Running Out of Matter with Michelle Thaller

Could spacetime curve in the opposite direction and produce a repulsive field instead of gravity? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice tackle fan questions about photons, heat death, gravitational waves, neutron stars and more with astrophysicist Michelle Thaller.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we finally got Michelle Fowler on StarTalk, a friend, a colleague, and science educator. We love these folk.

• 0:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's fun. She's got the energy that we all want and seek of someone who's enthusiastic about the moving frontier of the universe.

• 0:17Chuck Nice?

  The energy of a neutron star in the compact form of an astrophysicist.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 0:25Chuck Nice?

  That, that, that came out of the show. I, I got that from the show we just did.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the highest compliment I've ever heard anyone get who's an astrophysicist coming right up on StarTalk.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, got with me. Chuck, nice. How you doing, man?

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  What's up, Neil?

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. We're doing cosmic queries today.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With an old friend and colleague, Michelle Fowler. Michelle, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  It is wonderful to be here. Great, great to be talking to you guys.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, so you're not only a fellow astrophysicist, you're a fellow science communicator, and we love that species of scientists.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were recently of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and, but the last time you weren't recently of it, you were of it. So how recently have you no longer been part of them?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, retired in October. I think it was October 2024. So, yeah, yeah. So been, been retired for a couple of years, been doing speaking. I've been doing a lot of lecturing with Smithsonian Journeys. That's been a lot of fun. So.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know them. Yes, yes.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, just having fun being a freelance astrophysicist. There you go.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, astrophysicist at large.

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

  We got a personal astrophysicist and a freelance astrophysicist.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  We can talk about whatever you want. I, I'm not working for anybody. So.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not working for anybody. Very, I like that. But let me just finish up with your CV here. You were research scientist with the Spitzer Space Telescope, one of the, one of the big, what do they call them? The, the grand?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Great observatories. Yes.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great observatories. And that one was a band of the spectrum that Hubble did not cover. So that was infrared, right? The Spitzer Telescope? Could you straighten us out here? Locally, we have the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who lost their lease with Columbia, as, as it was removed by the White House. But that has, were Goddard in it. And then we have the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. They're both NASA. Could you just help us distinguish the two?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Well, yes. So, so the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has for a long, long time been the, the center for NASA, basically earth science, climate science.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  And, and so, you know, that was the thing. So they, they, they had a very close link to Columbia University. Columbia University leased this building to them. Famously, it's the building that, if you remember Seinfeld, you know, the, the sitcom Seinfeld, it's the cafe. That's that building. Yeah, that's right. The diner's in that building.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just says restaurants on the front.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  It's the greatest name for any eatery ever.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a restaurant.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Restaurant.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, I mean, absolute heroes of mine worked there. I mean, these are the people that are doing, you know, they're, they're in the middle of Antarctica, ground truthing measurements from satellites. You know, they're making sure we understand what's going on with, you know, the atmosphere and the oceans and all of that.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you could say it, Michelle. You could say they're doing God's work. You could say that.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  Goddard's work.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Goddard's work.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God's work.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely. No, two, two heroes of mine. And, and yeah, it's, it's been rough. It's, it's been a, a rough couple of years for them.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. In fact, at the museum, we have a few refugees that have taken pitch tent within our facility, because we're just down the street, a couple of miles from G.I.S. Goddard Institute for Space Studies. But they're homeless at this point. They're still all paid as scientists, but they're homeless. But it has the name Goddard in it, yet so did the Space Flight Center. So now we go to Maryland, then what happens there?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. So, so Maryland, right. So this is this, this, this giant base. At the, at the moment, it's still NASA's largest base in terms of people that go there. I think they're down a little bit. But when I was there, there were about 10,000 people that worked there every day. And that's, that's pretty incredible. I mean, it, it's, I mean, we, they, one statistic they had is that if Goddard were to leave NASA, then Goddard would become the world's second largest space program. I mean, I mean, Goddard itself is bigger than the other space programs, you know, around the world. And again.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Goddard builds, builds satellites that, or telescopes that get launched?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. Well, so, I mean, the, the Hubble Space Telescope was built largely at Goddard, the observatory part of the James Webb Space Telescope. We, we build the, the GOES satellites, the weather satellites. I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's, there's four huge science divisions. You've got earth science, which is the biggest one, and then heliophysics, study the sun, the Space Weather Action Center, you know, all the stuff the sun's throwing at us. And then you've got, you know, the planetary stuff and the astrophysics stuff. It's, it's, it's the world's largest science base that we know of.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, for now.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Please, please keep it that way. Yes.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get there, Chuck.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michelle, tell me what are the consequences, budget cuts we've read about to NASA overall or, and to Goddard specifically, where you once worked?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  It's been a couple of years of, of, I mean, I, I really, I really, I really feel for all of these people, all, all my former friends, and so many of them have left. I mean, I, I've seen some of our absolute best scientists, and, and not only that, our best engineers, one of my best friends, who's just an incredible kick-ass systems engineer, she got scooped up by Switzerland. And, I mean, the, the scientists are going overseas. With, with NASA and Goddard in general, it, it's been this real seesaw. Is there going to be a huge cut, you know, or, well, then Congress kind of restores the funding, so maybe not. Oh, no, no, we're going to do the huge cut. Oh, well, well, maybe not. So, I mean, it's, it's this time of terrible uncertainty. And, and, I mean, aside from, you know, programs being on the canceling block and losing scientists, the other big

