Cosmic Queries about Cosmic Phenomena

It’s time for another episode of Cosmic Queries! Neil deGrasse Tyson welcomes first time comic co-host Godfrey to ask fan-submitted questions about photons and tachyons; Einstein, black holes and multiple universes; comets, aliens, and so much more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today, we're doing a fan favorite edition of Cosmic Queries. And I got with me, I've never had him before, Godfrey.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Hey, man.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey tweeting at GodfreyComedian.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  GodfreyComedian.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't use your last name, Danchima.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Danchima.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Danchima. Okay, that's fine. We don't have to go-

• 0:46Speaker 01

  It's too long.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too long, too weird.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Too weird. It can sound Japanese sometimes.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bathroom's two doors down on the left.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  If I'm constipated, I use my last name.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we get any mail, we're sending it to you on that one.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  When I need an extra push, I go, "Danchima!"

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was not one of the Cosmic Queries, but if we start out with scat jokes at the beginning, there's no place to go after that.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, it's cool having you on, man.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Thanks. Listen, I've been watching your shows. I see you on Bill Marshall, Real Time.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of hot air on there. I just tried to put it there.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  But it's great, but you know how, you step in, you say your little thing, let the scientist talk. Bam. I'm like, "I'm proud of that man right there. That's right, he's articulate and smart."

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. I got like a fan out there.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  And your cosmos, it's awesome because I used to watch Cosmos with my dad, with Carl Sagan.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  He took over the reins. And then when I saw you were a 14-year-old kid, you met Carl Sagan. He gave him, he gave you his number!

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His phone number. So I had people say to me, "I should-" I should have told him that the bus really couldn't come through. And I had to spend the night in Cornell, cuz he gave me the phone number in case the bus.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to the city.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't happen. No, but I was too honest back then.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  You're too hon- oh my, were you like, was he like the nicest dude ever?

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was very polite and very, he was, it was almost, uh, he cared. I mean, that's really it.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He cared about the trajectory of others who would come behind him. And not enough people do that in all the professions.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Uh, called, uh, it's called comedy, yeah. Uh, my friends suck.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Hey, man, can you tweet for me? I don't know. Might take my followers. Yeah, that crap. But Carl was like.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was a genuine, genuine person.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Man, he could have at least given you his turtleneck and his jacket, too. That would have been sweet.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just his elbow patches.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  His elbow patches were awesome. And you said, cuz I, we were talking before we started the show. And I thought that he was a guy that said billions and billions of stars.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He only said the word once at any.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Billion. And Johnny Carson.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Johnny Carson was the one who doubled up on him. I said, imitating him with.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  You know I can do Johnny Carson, right?

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, all right, let me hear.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Okay, watch. I did not know that. Wow, good stuff. Carl Sagan. Here I go, watch this. Wow. Billions and billions. And then Ed would go, ho, ho, ho. Nah, nah? Can I get some Johnny Carson fan love?

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, for everyone over sixty, that was Johnny Carson's.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  You know there's a sixty year old man going, I like that boy. That boy does Johnny Carson. Okay, go ahead.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we got some, uh, this is a Cosmic Queries edition.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On cosmic phenomena. I haven't seen the questions before.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Told from our fanbase. And so you got them. You are, you have the steering wheel.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yes, I do.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's bring it on.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, hmm. I'm gonna, uh, read one from a Patreon?

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon, these are, oh, yes. Yes, so, these are people who support the show. And so basically, they extort. Our setup to get their questions asked first.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I thought the Patreon was a name like an alien name.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Cause you guys are Cosmos, so I thought it was like.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Klingons, the Patreons.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I am a Patreon. My name is. This guy's name, it's a little annoying.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Kyle, why'd you have to spell your name like C Y L E? So it looks like Syle.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So well.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  But it's Kyle.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trying to be an individual.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Special, you know, like when Christina, it's with a T and a K. It's okay. Here we go. Okay. Here's a Patreon Kyle Yocum. He's from Tennessee.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  So I think I'm gonna use an accent for this one. Okay.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Texas more than Tennessee.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Well, okay, what's this now? What's this?

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, uh.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  This. Exactly. As long as you don't know where it is. I don't like how you specify my name.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I spent some time inside. I guess.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Okay. All right, here we go. How's that one?

