Cosmic Queries – A Stellar New Year

What will first contact with aliens be like? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice say “Happy New Year!” by answering a grab bag of fan questions about aliens, string theory, moon landing skeptics, and more!

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. And if it's gonna be Cosmic Queries, we're probably gonna have Chuck Nice in the house.

• 0:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Chuck Nice, your personal nothing.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your personal, that's, well, I'm your personal astrophysicist.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  You're the personal astrophysicist, making yourself available for people all across the cosmos. I am your personal nothing, which means leave me the hell alone.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are Lord Chuck.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Lord Nice.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duly designated by a general in the US Air Force. All right, Lord, Lord Nice, you got questions for it? You know, this is the beginning of the year, you know, a third year of the pandemic. So a lot of people are bummed out about, you know, how, you know, how much longer must we endure? But a new year, of course, is always a time for sort of thinking fresh thoughts and possibly putting a positive spin on bad things and just putting positive out there at all. Whether or not it's a spin on something bad. So, so maybe I'll try to give positively tinted answers to every question you have. Because it's, this is otherwise just a grab bag, right?

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  Let's be real, though. I mean, when do you ever give a truly negative answer?

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's true.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Tyson, I would like to know about time dilation. Uh, well, dumbass. It's like, you, you're never negative.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's true. No, I'm not negative. That's true. That's true. But I, maybe I can do a little extra. We'll see. Bring it on.

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  I like that. This is the time of year to do that, so you're absolutely right. Okay, hey, how about Sean Grossman? Let's, uh, let's see what Sean Grossman is saying here. It doesn't say where he's from, but he says, uh, hey there, Dr. Tyson. Uh, what do you think our first contact with alien life will be? And how will it be received? And I, I think by received, he means like, how will it come to us? Not how will we respond to it?

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I have to stay positive here?

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  Right off the back, it's a challenge. First question, first question is challenging the positivity.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The aliens would ask us, "Do you prefer to be boiled or sauteed?" Exactly.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's like, "Happy New Year!" Wait, 12:02? Well, there goes the positivity.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So, I think, I've said this before, but let me say it with precision, in this moment. I think the evil alien trope, which is in so many, so, I think, I think all of them except for ET, maybe, alright? I don't know. Right. They're always evil and they wanna harm us. And, and that is not derived from, it's what we think aliens will do to us. So, we're projecting that onto aliens? Well, yeah, we think that's what they do, but it can't be based on that, cuz we don't know anything about the aliens. But what we do know is ourselves.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think those scenarios are based on not what we think aliens would do to us, but what, based on what we know, we would do to ourselves. Because we've already done it. We, the issue is, you have a high-technology civilization encountering a low-technology civilization. And it has never boded well for the low-technology civilization among humans. So, I think these are projections, these are mirrors to our own conduct without us even knowing it. So, let me take a different tact and say, maybe the aliens are better than us.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe they, they have no reason to be evil or to take our resources here on Earth. Because the universe is full of resources. There's nothing special that Earth offers that they can't get elsewhere. So, they can't be looking for that. And, and so, maybe they just wanna make friends with us. And just, you know, it's like- Break out the M&Ms. Break out the M&Ms and the Reese's Pieces. We're gonna make some alien friends.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And give him a sugar dependence?

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have diabetes.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  Right. Well, now, but what about this? Just to dovetail into the question. What if the aliens are so advanced that what we perceive to be evil, they perceive to just be the fact that we're insignificant?

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this your question?

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  No, no, this is, this is, you know, kind of an extension of, of Mr. Grossman's question.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're lying.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're lying.

• 5:19Chuck Nice?

  I am lying. This is my question.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're lying.

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  Hey, look, I gotta sleep in when I can.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that, that, that's a good one. We'll take it as a, as a, as a, as a, as an add-on to

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it's an add-on, okay.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Patreon member question.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  Patreon add-on, that's it.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, if you're walking down the street and you step on a worm.

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want all the worms thinking you're an evil person who hates worms. It was just kind of inadvertent, right?

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I mean, worms mean nothing to you.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, so, but then why would they spend all that effort to come to Earth? See, I think that's, we're allowed to ask that question. Because if they are, it's like, because you're not going to say, let me drive a thousand miles and then step on worms

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the lawn of a stranger. This is not, this, this, so.

• 6:11Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's funny.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty funny. Where are you going? Arizona? Why? Got to kill a scorpion? I got to kill a scorpion? You're driving to Arizona to step on a scorpion?

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's by accident. Yeah.

