Cosmic Queries: Science Fiction - The Sequel

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman are back to answer more of your sci-fi questions about Aliens, The Black Hole, Prometheus, Superman, Star Trek, Iron Man, Futurama, Gilligan’s Island and more.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist, your personal astrophysicist. And I work at the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York. And I also serve as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium there. Today, we're doing Cosmic Queries. StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition. I've got in studio Eugene Mirman.

• 0:46Eugene Mirman?

  Hello.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one, the only, a voice.

• 0:49Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Risen from Bob's Burgers.

• 0:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Says, "I can't believe you're that on the...

• 0:53Eugene Mirman?

  A child.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll look for you on TV." So, so you're gonna help us get through this? I haven't seen these questions before.

• 0:59Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this addition is the sequel.

• 1:03Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the science fiction.

• 1:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, science fiction, part two.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part duh, yes. Let's do this.

• 1:10Eugene Mirman?

  All right.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on. These are questions called from the internet.

• 1:11Eugene Mirman?

  Oh yeah, this is from Facebook, Twitter, uh, from the internet.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:15Eugene Mirman?

  These are not...

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fans of StarTalk, and this is our way to give back to them.

• 1:18Eugene Mirman?

  So here we go. Uh, Ally Bishop wants to know, "Can Neil please explain the hypothesis that the universe is a holographic projection? I've heard of it, I just don't understand it."

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I can't claim to fully understand it either. It's an inventive, innovative concept.

• 1:35Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, see, on a black hole.

• 1:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Information that comes through the event horizon has a, a memory of that information imprinted on the inner surface of that event horizon. And if I remember correctly, and the the notion is you can create a whole world just on this sort of projected fact of having passed through the event horizon. Now, how you get from the event horizon, which is a surface surrounding a black hole to the 3D existence that we are, I was a little fuzzy on that. And so I don't, so I don't claim enough to answer that question.

• 2:17Eugene Mirman?

  But you described her question to other people, and now we all want it answered.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I've just, so I've just frustrated people even further.

• 2:24Eugene Mirman?

  Well, no, you've clarified a thing that I didn't know to not understand.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Eugene Mirman?

  So, thank you.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an intersection. Now you really don't understand it. It's an intersection of sort of information theory and general relativity.

• 2:36Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With regard to uh uh uh things like event horizons. And the visual edge of our universe is an event horizon kind of of it unto itself.

• 2:48Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so it's intriguing. It's intriguing, uh, but I'm not all there.

• 2:53Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, so it's a partial answer, uh, and maybe we'll come back and pick it up again.

• 2:59Eugene Mirman?

  Sometimes, uh, okay. Jacob Crainer asks, in the alien movies, the aliens have highly corrosive acid for blood. Is this biologically feasible? Could a creature survive having highly acidic blood? And do we know of any that exist with similar properties today?

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, I mean.

• 3:16Eugene Mirman?

  Blood, uh, acid snakes?

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, everyone, when they hear the word acid, they say, ooh, it's gonna destroy things. Well, you can be basic as well. That's the opposite of acid, and that can also destroy things.

• 3:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. I have acid in my stomach.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes, you do. And it's very, you know.

• 3:34Eugene Mirman?

  I could eat metal.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very low pH acid. And the, uh, but when you're basic, very base, basie, if you want to think of it that way, you, that's also rather caustic. And in fact, some of the most caustic stuff in your household is basic. And that's, um, in Drano, liquid.

• 3:52Eugene Mirman?

  That's why you really shouldn't drink Drano.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's.

• 3:56Eugene Mirman?

  And if Drano was alive, this would be a great answer to his question.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all that matters is whether your acidic or basic blood is not caustic to the skin that contains it.

• 4:08Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? That's all that really matters. And for example, you have acid in your stomach that could dissolve other things.

• 4:14Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they don't dissolve the lining of your stomach. So it's just a matter of who's sitting next to whom.

• 4:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemically or biophysically, and then you're cool.

• 4:24Eugene Mirman?

  So the answer is, yeah, totally. You could have a very acidic alien.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, like I said, we have an extremely acidic stomach acids. So stomach, it's basically hydrochloric acid.

• 4:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. In fact, the chlorine in salt.

• 4:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is sodium chloride.

• 4:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chlorine becomes part of the hydrochloric acid in your stomach.

• 4:44Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one of the reasons why you need salt.

• 4:46Eugene Mirman?

  To keep your stomach all nice and acid.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so that you can dissolve foods and have it enter your bloodstream for nourishment.

• 4:51Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 4:53Eugene Mirman?

  Jeffrey Beth- Jeffrey Bethel wants to know, could it be possible to give people telekinetic abilities like the force from Star Wars using cybernetic implants?

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well.

• 5:04Eugene Mirman?

  Cause obviously you couldn't just grow it.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the thing, cybernetic outplants don't do that either. So I don't see.

• 5:11Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, could you do it with just a helmet?

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I don't see it happening outside of your head, much less in your head. Something in your head presumably would enable you to control it.

• 5:19Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their thoughts. I think that's the concept.

• 5:21Eugene Mirman?

  That's what he's really a fan of.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can't do that outside of our head in the first place.

• 5:25Eugene Mirman?

  We don't have any kind of telekinetic wands that use magic magnets? Are you saying Magneto is unrealistic?

• 5:33Eugene Mirman?

  Magnetic fingers and blood?

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, one issue I had with Magneto is he's deflecting lead bullets and lead is not particularly magnetic. I mean, not all metal is magnetic.

• 5:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that's why you should always shoot him with nickels. That's what, that's, that should have been just. A 10 minute X-Men movie where someone shoots him with a gun made of nickels in the head and he's dead.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not many people know that nickel is a magnetic metal because when you go to a nickel coin.

