Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Escape

How much do we actually know about the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions from plasma propulsion to quantum gravity to black hole escape plans.

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 Cosmic Queries Grab Bag.

• 0:03Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, those are, make the best combinations of questions because they come from everywhere.

• 0:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But some of them, people, stay off the drugs, okay?

• 0:14Chuck Nice?

  That's good advice from this show, yeah. Coming up, people, you'll see what he's talking about.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On StarTalk.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. In fact, it's not just Cosmic Queries, it's Cosmic Queries Live. Chuck, I love doing this.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah, man, very cool.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's also Cosmic Queries on the road. I'm in LA right now.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  What are you doing?

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, do you have any public talks?

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, nice.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, tonight in Riverside and, uh, right, leading up to on Friday, I'm in Oakland and I get to Oakland often enough.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay, make sure you wear that bulletproof vest.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you stop?

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  I saw, yeah. Oakland ain't no joke, man.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you know they're angry because they just lost three professional teams or something, you know?

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Man, it's terrible. I know, and the Raiders, come on, like, I still call them the Oakland Raiders, I don't care.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so they're especially Henri, okay?

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Watch out.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So today is, um, Grab Bag for us, right? What you got?

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we got, we got, I got them right here, the, uh...

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if I don't know the answer, I'll just say I don't know the answer. Just be clear about that.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Um... All right, here we go. This is Smitty West. Smitty. He says, hey dudes, it's Smitty from Ojai, California, a new Patreon member.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's true. It's really like dudes.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Hey dudes.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. That's surely what the man sounds like.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  That's what he sounds like. Absolutely. New Patreon member with my very first question. And this is what he says. It seems gravity is the bastard force in nature. Speculation continue as to whether it's a force, a field, waves, or particles. Now that LIGO has detected gravity waves, I was wondering, could you somehow aim those waves at a double slit like the Thomas Young experiment of 1801? And what would it show? And would the slit, what would the slit be made of? Would it show particle wave duality? I'll share the Nobel Prize with you guys.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brilliant question. That, that's, that takes what we know and takes some other bits that we know and tries to put them together into some future idea. And that's what good scientific thinking will do.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  Way to go, Smitty.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so, so my answer is, I have no idea. Because the waves, right? So, let's back up for a minute. So, we know there's the wave particle duality. You may have heard about that. And every particle in nature has a wave length associated with it. And you can think of the particle as a particle, as a physical particle, or as a wave, depending on the experiment you conduct.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will manifest as a wave and will have wave interference. All right. If you have a wave, and it can, you know, wave interference means if the crests and the troughs match up, it cancels out the wave. And if the crest and the crest, crest and the crest match up, it'll amplify the wave. But you can watch phenomenon, wave-like phenomenon happen with these particles when you put them through the right experiment. So, Smitty, was it Smitty?

• 4:02Chuck Nice?

  Smitty, my man.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smitty's asking the right question. We have gravitational waves.

• 4:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a double slit experiment that we can imagine?

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For which these would then reveal that they behave just the way other particles do. So if there's such a thing as quantum gravity.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We expect there to be the graviton.

• 4:29Chuck Nice?

  Which is the particle that would make up gravity.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could the particle to the graviton is to gravity. What the photon is.

• 4:40Chuck Nice?

  To light.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To light or electromagnetic.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Electromagnetic force.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay. So if there were such a thing as a graviton, how would you detect it?

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And because that implies that you trapped it, right?

• 4:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you detect something, it existed over there, now it's in my detector.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how are you gonna trap gravity? What does that even mean, right? What like with with the night? Is the gravity in the bar? It's like in the like in the Ghostbusters, you know?

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah. It's you have it down and and now it's just in a little rectangular box.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a little rectangle with a handle on it.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Right, with a handle on it.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And and what happens if you open it? What does the gravity do? So I can't even begin to think about what that would mean and how you would go about that experiment. So I'm gonna have to put that in the in the holding bin. So, yeah, I I wish I had a better answer, but we learned from the German poet, Reinhard Maria Rilke.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of his poems is has one of as a line, learn to love the questions themselves.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, now see, that's a man who had no answers.

• 5:53Chuck Nice?