• 6:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, okay.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, so, yeah, I don't see them coming as far for that reason. Maybe they just want to, you know, make, be friends with us.

• 6:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 6:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's true. Okay. I like that. And guess what? You did it. You stayed positive. Everything was positive.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but one other positive thing? I have a negative positive thing. You ready?

• 6:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the alien says, take me to your leader.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take them to a scientist, anywhere.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  Right. Don't take them, right. Whatever you do, don't take them to a politician.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't take them to the head of any country, or any, no, no, this is a bias I have. I don't, I don't want a politician to be the first encounter with an alien. I kinda don't want that. Cause politicians can't get along with each other. How we think we'd get along with an aliens, whereas scientists get along with each other internationally and have done so ever since there's been science. So if there's a chance of, of, of kind, uh, considerate exchanges uh, that might have some way to even communicate. Alright, they're not gonna be speaking English, or Mandarin, or Spanish, or Swahili, or Urdu. No, they're speaking none of that.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  They speak octopus.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They might have a, a periodic table of elements that you can compare it with, or Pythagorean theorem. There'll be some rudiments of cosmically common communication that we might be able to invoke and be the first ones to say hi.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you can also take them to Oprah.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oprah, okay.

• 8:13Chuck Nice?

  Clearly that works.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why more sci-fi movies don't do that, where they land and they go, "Take us to Oprah."

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oprah's down with everybody, right?

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, you know?

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  Alright, let's go to Sky, uh, this is Skyletta Ram- Ram- Ramona. Hmm, Skyletta Ramona. Uh, hello, uh, Dr. Tyson and Lord.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something tells me that's not how it's pronounced, but go ahead.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure it's not. But she, she'll figure it out.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what, that's not, what kinda, you'll figure it out, you'll know who the hell this is, Chris.

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Like, if I was on this, if I put a question into this show and you, and it said, "We got Buck Rice from New Jersey", I'd be like, "Hey, that's probably me."

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  I messed it up. That's probably me. All right. This is a skyletter from Hawaii. She says, hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Do you believe that particles are point like in particles or string like as in string theory? Also, I heard from Brian Green that string theory required 10 dimensions for the math of string theory to work. Is that so and why? That's a lot. That's a lot in that question, Skylar.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a lot.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  God.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  That's the rest of the damn.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't also distract you in Hawaii?

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  I know. Should you be surfing?

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Should you be out on the North Shore right now, just chilling? Sucking on a coconut drink and watching a sunset? You're talking about string theory and 10 dimensions. Jesus. God.

• 9:56Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Good stuff. Good stuff. I mean, that's the rest of the show, to be honest, but, you know.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's the thing. Of all the particles have a known size. Except electrons.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electrons have no known size.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are smaller than our greatest efforts to ever measure how small they are.

• 10:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as far as we're concerned, they are infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally small.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  How is it that I did not know this all this time we have been together? That is a fascinating fact. I did not.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's no, there's no known dimension for electrons. Correct.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Get out.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Fascinating.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Plus, while we're there, every electron is identical to every other electron. So if I have a wire filled with electrons, okay? And I stick one electron in the back of where I am, and this wire goes, I'm in New York and you're in LA, I put a wa, I put an electron in the back, that one, the, the, the negative charge will push the other one forward, and it'll keep doing that until an electron pops out the other side. And as far as that person is concerned, I sent them my electron.

• 11:18Chuck Nice?

  Amazing. That's really cool.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though my electron is still back here.

• 11:22Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why electricity works. That's why I can send you a message. You get it instantly. It all goes by electrons over wires. And all the electrons are identical. And I put something here, it pops out the other side. And there you have it. Did the electron actually go from New York to LA? No. No.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  That is just great.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, so back to string theory. So we have several fundamental particles. Electrons are among them, quarks, photons. They're antimatter counterparts, right? The antimatter counterpart to an electron is a positron. Okay, so what string theory suggests is

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  all particles are strings that vibrate differently from each other. So electron looks different from a quark or from anything else because of the nature of the vibrating string. Because of how the string is vibrating. But it would mean everything is just made of strings, right? So that simplifies it. We're not made of multiple different particles. We're made of one kind of string vibrating differently. Now, the point is that exists in a higher dimension. But as that string, as we experience that string in our lower dimensions, those vibrations manifest as these particles.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, so it's not like

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Particle just a point? Or is it a string? The whole point of the string, the whole the whole feature of the string

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  I like.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that it is a string in higher dimensions and a particle in your dimensions.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome. I like, I like the idea of the whole point of the string. Anyway. Did that's, okay, cool. Well, great, uh, great, great question, Sky Aletta. Way to, way to jump two segments there.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we gotta take a quick break. This is Cosmic Queries, 2022, StarTalk.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Cosmic Queries, beginning of the year edition. Trying to spend positive thoughts onto all that has brought us down in these past two years, entering our third year in the Corona-verse. Ooh. They're knocking out the Greek alphabet there. We're up to Omicron, dude.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Well, when we get to Omega, kiss your back... Never mind, sorry.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the end of it all.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say...