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, that's Ranch, Texas.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Okay, Tennessee. I'm from Tennessee. Yeah, there we go.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Tennessee. Okay, here we go. Kyle Yocum. Here's the, here's the, uh, the, the question, right? Ready? Here we go.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Okay, the math of Einstein's equation shows nothing can reach the speed of light if it has mass. But if we discovered a massless particle that could be accelerated beyond light speed and travel backwards in time, the instant it did, would it begin to decelerate again since acceleration required forward movement in time? And going backwards in time would be the reverse. If so, it seems it would just be stuck at exactly light speed. Could this be why photons are always traveling at that speed? Mmm. Wow.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Mmm. That was.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a lot in there.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  It's a lot, but it seemed like he was repeating something that was obvious.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But no, but obvious to whom too?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  He said, like he said, would it revert, it's almost like he said, the instant it did, would it begin to decelerate? Like, that's almost like a common sense.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the way, the way it works on the other side, which you cross over Einstein's equation. So, anything with mass cannot accelerate to reach the speed of light.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not, it's never been seen, nor is it theoretically possible.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we've tried it. So, we have experimental evidence, theoretical foundation, and the like. So, things at travel speed of light have no mass at all, like photons, which he correctly noted.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now, we, we, my, my brethren of decades ago, my academic brethren hypothesized a particle that lives faster than light. So it doesn't have the problem of accelerating to the speed of light.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it just lives faster than the speed of light.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, if you have such a particle, what would happen to it? Well, it would live backwards in time.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we call this particle tachyons.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the Greek tachyos, meaning fast, like a tachometer, is the same root.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  So that'd be like Usain Bolt's a tachyon athlete.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Kathy athlete?

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tachy athlete.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Kathy?

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tachy athlete.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Tachy?

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go. We, we, we finally got it, tachy athlete.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Tachy athlete.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, uh, the word T A C Y H Y is a common root when people want to refer to things going fast. Where, where speed is the, is the measure of things. So, we hypothesized that there might be a particle called tachyons. Now, tachyons are really cool, if you think about it, because if you, if I sent it to you now, you would have gotten it before I sent it.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's kind of cool. So, yeah, yeah. So, you can imagine, so I, I, I've thought about this.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's an interesting scenario, if you could text via tachyons, all right?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  What?

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I see you walk.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, okay, so there's a banana peel in your path.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I don't want you to trip on it.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, but you already tripped on it.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I send you a Tachyon message that you get in the past.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you got that, you with me?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I send you a text and I say, watch out for the banana peel.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  I'm already on the.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, and then your, your smartphone jiggles.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You pick it up.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Read the text.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you're no longer looking where you're stepping.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you slip on the banana peel.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Well, that depends on your phone package.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I mean, if you got Sprint.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it may be that changing.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The past might not be possible. Because the very act of me trying to interfere with you stepping on the banana peel is what actually made you step on the banana peel. You, you were not paying attention to the banana peel because you were reading the text.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Text, right.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I sent you to not step on the banana peel.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  So are you saying that, is it true that everything is, happens at the same time?

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, so there's another way to think about that.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  You're saying?

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, so if you have like a yardstick.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say all the numbers are on that yardstick at the same time. They're all just there.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can be eight inches, thirty inches, they're just there. So imagine a timeline that's just there. You're born on one end, you die on the other end. It's just there. And wherever you, you could jump in, jump out.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Join yourself at any part of your lifetime.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, in a sense, your timeline, when viewed from a higher dimension, is all happening at the same time.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Phew, deep, I think I kinda got there.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, not, not just, so, so, so, so.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  This is Tachyon thinking.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yes, it's, it's, it's Tachyon, you want a Tachyon brain, this is how you do it.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  I already thought about it yesterday.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, except.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I already thought about.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except the timeline has to be thought of in the higher dimension that allows you to see the entire timeline all at once. That's the only point. In our current dimensionality.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are prisoners of the present.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our inaccessible future.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Okay, then we just live in the present.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  All we can do.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, all we can do, but a higher dimension being would say, hey, just rejoin.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Who would that be? Buddha?

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, not from any images I've seen illustrating him.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what higher. Yeah, there's a higher dimensional being, no, I would.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  And who would that be, though? This is what I wanna know.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna know if it's human?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  From a human perspective. Now, who's this higher being? It'd have to be maybe the Dalai Lama. If he meditates to a certain point.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you meditate, but what I wonder is if meditation is happening interior to your brain? And not objectively verifiable by others outside of your brain? So, so if, so if, if your mind experiences it.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you go back in time in your mind, sure. But we're talking about a physical reality, not a neurological reality.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And meditation is all about your neurological reality.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  But don't you need, isn't mind and body the same thing, or no?

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, because we can pith your brain and your body.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The things we can do to your mind and your body is just still there.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could take out this part of your brain and you can't speak. This other part of your brain, you can't recognize faces.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  True.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This other part of your brain, you lose your appetite. I can do, we, we know enough about the brain to know how to, how to, what the causes and effects are.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Let me tell you something. Here's a reason why we don't know a lot about the brain. You want me to tell you why?