  That's what that was.

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  She was like, now where have you been all night? He was like, sweetie, I'm just learning to love your question.

• 6:04Chuck Nice?

  I don't even wanna talk about where I was. I just wanna reflect on the the beauty of the question you just asked me. That's, yes.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next. Thanks, Middy, for that.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  This is, uh, David Robertson, and David says, "G'day, Neil and Lord Nice, the Butcher of Aussie Accents." Oh, thanks.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  I really should read these ahead of time.

• 6:38Chuck Nice?

  David Albury. He's Aussie. Clearly, he is. He goes, uh, David Albury, if, uh, here. Uh, he doesn't tell me where he's from in Australia, but he says, uh, "If the singularity of a black hole is a moment in time, can I escape if I bring my time machine? By the way, you guys have a great show."

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the answer is yes. Yes. Yes. Okay? So, let's, let's, let's back into that, all right?

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, no, you, yeah. Go ahead.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm listening.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's, I, let's have the surface of my desk, let's say. And I put an ant on the desk. And then I draw a box, you know, a rectangular box on the desk. It was a little door, okay? And I say, "Ant, go through the door." So it goes through the door, and then I shut the door on it. Now, the ant has no access to a third dimension, just in this example. The ant is living in the two dimensions of my desk's surface. Just picture that.

• 7:43Chuck Nice?

  So up does not exist for the ant.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't even have a word for up in this example. You go left, you go right, forward, back.

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  Backwards, that's it, right.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it. So I open a little, a little hinged door. The ant walks in and goes, "Ant," okay? Okay. So the ant looks trapped. But we, higher dimensional beings, live in three spatial dimensions, say, "Just step up and go, I mean, step over the wall." Okay, that's not really a prison for you. Just, let's go into this extra dimension we have supplied for you.

• 8:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you can escape. And the ant is looking at us like, "What are you smoking?" Okay? Fine. So now, let's up that. Let's just up that to a prison cell. Where it's not just a rectangle or square that surrounds you.

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A wall on all sides, a floor, a ceiling, and four horizontal, two, four vertical walls. Okay? Somebody opens the jail cell, puts you in. Uh huh. Closes the jail cell. I'm sorry. First of all, as a black man, I do not like where this is going. It's okay.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me think of another.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you're a place you don't want to be. Okay. Okay. And somebody locked the door. How's that? Is that a little better? That's much better. Thank you. A little better. Okay. So now you say, well, how do I get out? Well, a fourth dimensional person will just say, step into the fourth dimension. Right. That's the way which arguing with the ant to step into the third dimension. You say, I don't have access to the fourth dimension. Right. I don't even know what that means. I don't know what your word for up means when that takes you into your fourth dimension. So we can say that. All right. Now, you've all heard that time is a fourth dimension. Right. You've heard that. All the, all the time. All. Yeah.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a spatial dimension, but it's nonetheless a dimension. Right. So if you were in your, in your enclosure and you had a time machine, you could go back in time before you were in. In the, in the, in the enclosure. Right. And escape the room without ever opening the door. Look at that. Okay. So time acts like an authentic dimension for you. If you want to be someplace other than where you are without having to go through whatever was the, the procedure to arrive there in the first place. So if you're in a black hole, it doesn't have to be a singularity in time.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just has to be a singular. You're inside the black hole. Say, I don't like it here. Get me the hell out. Right. Go in your time machine and just simply return, go back.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to the future.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can just simply go back in time or forward in time. If you happen to know that there was a point where you were sprung loose by some, you know, a higher dimensional being.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, by evaporation. When you get there, there's nothing, there's no universe left.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a hawking.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  Like hawking radiation, yeah.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to be evaporated out of the black hole. That's no good.

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  That's true. Yeah, that's not good. Right.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Maybe backwards is a better.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you want to come out intact on that. So that would be how you would escape. Using time as a fourth dimension, you just go back before you you entered the room. I know that's not as romantic or as fascinating as other sort of elements of physics, but it would work entirely for you.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay, very cool. All right. Well, way to go, David. Appreciate that and thanks for disparaging my Aussie accent. I appreciate that.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I think is pretty good, but who am I to judge?

