Things You Thought You Knew – Why Size Matters

What’s the fastest a car can accelerate? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore goal size to goal scoring ratios, the doppler effect, and the maximum acceleration for a car.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I recited that Doppler effect sound differently, you would say, what's wrong with you? Right? If I went,

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  no, you know intuitively that that's wrong. That's true. Or,

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  no, it's,

• 0:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  stop laughing at my Doppler shit.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. This version is a Things You Thought You Knew edition. I got Gary O'Reilly, Gary, co-host.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Hi Neil.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, dude. And we got Chuck Nice, Chuck.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's up, guys? By the way, Gary, the World Cup final was, it was so good that I had to text Gary while it was going on.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, trying to get some, trying to get some street cred with Gary, that's all you're trying to do.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  No, it was so good, I couldn't believe it. Like, I, I like soccer, I'll watch it. Like, they have Bundesliga that comes on here in America. That comes on Saturday morning. And Premier League, I think it's called, comes on.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Premier League, I've seen that, yeah.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Premier League comes on as well. And, you know, it's like, sometimes I'll just, like, stop as I'm going across the channel and I'll watch it. Because, you know, what I, what gets me more than the game is the fans. The fans are insane. And I'm, you know, they're singing songs.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And none of them are, none of them are sitting down.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they're all standing for the whole game.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is two hours.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  I know. Paid for a seat and don't use it. Paid for a seat, I don't even know why they put seats in the stadium, to be honest. And the great, the great thing is, Chuck, every club...

• 1:57Gary O'Reilly?

  All the fans have their own particular set of songs that they will, they will sing all through. I mean, go to, go to Argentina.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  And it's got, wait, and it's got songs for, for players.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 2:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you go to Argentina, it's like you've rocked up at a rock concert. Cause there's the music's there, the fans are singing and you're like, wow. And then a game of soccer broke out.

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. That's what you do. You went to a concert and a game of soccer broke out. It's, you know. But anyway, I watch it. It's, you know, it's, it's not my favorite sport, but you know, if I come across it and it looks, and it looks, uh, I just think the field is too big. If they shortened the field, I would become a soccer fan. Okay. But, but, but, but when you gotta watch.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, wait, Chuck, did you see the tweet? Somebody tweeted, it was, you know, you know how to improve soccer? First, make the field smaller.

• 2:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, uh, use five players instead of 11 and make the net smaller.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's basketball.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, no, no. And then, then just do it on ice and then that'll make it fun.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hilarious. But, uh, uh, it takes them like two minutes to run up the field. So I'm just like, that's really the hardest part of the game for me. But I understand if you really know the game, that is part of the game. There's.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that, see, that, that got me thinking, Chuck. Okay. Uh, how come there's not more scoring in soccer? I, I just was wondering this. Then I said, could it be that the net is not big enough?

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Could that be? I'm just asking. I was just asking.

• 3:31Gary O'Reilly?

  It's 24 foot by eight feet. How big do you want it?

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how many games end 0-0? Yeah. That, that net is 24 feet wide.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  That's 24 feet across?

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By eight foot high.

• 3:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Up.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  And eight feet high. Damn.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So here's how you do this. You want to do this sort of geometric mathematically. You'd get the area, the cross sectional area of the net. So it'd be 24 feet by eight, the, the depth doesn't matter. To a cross at the front line, it's, it's in. Okay. So then you get the total square footage of the net.

• 4:01Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you subtract away the area that the goalie occupies. So I approximated a goalie as being two feet wide by six feet tall. So it'd be 24 square feet. Okay. I mean, and whatever it is, it's not going to be far off from that number. So what you do is you divide those two numbers.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Did you include, did you include the Mickey Mouse gloves? I know. In the total area of goalie. The totally Mickey Mouse gloves. Cause you, you gotta, you gotta include the Mickey. Every time I see a goalie, I just. Oh, I can't. Like, that's what I'm waiting for. I'm just.

• 4:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, man.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So what, so first, the, the goal, the, the, the net area relative to the ball. Okay. So it's a relatively simple calculation because the ball is about nine inches in diameter. So you, you do have that to get the radius. You do pi r squared. You get the cross sectional area of the ball.

• 4:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Of the ball, okay.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the cross sectional area of the net. You divide them and you learn that the net is 440 times larger than the ball.

• 5:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now, now subtract the area occupied by the goalkeeper. Is that what he's called? Goalkeeper, not goaltender?

• 5:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, it is.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Goalkeeper. Thank you. Thank you. Um, you gotta compliment me when I get that stuff right.