• 6:17Speaker 02

  thing I've been seeing that's been heartbreaking is, you know, the, the best young people, the best scientists. So NASA was required to get rid of all of their, you know, all the people that were hired in the last three years, right? All the people that were still on probation, you know? I mean, this may be the person you wanted to get, the leader, you know, right out of graduate school. They're going to be the leader for the future. If they were there for less than three years, you can still legally fire them. And so those people are gone. And, and you have a lot of the best scientists now going, well, why should I work for NASA? Why should I work for any kind of government agency? Because they can just up and cancel my job, you know, at a moment's notice.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, when you use the word probation, you don't mean they did something bad and they're under observation? This is just the starter period of time over which you could be removed for no cause at all, just because you're not vested in the, in the government system yet. Is that a fair way to characterize that?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, everybody sort of has a trial period when you're hired as a government scientist, you know, equivalent to sort of like getting tenure at a university. You know, you're, you're there sort of for a while where it's legally, you know, easy to say, oh, well, that wasn't the right fit. You know, maybe, maybe you should go somewhere else. But then when you, when they make you permanent, that's harder to do. And so, so yeah, by probationary, that doesn't mean that any, nothing was wrong. These are, these are the best people in the world.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  If you do something wrong, they put you on double secret probation.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michelle, this sounds like when we, I think, I might be a little older than you, but same sort of generation, where, where we're in graduate school and we, as a nation, are the beneficiaries of the smartest people in other countries coming to the United States to, for opportunity to express their talents and their brilliance. And said, bad for their home country, good for America, right? And now I have colleagues, as do you, who are getting the phone call from Europe. We got a lab for you in Germany. We got a lab for you in Paris, and here's money, and it's funded, and it's stable. Come on down.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now the world is cherry picking us.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  They weren't sending us their best, their brightest. They weren't.

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but now we're sending our best and brightest out.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so where, where does this land, do you think? Are we going to recover from this?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Well, I, I mean, one of the physics journals, I remember, had a full page ad from the country of Denmark, saying, you know, come to a place where facts still matter, right?

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, other countries are on it. And. Yeah. I, I mean, Europe is a beneficiary, Canada, and China. I mean, I mean, China as well. I have a lot of colleagues that got offers. It's like, they'll bring your whole lab over, all your graduate students, like you said, funding. It, it's so unnecessary. I mean, the thing that has been so tragic about this is that science research in the United States is a, is a low budget item. Oh, my God. You know, we, we do not spend a lot of money on this already. I mean, the, the thing that I was so proud of, I mean, you know, I worked for sort of the, the science part of NASA, you know, we'd be doing all the, the earth science, the Mars rovers, you know, the, the web telescope, about 110

• 9:31Speaker 02

  active missions at any given time. Each of those missions employs thousands of people, in some cases, tens of thousands of people across the country, across the world. They do it all for under $6 billion a year. I mean, that's, that's a nothing burger when it comes to a budget. I mean, we get so much innovation. You know, you can demonstrate, we've had economists do studies, that you get, get two, three times the, the economic advancement of, of money put into science research.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, that's the $6 billion out of the $30 billion that is NASA's annual budget, and you're referring to just the science, which is not putting people in orbit? That's not the space station. That is not launching astronauts. That is science.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  But putting people in orbit, of course, has to be more expensive, because you need to be a lot more careful when there's, when there are human lives on stake. You know?

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They want to come back usually. They want to come back. Rovers don't need to come back. People, you got to bring them back, you know?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  What you can do for the cheap, I mean, some of the missions that blow me away, you know, I mean, basic physics, how did neutron stars work nicer? That's actually on the space station, but it's a small thing, just a couple hundred million dollars. I mean, these little budget items, you know, James Webb, of course, is a bigger one, but that was over like 20 years and employed again, tens of thousands of people. You know, these are, these are tremendously great value for the money.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Did you say it was 30 billion? That's all we spend? 30 billion?

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The total. Yeah, it's around there, plus or minus for NASA in a year. But 30 billion is less than four tenths of 1% of your tax dollar. And I do the experiment, you take a full dollar and just cut into it, just a single dollar bill, cut into it, four tenths of 1% of its width, and it doesn't even reach the paint, the ink of the bill. Okay, you can remove that and the bill is still there. A. B, what I wanted is to create a new budgeting system where agencies get the money people think they're getting. Because the visibility,

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the visibility of NASA is so huge compared to their actual budget, no one would guess off the top that they're getting four tenths of 1%. They would say 5%. I've heard some people say 10%. And I say, that's the budget we should give. Give them their visibility budget. Yeah.

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And by the way, everybody loves NASA. Still, it's one of the few government agencies where people believe in the institution of the agency and they also trust it.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's respected around the world.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  It's respected around the world, you know, that and what was, what was formerly the NIH, which is now the SAD, as in just sad.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't even stand for anything. It's just sad.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, NIH is a whole other story. I mean, honestly, that, that's even, that's even more worth saving than NASA. Is, I mean, I mean, I, as much as I am a huge NASA and space fan, I mean, do not mess with the NIH. Good Lord. I mean, we, we need to keep that research going, the cancer research, the Alzheimer's research. I mean, again, Center for Disease Control, things like that. Oh my God, do we need those? So, so yeah. And remember, I mean, for 30 billion, you're still talking about the whole budget of NASA and the human space program is the big chunk of that. All the earth science, all the climate science, all the weather satellites, you know, all the monitoring the sun, all the exploring the universe.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all the space telescopes are in the science.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  All the space telescopes. Yeah. So, I mean, it's nothing. I mean, I, I don't know if this is true, but I remember one economist saying that, that they'd shown that the Pentagon, the military across all over the world had spent more money on air conditioning in a year than that budget.

• 13:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  So, uh, don't, don't, I'm not, not absolutely sure that's true. But, but, you know, it's on that level. I mean, we're not even a fighter jet, basically.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Looks like we, uh, America has stepped in a pile of dodes crap.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Dojoodoo.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  This is Ken, the nerd neck zebra from Michigan, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's pivot now to our question. So, Michelle, we've solicited questions from our fan base. Well, from our Patreon supporters, and they know who you are, they know your expertise, and these are targeted for you. And I, to the extent that we overlap in expertise, I'm happy to put in my two cents, but we're really here to see what you've got to say in response to these questions. Chuck has them all. I haven't seen any of them. And so Chuck, what do you have for us?

