StarTalk Podcast
Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wil Wheaton, famous for his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, joins StarTalk Live at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle.
6,191 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
Hello, Seattle.
Welcome to a very fun thing. It is my great pleasure to bring out the incredible Neil Tyson.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have some other wonderful guests. I'd like to bring out Paul F. Tompkins.
Kristen Schaal.
We have one more seat. Let's try to fill it with somebody.
Join me in giving a warm Seattle welcome for the one, the only, Wil Wheaton from StarTalk.
So, the subject of this evening will be the geek mecca. And we're just trying to understand the geekiverse. Here we are in Seattle, home of Microsoft, the head of which is the patron saint of all geeks, Bill Gates. And I have a quick Bill Gates story, if I may.
Is he here tonight? You better check.
Where is he? Is he in a special box? I'm betting not. I did this calculation, if you want to know how rich Bill Gates is. And I asked myself, what is the smallest denomination coin I'll bend over and pick up in the street? That's a measure of your wealth, right? I think. So, I make enough money, I'm not picking up the pennies or nickels anymore.
It's a measure of your wealth or your superstition.
Okay.
See, if you're a child of the 80s, you pick up a quarter every time you see it because video games.
Yeah, not only that, a quarter is like for laundry and for like car parking meters.
I pick up socks if I think no one's worn them.
So, I pick up quarters. Sometimes I don't pick up dimes if I'm in a hurry. So I'm in between a dime and a quarter. So now you ratio that of my income to what that might be for Bill Gates. It's forty-five thousand dollars. So if he finds forty-five thousand dollars in the street, "Oh, too busy. Gotta walk past it, make decisions at Microsoft."
So I'm gonna do a Kickstarter and it's just for, to fund me following Bill Gates around to pick up the money he leaves on the ground.
What if it's all in ones, so it looks like way more money? Yeah, that's... I don't know if he's got Rain Man-like abilities where he can instantly count a pile of bills on the street. He probably has some kinda talent such as that. So, I got one of the geek saints right here to my right. You took some seriously geek roles in a lot of TV programs.
I was an enormous Star Trek fan before I was cast in Next Generation.
As Wellesley Crusher.
Yeah, you know what, I'm actually, I'm so much of a Star Trek fan... That's where I know you from! Oh! This was killing me! Now, aren't you glad that I didn't just tell you? Cause I would've robbed you from the joy of that discovery.
I appreciate that, thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
I remembered toy soldiers and then it's sort of blank after.
Yeah. You in the entertainment industry until about 2006.
So Wellesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, TNG if you're in the circle.
Right. If you're very busy, you don't have time to say things like "The Next Generation." I'm such a big Star Trek fan that I noticed that your sideburns are actually pointy.
He noticed! He noticed! I used to have 1970's mutton chop sideburns. They were in style at the time, okay? And then I, I had transitioned and I said my homage to Star Trek was to do the pointy... So, he knows, first person to ever notice that is right here to my right.
Achievement unlocked!
So, when I was a kid and I was working on Star Trek, LeVar Burton and I were the only two original Next Gen cast members who were very proud, out-of-the-closet Star Trek fans. Nobody else really knew the show like we did. I did things like, when I was flying the spaceship, you know, like you do. It was... The buttons that we had didn't really do anything. It's...
What?
Yeah, I know, well...
Really?
But I invented a series of buttons, and this particular series made the ship go to warp speed. This particular series of buttons put us into standard orbit. Nobody knew it, nobody cared about it, but it was very important to me.
Well, it probably showed in your face.
Maybe.
Like, you're acting.
Yeah.
The Robert De Niro of space shuttle button pushing.
Yeah. I wrote a book about it, that nobody wanted to buy.
What's it, Memories of the Future?
Memories of the Future, Volume One, is a book that I wrote.
Wait, is there a Volume Two?
The Volume Two is in the works. I was writing Volume Two, and then I started working all the time as an actor on The Big Bang Theory, and Eureka, and Leverage.