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you got, you got, you got this, you got this.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I got this.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this, what is it?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I got this.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is it?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  The reason why we don't know, we still have mysteries about the brain is because we're using the brain to try to think about it.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  So why would the brain give you that secret? Come on. The brain's like, I'm not gonna give you all my stuff.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're asking a very deep question.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the mind.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Understand itself. We don't know.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  And guess what? What you just thought about, the mind gave you.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, as I think about it, we are assemblies of atoms and molecules.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this universe.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the universe itself created.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're on a mission.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To decode and understand the very operations of the universe itself.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, as has been said before, we, in a way.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are a pathway for the universe to figure itself out.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Wow. That's, that's heavy.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, so the fact that we can even approximate some of what is real in the universe gives me hope that our mind can figure out our mind.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Hmm. I think there would have to be something outside the mind to figure out the mind.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, probably to do it best, for sure.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  You have.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, we're kind of grogging along. It's like an unborn child deducing the nature of its mother. You can't do it because you're inside.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No idea what your mama looks like.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you have one of these mirrors that you can stick out.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Wow, that would be scary.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  You have like an alien vagina, Jesus. Sorry, vagina is a proper word.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Scientifically proper. If a hand came out to look at it, oh goodness.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so, so, right, so here you go. So on the other side of the speed of light.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the properties of tachyons include, last I had checked up on them.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That it would take an infinite amount of energy to slow them down to the speed of light.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're capable of infinite speeds. So, that's what, so if you want to take Einstein's equations and flip them to the other side, knowing you can't pass through the speed of light, these are the properties of what's going on.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  That's heavy, man. That's fast.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  What is it, one hundred eighty-six thousand?

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two hundred eighty-two miles per second.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Wow, that was that pretty good?

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's very good. Godfrey.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I know I'm not you.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey gets.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  I got a love number right.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three significant figures and the speed of right.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  So are we, are we?

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go, let's go, let's go.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  That was a good one, Yocum.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take him.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yee-haw.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That just took most of this segment.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  I know, geez. How about this one? This is pretty simple. A radio farmer from Facebook. How much space is there inside a black hole?

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, ooh. Well, okay, so you can measure the volume of the event horizon of the black hole. One of the most poetic terms ever.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given what it does to you as you go this one way. You don't come back. This is the zone within which there is no return.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The event horizon.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  The event horizon.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the, no, you say we gotta be so, the event horizon.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  The event horizon.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now, after hours, the event horizon.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  One man in a world.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a world.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Event Horizon, starring Samuel Jackson. Yo, where's that black hole, man?

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course it needs Samuel Jackson.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no complete movie.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  I can't see a damn thing.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so you can measure the volume of the event horizon very cleanly, but, but, for reasons that remain a little bit mysterious to me. When you run the equations, Einstein's equations of what happens inside of a black hole. It births an entire other spacetime.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An entire other universe. So if you can survive the fall into a black hole, what, what you will see is the entire future history of the universe you came from unfold before your very eyes. Because time slows down for you and everything else would look like it's moving fast.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the entire future history of your universe unfolds before your very eyes and another universe opens up in front of you. So that the black hole.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a portal to an entire other, what we call spacetime continuum.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Entire other universe. That comes out of Einstein's equations, the same equations that give us out the structure of our universe. So no one's gone into Tesla's.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming back out.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  You're not coming back out.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming back out. But everything else about his equations work. So it gives us high confidence that maybe this is happening there too. That's why we talk about, there's some variance of multiverse thinking where every black hole is just a, a, a, a conduit to whole other universe.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  You think it's a whole other universe?

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole other universe. We have this interconnected. Warren.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Isn't it just stars being swallowed up?

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll swallow stars.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Stars.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it becomes more math, yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Never planets, though.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll swallow anything that comes near it.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  It comes near it.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Anything. And nothing comes back.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing, well, there's a way.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  We don't know.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something called Hawking radiation.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Hawking radiation.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Hawking radiation. So Hawking, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Hawking. He's famous, legitimately famous, for a whole lot of reasons.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of them was, he calculated that the energy field surrounding the black hole, you remember G equals mc squared?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the equivalence of mass and energy.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That energy field can spontaneously create particles.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Particle pairs, matter and antimatter pairs, one of which falls back into the black hole, the other escapes into space.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a black hole can essentially evaporate, very slowly, particle by particle, evaporate by this phenomenon. So that it can lose mass through its energy field, because mass and energy are one and the same.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is, so this is called Hawking radiation. So yes, do come out, but in a very different state than you went in.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Godfrey on StarTalk.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Brain hurts.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  We're back.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries edition, and I got Godfrey here.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Hey, man.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Studio.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  What's up?

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey tweeting at GodfreyComedian.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a lot of characters to give up to your Twitter handle.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GodfreyComedian.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  It's the only way.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the only way.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  I wanted to be as.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could shorten it, just say "God."

• 18:32Speaker 01

  No. Cannot do that.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thou shalt not do that.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I would say, well, lowercase g.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lowercase.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Lowercase. Because people will come up to me and go, "Oh, do they, and he do it like in an arrogant way, do they call you God for sure?" You know what I mean? I'm like, "Yes, they do."