• 5:21Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you're good. You're on a roll, man. Keep going.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, when you subtract that out, the open area available to the scorer of relative to the player for the ball, it's, they've got three, it's 384 times larger than the ball.

• 5:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  300.

• 5:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Are you making it sound as if people out there playing soccer, football are talentless?

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is true.

• 5:50Gary O'Reilly?

  They had a space that big.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is true that if I take a, what do you call it, a penalty kick? If you're, and you're the goalkeeper, if you're leaning the wrong way, I score 100% of the time.

• 6:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Because your body weight, your body weight is committed to over, over one leg and you've no chance really to then move laterally.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what I'm saying, it's a, it's a reminder.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  You have so much, you have so much area.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's my point.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  To put that ball through.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my point.

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  That it's almost impossible for you not.

• 6:17Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, but Neil, the thing is, the goalkeeper is not going to be leaning up against one post, right? One part of the frame.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I get it. I'm, I'm just saying.

• 6:25Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I know. I know. I know how you're doing this.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The chances of them not scoring on a penalty kick, if the goalie's leaning the opposite way is near zero. Okay. So, so it's huge. It's huge.

• 6:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But.

• 6:38Gary O'Reilly?

  There should be the advantage with the penalty taker. However, once you start to stand behind the ball, step backwards, ready to take a penalty kick. Let me tell you what goes off in here.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a, it's a mind game, a mind, total mind game.

• 6:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Honestly, the ball gets larger and the goal gets smaller.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:57Gary O'Reilly?

  You might as well be, you might as well be in Wonderland with Alice.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget the laws of physics, laws of physics don't matter.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  That's hilarious.

• 7:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, stick it in a World Cup final where this isn't just a game. This is more than a game. This is for country. This is for

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:11Gary O'Reilly?

  millions and millions and millions and millions of people. This thing goes bonkers.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless your country doesn't have millions of people, but yeah.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  And I was gonna say, by the way.

• 7:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Most countries do, most countries do.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, that, that's kind of the problem is you, you guys need more sports. Okay. Cause a, a, anytime your whole country is relying on one sport. Like in America, we have like 30 sports where somebody gets to be world champion. Cause nobody else plays the sport did us.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  See?

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. That's why we go, you know, the world series, right? I know it's supposed to be like the world, the, the, the New York world newspaper, whatever. But still, it implies that if you're best here, you're best anywhere.

• 7:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. So what, what, what's, what's the relativity with, from soccer then maybe into other?

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into hockey. So let's do hockey. Okay?

• 8:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the net is 1,150 times larger than the cross section of the puck.

• 8:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Really?

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But the goalie takes up a third. If you look at the fully equipped goalie with the, with the

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  Pads.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the pads and the, and the stick, and they got a fatter stick. So once you subtract that out, they, they basically cover a third of the total openings. But still, when we're done, the available space is 770 times larger than the puck. So here's an interesting fact. The available space, all other things being, forget the talent of the goalie.

• 8:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ignore that for the moment. How much area is available for you to score in? And if you run these numbers, it's 770 for the hockey player. And it's 385 for the soccer player. So there's about twice as much available area to score in hockey as there is to score in soccer. So then we can ask. On average, how many more goals are scored in hockey than in soccer? I'm thinking it's about a factor of two.

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  It is, because when you think about it, I mean, okay, I don't know this for a fact, so I shouldn't say it so definitively. But in my experience watching hockey, which by the way I do,

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  I know, I know people, I know, and yes, I do. But, uh, uh.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I worry about you, Chuck, sometimes. You know way too much about hockey, NASCAR, and I don't know where you were born. You tell us it was South Philly.

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna learn one day.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  In West, in West Philadelphia, I was born and raised, but you know, by a bunch of hay seeds. That's right, damn it. Anyway.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  Uh, but yeah, um, if you look at like the average hockey score at the end of the game, it's like three to two.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three to two.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  That's about five goals. That's about five goals.

• 10:05Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, you'll get it, you'll get it nil-nil, you'll get a zero-zero tie in football. You'll get one-one, you'll get a two-one, which is possibly the most common.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  Mostly it's two-one. So that's three. So it's about twice as much.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about twice as much. And if hockey goes up to five or six, usually one of those goals was one of those free goals at the end where they pulled the goalie.

• 10:26Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing, Neil, here, how much of this is down to actual speed? So the speed at which a player can run, the speed at which a player can skate on ice, the speed at which the ball, the soccer ball can travel, and I suppose the fastest it will be kicked could be nought of sixty miles an hour. Which is nowhere near as quick as an ice hockey puck who could be clocked at triple digits, Chuck.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so the way, the way we do this in physics is you say, what is the simplest case to analyze? And that would be the baseline on which you would then add these extra variables. So for, for me, the baseline is how much available area is there for the puck?