Totally cool. We have that in common. I had a cameo on The Big Bang Theory.
I know that you did.
You know that.
They talk about you on the set. I was just there last week.
In another, in another episode.
In another episode. It'll air in, like, two or three weeks.
I played myself.
So do I!
How evil are you?
Except, you play a real dick on the show.
I do.
And isn't it, like, the Wil Wheaton...
It's Wheaton's Law.
Wheaton's Law, "Don't be a dick"?
It is.
Okay, so...
However, in the universe of The Big Bang Theory, Wil Wheaton is evil.
Oh, so it's your evil other person?
Yes.
Oh.
We look exactly the same. We sound exactly the same.
You're just the evil one.
Only, he is the evil twin.
Now, here's the problem. I'm not an actor, so I had to give them, have them give me lines that I would've spoken at some time in my life.
Oh, so you got to say all the crazy techno-babble physics stuff that kicked my ass when I was doing Star Trek?
No, no, it was simpler than that. I said, I was kinda deep in the Pluto situation.
So, any sentence that had Pluto in it, I'm good for it. So I got into a kerfuffle with Sheldon about Pluto. Cause he still wanted Pluto to be a planet, and I just, you know, it's not happening here.
The Pluto situation sounds to me like the title of like a segment in a Tarantino film.
Did you?
Here we go. Wait, wait, wait. We're in the Neptune Theater?
May I? So...
This theater actually spins the other way, right?
So, first of all, Pluto is so misbehaved, it crosses the orbit of Neptune. In such a way that between 1979 and 1999, Pluto was closer to the sun than Neptune was. That's just no kind of behavior for a planet. Second, if Neptune were a Chevy Impala?
Not this analogy again. I am really liking where this is going.
So, if Neptune is a Chevy Impala, Pluto is to Neptune as what car is to a Chevy Impala? Like, would it be like a Mini Cooper? Would it be, what's that little itty bitty?
Like a Smart car?
The Smart car? Nooo. Neptune is to Pluto as a Chevy Impala is to a Matchbox car sitting on the curb. Now that's just embarrassing. That's all.
No, that's just embarrassing, that analogy I made up.
So, I said, Will.
I am embarrassed for the thing that turned out not so good, in my estimation.
I'm embarrassed for Pluto.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle, recorded on March 30th, 2012. Along with my comedic co-host Eugene Mirman. Joining me on stage that night were his fellow comedians, Kristen Schaal and Paul F. Tompkins, as well as the actor, Wil Wheaton. Let's get back to the deck of the Enterprise.
There's all this technology there. I know it's fake technology, but it's still technology we can think about.
So I remember the original, thinking, could that happen or could it not happen? And I'm thinking, alright, they got this thing that makes food hot real quick, okay? Maybe that'll happen one day.
I'm sorry. I don't remember any scenes of the original Star Trek where they just heated up food.
No, there is! There's a...
But they would make food. It would materialize hot. That is different from us being...
Computer, uh, set pot pie to warmer than now.
They clearly never watched the third season of the original Star Trek.
Of all the technologies with the tricorder and the communicator, the one that I said this will never happen in 500 years was where the doors opened up just by walking in front of it. It's like, no, that'll never happen! That's how old I am. There was a day when doors did not open for you when you approached them.
Patrick Stewart and I did a scene once in Next Generation where Picard and Wesley are going to...
Wait, I gotta ask, why did he have a French name and he spoke with a British accent? Jean-Luc Picard, and he speaks Brit.
Right, well, probably because sometime between now and then, Britain probably just storms across the channel and occupies France. But you think they built the tunnel for convenience?
So Patrick and I did this scene once where we're on a starbase and I think Wesley's going to have his artificial heart replaced. So they had built this set that had this glass door, just a regular door with a handle on it. And we walked up to it and I said to Patrick, Wesley has never experienced a door that doesn't just open for him. So, let's do this thing when they're rolling where we'll walk up and I'll just stop there and look at it, like, what the hell is going on?
What do you do with this?