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No letters left.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, kiss your black behind goodbye, but I was like, let me chill out. Yeah, but when we... Yeah, Omega, that's it.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it. When you get to Omega, the Greek letters, the Greek alphabet can't help you.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Game over, baby. Game is over.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pretty sure COVID-19 doesn't know about how many Greek letters there are in the alphabet. I don't think it cares about that. I'm just thinking. All right, Chuck, give me more.

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Um, let's go with Edward Trahan. And Edward says, hello, Neil. Hello, Chuck. My question is, if humans were to build a massive object in space, let's say just the size of the moon, would it generate a gravitational pull? If so, would it depend on what materials would it be made of and what shape it was? Or is there a certain size threshold? Uh, what is it that would give it gravitational pull?

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that. Great question. So first of all, if you're gonna make something the size of the moon, you need that much mass, kind of, okay? So where are you gonna get it from? So what you could do is get it all from the moon, and then our moon would disappear, and then you just create another moon. So...

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did you gain by that? The moon is actually, is about 1% of the mass of the Earth. So if you wanted to hew forth another 1% of Earth's mass and put it up there in orbit, you can cart it out there. Yeah, just put it out there and just keep adding to it. And you can just keep building and building and building. And we can watch this moon construction project in orbit around the Earth. And yes, the gravitational field depends on only two things. How much mass it has and how far away you are from it. And that will tell you how strong the gravity will be at your location.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But for this, for your gravity on the surface, it depends on what the density of the material is that you use. So depending on how dense the material is. But yeah, you can build up stuff and create a whole world. And yes, it will have its own gravity. And you want to build a shape that's not a sphere? It's very hard to do above a certain size. Because the gravity will make the high places low and fill in the low places and make them high. So that's why large objects are all spherical in the universe. Large, sort of solid objects. So yeah, you can't make a cube the size of the moon. It won't, it won't maintain itself in that shape. I don't know if you knew that, Chuck. Cool. Yeah, if it's small enough, it'll take on any shape.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's smaller, that's why if you look at tiny asteroids, they look like Idaho potatoes. They're not spheres. They can be all kinds of weird funky shapes. Because above a certain size, gravity becomes more important than the things that are otherwise giving shape to it. And gravity wants all parts of that object to come as close to the center as possible. And if you're high up and there's a ditch near you, it's going to take stuff that was high up and put it down in the ditch to bring it closer to the center of the object. And so there you have it. You say, well, how about our mountains? Like, okay, Mount Everest, really? Okay, it's about five miles up, really? You're, that's what you're thinking about?

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how big is five miles compared to the 8,000 miles of Earth's diameter? Five miles on eight thousand. So Earth is basically perfectly smooth. If you're a giant and you came up to it with a finger and rubbed your finger across, you would not notice the mountains, the valleys, the lakes, the oceans. In fact, if you shrunk Earth down to the size of a cue ball, it would be smoother than all cue balls ever made. Just saying.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Okay. Oh, well, that's a very interesting game of billiards. That's all I can say.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you're gonna make a moon. If it's big, it's gonna be spherical. Deal with it.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's very cool. All right.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me more. But let me say, I'm supposed to say nice things for the new year for every question. So if you want two moons, that would be doubly romantic. How do you like that? The moonlight.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be beautiful. And over here, you'd have a crescent moon and over there, you'd have a half moon. And that would just be, that'd be beautiful.

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Sweetie, let's take a walk by the moonlight. There's always moonlight, okay? Always.

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  You're not doing anything special. There's always moonlight. Okay, here we go.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I forgot about that. Perceptive of you, Chuck.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  This is Brandon. He says, hey, Neil, I have been a fan for years. You actually helped me get interested in space along with your book, The Universe in a Nutshell. My question for you is, why do you think there is so much skepticism and belief about the moon landing? Scientifically, there's more evidence to support that we went than there is to say that we didn't, yet there are still naysayers and skeptics. With all the footage, audio, documents, et cetera, do you think there's any believable way they could have faked it?