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, that's clearly, yeah.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you just start with that. And then you can say, what, or whose reflexes are better, whatever, and that would put nuances on it. But this simple fact. That a hockey net, which remains after the goalie blocks it, is is twice as large as a soccer net after the goalie blocks.

• 11:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, that doesn't, that shouldn't happen.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It it that tells me that we should have twice as many scores in in hockey, and we do.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  And it looks like we do.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It kind of looks like we do. That's all. That's all pointing out there.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Now with, now with respect to reflexes, I'm gonna call that a draw. And the reason I call that a draw.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they're both high, high, high level athletes, so.

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  They're both some high level athletes, but if goalies, hockey goalies, have better reflexes than goalkeepers, they wouldn't have to wear a dog on mattress.

• 12:00Gary O'Reilly?

  You know what they look like? They look like those guys who go out with police dogs ready to be attacked.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  They look like that movie The Hurt Locker.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Where the, where the bomb squad.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  You know, the bomb squad dude.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that dude more than more than one that the German shepherd attacks to train.

• 12:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's it. So the other thing is, Chuck, I I have to give credit to the hockey gold miners. Because that that puck generally isn't coming from 25, 30 yards away.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 12:31Gary O'Reilly?

  It's coming from close range and they get blocks. Their reaction speeds must be absolutely ridiculous.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this blocking, you get blocking in soccer too. I'm just saying, but everything is just broadened out, right? And, you know, with scattered over and slowed down. Right?

• 12:47Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I just, I'm just looking at reactions. I mean, football goalkeepers are, I mean, they're all a variety of nuts in a jar, but their reflexes are awesome. But they are, trust me. But hockey gold miners, their reaction speeds are frightening.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely frightening. Especially when they drop down and do the splits and then catch the ball in the glove. That to me is probably, you know, one of the greatest feats in sports.

• 13:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's that's showboating, but you know what? That's what it takes. That's what it takes.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. They've split so much, that's why they waddle off.

• 13:25Gary O'Reilly?

  So Neil.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Hockey goal is they waddle.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they left the groin in the net.

• 13:30Chuck Nice?

  It's like, why are you waddling? Because, man, my testes are frozen from resting on the ice half the damn game.

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so guys, that's my little bit there for whose net is actually bigger relative to the scoring,

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  relative to the object you're using to score, and it's hockey, relative to soccer. You might not have thought that, but there it is.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, more Things You Thought You Knew. StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition, Things You Thought You Knew. In this segment, I want to tell you guys a little bit about the Doppler shift. You might know a little bit about it, but I want to sort of flesh it out some more.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  That'd be good for me.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've surely heard of it. This is the shift in the frequency of sound between when an object is approaching you versus when it's receding. And we know it intuitively. That's the fun part about it. Even if you didn't know there was a word for it, we know it. Because, for example, if you're on the side of a freeway or even at a racetrack, there's the sound of the car as it approaches you. And it goes

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and that's different from the sound it makes as it recedes from you. It goes

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and you put them together, you go

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? That's what happens.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Well, see, I know it because there is a meme of you giving a talk and doing that. And as soon as you do it, they show a hurricane and a sign that knocks a woman.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, I've, okay, I've seen, I've seen one of those memes where somebody loads a fish into a cannon.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then shoots the fish. And then it goes meow, and then it lands in a fish shop somewhere.

• 15:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, I didn't know that they.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  But the one with you is hilarious. You do it and then they show a hurricane, was take a sign.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, first they show the hurricane. The sign comes off of its post.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  And then you go meow, and then it goes back to the sign and it claps this woman and knocks her, you know, it's, it's, it's actually mean, but it's so funny.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only, only the professional comedian is allowed to say that sound.

• 16:19Chuck Nice?

  So it's just mean, but it is hilarious.

• 16:21Gary O'Reilly?

  It is mean.

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  It's mean.

• 16:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So, so see, I never, having, having never grown up near a NASCAR track or a racetrack of any kind, I would know what you've just described from aircraft that would fly overhead.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, it'd be easier at like at an airport, you'd get more of that, yes. Okay. So, so, so the point is, if I recited that Doppler effect sound differently, you would say, what's wrong with you, right? If I went.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you know intuitively that that's wrong.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or. No, it's.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop laughing at my Doppler ship.

• 17:07Gary O'Reilly?