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  I mean, you know, listen, it's it's like, first of all, I mean, how many of me are you going to meet in Australia anyway? So.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  All right. So quite frankly, if I was in Australia and you met me and I was like, good eye, mate, you would be like, that guy's faking. So.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Ted Doyle. He says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, I love you guys. And greetings from Southern Idaho. I am Theodore. Idaho. Idaho. Lord Nice, if you're delivering the question, my name is pronounced Theodore. Okay.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Really, bro? Come on. Anyway, he says.

• 13:01Chuck Nice?

  That was uncalled for, by the way. Okay. That was. He says. My question is, if a plasma propelled spacecraft is chugging along to its destination, at what point must it start deceleration? Fifty percent, seventy percent, ninety percent? Uh, to avoid crashing and burning at touchdown?

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so generally, the way we think about this problem is it's a fifty, it's a halfway point.

• 13:30Chuck Nice?

  Halfway.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in a plasma propulsion, uh, plasma is a gas where it's, uh, it's, it's a charged gas. So, in other words, the atoms that are normally complete with their protons in the nucleus and the, the appropriate number of electrons to match the, the, the pro, the protons. Cause electrons are negatively charged, protons are positively charged.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Positive charged.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or neutral. Yeah, if you, if you, if you kick off the electrons, now the atom is no longer neutral and the whole gas will respond to magnetic fields. I mean, it's a fascinating phenomenon. The sun is a big ball of plasma. And that's why it's got these weird, it's got sunspots. It's not just a gas sitting there, minding its own business. There's phenomenon occurring in it. So, a plasma rocket is it, is it, is set up so that it kicks out. Particles, charged particles out the back. And so what does your spacecraft do in response? It moves forward. It goes forward, it recoils, correct. So, when you are a plasma, you can react to magnetic fields, electric fields,

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and you can do things with it. And do very fascinating things, like you can become a star with a turbulent surface such as is our sun. So, with a plasma rocket, one of the charged particles is channeled so that it gets kicked out the back. And one of Newton's laws of motion is, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Action was his word for force. So, in this case, you kick something out the back, that there's momentum going out that way, you recoil in the other direction. Your acceleration is slow. Right. Because how much is your ship going to recoil if you send an electron out the back? Right. Right? Yeah.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, you could do this, if it's a long journey, you just keep accelerating, okay? And once you get an acceleration that you like, maybe 1G, then on the ship, your journey is at 1G. So you feel like you're standing on Earth. Right, right. You don't need special exercise equipment to not lose your bone mass. You don't need special medical devices, you know. Because that is the force that's being enacted upon you, right? And Einstein made the brilliant observation that 1G on Earth from gravity

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is indistinguishable from a 1G acceleration in a rocket. Okay. Indistinguishable. And, oh, I gotta, we gotta go there, because we're already there. Okay. Eighty percent there, you ready? Go for it. Okay, so if you are in a, if you're in a rocket, and you're accelerating, it means every next moment, you're traveling faster than the previous moment. Right. So a constant acceleration means your speed is increasing. The entire time. The entire time, okay, Snow Watch. So, if you take a beam of light.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And turn it on on one side of the rocket and have it just cross the rocket. Okay. You'd say, well, the rocket isn't moving, it'll just go exactly across to the other side. Take a laser, just go straight line. But if the rocket is accelerating, it means the rocket is moving faster by the time the light got to the other destination than it was when the light was emitted. Which means the light will not hit the spot directly across where you turned on the laser. It'll hit slightly below because the whole rocket was accelerating.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Is moving.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was moving. Okay. Einstein said, that's interesting, because if accelerating a rocket is physically and mathematically and cosmically the same as gravity, then gravity ought to bend the path of light.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 17:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I mean, I, that's, that's a serious leap.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Yes, it's called the equivalence principle.

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  Lovely.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The equivalence of gravitational acceleration and physical acceleration through space.

• 17:57Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I had to go there because I was too, we were too close to, there was

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  That's a good thing that, it's a good thing to go to.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that was the equivalence principle in nineteen fifteen that Einstein put forth to become the general, the foundation of the general theory.

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Relativity.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so now watch, so, so here we are, so you get up your acceleration until you're going at one G.

