory.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we, uh, time for Cosmic Queries.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  Lightning round!

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's do it.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  Let's do it.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna give soundbite answers.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  Soundbite answers. Okay, here we go. Chris McMonara97 from Instagram, what is the biggest thing the moon taught us about Earth?

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For me, I have my personal list of that, all right? I think going to the moon and getting direct measurements of its mineral content and soil content. For me, the coolest thing was discovering that the moon is the product of a collision between a Mars-sized protoplanet. Side-swiping Earth's crust in the early solar system. Having that material that had been side-swiped gather into another cosmic body that orbits Earth that we now call the moon. The moon, for its size, should have much, much more iron in it.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it doesn't. The iron has already been sifted out. Well, how do you make that happen? Well, on Earth, the iron all went to the core. Most of the iron went to the core. So the crust has hardly any iron in it. If you're gonna make a new cosmic object out of the crust, you're gonna have hardly any iron in your substance. So, the moon has suspiciously low iron, and it is completely consistent with this scenario.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  Nice!

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people ask me, if I wanted to go back in time and see something happen, I'd wanna see the collision of that Mars-sized protoplanet with Earth, and watch the moon get formed. We think it would have formed within a few months.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  That quickly?

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that quickly.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That quickly. That would've been a badass collision.

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a nice collision.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. Okay, quick, go.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go. That was too long. I gotta answer faster.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. @seabass621 wants to know this.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fisherman there.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just loves him to eat some sea bass, alright.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Who do you think won? Won the space race?

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so I call it a tie.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between the United States and Russia.

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know why?

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they were the first to put anything in space, eh? They were the first to put a living creature in space. They were the first to put a human in space. They were the first to put a woman in space. They were the first to put a black person in space. They were the first to have a space station. They invented the rocket equation that enabled all this to happen in the first place. And we went to the moon first.

• 29:01Chuck Nice?

  There you go. So?

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so to me, I'm saying, you know, we didn't do any of that other stuff first and we got to them and say, we win. I'm saying, give the people some credit here, please?

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that was a great answer, man. Alright, since the moon is loaded, I'm sorry.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, their black person was a Cuban.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  So Brentral, at Brentral wants to know this. Since the moon is loaded with helium 3, which is useful for alternative energy, how do you think laws will form in retaliation to mining the moon? He's assuming that we're gonna mine the moon.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, so helium 3 is a version of helium, missing one proton. Helium usually has two protons to neutrons. That would be helium 4. Take away a neutron, you get helium 3.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it's called, okay? Helium 3 is one of the things that is emanated from the sun in the solar wind. And it comes through space, it gets lodged in the surface of the moon, and it sits there. And there are whole books given unto mining, quite simply scooping up the topsoil of the moon, collecting this helium 3 and using it for nuclear fusion reactors. So there's a whole plan that people have for this. And there's been some rebuttals, is will it really recoup the cost, whatever? So, but helium 3, yeah, we need laws going into the future. Who owns the moon? Who owns asteroids? Who owns the mining rights? Do they have to be shared? Who paid for it? This, there are some laws related to this, but for me, it's still undiscovered territory.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is why the future in space is not just about astronauts, scientists, and engineers. There's the rest of what life is. Lawyers, the artists, the politics. All of this has to come together if we're gonna turn what is sitting there above our head that we call space into our backyard.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned, more up next. Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  So Neil, you're beaming in from Vegas, huh?

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I got a, I got a gig tonight. I'm giving a public talk on astrophysics. There is some learning that goes on in the town, apparently.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, that's the most exciting thing I've ever heard happening in Vegas. Well, one thing is for sure, we know we always win when we bet on Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you really betting on the universe when you bet on me? Cause all I am is a conduit to it.

• 31:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I meant bet on the black. Anyway, Annalisa Essie Katrina Lee says, "My daughters, ages eight and 11, want to know, would it actually be easier to travel forward in time rather than backward? And what would that require?"

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we can easily travel forward in time, and we've known how to do that since 1905. Einstein's special theory of relativity lays out the whole recipe of how you can move into the future. And all you have to do is go into sort of a lower gravity field relative to other people, or just travel very fast. And your clock will tick slower than that of everybody else that you've left behind. And then when you return, you'll be younger than your twin, for example, if you had left your twin back on Earth. So, in that sense, you are traveling into the future. That's easy to do, and we've known how to do that. Traveling backwards, that's the problem. And it takes, we think we can do that.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have some colleagues who've made some calculations that assert that depending on a, or a trajectory you take around a black hole, you can come out and end up in the past of when you started. So, but that takes extraordinary setup to make happen. But right now, no problem traveling into the future.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  So, it's either lower gravity, travel faster than the speed of light, or very good moisturizer?