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  All right. So, inquiring minds want to know, uh, this is Ross Graves, who says, hello, I admire and I respect you all, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Thaler, Lord Nice. This is Ross from California. When a photon is absorbed and re-emitted or reflected, is the journey through spacetime physically continuous? Or does that interaction create an entirely new quantum history for the outgoing light? In the sense that the light experiences no time of its own, if reflected, did it hit a surface and restart its experience as a

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  reflection? Dude, that's a matrix like crap. He just, that is an amazing question.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. I love it. Uh, did it take on a new identity as a reflected photon? That's what that comes down to. So, Michelle, what do you have to say about that?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. All right. So I'm going to say, I'm going to start out saying, this is something that is a question of mine. So, I mean, I mean, well done. Cause I mean, this is actually something that I wish I understood better. Um, I, I only recently came to a better understanding because of some great, uh, podcasts, actually. Uh, it was the podcast Veritasium that Derek Muller does, that finally I could understand, like, why the speed of light is different speeds. When you go through the vacuum of space, it's, it's the fastest anything can go, the speed of light. When it passes through air or water or glass, you know, you see that classic bend, right? When you look through water, you see light, like bend, and that's because the speed changes. And it was, it was only his podcast that finally got me to understand, you know, light is an electromagnetic field.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And when it's in the presence of other electromagnetic fields, when you're not in a vacuum, there's other atoms and molecules around, the electromagnetic field basically becomes a combination of those two fields. And, and he did this great podcast about that. The question about whether a photon is reflected becomes a different photon is fascinating. So, so let's, let's break it up. Let's go back to the beginning. I mean, this is one of the craziest, and it's true. You know, the, the idea that when you're traveling at the speed of light, I mean, photons obviously don't have any consciousness. They're not able to observe this. But, but if a photon has no idea that space and time exist, when you're traveling at the speed of light, time goes to a, a zero. You don't experience the passage of time. And, you

• 16:48Speaker 02

  know, when you think about, you know, you're frozen in a moment of time, you can go any distance in the universe instantaneously to your perspective. So a photon doesn't really experience the universe as ever having expanded. You know, we're still a point, a thing, you know, almost a singularity to a photon. It does not experience space and time. What the hell does that mean? I mean, I mean, how do you wrap your head around that? When, I mean, the, the light that's, you know, bouncing off my lamp from my face right now doesn't agree with me that space and time exist. Now, now, I mean, help me unpack this, Neil, because I don't have a great answer. I would like a better answer.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me restate what you said, but I don't have a deeper understanding just for having restated it. It's, the photon has to know that the universe expands because it gets redshifted, right? So the photon you detect has a different energy than the photon that was emitted. So even though the photon does not experience spacetime, we measure a different photon, a different energy for that photon. It's some of that energy got shared with the expansion of the universe. So that's something I can't claim to fully understand.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How it exists, doesn't exist in time at all, yet it changed its wavelength before it arrived on location with you. Now, let me ask you, I didn't see that episode with Veritasium, but it was also a recent understanding of mine as well, that when photon moves through a medium, it is moving at the speed of light between atoms of the transparent medium, but it interacts with each atom and continues forward, and that interaction creates a time delay. So the photon is never actually ever going slower than the speed of light. It

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  just got waylaid en route through the transparent medium. Now, is that consistent with how, what you got out of the Veritasium episode?

• 18:57Chuck Nice?

  So wait, wait, Neil, let me just, uh, cause I'm, wow, Jesus. So.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to, I'm trying to-

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take a cleansing breath Chuck.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take a cleansing breath.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to get this as a metaphor, because that's how I see and understand this. So in the vacuum of space, that would be like taking a pool ball and shooting it straight across the table into the pocket. And it's going at that speed. But then, when you put it through a medium, that would be like having the same speed, but banking it off of three banks and then going into the pocket. So your speed doesn't change, but the fact that you had to bank it three times is what slowed you down.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, however, what you're describing does happen to light, but that's when light scatters. Okay.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, so that's a different phenomenon.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It keeps in the same direction at all times.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Ah, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference between a transparent medium, a translucent medium, and just something that completely scatters the light. So, so, so, Michelle, are we in agreement that we're talking about a new photon as it goes through, a newly shaped photon after it interacted with these other fields? Is that a fair way to think of it?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  So, um, the, the, the way the podcast did it, and this was the first time I ever sort of thought, oh, okay, I get this. You know, uh, uh, we were sort of talking about photons as particles here, as like little billiard balls and stuff. But of course, remember famously-

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  It's a field.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  They're electromagnetic waves, right? I mean, they're not, they're not just little balls. And so the, what the podcast did is it showed that there's electromagnetic wave, there's a photon going in, and there, there's other atoms around. And, and the, basically, the electromagnetic wave starts those other atoms kind of vibrating along with it. But there's a delay, there's a lag to kind of get those other fields, those other electric fields vibrating as the photon goes by. And the resulting speed is actually a combination. It, it's actually a way of resolving those two different vibrational modes.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  So the photon is like to the other, you know, atoms, like, bro, you're bringing me down.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're slowing me down. Yeah.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Bro, you're just, you're a drag on me, man. I can't, I, I gotta, come on, I'm serious, like, get off me. And then-

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me get the hell out of this medium. Yeah. Because once it exits the medium, it's back at the speed of light.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  The speed of the wave that we measure is a combination of the speed of the photon in a vacuum, but then also the, the speed of the variations of, of, of, of basically the, you know, the oscillations of everything around it. Those two combine into the measured speed of the photon that we see. Yeah. And so, so, so the, the question about, I mean, it's the same thing, Neil, absolutely. When you talk about how a photon changes, even as it goes through a vacuum, it loses energy. It, it, it's a very similar question that if a photon is reflected, is it a different photon? I mean, it could certainly be a different energy, right? I mean, when, when you, when a photon is reflected, you usually lose some energy in the reflection. So, I mean, I mean, there's, there's, there's all sorts of things. Photons absolutely can change.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, Chuck, if the photon hits a surface and reflects, some of its energy is imparted as momentum to that surface, and that's why solar sails work at all.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Has to be, yeah, yeah.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so, yeah, there's an energy change there. So, so I'm voting for a completely different photon here. What do you, what do you think, Michelle?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, like I said, I, Ross Graves is a name that's familiar to me. So, yes, I, I, I thank you, thank you for this fabulous question. And I have to say, I, I, I do not have an extremely clear answer. I, I, I'm, I'm not ashamed of that. This is one I've, I've wondered myself.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's, let's vote.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah, yeah.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm voting that the photon that came out-

• 22:46Speaker 02

  It's a different photon?

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a new quantum state that is carrying the mission forward after it had its delay from the medium through which it passed, or the medium off of which it reflected. I'm going with that.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:00Chuck Nice?