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you're living on the back end of the rocket. Okay, so all your couches and beds and things are up against the, that's where, or you're not on the sides, because it's not a rotating rocket.

• 18:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's not, you could maybe, but if you're moving the whole thing and you're accelerating it, you're gonna feel that and so you're all gonna be walking around in the bottom of the rocket.

• 18:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the way we generally think of this problem is you accelerate at one G, half the distance.

• 18:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then. You turn the ship around.

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And decelerate at one G.

• 18:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cuz.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the other half the distance and a deceleration is the same as an acceleration. You're just now walking on a different side of the ship.

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And there you have it and you get to live in one G the entire way. And by the time you get there, you would arrive at the same, you would arrive at zero velocity. Okay.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because now you're slowing down. With one G acting in the opposite direction it was before. So that's how we would think of these long uh trips with the mu- with the acceleration that builds.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and that's a really cool thing and it's a.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you you arrive at zero velocity.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there's a.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A metric.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  There's a show, I think it's on Amazon, I'm not sure, but it's called The Expanse and they make very good use of that principle in the show.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 19:48Chuck Nice?

  They show all.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen Expanse, let me go back and remind myself of.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, when you watch it.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a lot of good physics in The Expanse.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  It is, and one of the great physics um points that they don't ever acknowledge, but they show is a ship going towards a planet. And you're looking at the rockets in the front. While it's going towards the planet.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, because it's slowing down.

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  Because it's slowing down the whole time.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and you see ships turn around to reorient their rockets.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know what else they get correct? If you're in a one G acceleration, you are not weightless at any time in that ship. Okay.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the movie Ad Astra with Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones, okay? Just everybody in space was weightless even when they were firing their rockets. Everybody's just floating around. I said dudes, come on, please. Please, take some lessons from The Expanse.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Expanse, just to catch people up, it's a futuristic. Tale where humans have populated the solar system.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And evolved in those.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  And we're still awful.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we're still.

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  That's that's just, there it is.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the whole geopolitical or cosmopolitical dimension to this where the belters appear. They're they're like the low class workers who are mining the asteroid belt. And then there's the.

• 21:12Chuck Nice?

  The Martians who are very erudite.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're they're physiologically different in in ways that accommodate life on those places.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah, man. Ah, that's very cool. I'm glad Ted asked the question. Theodore, Theodore. Okay. All right. Here here is, uh, this is Jason Bennett and Jason says, you know, I've always wondered what would happen if Neil and Chuck never met? Would any of us or any of this exist?

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Ah, geez.

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I got, I have an, I have a reply.

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about this often. This is the contingencies of life. All right. There was a TV series. What was the dude's name? It was called Connections. Okay?

• 22:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yes, you do. He wrote a book called Connections. Then he had a very successful TV. It was a Brit. And so it sounded all, you know, erudite.

• 22:14Chuck Nice?

  Welcome to Connections. It's like, right. I'm terribly pretentious and that's what you actually like.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what he would do is he would find chance encounters between historical figures that would lead to something that would be transformative in our civilization. And then you say.

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's cool. And I'm amazed he could like assemble that many encounters.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and the whole show, uh, revolved around Kevin Bacon.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, every show would land with Kevin Bacon.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, right, if Chuck and I never met, and by the way, how did we meet Chuck? In the early days of StarTalk, we'd go trolling, back when trolling was not a bad word. Trolling comedy clubs.

• 23:11Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we would look to see who was in the open mic night, who, because we know we wanted comedy as a, as an element, as part of the DNA of what we were trying to create. And so, we would invite comedians to come try, try out with us. Not so much a tryout, but just to have a, what do you call it, when you just, um?

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  A meet and greet.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, and they'll do a show with us just to see, we'll feel them out. And so, and Chuck was one of, one of such people. If memory serves, is that, is that your memory of this too? Because it's so long ago at this point.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  It was, uh, 15 years ago, so, uh, yeah, I mean, um, I think that was it, but somebody called me and said, Neil deGrasse Tyson would like you to come to his office, and I thought it was my friend [BLEEP] with me. I'm sorry, oh, pardon my language, I forgot we're doing a show. Yeah, I thought it was a buddy of mine, um, messing with me. Um, and yeah, but then, yeah, that's what happened, and we met, and you were like, yeah, well, let's see if we can get you back in and just see how it works out, we'll do one, we'll do one show together.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's missing a little bit here in that retelling, is you already had experience on radio.