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yes, they do, and you're a sinner. Yes. Are you ready?

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wait, so these are cosmic phenomena. I haven't seen the question, so bring them on. Bring them on.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  So I'm bringing you. Let's see what I'm bringing.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see what you got.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  I'll see what I got here.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a...

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Joshua Shoop from Twitter.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Aliens are so far away, they can see our entire history as it's happening. Is that why they don't want to come here?

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Next question.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just let me clarify why that would be the case.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, if you are at any distance from anything you're looking at.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You see it not as it is, but as it once was.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see you not as you are, but as you were four billionths of a second ago.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, light takes about a nanosecond to go a foot.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  A nanosecond to go a foot, wow.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A billionth of a second. So, you're about four feet from me right now.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see you as you once were, four billionths of a second ago. So, now, let's put, let's put a civilization in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to ours. That's four light years away. You're four light nanoseconds away from me.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alpha Centauri is four light years away, so anybody there is watching if they were, could get our signals.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, they would be seeing Earth, um, what was going on four years ago? There was another campaign for a president.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Obama was smashing, um, uh, that dummy, um...

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was he talking about?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  What's that dummy's name? Oh, that Mormon guy.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mitt Romney.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Mitt Romney. You could see him getting pummeled.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, so, so he loses... So, they would be watching tho- that, the last few weeks of that campaign.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Ah!

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, in real time.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  In real time.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it was unfolding, because the light is just arriving at them at the time.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, if you go farther, so, so, here you go. There's, there are galaxies that might be six, there is one, sixty-five million light years away. Why'd I pick that number?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the stuff that was happening here on Earth sixty-five million years ago is only now just reaching them.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It's just reaching them?

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just reaching them. So, they're gonna say, hey, let's check out Earth TV. The Earth Channel. I'm sure that's what they sounded like. And so... So they would see the extinction of the dinosaurs because that's when the asteroid struck.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Meteor.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meteor struck.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Meteor struck.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The size of Mount Everest.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  So that's what they would be saying.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would watch that in real time. So, so there's a lot of interesting history on earth that shouldn't preclude alien visitation. At least maybe they visited the dinosaurs and.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you could ask, why didn't they help them out? You know?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, if they were really checking.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So I was thinking they wouldn't come because of Trump. No, nothing?

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that Trump is a very recent phenomenon.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That has not had enough time.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reach any planets beyond our own solar system.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Can you imagine?

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's no understanding of recent current events. To any aliens anywhere in the galaxy.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't want to trump you, but I go wrong.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Isn't that what? That's what he did the whole time. Wrong, wrong. So that's interesting. I didn't, you would actually see the dying of the din- the extinction of the dinosaurs.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  That is cool.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so they would have access depending on their distance.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would have access. So, uh, what are some events? So let's say, what's a good example? World, World War One and World War Two. Uh, pretty tragic times in the history of the earth, seventy, eighty, a hundred years ago. Um, they might say these people have messed up.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And say, when we will not come anywhere near. This is, this is the, in summary.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aliens have never visited because according to them, there's no sign of intelligent life on earth.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all right.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I have another question.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic phenomena, bring it on.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  This is by William Morris. Facebook.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  What's a henway?

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About two to three pounds. Next?

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't, you can't, who, what do you think I was born yesterday?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  I just wanted to see that. What's a henway? There's no science behind that, huh? That's it. Next, that's it. What's a henway?

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We should call the first warp drive a henway. So that wherever they land, they say, we gotta fix the henway.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  You gotta fix the henway.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Run that joke clear across the galaxy.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  That was awesome. What a jackass.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is in, I'm old enough to remember, uh, F Troop.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  F Troop, that's Larry Storch.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Larry Storch and, uh, what was it? It was like the, the cavalry.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Indians, right?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, in the, in the Wild West and the.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name of the tribe, where the Hakawee Indians?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  The Hakawee?

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Hakawee, and I think in the first episode.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  You remember the first episode, F Troop.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Am I remember, I think I'm remembering this correctly, in the first episode. The, the cavalry meets this tribe and they say, who are you guys? And the, the Indians say, where the heck are we?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  That's hilarious. The Indians say that.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They say, no, we, they didn't know where they are, cause they, they got lost.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  The Indians did.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They got lost, they say, where the heck are we?

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they said, oh, you're the Hakawee, no, who are you? Where the heck are we? We're the Hakawee Indians. Yeah, that's, I think that's how that happened in the very first episode.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Hakawee Indians, I just caught that again. I'm telling you, I'm eight years away. The Hakawee Indians.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Took you a full 12 seconds.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  I was like, the Hakawee, cause you was, the way you said it.

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that's how they said it all the rest of the episodes.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  But it's F Troop, it's a sitcom.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  It's a sitcom, man. That's good. What's the hen way? You knocked that out.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's, I'm gonna call, if I invent the warp drive, it's the hen way warp drive.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Hen way warp, I like that. Is that how they sound? Wait, how do hens, yeah?