Yeah, and then he was like, oh, and then I'll look at you, like, oh, kids. And then I'll push the door open and go through. And we did it, and it made it into the episode.
So we're doing like this kind of schlocky physical comedy bit on Star Trek, and I guess we just snuck it through.
Well, now and then, I think it maybe needed it.
Well, because our science was airtight.
So I got my list here. So we had the warp drive. You need that, of course.
Right, yeah.
Because here's the galaxy, and you're on one side of the galaxy. You want to get to the other. In case you didn't know, the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years. So traveling at the speed of light, if you watched a ship do that, it would take 100,000 years. So they invoked the warp drive.
And 100,000 years is equal to one light-year?
No, 100,000...
How, what's a light-year?
Light-years is 100,000 light-years.
Well, how long is a light-year?
Uh, so a light-year is a distance.
And how far is that?
It is 5.8 trillion miles.
Yeah, thank you. Okay. Good.
So 5.8 trillion times 100,000, that's how many miles that is.
Okay, so now.
That would take years.
It's okay. We can give it more power.
That's exactly right. So you warp space, so where you are gets closer to where you're trying to go, and then you go through a little wormhole, you unwarp space, and there you are. And you got there during the TV commercial. That's how that works, right? So warp drives, I'm cool with that. Tell me about Captain Kirk.
He had a way with the alien ladies.
He certainly did.
And why would first the aliens be female, right? I mean.
Right.
There's life on Earth that is non-gender, and you go to another planet, and there's gender.
Yeah, why doesn't he have sex with gender-neutral, like, piles of alien goo? That's a very intriguing exploration.
Well, actually, in the classic Star Trek episode, Devil in the Dark, no one ever really explains how that Horta became pregnant.
Oh, the Horta, that was that life form based on...
Silicon-based life form.
Silicon-based life.
Silicon, directly below carbon on the periodic table.
So they were boning.
Right?
Uh.
Ooh la la.
No, no, no. No, they don't bone with each other.
They each bone with the same other elements.
Oh, so they have an understanding.
They have a total understanding.
An open element bone.
So, right, so it was a pregnant silicon-based life.
Yeah, so.
And you'll notice that its little babies didn't have any hair, just like William Shatner.
Ooh.
So the point is, we are carbon-based chemistry. And in principle, you can create life such as we, based on any element in that column on the periodic table.
You know, one of my favorite sci-fi novels ever is Larry Niven's Ring World. And it is one of the books that really helped me understand that I was totally different from everybody else that I knew, that I was really nerdy, that I really loved science, that this imagined world was more interesting than my own. And what really blew me away about that was just the scope of the Ring World itself, and how it stays in place and all of those things. And I know it's unstable, I'm getting there. And in, and.
Someone in the audience said, "It's unstable."
Yeah, so that's. Why do you guys have a science fact, please? Don't keep it down.
Hello, guys. So there's nothing more entertaining to the non-geek than watching geeks argue over nonexistent future worlds.
I liked how this guy was trying to head it off, because as if Will was gonna say, "So we should do that."
"We should make it a reality."
I'm just stuck on the fact that we glossed over, "So you'll take a space and you'll flip it over like a tortilla and you'll get there." I'm cool with that. I'm not. What kind of energy are they using to take all of space and put it into a bowl and just flip over? But can't you?
Can you explain it with a different ethnic food? She doesn't like Mexican. So anyway.
Wait, wait, Chris, it takes an enormous amount of energy to do that.
Maybe the energy of all of the stars in the known universe?
Approximately that, actually.
Lucky guess.
Good guess, yeah.
So anyway.
You've got a different world.
Right, so Niven's going to conventions and he's speaking about Ring World and people in the audience are shouting out, "The Ring World is unstable." So he writes a second book called Ring World Engineers, where he goes to repair the Ring World, because that's a good way to spend your time. And in that book, there's all this interspecies sex. And it's the way that they consummate a deal by engaging in this interspecies sex.
But does that lead to offspring?
Uh, I don't think it does. No, I don't, I don't think it does.