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, okay, so first of all, I think there is a book called The Universe in a Nutshell, but I didn't write it.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just put that out there. If we're talking about truth in advertising.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we're talking about what people believe and what they don't believe, I think there actually is such a book. I didn't write it. The book you might be referring to is Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. That could be the book.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's what he's talking about.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my take on the, my take on the moon landing is, how amazing it is that we live in a time where our science and technology is so advanced that people living among it remain in denial of what those advances can bring to us. For me, it's evidence of how advanced we are. What a compliment. That's how. I mean, it relates to Arthur C. Clarke's edict. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you don't know or understand how advanced these technologies are, it will look like magic to you. And you're not going to believe that magic is real, so you'll have to say it's faked, because you know Hollywood is really good at faking this stuff. Again, these are very high compliments for the technologies that we have. So, plus, we went, we went to the moon nine times. So if you think we faked it, you'd have to think we faked it nine times.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. And people know that only happens in marriage.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, stop, Chuck. This is the new year, Chuck. Say nice things, Chuck.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Nice things, nice things.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. So yeah, so it's, I've stopped chasing down the people who are technology deniers. Because I know what the technology is. I know how we make it happen. Yeah, it costs a lot of money. We spent a lot of money. And by the way, you can calculate how much fuel is in that Saturn V rocket when it launched. If you do that, you are, this is enough fuel to take the lunar module, the three astronauts into orbit, leave orbit, go to the moon, orbit the moon, return to the orbit, come back and land. That's how much fuel is in there. So where the hell do they think that thing was going? You saw it launch. That was real? What, you think it was going to Piggly Wiggly to pick up some groceries?

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that sucker was leaving Earth. So if you do the math, you end up less stupefied by the things that math empowers in modern society. That's all.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  That's a mic drop, baby. That's a mic drop.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break, but when we return, we'll continue with Cosmic Queries on StarTalk.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And of course, I got my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey, hey, Neil.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're watching or listening to this show on January 4th, allow me to announce that we are in Earth's perihelion today.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, today, Earth is at its closest distance to the sun of any other day of the year. And it's midwinter in the northern hemisphere, which means our distance to the sun has nothing to do with what season it is. But that's another show.

• 23:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Cosmic Queries 2022. So what do you have for us?

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, let's, um, let's jump into JMAX479. And JMAX is, my real name is Jason M. Benton, Jason M. from Bentonville, Arizona. And he says, hello, Dr. Tyson, please remind us of plans to return to the moon, or plans for moon habitation, or maybe a moon space station. Are those things?

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  Relevant.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relevant. Hmm hmm. That's, that's a loaded question, like, relevant to what?

• 24:31Chuck Nice?

  That is.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To us, to the future, to itself, to... See, you know what's good about the moon as a target? Even though we've been there before, right? We, I'm sure we'd all get excited if we landed there again. And we would be really irritated if somebody else lands there again before we do, right? Uh, but I can tell you this, that the moon, you can get there in three days. That's, that's a news cycle, right? You can launch today, get there by Friday, or whatever, whatever it takes. Get there within the week, you can track it, you can do, do your business on the moon, and then come back. And all that happens over a time period where no one loses interest in your journey.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't mean to speak of it on such crass terms, but the reality is, public support is fed by media interest, and if the media can stay attached to what's going on over that appropriate time interval, I think it, it's win-win for everybody. So, trips back to the moon with human beings, yeah, I mean, they're in NASA's sights. I, I always think they, um, the timelines are a little, uh, more optimistic than what is real, but who am I to say? All right? Uh, but, uh, the Artemis mission is, is, is a, is a architecture of rockets and capsules that'll take human beings back to the moon. And I don't see why that won't just continue, uh, within the NASA budget that's already

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  been allocated. So, yeah. Now, what, what was the last part? What is its value?

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Um, yeah, well, space stations on the moon, moon habitation, would those things hold value? Are they relevant in any way?

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they relevant? Well, if people are interested, they're relevant. If you're not interested, it's not relevant to you. By the way, a whole lot goes on in the world that you might not be interested in. That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen, because it actually interests other people, right? So, so I don't have a problem with that. And at some point, you'd want to attach to private enterprise. There could be some interesting journeys, you know. Would there be, you know, Disneyland on the moon? That'd be weird and initially a little sad, but then you'd say, "Yeah, of course. That's what's gonna be."

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right?