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not only that, the GPS satellites, which are farther away from the center of the earth than we are, they experience less gravity than we do, and GPS clocks tick faster than our clocks, yet we're getting our time from them. And so they know this in advance. Rather, we've programmed in the relativity correction to compensate for this fact, so that when they do give us the time, it's the right time, not the relativistic time that it wants to keep by being where it is in orbit.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Awesome. All right, Neil, you ready for the next question? How theoretically might time travel be a wormhole work? Whoa.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. So what a wormhole enables, by the way, if you manage to travel someplace faster than light, you have the capacity to move backwards in time. That's, we've got that one established as well. We just don't have any easy way to travel faster than light. But one, one way that's been celebrated in science fiction, and you can write it out on paper legitimately, is a wormhole. A wormhole, I'm over here, and I want to get over there, and I want to get there quickly. I want to get there before the end of the commercial break. Okay? So you can travel through a wormhole that changes the effective distance between where you are and where you're going. And then you sort of look around when you get there, and you find, oh, my gosh, I've

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  traveled 100,000 light years in a matter of a moment. Okay? When you do that, you have the capacity to move backwards in time relative to when you left. Now, you don't get to visit yourself. You're in a sort of a different spacetime trajectory, so you can't shake hands with yourself before you left. That, so that's what you're thinking of doing? No. And there's a huge paradox that people worry about, and many people, including Stephen Hawking, the late Stephen Hawking, worried whether this paradox would prevent backwards time travel completely. Because if you go back in time and prevent your parents from meeting one another, then

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they wouldn't have ever given birth to you to go back in time to prevent them from meeting one another.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  First of all, let me just say, I stopped listening when you said, I can't shake hands with myself. [laughing]

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  Eric Varga wants to know this. What would you say is the most accurate time travel show or a movie and why? Ooh.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. It's really hard to do an accurate movie and still have interesting plotlines. So, given that they take some loosey-goosey steps with it, with time travel, I have to say that Doctor Who as a TV series is the most invested in the authenticity of their time travel storytelling. And so, they thought about the contradictions and the paradoxes, and they have their own solutions to all of that. Now, on the, on the stateside, I would say there's nothing like the original Back to Future movie, the first one.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That one, they thought it through, they imagined consequences, they... Uh, so, I give both of them sort of equal high ranking. And as a special mention, you gotta love Bill and Ted.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Come on. I mean, that's, that's a special runner-up, special mention for, uh, time travel exploits.

• 36:47Chuck Nice?

  All three, very good. Uh, the most disturbing of the three, definitely Back to the Future, where you have to make sure that your parents smash so that you can be born.

• 36:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, Neil, you ready? Daniel Junius wants to know, what happens when we fall into a black hole? Before we get into it, can you just let the people know, what is a black hole?

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black hole is a region of space where matter has condensed to such a high density that the gravity at its surface, the s- the surface gravity, is so high that you cannot escape it, even at the speed of light. You are forever trapped. It is the fabric of the space-time continuum warped back on itself. And once you fall in, you are never coming out. It is the human version of the Roche Motel.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You check in, but you don't check out. A black hole. That's why we call them black. And when you fall and you don't come out, that's why we call it a hole. Because we tell it like it is in astrophysics. A black hole. But if you happen to fall in a black hole, which is my preferred form of death, it's better than getting hit by a bus, right? So if you fall in a feet-first dive to this cosmic abyss, you will not survive because you will not miss. The tidal forces of gravity will create quite a calamity when you're stretched head to toe. Are you sure you want to go? Those tidal forces will increase to the point where your body will just snap in two,

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  likely at the base of the spine. Then each of those two pieces will snap into two. So you become one to two to four to eight to sixteen, until you bifurcate all the way down to the center of the black hole. And you become a stream of atoms. And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is you are funneled, extruded through the fabric of spacetime. So that you used to be this wide, now you're this narrow. And so this phenomenon, this extrusion, like toothpaste through a tube, we have a word for it. Death by black hole is called spaghettification.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Spaghettification, sounds like a meal to die for. See what I did there? Kill me. But give this video a like for a dad joke. All right, Neil, you ready for the next one? Iva Kassern wants to know this. There is a black hole in the middle of our galaxy. Is there a giant black hole or something giant in the middle of our universe? And something in the middle of the multiverse if we follow that logic?

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  And that's all we have time for.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, why are you offering me? It's a no. No. No. There is no center of the universe. All the universe was in the same place at the same time, nearly 14 billion years ago. Then you could think of it sort of as a center. But after that, we are expanding and all pieces expanding away from every place else. It feels like we're at the center, but we're not. Any more than when you're a ship at sea and you are in the middle of your own horizon. You're equidistant from every edge of your horizon. That doesn't mean you're in the center of anything. So, no. There's no known center of the universe, and therefore I can say with some confidence, there's no black hole there.

• 40:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay Neil, thanks for making me feel less important than I already do, knowing that I'm not the center of the universe. But wait a minute, how about black holes at the center of our galaxy?