  I'm going with that. I wish I had the same properties and there was a reflection Chuck and real Chuck, and I could tell that all the people I owe money, you need to go talk to reflection Chuck.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  That's not me anymore.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  That's not me anymore, buddy.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's a great question. Okay, what else you have, Chuck?

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Jao Costa, and Jao Costa says, "Good tidings, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Fowler, Lord Nice, deep breath now, Chuck. Jao Costa here, greetings from Portugal." All right.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Portugal.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he says, "If matter isn't being created, only transformed, will there come a day when the universe runs out of matter to create new astral bodies? If so, how will we be able to notice such a situation developing? Will the creations start to become rarer, smaller, or deficient, as in less frequent, less energetic, or less stable? Thank you, and please keep making our necks hurt." Oh, I like it. Look up, make the neck hurt.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, now, okay, I see, I see what he did there. Okay.

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  He's saying, you, you got him looking up so much, you gave him a neck ache, Neil.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you can lay down and look up, and then you're just looking straight ahead.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The geometry works that way.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it sounds to me like somebody is just describing what's called the heat death of the universe, and the answer is yes. The answer is that the, the, the universe is, is slowing down in the sense that, um, it, it's not so much that matter can't be destroyed, it can, it can be converted into energy, right? Matter and energy are, are two sides of the same coin. That, that famous equation, you know, hopefully the only one you ever have to deal with in life, you know, unless you want to be a scientist, is e- energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Good old Albert Einstein. Equals mc squared.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's most people's first equation they learn in elementary school, even before you know what it is.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  It's your elementary school equation, yeah. So, I mean, I mean, so you can destroy matter, you can make it into energy, and you can make energy into matter. That, that's what we do in particle accelerators. We, we, we get things going, we, with such high energy, when things collide, there's so much energy around, it actually creates new matter. That's how you find new types of particles.

• 25:19Chuck Nice?

  New particles.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, energy and matter are equivalent. And so, there is, there's, absolutely what's happening is that in the early universe, there were things that were much higher temperature, much higher energy. Stars, for example, are an example of something that's a very low entropy. Stars create very high energy radiation. And, um, you know, over time, yes, I mean, every time you, you, you, you basically generate, you know, heat. I mean, if sunlight comes down, it's a high energy photon, hits the earth, warms things up. What's, what's released, the heat is a lower energy type of light. You've lost energy. You've made from a, a high energy particle of light, now it's a lower energy type of light. And so, eventually, the universe, all of the photons that were high energy are going

• 26:05Speaker 02

  to hit things, get absorbed by things, make things warm, get re-emitted, and they're going to lose energy over time. And so, yes, the universe is running down, and eventually, we're going to get to a point where there's nothing left but very low energy photons. You know, photons that are so low energy, they're probably not even detectable. And, and, and then it's sort of anybody's guess as to, you know, does time and space exist anymore? When there's really, everything is just the same temperature, a very, very low temperature is the only thing that the universe has. So-

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a misnomer to call it a heat death if it's actually a cold death?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Well, it gets cooler and cooler. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I-

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  So it's the heat, it's the heat that's dying.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  It's the heat that's just like, ah, oh, go on without me.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Just go on without me.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, the expanding universe also drops, is dropping the temperature with it, right?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You've got a photon going through expanding space, and think about, you know, right, you know, draw a squiggly line on a piece of elastic and pull the elastic, and then that, that wavelength drops down, you lose energy. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's really kind of as simple as that.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but just to be precise, the wavelength gets longer.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  The wavelength gets longer, that's right, yes.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a lower energy wavelength, right?

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  Lower energy.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it drops down.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  The wavelength gets longer, the frequency drops, yeah.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Right. And if I may, what Michelle just described is exactly how the warming of the planet happens. High energy comes in, pierces our atmosphere, becomes lower energy and a longer wavelength, which is trapped by greenhouse gases, and that's how we heat up. Because as everybody has learned from Neil, the atmosphere isn't hot, the ground gets hot, and radiates heat back into the atmosphere, and that is the cycle that creates the warming of the planet. Just so that you guys know, that is real! Okay.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's real. Send $5, send $5 to Chuck's campaign.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, just to be precise, there is a layer of the atmosphere that does absorb light directly from the sun. And it's the thermosphere where the ultraviolet gets absorbed and by the ozone. And so that there is a layer that is hotter, but we're not experiencing that right down here. Right.

• 28:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, that's cool.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. The hottest part of the troposphere is right above Earth's surface.

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Right above Earth's surface. Okay. Nice.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Right. And what's the part? Uh, see now, now this is where the explainers are all swirling in my head. What is the part where the excitation of the molecules is such that it's, we say it's cold, but it's actually hotter?

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, could it be that there's a layer, upper layers of the atmosphere where the particles themselves are high energy, but there isn't many of them.

• 29:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that you don't feel that temperature that you otherwise would.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The concept of temperature kind of loses practical meaning there. Right.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I, I, I said it like a...

