Things You Thought You Knew – Zombie Apocalypse

How empty is space? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice break down things you thought you knew about asteroid belts, the sun’s highest point in the sky, and what the real danger is in a zombie apocalypse.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on StarTalk, it's another Things You Thought You Knew episode, all about asteroid fields, the analemma, and the zombie apocalypse. Check it out.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jack.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, man. So you know, there's this latest StarTalk book. We spend a large part of a chapter exploring how empty space actually is.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can get a sense it's empty because it's this big vast voids and things. All right. And but I don't think people really feel how emotionally empty.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They came out wrong.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  No, I was gonna say, space is just sitting around just like, I just don't get it.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Emotionally empty?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  I put myself out there. I mean, I'm friendly. I don't get it. You know, I want to connect with people. I want to. I just, I don't understand why. I just can't seem to make that kind of tight fit with anybody. I don't.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, it's tough in space, being space.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  God, it just seems like no matter how much comes into me, I just still feel so empty. I mean, new stars are happening all the time, but still, I'm just, it just doesn't do it. What do I have to do to have some sense of accomplishment or fulfillment in my life? I don't.

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, Space. I'm sorry, Space. Our time is up. Maybe we can pick this up next week.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would ever think to personify space? Okay, that's not even a thing, right? Alright, so, so, so let's take a look. We have eight planets and they go out, you know, four or five billion miles, but there's only eight of them, right? So clearly that that's pretty empty, right? Yeah, yeah. That's pretty empty. Okay, but let's keep going. But you know, there are these asteroids. Right. And most of them are collected in this flattened zone. Yeah. Between Mars and Jupiter. Right. Okay. Because it's a flattened zone,

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we call it a belt. The asteroid belt. Okay. There are comets that come into the sun from all directions. Right. And if you projected where they come from, it's a spherical region around the solar system. And that we wouldn't call that a belt. Because it's a spherical region, we call that a cloud. A cloud, right. The Oort Cloud, Jan Oort, who's a Dutch astronomer. So he saw how many comets were coming in from every direction. And, and comets are moving fast when they're near the sun. Alright, and when they go farther away from the sun, they move slower and slower and slower. So when he did the, when he ran the math on the, before computers, by the way,

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  he ran the math. He concluded there must be billions of these comets way out there in these long loop orbits that come around. Right. And they'll spend most of their time far away from the sun. Because that's when they're moving the slowest. Right. Pluto is the most significant member of the Kuiper Belt of comets. Right. So it's a belt because it's a flattened flattened disk. region around, around the sun. Alright, 1801, the first asteroid is discovered. And, uh, people are excited because they think it's a planet. Right. They discovered orbiting in this big gap, suspiciously big gap between Mars and Jupiter. People are saying,

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there's gotta, let's just keep looking. There's gotta be something there. It's a bigger gap than you think should be there, given the distances between other planets. Other planets. Exactly. So they found, seriously, we found a planet!

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they found another one. And then they found another one. And another one. The first four asteroids, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, and Juno. Uh, Ceres is the root. Uh, Ceres is the goddess of harvest, and that's the root to the word cereal. Okay.

• 4:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Okay, so. Anyhow, once we started discovering many, many, many more of these. We realized, wait a minute, they're all in the same swath of real estate? They don't sort of own their own space? And actually, they're really tiny.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're so tiny through a telescope, they look like a star. Stars are so far away, you can't see any size for them.

• 5:03Chuck Nice?

  These are right here with us.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're right here with, so they look like stars, but they're not stars.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're asteroids.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get that?

• 5:13Chuck Nice?

  Little stars.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, oid, oid, star-like.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Star-like.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star-like, okay? So. Well, how many are there? Well, we started counting hundreds initially, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. Right now, we're up over a million known asteroids with orbits and, and existence in our solar system.

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of them has my name on it.

• 5:42Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that?

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  I did not.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did not know that?

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm serious, I did not.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  We've been together a long time. How did I not, you have your own asteroid?

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I'm sorry.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't mean to brag or anything. By the way, there are a lot of asteroids, so there's, there's a limit to how big your head can get, which you get an asteroid named after you, just saying.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  I, I don't know about that. That's not bad. I mean, I wouldn't mind, I mean, can you see it? Now that, that's the thing.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I double-checked that it's not headed towards Earth, or it's not on an Earth-crossing orbit.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, see.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you don't want to be that asteroid.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  You don't want to be that asteroid. Yeah, it's just like Neil Tyson is coming to kill you all.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's asteroid one, three, one, two, three, Tyson.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

  One, three, one, two, three, Tyson.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's, that's what it is.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  That's cool, man.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I have a name.