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got one, Andromeda's got one. Except theirs is bigger than ours. We have black hole envy, but that's another show.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Long ago, we didn't know if black holes would be common in the centers of galaxies. With the help of the Hubble telescope, which has good, precise ways to look down in the center. Every galaxy we've had the capacity to check has revealed a black hole to us. Thus, we will extrapolate and assert that a black hole is a natural phenomenon in the center of all galaxies of the universe.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Alright Neil, it's time for another question. Dan Birmingham wants to know, what's the most exciting thing we don't know about black holes?

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's good theoretical

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ideas about what would happen if you survive a trip through the black hole and come out on the other side. All of our equations tell us that an entire new spacetime opens up for you. Once you've left the universe you were just in, you will never return to it. But you'll enter another domain.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our equations tell us it's there, but there's no way to test that and come back and tell anybody about it. So that remains, for me, one of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe. Is each black hole a universe unto itself? Chuck, back to you.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  Damn, that is super cool. I'mma call that a black rabbit hole. All right, it's time to talk asteroids. Are you ready, Neil? I'm ready, Chuck. Daniel Tickner wants to know, what is the easiest way to defend the Earth from asteroids? I didn't even know they were trying to attack us.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you want to do is first find out that it's headed our way. Then, as early as you possibly can, slowly deflect it out of harm's way. Because if the earlier you get it, you don't have to deflect it by very much, and that angle accumulates and gets wider and wider and wider so that it completely misses Earth. The later you do this, the more significant you have to deflect it so that it does not hit Earth. And if it's headed right at us, you have to deflect it the entire diameter of the Earth just to avoid collision. So the earlier, the better, in all cases. So how would you do that? Well, one way is you can like, paint one side of the asteroid jet black.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that'll absorb more sunlight than the other side. And when that happens, it radiates at a different rate from one side to the other. And that difference in radiation rates has a pressure that pushes it into a new orbit. But there's still issues. How much spray paint do you need for this? Or what would you actually take out there to accomplish this? And these asteroids are large. The ones we're worried about are miles across, okay? And if you're European, kilometers across. But that's a lot of spray paint. So, is another way to do it? Yes, you can send a spaceship out there and have it a space probe and park it near the asteroid. So here's the asteroid and here's the space probe. Just park it there. Now, what's going to happen is

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the gravity is going to want to attract them to one another. But you don't let that happen. You fire little retro-rockets. So that pulls the spaceship a little farther away, and then the asteroid falls towards it. And it's very steady. But it is, in effect, a gravitational tractor beam. It's like a gravitational tether. And that way, you can measure how effective it is and how long you should do it. And so that's clearly the best way to protect Earth from asteroids.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  So blowing it up Armageddon-style, that's not a good choice?

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. In America especially, we're really good at blowing stuff up. But we're not as good as knowing where the pieces will land. So you don't know what effect exploding it will have after you've blown it up.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  So what you're saying, Neil, is Bruce Willis is a fraud?

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. The way I put it is, if we are gonna blow it up, for whatever reason, I'd send Bruce Willis.

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, Neil, it's time for another question. Matthew Vincent Liberto wants to know this. How did all of the asteroid belts form? I'm genuinely curious. Also, if there were an asteroid headed towards Earth, how would it be known to the public?

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, first, let me say where they are. Most of them are between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. Hundreds of thousands of them. And they're craggy chunks of rock left over from the formation of the solar system. And we think many of them tried to become planets, like planetesimals. And the solar system back then was basically a shooting gallery. And as they're trying to become planets, they get broken up into bits and pieces. So they're really the vagabonds of the solar system.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  So what you're saying is the space garbage, like Pluto?

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, don't get me started.

• 45:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm joking, I'm joking, okay? How about the second half of Matt's question? How are we gonna know that we're all gonna die?

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, all the movies always show governments detecting the asteroid with some special telescopes and then keeping it a secret. Excuse me, you cannot keep the sky a secret. It is above all our heads. And there are countless thousands of amateur astronomers with backyard telescopes that look into the universe and find these things. And so you realize that most comets, up until recently, most comets were found by amateur astronomers. And asteroids, too. So now we have specialized telescopes, but they're controlled by us, not by the government. So, yeah, if we find one, you're gonna know the next day. The next day, because that stuff will go public.

• 46:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then everybody will find out at the same time, very likely via the internet. And it is no secret anybody can keep.

• 46:11Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, Neil, I don't believe you. I got a feeling they're not telling anybody anything. And then they're going to take that information and escape on their own. Or maybe that's just what I would do. I'm an awful person. All right, now, on a serious note, I actually saw this comment in the Facebook group comments. Ray Parker said this. "I don't care or want to hear about asteroids. If we get hit, so be it. Nothing we can do about it. There are other things that are a lot more important than rocks." Neil.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is why you want scientists and engineers in your midst. Because when something that might render you extinct arises, is on its way towards Earth, they will turn, they will look up and say, "How can we prevent that?" And they'll use methods and tools and ingenious ideas. And that can be the difference between you being alive, saying you don't care, and you being extinct, where your thoughts then wouldn't matter to anyone.

• 47:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you have it.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.