• 24:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I had, I had years of experience in radio, so, you know, I was, I was cheating compared to the other comedians.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comedians who were just sort of comedians, right, right. You, you actually know how to flow a conversation. You know how to end a sentence so that the other person knows you just ended a sentence. It's time for them to start speaking. There's a whole dynamic there that would not otherwise be obvious. So, that's how that, so, here's what you have to ask, and who's the person again, who asked?

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is Jason Bennett.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, here's what he's got to ask, okay? He's got to ask, it's not what would happen if you and I never met.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, what would happen had I met someone better? Ha!

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an option that's in the space of possibilities.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's it's in the it's in the slim space of possibilities.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the people say, oh, look how lucky I am because this happened and I had this opportunity. And I met this person in their life. It could be a career trajectory or or or loved one. And you will never know if your life could have been even better.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, given that it could go either way, and I because I said, I thought I think about this often. I simply embrace what is rather than imagine what might have been. Because you can then you work with what is because that anchors you in reality.

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it, Jason. What he just said is he settled for Chuck Nice.

• 26:00Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 26:05Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Kylie.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, wait, wait, let me back up for a sec. So with this fellow who had that show Connections.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What he doesn't talk about in this same vein is if that connection wasn't made. Would a different connection have been made that would have been a better outcome? Or would another connection have been made that would have had the same outcome?

• 26:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's he's dangling you there, leaving you to think that the whole world exists on this delicate pathways of contingencies of who happened to meet whom. Without thinking some progress in civilization would have been inevitable, no matter who.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  No matter who made it, right?

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so stay broad in how you think about contingencies and then you you lead a more sane life.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  So true. I like it. I like it. This is Kylie Roning, who says, Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord and Ice. Kylie from Kenora, Canada, here.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kylie from Kenora, Canada. Okay.

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sounds like a TV show.

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  It does. Kylie from Kenora, Canada. Yeah. Uh, by the way, Kylie, let me just say on behalf of America, we're sorry. Okay? All right. Uh, Jesus, we're just so sorry. Um, she says, if humans were to be graded on our understanding of the universe, what grade do you think we should receive? Or put another way, what percentage of the universe do you think we humans actually understand?

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, we know that precisely. We know enough about the universe to quantify our ignorance. How about that?

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pretty good. That's, that's good.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  That's not bad, yeah, I mean, honestly, it's like, it's better than being Dunning Kruger, you know what I mean? Like, where we think we know everything and we really know nothing. We know enough to know that we are dumbasses. So, that's pretty good.

• 28:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, we, we, now, by the way, we're still making discoveries, of course, and we're looking for a cure for cancer. So there are frontiers, even within the realm of what we know. So, I'm gonna quantify our ignorance in a more profound way than just simply do we know how to cure cancer, okay? The fact is, we know that there's a thing called cancer, and it does what we don't want it to do in our bodies, and we have top people working on it. That's a frontier, but that's not the frontier I'm talking about. Because all of that is operating within the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Okay? All right. So now, if you look at everything that we have mastery of,