• 6:36Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute, just now, just very quickly.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 6:39Chuck Nice?

  Can anybody get their own asteroid? I mean, is, or is that something where like somebody bestowed this honor upon you? It's not one of those things where it's just like one of these services where it's just like you too can name a star.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  Give it to your girlfriend for Valentine's Day.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like to.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  Star.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You use the salesman voice, right? Name a star. So, um, the person who discovers the asteroid.

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has the power to name it after any person, place or thing.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so that's cool. So somebody found this asteroid that you know, and they were just like, hey, Neil, I'm gonna name this asteroid. Wow, that I'm gonna say.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's an honor. It's honor.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  That's more than an honor. That's like, it's like naming a child after somebody.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  I mean, honestly, that asteroid is gonna be there long after we're all gone. Your kid's gonna die.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true. That's true.

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  If you named your kid after me, it'd be like, okay, that's an honor for like, what, 70 years, three, four and 10, all right? It's not like your kid's gonna live forever. You know, I was named after Chuck Nice. No, but that asteroid will be there for generations to come.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Long.

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  That's a serious honor.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There, there it is. Okay. So that's one of the asteroids in the asteroid belt. Okay, there, we know of a million, there's probably as many as a billion. Depends on how small you, you wanna count.

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  What you're gonna, okay, count, right.

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So now watch. That swath of real estate.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is so large.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could, let's ask the question. What is the average distance between asteroids?

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very honest question to ask.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Question.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if you, if you base it on movies. All right.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  That that average distance would be around uh six and a half feet.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, because you're.

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  Because you gotta navigate the spaceship to make it look cool.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't look cool otherwise, right? And and and and the rocks are banging off the side of the ship. And jostling the ship.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And even in Star Trek, uh Captain, we're entering a star uh uh uh an asteroid field.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There they go. And so, yeah, this is this is cinematic trope. What's going on as you enter an asteroid field?

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got a feeling right now. I got a feeling that you are about to ruin another cinematic constant or or or uh uh uh tradition, another cinematic tradition is about to bite the dust, courtesy of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why you got, why you got billet like that?

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  I just know.

• 9:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why you gotta make me look, why you got, why you, why you do that?

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Something telling me, man.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the average distance between asteroids in the asteroid belt.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is about six hundred thousand miles.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  So so basically, you're like, okay, so you can't see it. But over there to the left, if we're not careful, in about a month, we might hit that asteroid.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mention showing that.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Showing that in the movie, right?

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  That's the movie. That's the new movie version, okay? Captain, we've entered the asteroid belt. Oh, my God. Well, what is the potential damage, number one? Um, I don't know how to say this, Captain, but uh we can't see any of them.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  They're too far away.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  How shall we maneuver the ship? There's no need to. I'm, I'm actually gonna go take a nap now, Captain. I'm gonna go lay down because

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  that's how, that's how much danger an asteroid belt actually poses.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what's interesting is our first space, we have four, well, five, well, more than that. I'm, I'm old enough to remember the first four spaceship to go beyond Mars in the solar system to reach the outer planets. So if you want to go to the outer planets, you have to cross the asteroid belt.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We did this calculation, all right?

• 11:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Early on, Pioneer 10 and 11, twin spacecraft, first to, first to have enough energy to leave the solar system, but they're not as famous as Voyager 1 and 2.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All four of those spacecraft went through the asteroid belt and nothing happened to them.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  And if it did, NASA would have been the laughing stock of all spacecraft, of space programs ever. Because there's 600,000, how could you hit something? You can't, if you tried to hit something, you couldn't hit it. You gotta try.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  It's like when my dad took me to learn how to drive in the parking lot of the supermarket and the supermarket is closed and I hit a lamppost.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you didn't.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  How? What? How could you? There's nothing here but lines on the ground and this one lamppost and you hit it? How did you hit the lamppost?