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  So is there anything, is there any resource on the moon? I remember once, just give me a second here. I don't want to screw it up. You said that the moon is bombarded all the time with helium 3?

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Chuck Nice?

  And so...

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And once again, you have not earned the right to ask a question, even though you're my co-host. But I will address this and I'll dovetail it into the actual Patreon members' question.

• 27:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay, good.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, in the solar wind, these particles that, this effluence from the sun, that leave the sun continuously, the sun is losing mass continuously to these outer particles, the solar wind, and we call it the solar wind. It's pretty accurate to call it that, actually, because there are particles that come from, you can't see them, they're small, they're fast-moving. These are the particles that hit Earth's atmosphere and render it a glow, and you get the aurora. And you get especially good aurora when you get solar flares aimed at Earth, because then it's intensified. But anyhow,

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  point is, some of these particles are helium, the helium nucleus minus one of the neutrons. So a red-blooded helium nucleus has two protons, two neutrons. But you take away, so that's helium 4, because there are four particles. Take away one of them, you get helium 3. Okay. So what? BFD. The point is, if you, if you harvest the helium 3, which is embedded in the soils of the moon, it's not really soil, it's called regolith. It's like pulverized rock. Soil on Earth has like microbes and things, and that's what we mean by soil. There's not, none of that is on the moon, but I loosely call it soil.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's embedded in the soils of the moon. If you remove that, you can put that into a nuclear fusion reactor. And helium three is one of the intermediate steps of going from hydrogen to full up helium four. And if you supply it with that, oh my gosh, it's a game changer for your thermonuclear fusion reactors in terms of the cost benefit calculation you'd be doing for it.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I I'd be disappointed if we had colonies on the moon that didn't undergo a a nuclear fusion as their energy source to power the entire moon because it's free sitting right there on in the in the soil.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Ah, that's okay. That's very cool, actually.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 29:15Chuck Nice?

  So there you have it, man. That that you did tie it back to the question.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good memory, Chuck. Good memory, Chuck. Yeah.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, I was, uh, throwing a dart at a board, but it actually.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm joking. Uh, okay.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, and one thing about colonies.

• 29:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, if if there's Disneyland and there's, you know, they have hotels and and restaurants and, you know, but, you know, parades, whatever. I mean, why not? I mean, I don't have to see any problem with that. And.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  I don't know about that. It's kind of, I don't know, I feel like we're somehow selling the moon like our presence there.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you know how big the universe is?

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  I feel like we sell you the universe, to be honest.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  It's like.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, on the here's one something for you. Ready? On the moon, helium balloons balloons sink.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a little thing. They only rise up because they're more buoyant than the air that surrounds them. If you go to the vacuum of the moon.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your helium balloon will fall as fast as a brick will.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  That's great. That's.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the moon.

• 30:13Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty awesome.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your helium balloon.

• 30:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just thought I'd tell you that.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  I think we sell you the universe that I have a I have a thought where in every sci fi movie, there is a a planet that's destroyed and then whoever's watching becomes the last of that species. And it's just like, I watched my planet destroyed, right? And I'm like, you know, i- if it were Earth and they'd be like, Chuck, man, you just saw your planet destroyed and be like, yeah, I mean, you gotta know those people. Then maybe it's not that bad of a deal.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're supposed to have happy thoughts at the beginning of 2022.

• 30:58Chuck Nice?

  That's true, exactly.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me. I have a happy thought for you. I got one ready. So, um, this is an oldie but goodie, but I gotta say it, right? So, um, you know, the, if you do have a whole colony, you'd have all the trappings of what you'd have on Earth, except on the moon. And, but you'd have to, all the, if you go to the restaurants, the, the food would be very different because you're in less gravity and less air pressure. And so, so, uh, if, if you want to sort of know about those restaurants, however different the food will be, what you know is they won't have any atmosphere at all.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's stupid, but it's, it's fine. Okay, what else?

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, Tim Jackson.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for like just a couple more questions. Okay, go.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Tim Jackson says this, uh, with, with the ever increasing commercialization of space, how is NASA positioned in the role of the space community? Uh, and how is it changing? What are some of the upcoming missions that may partner commercial enterprise along with the missions of NASA?

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's set the record straight. NASA has always partnered with commercial industries, right? The LEM that landed on the moon

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was designed and built at Grumman Aerospace right here in Bethpage, Long Island.