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you know, the molecules, and atoms, and, and gravity, and all of this, okay? And you look at what's driving the universe? Everything you learn about in school, in science, like I said, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, planet forming, star forming, all of this.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is four percent of the universe. Wow. We see things going on in the universe. We can measure them and we have no. No idea. What it is and the and I tell you what it is, it's dark matter and dark energy. That's it. That's it. You those two things are operating on our physical universe. And you can sort of weigh them if you if you like as to what what is the how consequential are these things in the universe that we call dark matter and dark energy? It is ninety six percent of what's driving this universe and we have no idea what's causing it. But the four percent we do know. That's life, that's civilization, that's that's transportation, that's that's.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, skyscrapers, that's dams that we build. All the rest of that, it's agriculture, is all the rest of that. Are the laws of physics that we know and understand? And so who knows what kind of profound advances will come about? Once we. Once we know five percent.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when we'll be smart. So here's here's an interesting thing. How do we know that even when we learn that other ninety six percent? That that just doesn't simply put us on a new vista. We get to look out and see even more ignorance. And that's probably what's gonna happen. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. And and who is to say that we are intelligent enough? To actually understand the universe? Here we are, human beings evolved on the plains of the Serengeti. Just trying to not get eaten by lions. So we develop a sensibility for that. All right, a lion runs at you, you run the other direction. You climb up a tree. This is survival things and now we're trying to contemplate the cosmos.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a mismatch of physiology, of neurophysiology. And so the idea that we are smart enough to understand the universe, there's a little bit of a hubris in there, I would say. Yeah. Uh, so, yeah, I mean, would an alien judge us as being intelligent? And I, I, I think not, particularly when they see some, as you say, dumbass behavior.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, basically, they would come here and say, these people are hell-bent on destroying themselves. Like, that would be the number one takeaway when you look at, when you look at us as a species.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can't possibly be smart for that reason, if for no other.

• 31:56Chuck Nice?

  If for no other. Yeah, yeah.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. All right.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is the artist formerly known as James Smith. He says, hello, James Smith here from Indianapolis. So Neil, can't we agree that it's Brian Greene's fault that the universe will not end in fire, but in ice? He's supposed to be figuring out what's causing the expansion of the universe. Or do we need to let him off the hook and become a level three civilization on the Kardashian scale to do that? Love you guys and have a great day.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, he's, he's calling out Brian Greene.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'll tell you, it's, I don't know what, I don't know what Brian did to you, man.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, we, the expansion of the universe derives initially from the Big Bang, but there's also this dark energy phenomenon in the vacuum of space that is accelerating the expansion of the universe against the wishes of gravity. All the collective gravity of all the galaxies in the universe, even the dark matter, what we call dark matter, because that has gravity, all of that wants to slow down the universe and maybe one day re-collapse us. However, we have a dark energy phenomenon going on that is accelerating the expansion of the universe, and we don't know what's causing it, we don't understand it, we want to, and you can't blame Brian, Brian Greene for that.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as we expand, the temperature of the universe drops, hence the, the notion, the universe, you know. So Chuck asked, how will the universe end?

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  Neil, how will the universe end?

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in fire, but in ice. Yes. Right. So, yeah, you can't blame Brian Greene. He's, don't shoot the messenger there. Because we need the messengers. Very cool. Now, about the level three civilization. Uh, so let's remind people that there is a, was he a physicist, a Kardashian? No, no relation to. Kim.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So Kardashian imagined, that imagined, he, he thought about and wrote about levels of civilization measured not by how smart you are, not by how nice you are, but by what means of energy do you command? Do you control? Wow. And a level one civilization controls all the energy manifesting on your home planet. So that would be like the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the earthquakes and the tides. We would somehow find a way to tap that energy. And harness it. To harness it for our own means. For our own diabolical. For our own means. That'd be a level one civilization. A level two

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  would capture all the energy from its host star.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We capture some of it with our like solar panels on the roof or whatever. Exactly. Sunlight is hitting every square inch of Earth's surface. Okay? Well, when it's not hitting our surface, it's hitting the tops of clouds. But Earth is intersecting a cross section of the sun's energy that would otherwise go into empty space, but Earth was in the way. Right. Okay? Well, how about that same amount of energy that went by Earth? And went above and below and every other direction in space? That's a lot of sunlight. So if you build a system where you capture all that energy of your host star, channel it down to your civilization, now you have a badass civilization level two.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's, that's level two?

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's only level two, right, and I think, yeah, level two. And now, you build a similar device that captures all the energy of all the stars in your galaxy.

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be a level three.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a level four would be all the energy of all the galaxies of all the universe. That'd be level four. And there's a level five, I think?

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's called God.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God, okay.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God on the Kardashian scale.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  That's it, God on the Kardashian scale. That's all there is to it.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do we command the energy of hurricanes or tornadoes, or, no. We run away from them. We buy, you know, toilet paper and run away from earthquakes and tornadoes and, and volcanoes. And we're not even at level one, so they were level zero.