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hens?

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds better.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Okay, here we go. Ray Clark, Facebook.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  If the moon were to somehow be blown apart. Would Earth end up with a set of Saturn like rings? If not, what would happen?

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Yes, temporarily, we would have rings, ring system. An awesome.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, using awesome the way God intended awesome to be used.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, it would be awesome if you could pass the salt. No, no. In my day, we use awesome when we discovered the cure to polio. We used awesome when we walked on the freaking moon.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Do you believe that? I don't know, we were talking about that. Do you believe that they landed? I just wanna know.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're asking the wrong.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Man, I'm just saying, man, the astronauts should have been black because we would have been more excited.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Upon landing? They said, oh, Houston, we have just landed on the moon.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, baby. Yeah. That's how we do, baby. Forget the cosmonauts. We did it first, baby. Uh. I'd be like this. Uh. No?

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one small step for a man.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Come on. You land on the moon, you go, one small step for man, one giant step for man. It's like, it's like, it's like when they.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what it is?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  It's like when the white dude scored touchdown, he just give the ball to the ref. When we score, we're like. Yeah.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shakes them. No, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think the emotions that would come about.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Among people who would rejoice in having just landed on the moon.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are incommensurate with how you might react in the face of disaster if you face that on your journey. If the oxygen tank blows.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Holy shit, what am I gonna do? Oh, my God. Okay, that's the same person who lands on the moon saying, oh, my gosh, I landed on the moon. Yeah.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you need some, you need people with ice in their veins. Yeah. And Neil Armstrong was just such a person.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Well, all right. I, I guess, but I, I just.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's right. He's landed on the moon and he's running out of fuel. Okay. You know about, I don't know if you knew about this.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Running out of fuel.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, he was, because where they were gonna land.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, there was like rocky and it was not smooth and he was worried that the, the lunar excursion module would tip.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He starts going sideways.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seeing very little fuel that's left. And so Houston is saying, you gotta land that puppy. Let, no, no, I'm good. Still looking. And he's monitoring how much it is.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you know what his heartbeat was when it's, it was like eighty-five or so. I mean, it was some low heartbeat.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That any of us get just when we're irritated that we're waiting in line or something. So, no, these were very special set of the right stuff.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was truly the right stuff.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  How long did it take to get there?

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three days.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It was three days.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three days.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  In this, in this ship.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, how.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Drinking Tang, I'm just saying, drinking Tang and sitting there.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three days, yeah, three days.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Three days, okay, all right, I'm glad you explained it to me because I was doubting it.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, oh, oh, you asked me if I believe it, I don't, one doesn't need to believe when confronted with evidence.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Oh, that's deep.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I should tweet that, shouldn't I?

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should tweet it, you should, you should tweet it, yes. July twenty first, I'm, my birthday, so it would always show the anniversary of the landing, they would show, you know, landing of moon the day, the day before that.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, well, well, the.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  July twenty first, July twentieth was.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was the date on the newspapers that reported it.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Right, that's my birthday, July twentieth is the big deal.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, the big deal, okay.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So, the big deal Neil, you're Neil, hey, a lot of Neil.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're both Niels, we're both Niels.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boom, did I even answer that question, what was it, what was the question?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  It was, it was that would the Earth end up with rings?

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, we would end up rings, but the particles are not stable.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Why?

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, because they'd be hitting one another and they'd be falling, and they have energy from the explosion, some would escape, others would come back to Earth, so.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  We wouldn't have like our own little rings like Saturn.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Saturn's ring system is in fact not stable.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  It's not stable.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, it's a temporary feature, in fact, there's good evidence to suggest that the dinosaurs, if they had telescopes, had they looked at Saturn, would see no rings at all.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Why is that?

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's, because the ring system, uh, different calculations give different numbers, but millions of years is a common number that I've seen.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the life expectancy of the ring system of Saturn, which meant they would have been long, they would not have formed yet at the time of, of the dinosaurs. So, stuff, you know, things collide, stuff happens, stuff happens, just because it didn't happen in your lifetime, doesn't mean it's not happening in the universe. So, yeah, if Earth would have a beautiful ring, it'd be, it'd be beautiful.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  You, you think it'd be better than Saturn's? Saturn used to be my favorite planet.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's my favorite planet, oh, Saturn's tough competition.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because Saturn is big.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Saturn is big.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me some big rings.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Big rings, big rings, okay.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Is that, you good, you good on that?

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  I got another one.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Okay, here we go.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, by the way, uh, uh, tides would be greatly reduced at that point.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Because.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There would, a whole lot of other things would change about Earth.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Women wouldn't be so moody?

• 30:10Speaker 01

  It's right, it's the period, right?

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're sending you all the mail.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Doesn't it affect, yeah, wouldn't it affect the menstrual cycle every twenty eight days?