  It just sounds like a car going by with a cat hanging out the window. That's having the time of its life.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think Chuck is jealous because he wishes he could do the Doppler ship.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it turns out that the frequency of sound that is actually being made is accurate only when the car is directly in front of you.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Passing by. Ooh. Okay. So when it's coming towards you, the sound waves are compressed, which puts more crests and troughs by you per second. More wiggles. And if there's more per second, that's a higher frequency. That's what frequency is. How many crests per second. So higher frequency sound, another word for that is a higher pitch. Okay. As it's receding from you, each next sound wave is now stretched from the previous one. And so that's a lower pitch. But if it's right passing in front of you, it's neither coming towards you nor away.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the only truly accurate signal you can receive from the car is right when it passes in front of you. Just a point of information there. Okay. So, so what do we do with electric cars? Okay, so now, now it turns out. Don't have that much sound. Okay, it turns out that not all of the sounds you hear is the engine. No. Okay. And in fact, depending on how fast the car is going, some, and in some cases, most of the sound is the air passing over the car and the sound of the wheels. Flies on the track. On the, on the track. Those make sounds unto themselves. Now, those who live in Los Angeles, okay?

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an In-N-Out Burger joint right beside LAX. And it is right there in the approach for planes landing. And you sit there, eat your burger, and you just watch it happen. The sounds you hear, the, the, the plane does not need engines to come in for a landing. It's basically a glider at that point. Yeah. So if you want to know, yes, the engines, they're on, and so they're making some sound, but that's not the dominant sound. If you want to know what a pure airplane sounds like with air going over the, the airfoil, it's what the, the planes sound like as, as a very high pitched sound. It's like, it's like, Chuck, I can't get it.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was like, yes, yes, yes.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Good one. So it's.

• 19:48Chuck Nice?

  I, I, I used to work at that In-N-Out Burger, so.

• 19:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you imagine this burger joint, right, by LAX? The, the P, it's packed to the rafters with aviation nerds. Just sat there.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they better come sponsor a show. Let me tell you that. Um, so, so the point is, we're talking about this because of NASCAR, all right? So now, I've been to a couple of NASCAR races in my life. Okay, one of them was at Daytona.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 20:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Fine, okay.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Florida, FLA, okay?

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 20:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, I'm just saying, brave man, that's.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no, that's all right.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  Good for you, man.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not the Antebellum South anymore, Chuck.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  I am, well, now, let me, ain't you that science guy?

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck's imitating everybody.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's fine, so I'm sitting there and so I was so disappointed, you know why?

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have speakers all around the track.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't get the pure sound of the car moving from your left to your right. The speaker is giving you the sound of the cars as they are, not as they are Doppler shifted towards you and away from you.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're actually missing the most beautiful Doppler shift you could possibly have, and it's a 200 mile an hour car coming towards you and going away from you.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Screaming at you as it goes around.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you imagine how high that frequency would be?

• 21:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At 200 miles an hour and how low it would be going out the other side? And they got some loud ass engines on there, so you get the airfoil noise, the track noise, and the engine noise.

• 21:35Gary O'Reilly?

  But if, if you're in the crowds, if you're in the crowd, Chuck, and you've got these PA speakers around the track, it is literally a constant wall of sound.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's, yeah, it's constant, that's correct.

• 21:46Gary O'Reilly?

  So rather, and therefore they don't lose out on this sound when the cars are on the far side of the track?

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's, that might be the motive.

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  That's probably why they do it.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've only been to those couple of tracks, so I can't speak for, you know, Talladega, I don't, I don't know, but. So I was so ready to just feel the Doppler shift and it wasn't there.

• 22:06Chuck Nice?

  So, so then you know they do that on the televised broadcast. If you, if you watch the televised broadcast of NASCAR,

• 22:16Chuck Nice?

  what you hear from the wide shot when you're looking at all the cars is

• 22:24Chuck Nice?

  and that's it.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  It's just a constant hum.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a constant hum.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  The only time you see the, hear the Doppler is it's a single camera in the ground and the car goes by you.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, right, right.

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  She chucks, Chuck, Chuck is really into NASCAR, isn't he? You could tell this. I gotta tell you, as much as I make fun of it, sometimes I do like watching it, but not as much as Formula One. Nope.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, don't start that fight here and now.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 22:52Chuck Nice?

  Get those racing overalls off, here we go.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Put that jumpsuit on, take those overalls off.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Doppler traces back to a German physicist, a German physicist, Christian Doppler. And he, he first measured this, you do it with a train.

• 23:10Chuck Nice?

  Did he have a twin? Did he have an identical twin?

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that was Einstein with the twin paradox. So.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm just thinking of doppelganger. Yeah, I was gonna say, it was Christian doppelganger.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, oh, doppel, Doppler ganger.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  I saw what you did.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, leave Chuck to tell the jokes on this one.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, you were not hired to tell jokes.