• 36:32Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. Yeah, we're number zero. Yeah.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we control all the energy of all the universe, maybe even the dark energy, then we can control the expansion of the universe.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For, for our own needs, for our own desires.

• 36:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's too much power for anybody to have, especially us.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but that'd be the future where you have wars between the universes in the multiverse.

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  That's true. Hmm, yeah. Uh, I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not joining that army. I don't care. I'm not doing it.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at that point, all the life forms in our universe would be, uh, aligned with each other, because our enemies would be whole other universes, if we're all level four civilizations.

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but, you know, the way it normally works is you're working with the people to defeat a common enemy while you're plotting to destroy them as soon as you defeat the common enemy. That's

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the playbook.

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  That's the playbook, you know, so, yeah.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The human playbook.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here would be, you know how to mess with another universe? If you have the power, maybe level five power, to change the laws of physics.

• 37:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, see, you're, see, now you're just diabolical.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, think, because if you just slightly change the charge on the electron, then all solid matter would just dec- would just disassemble.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh. Oh, you, you just Thanos a whole universe.

• 38:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that's crazy.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, by the way, I don't generally have those, I'm a peaceful person, this is the.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That question drove me to these insane thoughts, yes.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, time for two or three more. So what do you have?

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Isabella. She says, hi, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Uh, Isabella and Sierra from Ogden, Utah. Our question is, what would our solar system look like if we had an extra planet? Uh, either terrestrial or gaseous? And what would the implications of this be? Can a planet that can't be demoted, R I P Pluto, uh, nineteen thirty to two thousand and six? Thanks to Leo Tyson. Um.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Implicate me that way? I was in a secretary. I was not, I didn't pull the trigger.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Right, so anyway.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I did drive the getaway car. I did drive the getaway car.

• 39:35Chuck Nice?

  Um, so Planet X, I mean, every.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so a couple of things.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  I kind of feel like we get this in the news every once in a while. Okay.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's a, my colleague, who works just up on the sixth floor of the Rose Center. My office is on the fifth floor, which is not where I am right now. I'm in a hotel in, in Los Angeles. Uh, Steve Soder, who, by the way, co-wrote the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan, and the first of my two Cosmoses. He co-wrote those, okay? Brilliant guy, brilliant in history and science and, and he's fundamentally a solar system guy. He wrote a research paper that demonstrated that. The planets we now have Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their locations is the maximum number of planets you can fit into the orbital space of this solar system. If you put another planet in of any size Jupiter-like or otherwise, the gravitational fields of the other orbiting planets would wreak havoc on its orbit and it would either crash into a pre-existing planet, crash into the sun, or be ejected from the solar system.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Thrown out.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thrown out. So, we are so mature as a system, four and a half billion years, five billion years old, that all the shaking out that was gonna happen has happened in the solar system.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we're gonna find another planet, it would have to be way beyond Neptune, where there isn't this orbital dynamics creating the stability zones of what we now accept as the eight-planet solar system.

• 41:25Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, gotcha. So it's all about the pulling and the tugging?

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because it's happening at all times.

• 41:32Chuck Nice?

  It's always happening, so ours is done. All the pulling and the tugging, it is what it is.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's some long-term instabilities, we think, like on billions of years time scales, but by and large, we're stable. And it would go unstable if you just brought in another planet. So, all the searching for another planet, Planet 9, Planet X, that's all happening well beyond, even deep into the Kuiper Belt.

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, it would have to. Okay, very cool, man. I loved that question. That was really, that was wonderful. This is aspiring scientific journalist, also a cow, who writes, that was the title there. It says, "If I rotate a proton fast enough, can I create a black hole? And if so, let's assume I spin it to create an event horizon of one meter or one kilometer, how could a Hawking radiation dissolve it?"

• 42:30Chuck Nice?

  Or will it just go all at once? Where does the spin go? And I'm gonna put on the end of that, "My man, you need to get some help for your drug problem."

• 42:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay?

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  It's all fun and games until somebody blows out a mind. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste, sir. Okay, anyway.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I have to reassemble the bits and pieces of that question into a question that has sort of physical meaning and coherence. So, just because you spin something has nothing to do with whether it becomes a black hole. The unrelated.