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because the phase of the moon is not twenty eight days.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Oh, what, wait, oh, what is it?

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Waxing and waiting, what is it?

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, waxing and waiting is twenty nine and a half days.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does not match the average menstrual cycle of women. So therefore you cannot credit or blame the moon for any periodicities in the human female. Consider also that there are plenty of other mammals that, who, whose menstrual cycles are very different from a month. They're mammals too.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  What other mammals?

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, just, I don't, you know, I'm not an expert on this.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Dolphins, right?

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying that, that, you know, mice, you know, just look at your mammal list.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Mice, okay, I'll just look in any New York apartment for the mice.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Magical about a month. Nothing magical about a month.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative to menstrual cycles, that's all I'm saying.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Okay, I thought that, you know.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's not an.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I thought I was on this.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not an, it's not, if it's not an exact match, that means they go out of phase yearly, so this is not a thing.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Okay, wow, all right, that's, I like that, well.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we can send him all the mail, right, that we get on this.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Would it affect all our moods though, because they'd say the moon, when it's full moon, it's affecting our moods?

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you live in a city, I don't know how you can justify that, given the fact that at night, street lamps are brighter than the full moon.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  True.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't talk about your moods being affected by streetlights, or what brand of bulb was used.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Cortisone levels are up. No?

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, but not, you can't credit or blame the moon for that, it's because we illuminate our nighttime lives.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  It's true, that's true, you're right.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are brighter than the full moon.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Set, yeah.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how you know this? You can only barely read under a full moon, so you come in at night, you put on brighter lights, and you can read just fine.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so people want to blame the universe for all kinds of stuff that's happening in their lives? No.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  It's just you, you're crazy. You're high and you're crazy, just blame it on your ass.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and Shakespeare, uh, in Julius Caesar.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Hey! Tweet, man.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  That's man, Neil deGrasse Tyson, boy.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  I like that one. Can we, another one?

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, well, if it's fast.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay, okay. I love this, cause I'm, I'm always a fan of this, but this is Dan Fisher, Facebook. If comets eject their gases into space, do we know of any dried up comets? The ones that exhausted all of their gas reserves?

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Nice question.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So comets are a mixture of ice and rock.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the ice, when it comes near the sun, gets heated.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it evaporates, or technically speaking, it sublimes.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I like it.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you go directly from a solid to a gaseous state. I, I'm loose in my vocabulary there, I just say it evaporates.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But sub- sublimation is the correct chemical term. You've seen sublimation with dry ice?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever see dry ice? It doesn't melt.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's solid, and then it's not there anymore.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It all, you, they talk.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so with comets, every time it comes around the sun, it loses some of this, s- some of its ice.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And eventually, you can have a comet that's just a ball of debris.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moving around the sun, and it's no longer a comet. It's just a ball of debris, and we'll just call it an asteroid at that point. And, and there are many asteroids, there are many asteroids we think were once comets that are just dead right now. I mean, they're living asteroids, but they're dead comets.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Like retired comets?

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tired, that's a better word.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  They're like, I don't do that thing anymore. Oh, man, now, I think some young boys go around and around. I used to be, and then the other comet said, you used to be the man at one time. That Halley's Comet? What's happening, brother?

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you can slap him as he goes by.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  What's up? Seventy-six point one years. Is that the truth about Halley's Comet?

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Halley.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Seventy-six point one years, it comes?

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's time around the sun varies depending on what Jupiter does to it.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be, it could be seventy-four years, seventy-seven, it averages, uh, uh, it averages seventy.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  So you believe that Mark Twain was born and died, and Halley's Comet came and returned?

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't have to believe it, it's a fact.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  It's a fact?

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and when things are facts, you don't have to.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  You don't have to believe.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your human belief system to accept them.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  When you said Jupiter, remember the Jupiter effect? Remember that? That big deal?

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another segment.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  That's another segment.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the, the man is on fire, he's lit up.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  I'm like a comet, man. My ice.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't get enough, he wants more. Alright, when, when StarTalk returns, more cosmic queries.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is still StarTalk. And I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, yeah, it means I have the keys to the sky.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I wanna go.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wanna go? I'll invite you.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Come on, man.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's go now.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  I gotta go now.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey, you've got a, a, a comedy special on Star, on, on Showtime.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's it called? What's it called?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  It's called Regular Black.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, all right, here we go. Regular Black.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  The reason why I call it Regular Black because when, growing up in Chicago, uh, my African-American friends, they heard my parents talking.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  And they, my parents have thick accents.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thick Nigerian accent.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And they were like, yo, man, where you, where your, uh, parents from? I said, oh, I'm Nigerian. They were like, oh, we thought you were like, regular black.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Like, we regular black, you know, like, we from Mississippi, Kentucky, we thought you were regular black.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but what you should have said was, I am African-American.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Oh! Ow! That would have been, ooh, call your praise back then.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would have total, that would have total, that just, nothing they could say.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. There it is.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  That's where that title comes from.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so, Cosmic Queries. Cosmic phenomenon. All right, what do you have? Go.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  The controversies of naming celestial bodies.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  What's the controversy? What's the, they, they, so what's the controversy? It's, it's Rick Roberts asking.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's no controversy.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  There are no controversies.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, next question.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Like, do they?