There would be mules.
What about STDs?
Well.
Space TDs.
Some, some people think that that's actually how Rick Santorum was formed. Unfortunately, due to his antipathy to science, we haven't been able to actually test.
Right. So, Kristen, there's actually a point of history about STDs, if I may.
Please.
I was gonna say, Neil, what do you know about STDs?
And stop asking permission.
So, I, so if you are of a planet, if you're from Earth, you're Earthling. Mars, you're Martian. If you're Jupiter, you're Jovian. Actually, on a show the other day, I said Jupiter-ian, it was more fun to say that, but it's officially Jovian. So here's the thing. This is what the astronomers came up with to call what you are if you're from these planets. The problem is, the planet names are Roman, so the genitive form of those words for Venus would not give you Venusian, it would give you Venereal. And the medical doctors got to that word before we did, because they found a disease peculiar to lovemaking, and what god of the planets is of lovemaking and beauty and all
that?
I know this, it's Venus!
It's Venus! So Venus...
And so it's not sex Hermes?
Sex, sex Hermes.
So when the astronomers said...
I went to public school.
How are we gonna name these planets?
He can wrath up the Titans.
So this was like, this was their sort of quaint Downton Abbey-ian way of talking about STDs.
Well, yeah, so they got the word before we, because they isolated STDs before we started thinking about aliens from these planets. And so when we said, if we're gonna call someone from Venus venereal, that just doesn't work. So, we invented this new name, Venusians. So now you have interspecies sex. Do we answer, did they have STDs?
Well, you know, I don't know. It wasn't covered in the book.
It probably didn't get tested.
But actually, but two, in Ringworld, they don't. But, I mean, that's sort of, that just...
Ringworld sounds like an STD right there.
Well, that is.
Well, it is unstable, as we heard.
I guess. But, you raise an interesting point, like, how did Captain Kirk's dick not just fall off?
I guess that conversation took place between the scenes. Like, I was thinking, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, before we do this.
I do have to know. Will you disintegrate my dick?
And Will, that was probably some acting work he was doing in his face.
Right. I moved my dick, but it's worth it.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle continues with Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, and Wil Wheaton. You can also watch a video of this show on the Google YouTube Nerdist channel. Check out our website for more details at startalkradio.net.
So, tell me about the holodeck. I didn't see every episode. Did you ever get to go in the holodeck?
I did. I spent a great deal of time. I was actually in the holodeck on the pilot.
And what were you imagining for your own world?
In the pilot...
Well, the holodeck is a room you go into and live out all of your fantasies, right?
Right. It's sort of like the internet. But real. Right. Yeah.
The idea was that the Galaxy-class starships in Next Generation would go farther, and they would be out in space longer than the Constitution-class ships in the original Star Trek series. So, in order to keep people from, like, you know, going...
Killing everyone.
Yeah, that. They did a couple of things. They put families on the ship so that people could be with their families, which is a super-great idea when you're sending a thing out into unknown space, where you're definitely going to be involved in wars and things. And then they built these holodecks that would let people go and sort of escape the drudgery of being on a starship. The problem with that is that the holodecks constantly malfunctioned.
This imaginary thing called the holodeck malfunctioned.
Yeah, it turned into a plot device.
But since it's imaginary, they could have just not made it malfunction.
It would be funny if in the first episode of Star Trek, they all went into space with their families, and all the families died right away. I mean, I guess it's good that that didn't happen.
I would think that the holodeck would be really addictive, too. Like, how do you keep people out of the holodeck?
There was...
I'd be in there the whole time.
Yeah. And the worst job on the spaceship is the guy that has to go in and mop up the holodeck. That's the worst. So, they...
The thing I did, UV light, I guess.
Yeah, boy. But it's a great idea, and right now I'm voicing an audiobook called Masters of Doom, and it's about John Romero and John Carmack, the guys that invented Wolfenstein 3D, and then Doom, and then Quake. And it was the holodeck on Next Generation that was really driving Carmack to program 386 computers to do really incredible, technologically astounding...