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I'm just trying to get real here. I mean, so that's all I'm saying.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  That's terrible.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why we don't worry about crossing the asteroid belt. We just send stuff through. It's not even a thing.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, honestly, oh, my God. And once again, I can say, once again, Star Wars has it completely wrong when it comes to the science of space.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, Star Wars, for your, your assiduous consistency where you just get it wrong every time.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyway, that was a long lead up to that one little bitty fact there. I have an asteroid, I have an asteroid named after him.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  That was so much fun, but actually, and that's the coolest thing. Well, actually, those are two cool things we learned. One, you are never getting hit by asteroid in asteroid belt. That's number one.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Number one.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  And number two, Tyson, three, two, one, no.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one, three, one, two, three, Tyson.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  One, three, one, two, three, Tyson.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which means at the time that was named for me, there was in the tens of thousands of named asteroids.

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  Got you, got you.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But now we're like in the high hundreds of thousands getting named. And so there's asteroids named after, like I said, people, places and things. If you discover enough asteroids, you can name one after your pet.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  So there's an asteroid somewhere named Fluffy.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  Fluffy three, one, one, two, three.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an asteroid named Santa. That was kind of cool.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  The Santa world.

• 13:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have a friend of mine who observed, who was at a telescope on Christmas Day, and he made shorter observe asteroid Santa on Christmas Day.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just for the grins of it, yeah.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  That's a cool thing to know, though.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long is a day?

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  Depends. Are my kids with me? Because then it's too long.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  But 24 hours is what they say.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  24 hours, yeah, it's 24 hours. We could repeat that every day without, okay, that's fine. But suppose you were to use the sun to keep track of that? How about the time it takes the sun to get to its highest point in the sky each day? That ought to be 24 hours. Because every day the sun rises and it gets the highest point in the sky and then it goes and sets on the other side. All right?

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ought to be 24 hours.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Damn daylight savings time.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. There are some days. Where the sun is early at its highest point in the sky relative to your clock. And sometimes it's late in the sky. You're thinking would cross the highest point in the sky at 12, high noon, right?

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  High noon, that's what they say.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sometimes it gets to high noon before noon comes. And sometimes it gets to high noon after noon comes. Sometimes the sun is fast and sometimes the sun is slow. Now, of course, we're the ones in motion around the sun. So I shouldn't be sun centering those sentences.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just for now, that's what I'll do. And it could be by up to 15 minutes.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too fast or too slow relative to your 24 hour day. That's correct.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what that means is you can't really use the sun to tell you when noon is. Because the sun will be ahead of that or behind it. So if you're okay, plus or minus 15 minutes, sure, use the sun.

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  Sun is on CP time.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, CP time, don't be out there.

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  That's the sun. Sun is like, what you're talking about? 15 minutes, that's, we're still good.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're still on time.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  We're still good.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On time.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  15 minutes. You're really mad about 15? Come on, man.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you going to tell people what CP time is?

• 16:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I don't want to, but I'm going to have to, but yeah, CP time.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, how about this? No, don't do it. Just make people go to the, the Urban Dictionary.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, go to the Urban Dictionary and look up CP time.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you drew the shadow, the tip shadow of a stick in the ground. Every day at 12 noon, the tip of that shadow will trace out a figure eight on the ground over the 365 days of the year. There'll be four days. Where the sun hits 12 noon at the highest point in its arc. All the other days of the year, it's either before or after that's the width of the eight. Tells you how much before and how much after 12 noon, the sun arrives at that point on the sky. Now, this sounds really obscure, doesn't it? But every single sundial ever made has a figure eight on it.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, but it it sounds obscure now because we don't use the sun to tell time. But if you actually use the sun to tell time and you don't want to end up on CP sun time.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you would use the figure eight to adjust.

• 17:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fact for the fact that the sun was either slow or fast. So that you get the proper time accurate to in in about a minute or two.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, I've I've done this experiment, you get it to within a minute.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A a properly oriented sundial, when corrected by this figure eight. It's that figure eight is called an analemma. That is the name of that figure eight. And so that so you might ask, how come the sun is not behaving?

• 18:21Chuck Nice?

  How come the sun's not behaving?

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Chuck. Because they got nothing to do with the sun. It has to do with the fact that Earth's orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle. When we are closer to the sun, we are moving faster in our orbit. If we move faster in orbit than when we're farthest from the sun. We have to turn a little bit extra to complete. The sun's journey from noon to noon because we moved in our orbit around the sun. So if we turn to exactly the right same direction, we're not going to see the sun anymore. We have to keep turning to compensate for that. And so these effects are not only because we're in motion around the sun.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But because sometimes we're traveling faster and sometimes we're traveling slower. Those conspire to make a figure eight. And that figure eight is called an annalemma. If you have old cartographic maps of the world, like old globes, look in the South Pacific where they put, you know, the legend for distance and the compass rose and things in there, you'll find an annalemma typically.