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could be what you're thinking about.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking about, but I said it like a dumb two-year-old.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like Michelle, if, if, if I, if I flew you through the sun's corona, which is 5 million degrees, would you feel that, given how low density the particles are that have such high temperature?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  We are really, really lucky the answer is no, because I mean, the corona is one thing, but, but, but also let's remember, I mean, we actually, our whole solar system is in this hot bubble of gas in the Milky Way galaxy. That we, we, we was, maybe there was a star that exploded here billions of years ago, but, but the, but the temperature of the gas we're going through is in the millions of degrees in our galaxy. The thing is, the, the, the gas between the stars is so thin. It's like, okay, there goes, there goes a proton, zoop, you know, there goes electron, zoop, you know? I mean, there, there's so few particles that it doesn't really impart any heat to you. I mean, yes, the, the average speed of these high-energy particles is equivalent to being, you know, millions of degree gas. And just like Neil said, the, so the, the, the, the sun's corona is this extended atmosphere of, of very hot gas.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Uh, we have a, a spacecraft, NASA has a spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe that is orbiting well within this solar corona right now. And you better believe it would not be a live returning data if, if, if it really felt like 5 million degrees. Yeah. So the, um, the, the analogy we used to use is when you think about, um, you know, everybody who's like done some baking, you get your oven up to 500 degrees.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's some serious baking, if you're baking at 500 degrees.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Pizza. We're going for pizza ovens here. Yeah.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a pizza, you're a pizza shop on the corner of Lennox Avenue, 125th Street.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have a 500 degree oven, okay.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  If you, if you open the oven and you just stick your hand in, your, your hand is, is not actually feeling like it's, it's 500 degrees all of a sudden. If you were to touch like a metal part of the oven, if you were to touch the rack, then you'd burn your hand. Because I mean, all of a sudden now you have a denser object, you've got the metal.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  A little bit of a thing about the Parker Solar Probe, it's another, uh, another incredible person, Eugene Parker, and, uh, and he was the person that discovered this wind of pyne energy particles from the sun, the solar wind.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The solar wind.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, a fabulous launch. I'm glad somebody told me that a Delta Heavy looks like it explodes on the pad before the rocket comes up. I was at that launch, it was amazing. The, the whole idea, you know, the, the, the, the surface of the sun is only about, you know, say, say roughly like 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but as soon as you get off the surface, the gas becomes millions of degrees hot. And, and I mean, this was a big mystery. And, and, and how does the sun do that? I mean, you know, normally if you've got a hot campfire, you know, the farther away you walk, the cooler it seems, why does the temperature go up? And the Parker Solar Probe has really helped answer that. The, you know, there's all of these complicated accelerations due to magnetic fields around the sun, the particles pick up speed, there are shocks in there. So, I mean, I mean, we, we're, we're figuring out how the sun works.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  It's not something we know until we go there near the sun, fly around in this corona and see what's going on.

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  And look at that, you're getting all of that for a lousy $6 billion.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  No kidding.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  What the hell is wrong with you people?

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck, that's his daily, I gotta blow a gasket once a day reaction.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Worth it. Worth blowing a gasket over.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If memory serves, the Parker Solar Probe set a speed record.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. It goes over 400,000 miles an hour. Oh, holy.

• 32:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I, I, I keep having to look that up because I don't believe it. And then I look it up again and I'm like...

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it gets pulled in by the sun's gravity. And, and there it is, 400,000 miles an hour.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Amazing. All right. Well, let's move on.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a few more questions. Let's try to fit in a bunch more. Uh, so let's tighten up the answers and see how many we can fit in.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Let's just do the questions and then we just have to have Michelle back to ask more. That's all, you know?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  I'm always here. That's right.

• 33:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we're not going anywhere. I mean, you know, why these people that just like, you didn't get to my question? What, what you think, you got, you got information we don't? We getting canceled? What do you know? What do you know that we don't know? You know, we could do this again.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  I'm always up for questions. Yeah.

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Tristan Breaker, who says, "Good evening, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Dollar, Lord Nice. Tristan here from Utah. Considering gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime, hypothetically, could gravitational waves from two separate sources intersect, forming a constructive interference pattern, combining their amplitudes? If so, could this create regions in space where the curvature of spacetime is great enough to produce a gravitational field as though a celestial body were present even though nothing is there? Additionally, wouldn't the crest of the waves create an inverse gravitational field?

• 34:03Chuck Nice?

  Could spacetime curve in the opposite direction, imagining the common fabric of gravity demonstration, for instance, producing a repulsive field rather than an attractive one? My heartfelt thanks to you for bringing awareness to the wonders of the universe." Well, Tristan, all I could say is, first of all, I need some of that weed you smoking. Because, man, that is some serious stuff.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe check with our producers, maybe for questions like that, we should create a little certificate that we send back out to them for questions that are above and beyond the call of duty.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. We've had, we've had two so far in this show.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a deep thought question. Right.

• 34:52Chuck Nice?

  That's a deep thought question.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michelle, are you up on, on gravitational waves? What's the latest?

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I love gravitational waves. Are you kidding? I was a postdoc at Caltech. I'd better love gravitational waves. So, um, oh my God, let me just say how impressed I am with gravitational wave detection, because this is something, when I was a, a postdoc at Caltech, it was a big deal, the LIGO project, the Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory, uh, uh, was something that, uh, Caltech was involved in. And, and I honestly, I talk, talk about my skeptical nature, I was like, they're never gonna detect these bastards. I mean, I mean, the, this is really, so you can, so LIGO, uh, at the time, there were, there are two facilities, there are now more. Uh, you, you've got a, uh, you've got a laser that's about, about two miles long and another one going out in, in, in a 90-degree angle, in, in, in a, there we go, in, in a corner.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  So, so two miles each direction. And, and those lasers, you know, are supposed to be exactly the same length. Imagine trying to calibrate that, you know? And, and so the lasers are going back and forth, bouncing around. And then if a gravitational wave comes by, a gravitational wave is literally a wave in space and time. And so space contracts in one direction and all of a sudden the two lasers are no longer the same length. They're, they're different because space contracted. And so the, the, the, the, the person with the question is absolutely right. That's what gravitational waves do. The, the thing that makes it mind-blowing that we detected these things is they're tiny, luckily for us. Um, they, I mean, they're, they're, they're a thousand times smaller than a proton.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  And, and to give you a sense of that, I mean, not that the human brain can even get that, and the human brain's not gonna get the next one either, but it's the equivalent of measuring from the, us to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, about four light years. Light year is about six trillion miles.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  You're, you're going on, you know, 24 trillion miles. Um, that would be the equivalent of the distance between us and the nearest star varying by the thickness of a human hair.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  They're trying to measure that. Holy, are you allowed to swear on this, bud?

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  I'll do it for you.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I could go more than that, probably. I could swear all day long. Um, you know, I, I, um, I did not think they'd be able to do this.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, Michelle, I would, you know, the Nobel Prize, which was ultimately given to the project, uh, for, for me, I view that as not only a prize for the scientific result, but for the engineering that enabled it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  With that measurement being so infinitesimally small, uh, how did they know that somebody didn't just bump the table?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So, I mean, so this is the thing, right? I mean...

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, breeze on the table.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Somebody bumped a table on the next steak, right?

• 37:44Chuck Nice?