So, Star Trek is influencing the creativity of video engineers.
Yes. And if you assume that Next Generation exists at a point in the future of our timeline, it creates this interesting paradox that people are watching Star Trek and then developing technology that was inspired by Star Trek, that then Star Trek uses.
So, one of my favorite devices on the deck was the visor that Geordi wore.
Yeah, sure.
Did that have an official name?
It was just the visor. And visor's an acronym, but I don't remember what it stands for. Does anybody in the audience know what it stands for? Gotta be for vision, right? Vision, independent, surreal, or...
Rate or reality.
Yeah, that's actually, that's right.
I love any adjective that includes or.
Yeah. We haven't nailed this down, but we need to call it something.
So here's the thing, in astrophysics, we basically have that. But you don't wear it, right? So there's visible light, and we used to only build telescopes that viewed visible light in the universe.
Fools.
And then we said, yeah, we're empowered by these telescopes. And then we discovered, wait a minute, there's this thing called infrared, which sits right on the other side of red, and something called ultraviolet, which sits beyond violet. And so then we built telescopes sensitive in those regions, and the universe is doing something else. We look in the same spot, and it's something else happening there. In fact, with ultraviolet telescopes, we discovered black holes. And so then we said, what's beyond ultraviolet? Then you find X-rays. There's X-ray things going on in the universe. And then on the other side of the infrared, there's microwaves, and then radio waves, and then gamma rays, and the whole electromagnetic spectrum is talking to us from the universe.
And we've got a telescope lined up in every band.
You're walking a fine line towards conspiracy theory, but I believe you.
One of the things that I loved about Gene Roddenberry.
The creator of Star Trek.
He was a good friend of mine when we were working on the show, and was sort of a mentor to me. And the secular humanism of Star Trek informed 100% of my morality and my worldview. And.
One of the great features of the show was the storytelling captured social-cultural issues. In a way where, oh, it's just science fiction, but in fact, it was pointing directly back to us.
And what you were saying about, like, all those telescopes that we've made and the things that we can observe in the universe, I've done a number of educational short videos for the Spitzer Space Telescope program at Caltech. And it's awesome, the things that that telescope can see are mind-blowing. And when you're talking about that.
Spitzer telescope is tuned for the infrared. So a whole telescope orbiting, like Hubble is orbiting, except it's checking the universe out in infrared, which enables you to see deep into. Otherwise opaque gas clouds, revealing the birth of stars and planets within.
So, wear a robe around the house.
So, when we talk about those things that we have done, the things that science has done, those things that human beings have done, just through the application of knowledge, I think, "Fuck yeah, we did that. We sat down as a species and we decided, we want to know these things, we want to understand these things, and we will develop and build instruments that let us do that." And one of the things Gene Roddenberry used to say was, "There is no limit to what mankind can do when we just sort of work together." And the only time I ever saw Gene get angry, we were at a convention, and someone was going on and on about the face on Mars, and pyramids on Mars, and just a bunch of stuff that was like pseudoscience. And aliens came to Earth, and aliens built the pyramids.
And Gene was like, "No, they didn't. Human beings built the pyramids. We did that." And he was incensed.
Well, so he missed an opportunity. What he should have said was, "The fact that some members of the human species look upon the pyramids and are so awestruck by them that they cannot even believe that it is a product of our own species, is that much more of a testament to how brilliant the human mind can be."
I still find it difficult to believe that that pot that you can drain pasta through, that that was a human being that came up with that. It wasn't even on Star Trek. They just, out of nowhere.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle, recorded on March 30th, 2012. Along with my comedic co-host, Eugene Mirman. Joining me onstage that night were his fellow comedians, Kristin Schaal and Paul F. Tompkins, as well as the actor, Will Wheaton.
The cloaking device. A couple of comments about that, if I may.
No, let's move on.
I'll allow it.
You are invisible if the band of light you use to observe it passes through it. So, windows are cloaking devices for visible light. If you shine visible light at a window, it goes through. So, you don't see the window. You see what's on the other side of the window.