• 19:28Chuck Nice?

  Now that is something I'm going to be honest, had no, never heard of before.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That didn't even exist.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  Now that it never just completely new and it, but it makes perfect sense. And it's very important because of course, if you want to keep time.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, so it, it, let's go back to a perfectly circular orbit, which we don't have. You would get this adjustment anyway. Okay. So the, it takes 23 hours and 56 minutes for the earth to rotate once on its axis. The 56 minutes and four seconds to rotate once. Well, how come we're to 24 hour clock? Because in that time we orbited the earth and we have to turn four minutes extra to then see the sun back where it's supposed to be. So we say earth rotates once in 24 hours. That is false. That has never been true. Earth faces the sun every 24 hours. Turns back to the sun with a, with an aligned spot every 24 hours.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that has to be adjusted because sometimes we move faster in our orbit and sometimes we move slower. All of that's going on.

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you just wake up, have breakfast, go to work and come home.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Now you can have a true appreciation for your digital clock, people.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. And, uh, and by the way, most ancient peoples knew about this because what else are you doing? They didn't have HBO, you know, Max at night. What else are you going to do at night? You're going to look up.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. My God, do they ever play anything else on this channel? God.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the sky channel.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  The sky channel.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, December 21st in the northern hemisphere, first day of winter. Okay. The arc that the sun takes across the sky is very low. In fact, it is the lowest arc of all arcs of every other day of the year.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. December 22nd, the path is a little higher in the sky. And this continues to June 21st with the arc that the sun takes across the sky is at its highest.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is part of the reason, like the primary reason why it's warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. The sun is not very high and is not up for very long. The ancients were very concerned about this. Ancient pagan cultures, very concerned about this because the sun is everything. Gives you warmth and, and, and your crops and your, and your, you know, your agriculture. So there's the sun getting a lower and lower arc in the sky. So around December 21st, it stops getting lower. The sun stops. Solstice.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sol is the sun, stis is stop. Armistice, you stop the arms. So it doesn't stop in the sky. The, the, the trajectory, the daily trajectory across the sky doesn't get lower. But then they weren't sure this, it took a couple of days to make sure. And when you can say, hey, it's on its way back up again, that would happen a few days later.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guess what day that happened on?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Probably around, I don't know, the Christmas, you know, nice, nice Christmas.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so huge celebrations.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now Christianity says, we, we don't want you worshiping pagan gods. We want you worshiping Jesus.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so there was a swap of, there was an adjustment of where are you going to put the birth of Jesus? Passages in the Bible, if taken literally for what they say, would put it in the spring.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in December. But that, but if you want to get as many converts as you can, you can't take away their holiday.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That's because pagans know how to party. Pagans party, baby. You can't stop, you can't stop the pagan party. You can't stop the pagan party. No, they got the bonfire and everything. Drinking and it's amazing. And they were like coming along like, no.

• 23:29Chuck Nice?

  Hey guys, by the way, you can't worship this anymore and uh, there's this guy Jesus, you're gonna have to kind of worship him. Well, does he drink? Well, not really. I mean, he can change water into wine, but he's not a big drinker.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's good. That's a start.

• 23:42Chuck Nice?

  That's a start.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a start.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Tell you what, tell you what, here's a compromise. How about you guys keep your party and we'll just celebrate him as a part of the party. We're good with that? Start the fire.

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There, there it was.

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's basically the entire reason for this, for the birth of Jesus be, at Christmas, being December 25th.

• 24:07Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's when you assure the sun's arc returns in the sky. So, all of this is going on in the 24 hour day and the calendar and the 365 days of the year. That's all.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's your Annalema for you.

• 24:20Chuck Nice?

  Annalema, baby.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Annalema did right by you in the end, I think.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you don't have to look too deep into the news to find all kinds of ways that we're all gonna die.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yes. It's why I like the news. You know, when I, when I get depressed, I just turn it on and, you know, sit back and, and bathe in apocalyptic, you know,

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Misery.

• 25:07Chuck Nice?

  grandeur, yes. Wonderful.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, there's the asteroid, there's a killer virus, there's AI.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the list goes on and on and people like stay up nights thinking about ways we're all gonna die. And the one that is treated the most lightly, however, is one that I think should be given a little more serious attention.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's, that's the zombie apocalypse.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm gonna ride with you for a second. I'm gonna ride with you for a second. Okay? Yeah.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  I mean.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

  Alright, okay.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't think I got this?