  Sneezed in Australia.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  So there, there's, I mean, there's all of these, uh, you know, there's all this noise in the detector, right? The detector, like you said, there's all kinds of noise going on in the detector. And then, and then this, I was, I was just making sure I had my, uh, my dates and everything. So this would have been, uh, in September of 2015.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and just to clarify, when a scientist uses the word noise, they're not necessarily and almost hardly ever are talking about sound.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they're not in the lab going, "Shut your ass up."

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Who knows? Maybe that's what the detector was saying. Cut down the noise!

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we're talking about sources of interference to the signal you're trying to measure, no matter what those sources are. Right, so go on, Michelle.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  There's all kinds of little variations. The lasers are under vacuum, but there's all kinds of things happening. So in September of 2015, you know, there's all kinds of noise, there's all kinds of variation, but then all of a sudden, one of the detectors goes "wum bum bum bum bum bum boom!", just like that. And then at the speed of light, between one detector, which was in Louisiana, and the other one was in Oregon, the same pattern, "wum bum bum bum bum bum boom!", goes off. And it was absolutely unquestionable. It was the same pattern, the same frequency, at the speed of light. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light from one detector, and people were like, Nobel Prize.

• 39:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's fantastic.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Oh my god. But I mean, let me just say, because I want to say, what that event was. There were two black holes, 1.4 billion light years away. This event happened 1.4 billion years ago. The black holes were both on the

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In another galaxy. In another galaxy.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was way out of our galaxy.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Far away, by the way.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, far, far away. Yes.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Those two black holes

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Far, far away. It's far, far away.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. 1.4 billion light years, don't need to worry about it. Yeah, that's right. You know, there were two black holes that were roughly 30 times the mass of the sun apiece. We caught them in only the last 2 seconds, point 2, sorry, 0.2, 2 tenths of a second, of them spiraling together and merging into a bigger black hole. And in that 0.2 seconds, they accelerated from 30% the speed of light to 60% the speed of light. Black holes 30 times the mass of the sun. And about 2 times the mass of the sun was converted into pure energy. Wow. In 0.2 seconds. This is an unbelievable thing. It's real. That is a monster proportions

• 40:21Speaker 02

  that the human brain can't go any... I have no idea what that is. And it happened, and we measured it.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Michelle, wasn't that the most energetic event in the universe in that moment? I think it had to be.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  It was more energy than every star in every galaxy in the observable universe.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. In that 0.2 seconds, right.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  In that 0.2 seconds. Yeah.

• 40:43Chuck Nice?

  Jeez Louise!

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so tell us about, so if this happens with some frequency, no pun intended there, then two waves that do intersect, what can we say about them? Do they magnify any kind of gravitational disturbance in spacetime? What can we say about what is happening? Because when you drop two pebbles in a pond, you see interference patterns with the peak gets higher and the valleys get lower, so it exaggerates what's there. Can we, presumably we can expect just that same thing, can't we?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the answer is yes, but it's at a tiny, tiny, tiny scale. And also, I mean, so this was a fantastic energetic event, that the gravitational wave detector was able to detect this event. But there's also a background of gravitational waves, binary stars going around each other, all kinds of things. I'm actually making tiny little gravitational waves right now. So, you know, again, we come to this idea of noise.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you were making gravitational waves because you were lifting your hands up and down?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  A mass is moving. There's something moving. There's mass moving around. That's right. Really, really small.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not that you have special powers, you're just moving your body, just to be clear. Okay.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. That'd be a great superpower, you know, making gravitational waves. But anyway, yeah, so the answer I think is yes. But I don't think there's going to be any organized effect of that. Because there's just, I mean, think about, you know, waves on a giant lake, a giant ocean. There's ripples going every which way. And yes, they are interfering, when they add together, or, you know, they can, you know, I think all that's happening. But I don't think that has any measurable effect on what's going on in the universe. It's tiny.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  So in Tristan's question, it was, would it be able to perhaps give the appearance of a celestial body being there when none is there because of the curvature of spacetime itself? And you're saying that that's not going to happen. Okay, cool.

• 42:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The energetics are too small. So, just to be clear, it gave off more energy than all stars combined in the universe over those 0.2 seconds, but then that energy in the form of gravitational waves moved how many billions of miles to reach us?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  1.4 billion light years.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1.4 billion light... So it's been diluted over that distance to the low energies that were ultimately detected in LIGO. Right? I mean, just think of the volume.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  What was it left there?

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because anybody at this distance, in any direction, from those colliding black holes, could make this measurement.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that energy is expanding through the entire universe, and we're just catching out one little piece of it.

• 43:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  What was that event like? I mean, because if you're close to that event, I mean, that must have ripped apart any matter, you know, within quite a large distance. I mean, I'm sure we could, you know, have somebody do the math on that. So, I mean, it's, no, I don't think there would be, it can't make it seem like there's a star there. This is not a solution for dark matter, sorry. It's not a solution.

• 43:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  This is Rachel Ambrose, who says, "Rachel here from Texas. I loved Michelle's Big Think interview. It was the first time I heard someone articulate the profound weirdness of reality in a way that completely resonated with how I have always felt but could never adequately explain. And I just appreciated that so much. Thank you, Michelle. My question is about neutron stars. I am confused why the high-energy, fast radio bursts, the FRBs, come to us in the form of low-energy radio frequencies rather than X-rays or gamma rays?

• 44:52Chuck Nice?

  What mechanism causes such a high-energy event to manifest as radio light?"

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, so this has built in the knowledge that radio waves are lower energy light than X-rays or gamma rays. And if it's a high-energy phenomenon, why is it wasting itself with radio waves?

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Ha!

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Michelle, you answer that one, Michelle.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Okay, so yeah, I at least know some, a little bit about that. I mean, as I said, I mean, one of the missions I absolutely adore is called NYSER, the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer. It's on the space station, it's a Goddard run mission, fantastic. It's about the size of a washing machine. Again, not an expensive mission. And it's able to actually get X-rays, in this case, X-rays from neutron stars, and it times the arrival of the X-rays so precisely, we can make a map of what the surface of a neutron star is like. They're tiny. Neutron stars are only about 20 miles across. They usually have about twice the mass of the sun packed into 20 miles. These are extreme

• 45:58Speaker 02

  things, and they're real. I mean, we studied many of these. And they're so incredible. When you do a map of these, and they often are rotating very fast, you actually get this strange effect on the side of the map, because light is bending around, there's so much mass, the curvature of space and time is so extreme. Two solar masses packed into 20 miles, that you actually can see behind a neutron star as well as in front. The light curves around it. And so, I mean, what an incredible, real monster.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is it has many properties that we would find with black holes, in its distortion of the fabric of space and time in their vicinity?