But also, you can see windows.
I know that no one ever contests you, but I can totally see windows.
I saw one today.
Yeah. My hotel room, Window City.
I was on a plane, it was full of windows. Eugene, Eugene, clean your windows, and then maybe what I said will apply.
Oh!
Snap!
I will clean my hotel windows, and then go downstairs to the front desk and be like, "I can't see my windows, because I cleaned them too much."
Someone's stolen my windows.
Here's the thing. This space, the walls are transparent to radio waves, and that's why you can like, have radio reception, even microwave reception. And so, one way to cloak is to use a beam that goes right through you, okay? So, that's one way. Another way to cloak is they found a way to have the light transmit a path around the object, and then continue out the other side. And so, that way, if you can do that for all beams of light, then you could be invisible to any way they try to detect you.
Sounds like it could get kinda hot.
Uh, no, actually, it'd be kinda cool. Because you feel warm by absorbing energy from light that hits your body. That's why it always feels warmer in the sunlight, even though the air temperature's the same as it was in the shade. The shade is not cooler in air temperature than standing in sunlight. So, stop saying that!
So what happens is, you step out of the shade into sunlight, and your skin absorbs radiant energy from that source of light we call the sun. And that way, you have two sources of energy into you: the vibration of the molecules of the air, as well as the sunlight. And air is transparent to sunlight. That's why you can see the sun in the daytime.
So, the sun is cloaking the air?
Yes, very good. In fact, Kristen, if no one told you, why would you even think there was anything between you and the audience right now? They're right there.
What are you talk— are you high? You went from so much science to like, who knows where we all are now? What if I'm you and red is green?
Air is transparent to visible light. It is not transparent to ultraviolet light. Which is why, when we first detected ultraviolet light, we needed to put a telescope above Earth's atmosphere. And we would not have known about black holes until we put the ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes above the atmosphere. That's all I'm saying.
Is "black hole" the best name they could've come up with?
It's a really awesome name. Because if it's a hole in the ground and you fall in...
A black hole? It's a three-dimensional hole. You fall in from any direction you approach it. Fact one. So that's an awesome hole.
Look, I am not trying to denigrate the holes themselves.
I mean, I let ultraviolet slide. That was definitely a lazy... Like, infrared sounds really cool, and then it's like, it's so violet, it's like, ultraviolet.
Let's watch The Big Lebowski again.
Well, just so you know, the way we looked at the visible spectrum, we ordered the light, Isaac Newton, my man, first did this, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Okay?
What, are you mad that indigo's left out all the time?
No, no.
What was that about?
Because indigo doesn't belong there, alright? Isaac Newton had a mystical fascination with the numeral seven, and he counted six colors. He said, "I need a seventh one somewhere, let's put in indigo." If you're gonna put in indigo, there are 12 other colors you can put in there, because the colors change continuously.
Well, if he's your man, let indigo be his muse.
Oh, I like that.
Okay, so he's got the seven colors. So we order them, red at the bottom, violet at the top. Quite an arbitrary notion to order them that way. It's an increasing energy, it is. But, when you go beyond the violet, it's ultraviolet. When you go below the red, it's infrared.
You must feel so dumb right now?
I still don't like it.
So if you leave the edges of Seattle, you go to ultra-Seattle?
The closer to Pike Place Market is infrared.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Our live show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle continues with Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, and Wil Wheaton.
Can I tell you how infrared was discovered?
Yes, you may.
No, let me. When Aerosmith first formed, I'm pretty sure I got this. Okay, you take over now.
Alright, so...
Isaac Newton asked himself, he was the first to pass white light through a prism, got the colors, put the colors back through a prism and got white light again. To show that white light is composed of these seven colors. All right, he asked himself, could there be more light beyond the edges of these seven colors?
Later, research would be done to find out whether the colors have different temperatures. And so, a thermometer was put in each color. Now, when you're doing a-
How, how?
Huh?