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  Apparently not.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so he did it with a, with a train, a railroad, that's a big thing, it's on a track. All right, you're doing this before you had automobiles, this was in the 1800s. And so what are you gonna, you're gonna use a track? And it was some years later, where, forgive me, I forgot the guy's name, who decided to do this with two orchestras playing on flatbed rail cars. And each orchestra was told to play exactly the same note as, it's a subset of an orchestra, as the other orchestra.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so they each are playing the same note and they're coming towards you. Okay, and so you hear, so the funny part is, they, as they pass in front of you, you hear the note, but all the notes were higher pitched as they came towards you and lower pitched as they went, yet you know they're playing the same note. That's what they were instructed to do. So, so this was the people's fascination with this phenomenon. And, I mean, it was quite the discovery. And by the way, we, this extends into the universe. We, we look at light shifting because objects moving towards us or away from us. And we can determine exactly, oh, yeah, so I didn't make it clear. Does it make sense to you that the amount

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that the wave shrinks, or the amount that it expands should be related to the speed of the object? Would you, were we together on that?

• 24:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So the faster it goes, the higher the pitch, or, or the lower the pitch, but that each of those would be more with a higher speed. It turns out there's an exact relationship between the change in frequency and the speed, and it's the Doppler formula.

• 25:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so what happens if I'm, if I, if I break the speed of sound?

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 25:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Am I now ahead of?

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 25:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh, steady, steady, gonna get two.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 25:27Gary O'Reilly?

  So.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  In that case, the note being played bursts your eardrums.

• 25:32Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you dissolve into a pile of goo.

• 25:36Gary O'Reilly?

  A pile of goo.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so here they are coming towards you, and you have this frequency that is broadcast. And the, the moment you, because the, the sound speed is sort of the same in air, except now you're moving through the air. So the next crest is compressed relative to the previous one. If you keep increasing your speed, the wavelength gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The frequency gets higher and higher and higher. The pitch gets higher and higher and higher. There is a speed with which the next wave lands exactly on the wave you just emitted moments ago.

• 26:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you are doing that, you are traveling the speed of sound. And every one of your waves is on exactly the same wave front.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a focusing of all of the sound that came in front of you into one place.

• 26:36Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that place is a shock front, moving at the speed of sound.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  So that's your sonic boom?

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the sonic boom.

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  So what if I, what if I floor it and I go faster than the speed of sound? Do I then dismantle the Doppler shift?

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the Doppler formula works only up to the speed of sound.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, great.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After that, the free, it doesn't make sense to talk about a frequency. Cause everything is jammed into, there's no, there is no, it's just a cacophony.

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it's, it's what we call the linear regime of the phenomenon is where the Doppler formula applies.

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wow.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so, yeah, yeah, so, so I think because if you can't get it at NASCAR for the reasons I described, then walk up to the side of any freeway, any freeway. And you'll hear, and of course, you can, you can tell which are the electric cars and not, because one will have an engine, but they'll all make sound. Every one of them will make sound.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  That's good to know. Next time I'm selling oranges, I'm gonna actually try to sell.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that how you supplement your income from Starbucks?

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir. Get out, get out to the Major Deegan here in New York City.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  But, you know, here is mango.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Major Deegan, Interstate eighty-five, eighty-seven.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  Eighty-seven. Yeah, by the way, in, in New York, it's mangoes. Uh, in LA, it's oranges.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, people sell mangoes on the freeway here, which is so weird because it's a tropical fruit and we are nowhere near the tropics. Don't worry, we will be soon.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's, that's another episode.

• 28:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Excellent.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so all right, I just want to throw some Doppler effect out there.

• 28:21Gary O'Reilly?

  I like it.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You knew about it or you didn't, but that's, those are the details. And it applies to trains and orchestras and objects that move.

• 28:29Gary O'Reilly?

  I want to know, I want to know who he was, put an orchestra on two flat big rail cars, right?

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 28:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Was it, was it Count? I know. Count Von Loaded? Count Von, way too much money and just.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, let me get, well, I know, I know who it is.

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, please, because this, this sounds so, so upper class. Please have the butler assemble the orchestras on two flat big rail cars.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm getting this from a book that is coming out this fall. It's the third installment of a Startalk book in a collaboration with National Geographic.

• 29:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Very nice.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a book I've co-written with one of our senior producers, Lindsay Walker.

• 29:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Amulus.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, yeah, so here's the paragraph. In 1945, a Dutch meteorologist, C. H. D. Boyes Ballot. Interesting name there.