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Listen, hey, here's the deal. I've doubted you in the past and it has worked out. So I'm gonna give you a little more leeway right now. But, you know, I gotta tell you, uh, this twig is very thin.

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  I don't know if it can support all this weight.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the zombie apocalypse is, alright, the way it's typically shown in a movie is there's some virus that affects a person.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they bite you and then you're affected by that virus. But that virus manifests by killing you.

• 26:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you come back to life.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, and using, then the virus is basically, you're a host for the virus in your, in your state of being undead.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Undead, correct, correct. By the way, there's a Key and Peele skit about the zombie apocalypse. Did you ever see it?

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they're in the suburban neighborhood and

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  these zombies are coming down the street and Key and Peele, they own homes on this street and they, the zombie comes towards them, then pauses, stops, and then just keeps walking.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  I won't bite them?

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are racist zombies!

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  That's a good bit. That's a good bit.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was hilarious.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty funny.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all the white people in the neighborhood were like running for the hills and they're out in their backyard playing ping pong.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a barbecue.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was just, what, what would it be? The zombies were racist.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the idea. And so they're undead and you gotta buy into that premise and then you have the whole movie.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one thing that The Walking Dead did so well in their series is to show for you that sometimes what we have to fear most is ourselves and not the zombies.

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now that I can go with.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, if you knew zombies were like everywhere, taking everything out.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then who's in charge? Who has access to the goods and services and foods and things you need to survive? Society. Right? Right. So all of a sudden, society becomes a Wild West in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Okay. So for me, I think a little differently. Well, I think more sharply about the zombie apocalypse. To me, the zombie apocalypse is the person who drives the truck, the people who drive the trucks that bring the food from the farms to the grocer

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  or from the canning facility to the distribution facility, they're taken out. Zombies don't drive trucks. Okay. The person who controls the water treatment plant that then sends clean water into your pipes is taken out. The person who delivers gasoline to the gas station or fills up or the power station, they're taken out. So a zombie apocalypse is not fundamentally different from a pandemic. Right?

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We saw some of this at the beginning of COVID. The supply chains were broken. Right. Because people stayed off the roads and other people got sick. So you're not you're not driving a truck that day. You're not you're not running the grocery store that day. And then what happens if the grocery store is open? What do you do? Well, you go in and you buy 800 rolls of toilet paper. That's what you do. I mean, clearly, that's the only thing to do.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How big is your ass?

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  Right. Exactly, you know?

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I would have bought food. I'd find other ways to wipe my ass is my how I would think about that.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean, I think it was, oh, no, it was spring. It was spring. Yeah, you know, I was gonna say that we've been using leaves forever. Human beings have been using leaves since the beginning of time. So, you know, toilet paper is not really the number one priority.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. As far as I would have seen it. Okay. So, um, so in a zombie apocalypse, forget the zombies. What's happening is society begins to shut down.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we are so dependent on even the littlest things in society. All right? If the electric company goes out and you gotta put gas in your car, the pumps run on electricity.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? If you have an electric car, when you not recharge it, unless you have solar panels, okay? Now suppose the solar panels break. You call solar panel fix it, man?

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they're taken out by the virus.

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so systematically, civilization as we know it unravels.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And let me tell you this. When I'm driving in a car and I see a deer crossing the road, or I see an eagle flying above, or I see a squirrel or a chipmunk, I say to myself, in the apocalypse, they're just fine.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, nothing changes.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing changes for them. They know where to get food. They know how to mate. They know where to live and get shelter. They know what to do from one season to the next, and they might hibernate. They don't need anybody.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so here I am, here we are as humans saying, well, we're smart and we're this. You know, by the way, Chuck, who said that humans are the smartest creatures ever?

• 31:56Chuck Nice?

  I think it was probably a human.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not humans.

• 32:00Chuck Nice?

  I'm pretty sure.

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pretty sure.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't aliens saying, oh, on the, on the grand scheme of, no, we declared that.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now, in a Darwinian sense, your, your ability to survive, the survival of the fittest, didn't mean you had the biggest muscles. It meant you were capable of thriving in an environment. You were best fit for that environment.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so we created a civilization. I don't know how to gut a deer.

• 32:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know how to chase a turkey.

• 32:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know how to, you know?

• 32:34Chuck Nice?