• 46:39Speaker 02

  In fact, the neutron star group at Goddard said that neutron stars are far more interesting than black holes. Because with black holes, you have this dark event horizon that nothing ever comes out of, you don't know what's going on in there. With neutron stars, you got the frickin' thing right in front of you.

• 46:51Chuck Nice?

  It's very bright.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  It's still here with us. And you can study something that has such extreme conditions, that there's no laboratory on Earth we could even study what matter's like under these conditions. It's amazing.

• 47:04Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  But yeah, okay, so going back to why it's radio waves. Neutron stars definitely do emit high-energy radiation. They're actually the source of what we think are gamma ray bursts, dangerous blasts of high-energy radiation. We're using an X-ray telescope to observe these things. The surface of a neutron star is very hot. It definitely does generate these high-energy things. The way you get radio waves is something, Neil, I'm sure it's a favorite of yours too, it's a lovely thing called synchrotron radiation. And would you like to go ahead and talk about synchrotron radiation?

• 47:37Chuck Nice?

  How could you not?

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As I understood it, no, as I understand it, the neutron star has to be magnetic, has to have a magnetic field.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as it rotates, it can accelerate electrons that are ambient in the environment. And you can accelerate electrons off a magnetic field that will radiate radio waves. We call it synchrotron radiation. I think I accounted for that correctly. Is that correct?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the one thing that's perhaps, you know, something to mention about synchrotron radiation, I mean, so you've got a couple of things going on. I mean, you also have, electrons are charged particles, they respond to a magnetic field, they can actually be accelerated, neutron stars have jets, we see those as well. Also, when you get, synchrotron radiation happens largely when electrons spirals around a magnetic field. That, just by the act of spinning around, that's a form of acceleration.

• 48:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it was. It creates its own frequency, spiral frequency, that is the radio wave. So what's fun about the neutron star, just to summarize that, is different processes within the environment of a neutron star give you different bands of light that our different telescopes can participate in, which is kind of fun. And then you can compare notes across different wavelengths of light.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  And this is why astronomers just aren't greedy. It's like, oh, we need a radio telescope, and an infrared telescope, and an X-ray telescope, and a visible light telescope. But you're absolutely true. You see totally different things in these different wavelengths of light. And so as high-energy and dramatic objects neutron stars are, and you better believe they are, there was one in, god, was it, was it 2007? There was an event that actually blew off a measurable amount of our atmosphere. And the whole magnetic field of the Earth was ringing like a bell for a while.

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you're telling us this?

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Wow, look this up. This is all real. And we traced it back to a neutron star that we think is about 50,000 light years away. The neutron star had a little bit of a bad day. The crust, we think, shifted by about a centimeter.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  And that gave off so much energy that 50,000 light years away, it blew off a bunch of our atmosphere.

• 49:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  These are intense things.

• 49:52Chuck Nice?

  Michelle, I'm gonna be honest, I could have lived without that information.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It keeps up at night, doesn't it? I mean, who cares about asteroids, right? Killer asteroids, no. I mean, I mean, these, these, these blasts of high energy radiation from neutron stars. Some people think that may limit the age of civilizations in the galaxy. Eventually, we all get hit by one.

• 50:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow, another great question. Thank you, Rachel. All right. This is Brett and Brett says, hi, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Thaler, Lord Nice, tuning in from Dublin, Ireland. My question is, what unlikely possibility or possibilities do you hope are true?

• 50:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Ooh.

• 50:41Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's fodder for good thought.

• 50:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is.

• 50:45Chuck Nice?

  An unlikely possibility that you're like, oh, man, that'd be so great if that were true.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, boy, that could go in so many different directions. Cause I mean, I've got, um, I mean, one of the things I-

• 50:59Chuck Nice?

  What a great question, Brett. Look at you.

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can lead off. I got one for you, Michelle.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Okay, I got one too. You go ahead. I think I got, yeah.

• 51:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's unlikely that we'll find anything other than microbial life on Mars, if we find life at all. But it would be really cool if we found sort of macroscopic crawly things, living in the subsurface of Mars. I think that's unlikely, but that would be really cool if creatures crawled out from home.

• 51:29Chuck Nice?

  Would you still be satisfied if those macroscopic crawly things were fossilized in some way, but they're no longer there?

• 51:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. We're talking about unlikely things that we want to happen. Let the thing crawl out and, and ride one of the rovers like a, like a, like a, you know.

• 51:45Chuck Nice?

  I got you. Right.

• 51:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, like, like, what do you call those horse, those, those-

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Bucking broncos.

• 51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Riders in the bar? Yeah, bucking bronco. I want to come out and ride one of our, ride one of our, uh-

• 51:58Chuck Nice?

  Rovers.

• 51:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rovers. So I mean, unlikely, but it'd be really cool if it was true. So now your turn, Michelle.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, since I was just riffing on that, I mean, do you think it might be more likely to find macroscopic life on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in the oceans? You know, Europa and Solis.

• 52:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about unlikely things that we want to happen.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Oh, you think that's a likely thing? Okay, all right, got it. Yeah, yeah.

• 52:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unlikely things.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, there could be like little brine shrimp and stuff.

• 52:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  What, what have, what have my big, uh, excitements right now with the Webb telescope is it's looking, it's looking so far away that we're looking back to a time roughly, like, let's say about 300 million years after the Big Bang. And we're, we're actually seeing the very first stars form. And they're, um, they're absolutely different. I mean, we haven't actually found, you know, one of these first stars yet. I, I really want to find a first generation star. We're going to be looking back to a time, just like I said, a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang, when stars started to form. Webb can now see that far back. We have that power. And we're starting to see these, uh, these pseudo-stars that are formed around black holes. They're about a million times the mass of the sun, relatively small.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, they're, you know, these things may become the seeds of the big black holes that are in the centers of all galaxies. We're starting to see that forming now. And, and my question, I mean, I was a stellar astrophysicist. I, I was a stellar astrophysicist. I studied stars. That was my thing.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Outstanding in your field.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Not outstanding, but I, but that's why I studied. And, um, I would love to see what one of the first generation stars looks like. Cause my, my guess is it's going to look totally different, that, um, the universe was more dense back then, there was more dark matter prevalent. Could, could, I mean, dark matter has gravity. That's going to get sucked into the formation of a star, just for the gravity too. What, what was that first generation of stars like? My guess is they're going to be huge, many, many times the mass of the sun. I mean, many, many times bigger than the most massive stars we have today. And I'm wondering if they're going to work really differently because there's more dark matter in them.