• 29:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Conducted a simple yet brilliant experiment to demonstrate the Doppler effect to anyone in doubt. By the way, the original Doppler effect was described just a couple of years earlier, 1842. So he positioned one band of trumpeters on a train platform and another band of trumpeters aboard a train to pass them by. And both were instructed to play the same note at the same time. And so then this whole thing was observed by all the curious onlookers. So, yeah, it's, it's a fun thing. But by the way, remember I told you the change in frequency is your speed in a formula? This is what radar guns do with the police.

• 30:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They boop you with a radar gun and they're looking at the change in frequency of, of microwaves that are reflected off your car.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if your car absorbs all microwaves, the cop will have no signal back to them and as far as they're concerned, your car isn't even there.

• 30:20Gary O'Reilly?

  What, what if I, what if I cover the whole car in aluminium foil? Well, then aliens will not be able to read your thoughts.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll be safe. You'll be safe.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Yay. Who doesn't want to be safe?

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but if what you put there reflects them back, then it works in the favor of the cops. So, so the point is they can get their most accurate measure of your speed if they're standing exactly in the middle of the street as you drive towards them.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  But they have to be direct in front of you.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get the correct speed, correct. But, so, but they're not in the middle of the street, they're on the side somewhere. Or if they're clever, they're on a turn and right before the turn, you are driving directly towards them. But typically you're on a straightaway, okay.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  That'll happen.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if they clock you speeding and they were not standing right in front of you, you were speeding because at any angle from being directly in front of the car, there's a cosine diluting of the speed that they measure. So if, if they're at an angle to you and they clock you going 100, 100 miles an hour, you're probably going 115 miles an hour, but you still get the ticket.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they can't ticket you for 115 because they didn't measure that.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  See, and that, that's why I have a problem with, uh, you know, them doing that to the black NASCAR drivers as they go around the track. I'm like, why are you shooting him? Why are you shooting him with a radar gun? There's only, the only NASCAR driver to ever.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a speeding ticket.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Lights and sirens go on, woo!

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck has an active imagination here.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so all I'm saying, so that's, so, by the way, there's a, there's a whole other,

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in principle, there's a way to thwart that, that invokes laws of physics that relate to your car, but that's, that's for another day.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, I don't think I should be giving instructions on how to break the law.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay, why?

• 32:33Gary O'Reilly?

  I think a lot of people, a lot of people listening right now have Chuck's question on the table.

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  You probably, listen, you'll probably be the only person I would take advice from on how to break the law. Cause everybody else I know is too damn stupid.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what it comes down to is at any moment, no matter how fast you're going, there is a part of the car that's not going forward at all.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 33:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe I should save that for another.

• 33:05Chuck Nice?

  You damn sure should, cause that is insane.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay, okay. All right, all right.

• 33:10Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a teaser.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna dangle that in front of you. Okay.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, all right.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And on, and depending, and for some trains, no matter their speed, there's a part of them that's moving backwards while they're going forwards.

• 33:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Are you just messing with us now?

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  No, it's true. I'm just like, yeah, and I believe for that car, you have to have a flux capacitor.

• 33:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, that's another day. All right, guys, we're gonna end this segment. When we come back, more of Things You Thought You Knew on StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're doing some things you thought you knew. We're putting those together for this one episode. And so I got another one for you. And that is, there is a highest possible acceleration for an automobile.

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know if you knew that.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  I, uh, I did, I'd say.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did know that, okay.

• 34:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a Tesla in free fall.

• 34:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't Tesla in free fall anyway?

• 34:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that, is, is that not a, is that not a euphemism, Chuck? Tesla in free fall?

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, that's, that's kinda what I'm getting at.

• 34:38Gary O'Reilly?

  So you, what you're saying to me, Neil, is it's not, if you use an internal combustion engine, it's not about horsepower and torque?

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct.

• 34:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Or if you're using an electric motor, it's got nothing to do with those?

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, okay, so watch what happens. So let me, let me lead you up to that, all right? So there's the car sitting there at the starting line. And what do you have to do to have the car accelerate? Well, you want to have the wheel made of rubber typically in contact with cement or asphalt or whatever, okay? And you want that wheel to propel the car. Right. Okay, okay. And then you say to yourself, I want to accelerate even faster. So you put, you press the pedal down even harder, right at a zero start. Okay, we're talking about zero to sixty here, let's say, okay?