  That is why you have got to get yourself a friend who has a bunker. Now, any friend with a bunker knows how to do all of those things.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I live in the wrong part of the country for people to have bunkers with, with AR-15.

• 32:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure there's, there's plenty of bunker people who would be very honored to be friends with Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know, and just like, we're pulling for the zombie apocalypse because Neil's coming over, guys. You know, just gotta make sure you don't get bit on the way.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I ordered one thing in a survival catalog. There was some fun looking knife that I wanted. And one thing, it's a survival catalog, mind you, okay? And ever since then, I've been on the mailing list.

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For guns.

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For, for, uh, uh, tactical gear.

• 33:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For, so that's how they roll. You, you can buy a box of food, just add water.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep you going for three years.

• 33:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I bought a, um, a self-defense of protection. I'll call it, it's basically a weapon. I don't want to say what kind, but, uh, you would think that I was Chuck Norris, not Chuck Nice. Not Chuck Nice. The, the mail that I get. Now I'm just like, clearly they do not know who they are sending this mail to. You know?

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a catalog called L.A. Police Gear where, you know, you get, it's like, okay, now I know what everybody else is reading when I'm reading, you know.

• 34:10Chuck Nice?

  I need that. Now, L.A. Police Gear is a catalog that I want to have. I'm ordering everything in it so that when I get stopped by the cops and they're just like, "On the ground!" I'm like, "You on the ground!"

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were the last words Chuck Nice ever said?

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  Get on the ground. You get on the ground!

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you'll just see the catalog on the seat next to you. Oh, go ahead.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  That could be it, too. You never know.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be it. So, so the point is that ask yourself how much of your survival depends on the efforts of others to maintain the civilization that you're plugged into.

• 34:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and like I said, we saw bits and pieces of it for COVID, and COVID virus was 3% fatality, right? The morbidity, there's a, these mean slightly different things.

• 35:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the total, the fraction of people who contracted COVID who died.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was in the low single digits. And so if that had been higher, 20%, 50%?

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was working its way through civilization, then civilization shuts down and you are basically on your own. That's exactly what happens in a zombie apocalypse.

• 35:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think we need to devote more attention to the creativity of the writers and the producers who do these zombie stories, just to see how the people are reacting in the face of lost services. They even know when the zombie shows, you don't use a gun to kill the zombie, because guns use what?

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  Bullets.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And somebody's got to make the bullets.

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that person doesn't show up at the factory, you ain't gonna have bullets.

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, the, uh, the, my favorite zombie, um, series of all time is The Last of Us on HBO. And it's because of everything you just said. It doesn't really focus on zombies. It focuses on our relationship with one another in the breakdown of society, and it just shows how different groups of people, how they coalesce and become their own sub-society.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they think about their, their survival in different ways.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and what they'll do and what their priorities are.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, I'm just saying, um... You know zombies are, we, we, we're scared of zombies, but as you clearly indicated there Chuck, at the end of the day, maybe it is we who we should fear, not the zombies themselves.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  I'm going with both.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  I'm already scared of us. If zombies show up, I'm gonna be scared of them too.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there's some, you know, people make up their own zombie rules, which is fine, as long as it's consistent. There was one storyline where the zombies could not move backwards. They can only move forwards, which meant they cannot open a door that opens inward.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, that's a dumb rule, you know?

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  All I gotta do is get-

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You bet your life on it.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, all I gotta do is get behind you now.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and then don't turn around and go backwards.

• 37:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was one rule, and then a movie I didn't see, uh, uh, uh, Z, what's that movie?

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  World War Z, it's a good zombie movie.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There, there was some fast-moving zombies, zombies should not be able to move that fast. That ain't right.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  And unrelenting, there, it's just crazy, like-

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't right, zombies should not be able to run, I'm sorry.

• 37:42Chuck Nice?

  And run faster than anybody, that's what made it-

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's not how, they ain't got no ligaments in their bones, and, no. The most I'll give them is in the thriller video, they can dance.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  I'm down with that. By the way, the only zombies I'm not afraid of, I'm like, those guys, they're, they're too entertaining.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Just one more number before you bite my brains, just one more, guys, please.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One more, one more, one more. So anyway, that's all I wanted to tell you about. Ask yourself, how dependent are you on civilization itself? And then consider the zombie apocalypse, and you're the first to go.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, there's something good to think about during this season. Perfect season to think about zombies and the breakdown of society as a whole, I like-

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, that's all I got for you Chuck.

• 38:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, keep looking up.