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here, I'm gonna tell you, I'm, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you. Ready? Okay. So, planets are named for Roman gods.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Asteroids were formerly named also for Roman gods when people thought they were planets.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, after the first few dozen asteroids were discovered in the asteroid belt, they said, these aren't planets, these are something else, we need another word for them. And even though on the sky, they kinda look like a star, because they're little, and you can't see like, a surface on them, because they're so, they're so little, there's like a point of light, so they're kinda star-like.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not stars, they're asteroid, star-like.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Star? I didn't know that.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that? Well, that's why you come on, that's why we?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  So what would hemorrhoid be?

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, they're out near Uranus.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Ass-like?

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Find the hemorrhoids near your anus. You got that?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Field of grass is quick, baby. He's a tac-tacian. He's a tacian comedian. You said near your anus. That was perfect.

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to, I know my universe.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Hemorrhoid, that's ass-like. Near your anus. You just did a whole booty joke. Scientifically.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That justifies the booty joke. We got science in there. Science vocabulary.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Okay, that was.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so asteroid. So then, when too many of those got discovered, then we just gave up. And they're named after any person, place, or thing.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a, there's a, oh, oh. Initially, they were named after feminized things and objects. So there's an asteroid Mozart, Mosartia.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Mosartia?

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's to feminize it. Because the asteroids are only named after feminine. The original asteroids are named after feminine gods.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roman gods, okay. So, now, then they just gave up because there's too many asteroids. So, because there's

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hundreds of thousands of asteroids. And so, um, so I even have, there's an asteroid named after me. Called Tyson.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Not Mike Tyson?

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I said it's named after me, so why would it be named after Mike Tyson?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  I mean asteroid.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, you're saying there's an asteroid named Tyson and I'm claiming that it's named after me? Wondering if it's named after Tyson chickens? Or Tyson Beckford?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  That would be a handsome asteroid.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Handsome asteroid.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be chocolate black.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Chocolate black asteroid, woo! It's, it's sexual chocolate. Sexual chocolate asteroid. Am I doing it like?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Sexual chocolate.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, all right, so, so that's, those are, there's asteroids named after person, places, things, and pets. Okay? There's even one named after Santa. All right, so, so asteroids have the most diversity in what they have been named.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Because there's so many of them.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's so many of them, thank you. You just run out of all the gods there ever was. All right, so, moons of planets, like.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jupiter. Any moon of any planet. Yeah. Is named after the Greek gods that played a role in the life of the Greek counterpart to the Roman god after whom the planet is named. Okay. So Jupiter has, one of its moons is Ganymede. Ganymede was the manservant of Zeus. Okay. And Zeus is the counterpart to Jupiter. Well, wow. So, so these two nomenclatures are homage to the Roman and Greek traditions that have influenced Western science. What about? The, the growth of Western science. Io is a character in, in Jupiter's life. I don't remember all, well, all they were, all they were, but they're there. You look them up, they're there. Okay, that's right. Now, not, you, this, there's more to this answer than I think either you knew, right?

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Okay, so now, okay, so you got that. So it turns out Herschel, William Herschel. Okay. Was the first person to discover a planet. The first person. This is the planet beyond Saturn. For most of human civilization, there was only Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, six planets. In fact, most of the time, there were only five because we didn't know Earth was one of them. Ah. It was just Ju- uh, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Okay. Okay, uh, so Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, five. Plus the sun and the moon were counted as planets, planets from the Greek meaning wanderer, which means you move, if you wait long enough, against the background stars.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there were seven wanderers that were known to the ancients. And this is where we get the names for the seven days of the week. So what day is named after the sun? Sunday. After the moon. Monday? Monday, and in our culture, it's a mixture of Roman and Norse mythologies, but each of those gods corresponds with the controlling god over those, those seven entities. Okay, so then Copernicus comes around, discovers that we're one of these planets because we go around the sun like everybody else, and we're not in the center with everything going around us. So that complicated things, just so you know. All right. He had the coolest name though. Uh. Out of all, Nicholas Copernicus. That's tight as. Not Galileo Galilei? Galileo Galilei looks lazy, that looks lazy.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because it's the same thing. Copernicus. Nicholas. Yo, Copernicus, yo, that's hot. That's a rhyme waiting to happen. It's like a rapper's name. Rap happen, there's a rap. Everything surrounds me, baby. Copernicus, baby, what's up, cap?