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you say, I want to go even faster. There's a point where as you press down the pedal, the torque on the wheels Right. will be so high that you'll skid out. You lose. Right. You'll no longer be attached to the road. Burning rubber, baby. So you've lost, you've lost control of the vehicle. You, you know, well, well, you've lost, you've lost the friction that moves you forward. Right. Because it's friction between the tire and the road that moves you forward. Okay, so one way to improve the traction

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is to increase the force Yep. over those wheels. Okay? I don't know if you've ever seen these entrepreneurial folks who have pickup trucks. In the old days, they were all rear wheel drive, but the engine is in the front. Yeah. So what, so the weight over the front tires is way more than on the back tire. And they want to equip them with a snowplow. And then, you know, they go by in the snowstorm and say, why don't you, to, you know, Plow your parking lot. Plow your parking lot. And they pick up money on the spot. Okay, so they, they will not have traction unless they do what? You know what they do?

• 37:01Chuck Nice?

  Well, normally they just have chains on the car.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if that helps.

• 37:06Gary O'Reilly?

  So they're gonna have to weight the back of the car, so.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have to weight the back, and it's an easy source of weight to do that with, and that's the snow.

• 37:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they will shovel snow into the back of the truck, increase the downward force on the drive wheels, which in that model that I'm describing with the rear wheels, America went through rear wheel drive for most of, you know, the 20th century of our cars. And so that increased the pressure there so that the wheels would not skid out. Okay?

• 37:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, but wait. As you increase the weight, the energy to accelerate has to move more mass, working against your ability to accelerate.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  So you need more power to propel the car because you have more mass, absolutely more weight pushing down on the car.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but in order to get the traction, you increase the weight. But what I'm saying is, by increasing the weight, you have to then have a more powerful engine in order to make this happen. And they scale exactly together.

• 38:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 38:24Gary O'Reilly?

  See, now you can get downward force through airflow.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna get there in a moment, I'm gonna get there in a moment, okay? But I can tell you this, you're not having much of any downward air pressure, starting from zero.

• 38:36Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you're not gonna get it.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you have to go much higher speeds for that to really matter here. But there are, at race car speeds, they do matter.

• 38:45Gary O'Reilly?

  But even from zero, it doesn't matter, you're not gonna get it.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From zero, the air is not helping here, okay?

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so to Gary's point, when you have air pressing down by using an airfoil of some kind, the spoiler, right, which if you look at its cross-section, it's an upside-down airplane wing.

• 39:02Gary O'Reilly?

  You can have air intakes inside of vehicles, you see them on race cars.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are other aerodynamic elements that you can add, that's right. And it's, how does the, how does the car look in a skirt?

• 39:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm, yep.

• 39:14Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, okay.

• 39:15Gary O'Reilly?

  But then you have, you have vents that direct air underneath the body.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, so we have faster moving air going under the car. That creates a net positive pressure down of just air. And the spoiler in the back, depending on its angle, will also increase the pressure. So in that way, you increase the weight of the car without increasing its mass.

• 39:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and that improves your traction. Okay? But what I'm saying is that when you run the numbers on this, what you get is that the fastest you can accelerate forward is 1G.

• 40:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow. Okay, that's it.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, you cannot accelerate with just normal friction between a tire and a road faster than the acceleration of gravity downward towards earth. And when you run that calculation, you say, well, if you were just free fall, how long does it take to get to 60 miles an hour? Takes about 3 seconds. Free fall for a stone to reach 60 miles an hour. So horizontally, this is playing out with the weight of the car and your ability to have the thing move forward without spinning the wheels.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there are 2 ways to improve on this. Alright, one of them is lace the tire with sticky gum. Okay?

• 40:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or more practically, you heat the tire.

• 41:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heat the tire.

• 41:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Which they do.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And sometimes, which they do, then the tire gets gummy.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it sticks to the road.

• 41:13Gary O'Reilly?

  They use different compounds, Neil, don't they? They use, I mean, think about the hot rod drag racing. They've got these tiny little bicycle wheels up front, like T-Rex arms, right? And then they've got these gigantic, gigantic pieces of rubber right at the back.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Monster truck slicks in the back.

• 41:30Gary O'Reilly?

  So, and that's, and that gummy, that gummy compound that they use, yeah.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and so they probably, you know, you can spin it to heat, heat it up to that, and it's gummy, so it's sticking to the road. When you stick to the road, then you're not relying purely on friction.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To move forward. In physics terms, the coefficient of friction is greater than one. Okay? And you can only achieve that. Oh, by the way, the coefficient of friction between rubber and roads is very high. It's like point nine, you know, point eight, point nine, point nine five. So rubber and roads are a match made in heaven. Okay? And now you keep getting that up to one. Then you'll accelerate forward at the downward acceleration of Earth's gravity.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You cannot do higher than that unless it grips the road in some kind of gummy way, sticky way. Or, you know how to do it perfectly, you have gears.