• 54:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  What, what were the, what were the, I want to see that first generation of stars.

• 54:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, James Webb was specifically designed and tuned for that exercise, to see the, the beginnings of the formation of matter in the early universe. So you're betting on the right horse there, I think.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're doing it. I mean, these, these things, they, they mean, never let astronomers name anything. These things are called little red dots. Ha, ha, yeah. Well, they're, they're, they're massive pseudo-stars around a giant black hole at the beginning of the universe, where we're calling little red dots.

• 54:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause they look like little red dots.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Little red dots, yeah. But they're so far away, you know? Yeah. It's one of my favorites.

• 54:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, time for like two more questions.

• 54:43Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 54:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But only if Michelle is, if, only if Michelle is efficient in her answers.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  I, I, I promise to be efficient.

• 54:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on notice.

• 54:52Chuck Nice?

  You don't have to, you don't have to promise anything, Michelle. It's gonna do what you want. This is, uh, Alyssa Feldhouse, who says, hello, Fowler the Great. This is Alyssa Feldhouse, tuning in from Hendersonville, Tennessee. As such a prominent female figure in the science world, what message can you give all the little girls out there that will one day stand on our shoulders? Me and my girls love how the universe works and thank you for keeping science cool.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Oh, I always think of myself as so nerdy and never, I never think about cool. Okay, so a, a, a message I always have-

• 55:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nerdy is the new cool. Nerdy is the new cool.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. I, I just, a, a message I already have is you, you're already, uh, the right type of person to be a scientist. Math and physics did not come quickly to me. I, I didn't get particularly good grades in school in math and physics. It took me some time. Um, I, I just loved it so much. You know, paying attention to your own curiosity and not being discouraged when maybe you don't get something very, very quickly. You're already enough, you're already there. For so long, I wondered, you know, do I have what it takes to be an astrophysicist? I love this, but maybe I just don't have the magic thing, the right stuff. And, and, and science doesn't work that way. Um, if you want to study it, you can study it. It's like learning a language, you know? It, it, it takes a while to become fluent in a different language.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  You, you don't really go up to a young person and say, you could never learn Spanish, you know, even if you tried. You know, no, no. I, I mean, I mean, science is a beautiful thing to study. It takes time and, and, and anyone can learn it if they're interested in it and have, and have that, you know, that, that, that passion more than any innate ability and talent to get all of this very quickly. So, you know, I, I spent way too much time thinking, maybe I'm not the right personality. I'm not smart enough. And, and I, it's, it's a cultural, you know, bullshit that, that science, you know, requires a certain type of brilliant, different person. So, you know, you're, you're enough and, and, and, you know, you're going to be the best scientist from your perspective, right? I mean, we're all, people have different science talents.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Some people are better at the math. Some people see the larger concepts. Some people are really good at communicating it. And these are all really important steps and you can find that, that, that part that you fit into. So you, you don't have to be anything other than, than just the way you are.

• 57:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that.

• 57:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. And, and if I can add, uh, not having ever been female, but being a black man in, in the world, there, there, there are resonant, uh, challenges that we face entering a world that, where, where role models are not there. So I, I would just add that there are always people who will learn something faster than you will. And the school system tends to reward that as, and call those people smart and they might get a higher grade. And, but in the end, that's not what matters. What matters is your motivation to ultimately learn what you need to learn. If it takes you longer to learn it, uh, and longer than the time before you're tested on it, takes you a little longer, so what? Took you a little longer.

• 58:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you get there and your ambition takes you and your interest, then ultimately that's what will dominate who and what you are as a participant on the research frontier. Not how quickly you learn a, a problem set on an exam in high school or in college. So, uh, ambition is something that tests hardly ever test for. And that's what you need, and that's what you need confidence in.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and, and just being able to stick to something.

• 58:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  And just having, having the grit. I mean, when I, when I got to college, I got placed in remedial math. I mean, I, I came from a, a public school system that didn't have a whole lot of math. And, uh, you know, I, uh, I, I just, I just, I knew I could not get space out of my head. I, I was so fascinated by it and I am so glad I, I stuck in when I was thinking, geez, I just don't have the talent for this.

• 58:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that became the driver, that, that was your source of energy to pursue.

• 59:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I like your language analogy because no one will ever say, oh, you're not smart enough to learn Spanish. No one will ever say that. They'll just say, are you committed enough to learn Spanish? And you learned a little bit today and a little bit next week and next month. And eventually you wake up and you're just talking fluent Spanish, you know? And everyone can learn it. And I think that's also true with math, uh, as a language of the universe.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 59:28Chuck Nice?

  Well, let me add, Alyssa, that, uh, as a product of Philadelphia Public Schools, there's always comedy.

• 59:46Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 59:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we only actually had time for that one last question, but that was a really good one to end this episode on. So Michelle, thank you for being a guest on StarTalk.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Hey, I, I'm always here.

• 1:00:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And where are you based right now?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Uh, right now, I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

• 1:00:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, is that where you're based?

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:00:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, cool, cool. Okay. Well, we'll, we will make sure to find you again, uh, because you're a delight to, to share in our answers here and to get your perspectives on the state of science in America and in the universe. All right. Uh, Chuck, always good to have you, man.

• 1:00:27Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 1:00:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are fan favorites, these cosmic queries, and we delight in the questions that we receive. And, uh, keep them coming. But you have to be a member of the Patreon community first.

• 1:00:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes, but it's only $5. That's it. $5 a month. And, um, I gotta tell you, that's, that's less than what, uh, the budget of NASA is.

• 1:00:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.