Yeah, you said it normal, but it-
The thermometer juice is red, is that gonna be an issue?
That's what- So, you got your colors laid out and you just lay a thermometer in the colors that came through the spectrum.
Okay, no big deal.
So, no biggie, right. So, what the experiment does was, as you may remember from your, like, science class-
They don't.
You, you, you need-
Also, I like how dismissively he said "science class", like, so far beyond your- Your mere mortal science classes.
So, you put a thermometer outside of the seven colors. You put a thermometer that is not exposed to any color at all, that's your control thermometer.
You mean in black, which is all colored, oh wait, nevermind.
No, you're right. So, what happened was, that thermometer registered the highest temperature of them all. That thermometer discovered infrared light.
And is that thermometer on a stamp? No. But Elvis is.
To be fair, Elvis discovered green.
All right, one last thing here. You know what, I liked that medical scanner, that was good. You just wave the wand-
Oh, man, I know, right?
And you just know everything.
Without cutting you open.
We need that.
Yeah, you know, the guy that invented the MRI, invented the MRI because of the device that- He watched the original Star Trek. And he watched Dr. McCoy sort of scan around on a thing. And he thought, we should do that. There should be a way that we can see inside people's bodies without having to cut them open.
So, here's the thing, the physical principle is nuclear magnetic resonance. But that term has one of the two famous N-words in it. And so, you, to bring that technology into the hospital-
People fear that N-word. And so they excised it from the name, came up with a new one. So it's magnetic resonance imaging. But it is so nuclear magnetic resonance. I'm just letting you know that. And so you send a strong magnetic field across the nucleus of an atom, and the nucleus aligns. Then you can image what the different alignments are, depending on the mass of the nucleus. And so you can see where different elements are inside your body without cutting you open. It's a brilliant device invented by a physicist, who, by the way, had no specific interest in medicine. Happened to have been a physics professor of mine in college, just by coincidence. My point is, there are people who say... That was your science class. It was my science class, right.
So he won a Nobel Prize for that. My point there is that people say, "I want to live healthy. Let's fund medical research." Wait a minute. Every device in a hospital with an on-off switch that diagnoses the condition of your body without cutting you open...
You're making me nervous about my health right now.
Oh, sorry, sorry. Every one of those machines is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine. And it took the medical technologist to say, "Hey..."
They're like, "People should give me the money, and I promise to invent a thing for them of no specific description yet."
You know, one of the really cool things about the... One of the really great things about the design of the computers on Next Generation, and specifically the tricorders. Michael Kuta and Rick Sternbach were the guys that designed all of these things. And Mike had this idea in 1987 that eventually, computers were going to be sort of operating system independent. And you would come up to a computer, and the computer would, one way or another, know what you wanted it to do. And the computer would reconfigure itself to serve that particular purpose. And that's the under...
To serve man.
That's sort of the core philosophy of the LCARS system. And it's why every computer in the enterprise goes to RedTube when Wesley walks by. But they... The medical tricorders on Next Generation, they were specifically designed so that the doctor could just sort of like... It's the coolest thing in the world that the doctor just goes... "What's wrong with this guy?" Point, point, point, and then the thing says everything. But you've got to take that information to the ship's computer and then use the ship's computer to sort of interpret all that information. And some of my favorite fake computers on the Enterprise were those things in sickbay because of all the computers that we had, they were the ones that looked the most, like, real to me.
And what is clear is that the most primitive thing today that the future will assess to be primitive is our hospitals. And evidence of that is you wouldn't be caught in 20-year-old hospital technology. The fact that the medical community says medical advances is so high and so great and we have come so far, the fact that they say that means they were not far yesterday. If you keep saying how far you've just come, it meant you're still improving, right? You're still not really there yet.
That's why I don't go to a doctor, I go to a physicist.
You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, funded in part by the National Science Foundation. There's much more of our show at the Neptune Theater in Seattle coming up, so check out our website for details about those shows and how you can also watch the video on the Nerdist TV channel. Until next time, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, saying, keep looking up.
Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