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I don't know. Keep working on that and come back. We'll hear, we'll hear what, how that could. Kepler. Kepler's type. Johannes Kepler. Woo, that's hot. He's badass. He was the first person ever write down an equation that described physical reality. Wow. He wrote Kepler's Law of Planetary Motion. That was in early 1600s. So we've only had mathematics describing the universe for 400 years. Okay. And he basically birthed that. So getting back to the names. Yes. So, because, because Herschel was the first to discover a planet. No one had a tradition of naming planets yet, because they hadn't been discovered yet. Everyone knew these things in the sky. Yeah. So there was no tradition yet. Right.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he just named it after his principal funder, which was King George. So for, for, for many decades, the enumeration of the planets of the solar system was Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and George. And George? Yes, Planet George. Wow. So, so, now that's kinda, you, you. That's so me. That's like, that's so gangster. That's gangster. Name it George, I gave you the money. Don't try it, I want to be a planet. This didn't last. Internationally, it didn't last, but they had to like be nice to the Brits because they discovered it, alright? Right. So as an homage, as, as a recompense. Right. The moons of Uranus, rather than, this is the only exception. Hmm.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than being named for Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to the Roman god after whom the planet is named. Uranus's moons are named after fictional characters in Shakespearean literature. Oh, okay. So that's homage to. One? The, um, um, um. Aggo? There might be one. I don't know. There's like 60. Otello?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Can I get an Artello?

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll go check on that.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got Miranda, Puck, Oberon, they're a lot from a Midsummer's Night Dream.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's there. Okay. And lastly, stars are no longer really named anymore. Most of the stars that have names have Arabic names. So the Arabic tradition is also preserved in, uh, in the modern reckoning of the names of things. And after a certain while, we just number them in a catalog.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And comets are named after their discoverers, or people after whom the discoverer wants to name them. But they're named after people exclusively.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Okay, all you know, I know only Ha- uh, Ha- Edmund Halley.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, uh, Halley's.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Haley's or Halley's?

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is Halley. Haley is Bill Haley in the comments.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Whoa, we got a rock on the rock tonight.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That messed with the proper pronunciation of Edmund Halley for decades.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Sure was a shake rattling roll.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around the sun.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta go lightning round. Three minutes left. Okay, lightning round.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Boom, boom, boom.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  The- these questions are too long. This is P D J Kragel.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Here's a shorty. How does life come from non-life?

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. We have no idea. That is a biological frontier. How do you go from inorg- from organic molecules to self-replicating life? That is a fascinating frontier in biology, and we look forward to the solution of that in the coming years. Next.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Okay, here is Rafael Alves. He's from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. How is it possible that the further we look into the observable universe, we see the cosmic microwave radiation, the oldest light in the universe? Assuming that it comes from matter beyond our observable universe, doesn't it mean that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light after the Big Bang? If the universe is roughly 13.75 billion years old, how could the oldest photons have traveled around 45 to 47 billion light years towards Earth? How come our 13.75 billion year old universe is 93 billion light years across? How is it impossible?

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the universe can, the fabric of the universe can expand faster than light. There is no law of physics preventing that. The speed of light limit is anything traveling within the space.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is itself expanding. That cannot travel faster than light. The fabric of the universe itself can travel without a problem. And in, yes, the early universe did expand faster than the speed of light itself. This is not a contradiction. Woo! Godfrey, we got, we got time for one more.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Peter Murdock, is there any way to tell how large the universe is? As more light reaches our, over time, we see more, but if the universe was finite, could this stop happening? And if so, what would that look like?

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that question. You know why? Because I think about it all the time.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 46:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, because there's an expanding, uh, horizon. It's a time horizon. And in a billion years, we will see a billion light years more of this universe. Because that's an extra billion years that that part of the universe had to reach us.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, because in other words, if we're only fourteen billion, thirteen point eight billion years old, where's the light from something that's fourteen billion, from fifteen billion years away from us? It hasn't had time to reach us yet. Wait a billion years, then that comes and you see that part of the universe. Now, watch what happens. If in sixteen, if in sixteen billion years age, nothing starts coming to us, that would mean the horizon has washed over the last bit of matter in the universe. And there'll be no more cosmology left to be revealed. Because, and you, and that would be then the literal edge of all the matter in the universe.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Done.

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Done.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Woo!

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That has not happened yet, which is why there is still something called cosmology, where we can look far out and see the birth of the universe itself.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey, thanks for-

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Thank you for, oh, this is-

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, so-

• 47:57Speaker 01

  My brain hurts.

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. You are no longer a cosmic queries virgin. Welcome.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the company.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Well, I just got banged. Big banged.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfrey, you're on Showtime. I'm gonna find you after I pay my bill for Showtime. They're paying the bill for you, the Cosmo thing. No, no. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This has been StarTalk and Cosmic Queries Edition. And, uh, well, till next time, I bid you keep looking up.