• 42:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Then it's not friction at all. Your teeth and your gears are pressing against something else that's embedded in the road. You can accelerate to any rate you want at that point. So it's all a matter of whether you're only depending on friction or not.

• 42:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're not going to have a car accelerating at two seconds from zero to sixty. Unless either it has something digging into the road, pockets of holes in the road. Or there's a jet engine.

• 43:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So I mean, electric cars, there are electric cars.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocket engine.

• 43:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Neil, there are electric cars out there must be close to about two and a half, three seconds, nought to sixty. Bikes certainly can.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if, so what typically what's going on there is that's on a particular track where the kind of tires they use is actually digging into the road.

• 43:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what's happening there. So, but you'll see there's a convergence down around three seconds from zero to sixty. And this is the reason, you're limited by Earth, basically. And the acceleration of gravity on Earth, if you're only relying on friction. But like I said, put a jet engine there or rocket engine. And then you're not relying on friction. This is the big issue with the land speed record. Are you allowed to have a rocket engine where there's thrust coming out the back? If that's the case, that's just a rocket going horizontally.

• 44:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you proving with that?

• 44:10Gary O'Reilly?

  They're not going to be popular in traffic, are they, Neil, rocket cars?

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I actually, did I tell you I rode? Jay Leno's jet car.

• 44:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I tell you?

• 44:20Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm on one of his episodes of, what do you call his episode?

• 44:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Jay Leno's Garrards.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Garrards.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Garrards.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so look at the one where it's his, it's his, he has a, a commercial jet engine in the back of his car that's powering the drivetrain.

• 44:36Gary O'Reilly?

  There was, there was once a British guy.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 44:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Took the engine out of a World War II Spitfire plane, right? Which would have been a 24 liter Rolls Royce Merlin engine. And built a car around it and then would drag it down the autobahn. Just duke it out with Ferraris and Porsches. This absolute monster.

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he'll win because he's not using normal friction.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. You'll leave the Ferrari in your dust or in your, in your.

• 45:07Gary O'Reilly?

  It looked like one of those old fashioned 1910 Bentleys. You know, that big open wheel thing going on.

• 45:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Everything's round on it. Yeah, yeah.

• 45:16Gary O'Reilly?

  With this massive Rolls Royce aircraft engine in it.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Jay Leno's car was street worthy.

• 45:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he even had like a stereo in it. I'm thinking, really? Really?

• 45:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a jet engine right behind me. It's a two seater. The jet engine is like behind my head. And I'm wearing a helmet and he wants to hear Blue Danube. That's not happening.

• 45:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Turn that up. That's my jam.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. He wants to hear Enya. Enya's not getting through.

• 45:45Gary O'Reilly?

  What was the heat like in strapped in to a rocket? That must have been ridiculous.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, so it has a cooling system. So, and it's behind you. So.

• 45:54Gary O'Reilly?

  That's nice.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was working fine. We were at Edwards Air Force Base. So they closed one of the tracks for us. And at something like 150 miles an hour, one of the windows blew out. And they caught that on slow motion. And, and, but the car could have gone faster. And I said, Jay, obviously I'm in the passenger seat. I said, Jay, why don't you take it up higher? And Chuck, you have to imitate him now.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Okay. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, Neil.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said, I didn't want to be known as the guy who killed the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, people like you.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, man. Wow. Yeah. That's insane. So you're actually limited by the acceleration of gravity. That's it. Pure and simple. Look at that. You got it. Wow. And how fast is it when you shoot a car in the space? Oh, yeah. You want to shoot a Tesla Roadster into the man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, the sky's the limit. Well, no, relativity's the limit, but there's nothing to stop any rate of acceleration in space. Oh, look at that. If you have engines and if you have rocket engines, you're just how fast you're how good your engine works, that's all. Right. Nothing else is otherwise limiting you. But look up the acceleration speeds. And if you find something significantly faster than three seconds at zero to 60,

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  look carefully at what the conditions were of the track, the road, what kind of rubber they used. Right. And. And whether or not it was on rails. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Rails, that's a whole other thing. Yeah. That's another conversation we're gonna have. Like I said in a previous, in a previous segment, if you're on a rail, then part of your train is actually moving backwards while you're moving forwards. So. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that, really. I'm telling you, we got, we got, I can't wait to do that. Save that, save that one. That's got me scratching my head there, Neil. All right, guys, Chuck, Gary, that's another sort of things you thought you knew. Thank you. This has been StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Things you thought you knew. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astro. This is it. As always, keep looking up.