• 43:14Chuck Nice?

  It's all about mass, mass, mass, mass.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all about mass. That's A. B, a proton is not a fundamental particle. Okay? A proton is composed of quarks. And so, so let's create that question, reassemble that question in a way that has meaning. If a black hole is evaporating by Hawking radiation, and let me remind people, the gravitational field just outside the event horizon has enough energy to spontaneously create particles, a matter-antimatter pair. And one particle drops into the black hole, the other one escapes. Where did this mass come from? It came from the gravitational field of the black hole.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the gravitational field comes from all the mass that is the black hole.

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bro, this is a way, I don't, this is the way that the matter that's inside. What, Chuck?

• 44:14Chuck Nice?

  It's so frickin' creepy, man! This is how black holes evaporate. It's crazy.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  It's crazy. You have no idea, people.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the weird, and the weird thing is, for me, because I, I, this was an emergent phenomenon that I then learned from my colleagues who work in this space, that if you inventory the particles that show up in the, from the evaporated gravitational field, it is the same inventory of particles that the black hole ate over its entire life.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so somehow the gravitational field remembered what the black, outside the event horizon,

• 45:08Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  remembered what got eaten and is living inside the event horizon.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  So, oh, wait a minute. I just, okay, so could that mean that maybe when the stuff falls in, the information stays at the event horizon?

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, so this is the idea, uh, this is the holographic universe that people are talking about. That the event horizon is an imprint of all information that had passed through that, that boundary. All the information is contained.

• 45:41Chuck Nice?

  Um, I don't, I don't know what to believe anymore in anything. I'm, hold on, I'll be right back. Um.

• 45:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right. The, yes, these are edibles, damn it. That's what they are.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just went and got edible?

• 46:01Chuck Nice?

  I just went and got myself an edible and, uh, yeah.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now here's what's going on. In the original Hawking radiation paper, what he was able to show is that the light that is, the, the particle comes out, but the, you can, you can associate a temperature of the black hole.

• 46:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Based on, and temperatures, at you, at a temperature, you radiate.

• 46:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he was able to analogize the evaporation of a black hole with a black hole of a certain temperature that's radiating. Okay?

• 46:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, as the black hole gets smaller and smaller, the radiative light, the wavelength gets smaller and smaller, and the wavelength is commensurate with the size of the black hole. Okay, the wavelength of light that's coming out of the system.

• 46:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as the black hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller, the wavelength of light gets tinier and tinier and tinier. And when you have tiny wavelength of light, that light has higher and higher energy.

• 47:05Chuck Nice?

  Energy, right.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Energy. So you go from visible light to ultraviolet light, which will mess with your, you know, your skin, to X-rays, which will mess with your DNA, to gamma rays, turn you into the Hulk, okay? So what he showed was that as the black hole evaporates, it evaporates faster and faster, and the energy level of light that it emits gets higher and higher and higher. And it eventually, it's a runaway process, and it's just a, a brief pop of light of pure gamma rays. And then the black hole is completely disappeared.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  Gone.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gone. So my point is, if you still like your proton, your proton is composed of quarks, that's what's fundamental, okay? And so as the, as the black hole is evaporating, and, and you're holding on to your Wraith proton and its quarks, I'm saying, that's the last one, you know, turn, turn off the lights when you leave, all right? And it'll just evaporate back into our universe.

• 48:09Chuck Nice?

  Crazy. Wow. Damn, that's a Blova. That's a black hole nova.

• 48:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Blova? Okay.

• 48:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I tried. I tried, man. I tried. Okay.

• 48:23Chuck Nice?

  I mean, well, yeah, but I mean, that's crazy.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So I think that's all the time we have.

• 48:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, this was so much fun. I tell you, these people, they come up with some great questions, man.

• 48:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so we got to land this plane. So Chuck, there it is. Another installment of Cosmic Queries.

• 48:37Chuck Nice?

  This was a good one, man. I liked it.

• 48:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a good one. It went, it went everywhere with some good people out there asking questions. Everyone, stay curious is the only way we grow as human beings and as a species.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yes.

• 48:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. Chuck, always good to have you.

• 48:56Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up.