• 32:21Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I'm speaking to you from New York City. You go to Bethpage today, people still walk the streets proud that they had an uncle, an aunt, somebody who worked for that LEM, right? And so it was partnered. So we paid for it, Grumman built it. Okay, so we partnered with, with private enterprise from the beginning. The difference is they, we had specs that they had to be built to. And so Grumman is sort of responding to NASA in what it produces. That's different from what SpaceX is doing. SpaceX says, I'm building a, building a rocket, whether you like it or not. Oh, I have a rocket and I can launch satellites. And NASA says, hey, you could do it on the cheap.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got to launch this satellite, uh, we want to buy your payload for that next launch. So it's still a commercial partner. The difference is NASA is getting it off the shelf rather than a one-off, which is what the LEMS were. They were just one-offs for those missions. So, so the partnership has always been there, okay? And the United Space Alliance, and it's gone through several different incarnations with names, but Boeing has been a part of that. Lockheed Martin, Lockheed, later Lockheed Martin has been a part of that. From Martin Marietta, before they merged. So there's a long history of this. So here's the difference. You need NASA to do the frontier stuff that doesn't yet have a profit motive, that has geopolitical value,

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but nobody can make the money on it just yet because there's a risk factor they don't know about, and what do they do, and why, and how would they? The governments do it. We find out where it's safe to land, where it's not. All that gets figured out. Private industry comes in afterwards. So that's why we now have private industry taking people into orbit. It used to be just NASA. And now SpaceX taking astronauts to the space station. Let's do it that way. Because if you're private enterprise, you could probably do it for less. But NASA doesn't have SpaceX doing a frontier mission on Mars if it's a one-off. That's not a business model. And all research typically are one-offs.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The James Webb Space Telescope, that's not on somebody's shelf. That stuff got built from scratch, okay? And so that's what you need NASA for, the frontier. The rest of that, private enterprise brings up the rear. And that's how it was with the early ages of exploration, where governments sent the explorers, and then later on, the Dutch East India Trading Company made a buck off of it.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  That's right, yeah, yeah. So there you have it. Private-public partnerships, hand in hand, pretty much always.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always, yeah. That's how, as it can be, as it has been, and as it should be.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we hardly have any time left. This is the beginning of the year. Can I offer you just some personal reflections?

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  Always, yes.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, always, okay.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  I missed your personal reflections because we used to do it all the time when we, uh, when we did, uh, your cosmic perspectives.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic perspectives, yeah.

• 35:32Chuck Nice?

  But we stopped doing your cosmic perspectives.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We stopped doing it, okay.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me hand you one right now.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready? Okay. We've been through some very challenging years.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, with the, uh, coronavirus, the COVID-19 virus. And I was early out of the box on that one with a tweet. Uh, March 6th, 2020, I said, this is a virus that doesn't care where you live, who you pray to, you know, who you have sex with. Uh, it doesn't, none of that, it doesn't care about any of that. It just cares that you're a human. And so to combat this, we need coordination internationally across tribal boundaries, as we've always been expressing them in modern times, to fight a common enemy. It's almost like an invader from space. It's not from space, but it's like that. Aliens just want to kill all the humans. We have to band together and we didn't. And that upsets me as a member of a species

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that has the power and the knowledge to have done something about it. So for this year, the 2022, I, I want to believe that, uh, people will see and understand and recognize what values science has, not only to our ability to thrive, but at its most base level, our ability to survive. We, it's, science tells us what's around the corner and why, and how dangerous it is, and what we can and should be doing. And you know what space exploration does for me? When I see the NASA docket for 2022, I say, yes. Oh, we're gonna try to deflect an asteroid and save humanity in, in, in, in, in doing so. Oh, we're gonna go back to Mars, a neighboring planet.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna, we're gonna do these things. And, and it's a reminder of how great we are as a species, how great we are as an intellect. And so, so what a shame to have this intellect and not invoke it in the best ways we know how. So I look forward to 2022 as a way where humans are back on the map, showing the universe how smart we are, so that we become better shepherds of our own fate as we move forward in this. Century, this millennium, Chuck.

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  Man, that's beautiful, man. That's, I mean, that really is.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not screaming at you here.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  No, you're not. Well, you know, when you raise your voice to, in a positive tone, it's not screaming. It's just, it's excitement. It's not screaming.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hadn't thought about that.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah, you know. If you were saying Chuck, go to hell, that'd be screaming. That would have been screaming.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. We got to call it quits there. Happy 2022 to everyone. StarTalk is still strong. We're at it and we've got more of the universe to bring down to Earth. Much more of it coming soon. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, and forever, and for this year, and forevermore. Keep looking up.