• 6:00Eugene Mirman?

  Oh yeah, I meant the coin. It's a gun that shoots the coin, not the material.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the material in pure form is highly magnetic.

• 6:06Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You take a magnet to a nickel, it's not magnetic at all. Telling you that there's not that much nickel in a nickel.

• 6:12Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just FYI.

• 6:14Eugene Mirman?

  I figured.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:15Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, government's always trying to trick us by stealing all the nickel in our nickels.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and there was a James Bond episode where he had a highly magnetic feature of his wristwatch or some item on his wrist. And when someone shot a bullet at him, he just lifted his arm up and deflected the bullet. And they forgot to include the conservation of momentum. If you can deflect a bullet with your arm, your arm has to deflect wildly in the other direction in response.

• 6:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's not what happened.

• 6:41Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, so is there anything that could function similar to telekinesis that I guess would be somehow magnetic or something?

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so what you'd have to do, maybe the, the argument here is you have your thoughts affect an object that generates a magnetic field that can then be targeted towards one object and another. And then you could attract or push away because you go positive, you know.

• 6:59Eugene Mirman?

  But it would be mostly things that have, that were actually magnetic. You couldn't push like a plastic cup.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that could respond to action at a distance.

• 7:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the two things we know are gravity and electromagnetism.

• 7:11Eugene Mirman?

  So you could have a gravity, a gravity machine.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but, but if I, but if I target gravity towards one thing, everything there would come towards me, right? It wouldn't just, I can't just say, cup, come to me.

• 7:22Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right. Everything between you and the cup would.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Exactly. So.

• 7:26Eugene Mirman?

  So everybody out there, stop trying to move things with your mind when you wake up in the mornings, okay? It's pointless. Okay. Amor Jean Baptiste asks, is there any, is there anything scientific to the different reaction of Superman cells to red sun versus yellow sun?

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, good question.

• 7:44Eugene Mirman?

  Is it realistic?

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is, we just ran out of time in this segment.

• 7:49Eugene Mirman?

  No, no. Is Superman real?

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to come back after the break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries Edition, the sequel to the science fiction edition.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the sequel to our previous Cosmic Queries on Science Fiction. Eugene, thanks for doing this with me here. Eugene Mirman is the other voice in the studio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. So you realize we're on the internet, as you know. We're at StarTalkRadio.net. You're on the internet. You tweet that Eugene Mirman. StarTalk tweets. You can find out where all the shows are. It's just StarTalkRadio. It's a very simple handle there. So I'm ready for this. This is the Cosmic Queries edition, questions called from the fanbase of StarTalk, and they're all about science fiction questions. So bring it on. Bring me the next one.

• 8:48Eugene Mirman?

  You never answered the Superman question. Superman cells, are they affected?

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, after the previous break.

• 8:52Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good memory.

• 8:54Eugene Mirman?

  There's nothing really scientific between, well, I have it written down, but yeah. Between the red sun and yellow sun, is that true? Like, would someone potentially be able to fly?

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Under one sun and not under another?

• 9:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we think we know stars very well at this point. It's one of the triumphs of 20th century modern astrophysics. How stars are born, how they live out their lives, how they die, what their properties are.

• 9:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've cataloged.

• 9:17Eugene Mirman?

  Who their friends are, what their favorite books.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, literally, they're, well, figuratively, stars have friends. They're born in clusters.

• 9:23Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And clusters of a few, 10, you know, clusters of pairs.

• 9:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are binary stars, triple stars, quadruple stars, quintuple stars, stars that have hundreds of star systems, that have hundreds of stars, thousands of stars, hundreds of thousands of stars.

• 9:36Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're cousins, uncles, aunts, all of these. Except they're all born at the same time, so they're simultaneous in their generation. Here's the thing. We know the difference between a yellow star and a red star. You know, one, the yellow star is...

• 9:48Eugene Mirman?

  And is it 10%?

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The yellow star is hotter than the red star. Period. And it gives off a little more white light. Okay? A little more yellow light than does the red star.

• 9:59Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just light. So if it's light that gave Superman his powers, then, and if it's red light that took him away...

• 10:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then all you need to do is shine red light on Superman, and he'd be a pile of a crying, a crying mess.

• 10:17Eugene Mirman?

  You know, Lex Luthor really can hear you, so you really shouldn't be saying things like that.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not simply-

• 10:22Eugene Mirman?

  You don't even need kryptonite, you just need a flashlight.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have fully characterized the light emanating from stars. And a red star, if Superman did not have powers on krypton, but he has pow- on, on the krypton system-

• 10:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he has powers on the earth-sun system, then we, we would have had him figured out long ago, so-

• 10:40Eugene Mirman?

  But even if his skin is like a solar batt- battery that absorbs the energy like a-

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, so if, uh, the yellow sun absorbs higher ener- emits, a yellow sun emits higher energy light than does a red sun.

• 10:52Eugene Mirman?

  And he could be absorbing it and then red light wouldn't ruin him right away.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could be, except we know exactly how much energy his skin can absorb.

• 10:59Eugene Mirman?

  And it's infinite.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's can't be any more than the light hitting him, right? And this, most of the sun's light is not hitting him, it's hitting the ground, it's hitting your butt on a beach.

• 11:08Eugene Mirman?

  He might fly butt first towards the sun until he's so powerful, he comes and puts an end all ability.

• 11:16Eugene Mirman?

  I wish now to be more realistic, Superman flew butt first towards the sun.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I assure you Superman needs much more, many more solar panels than what his skin clad with such material could bring him, given the powers that he exhibits. So it's some mystical thing that is, is not really-

• 11:33Eugene Mirman?

  Even though magic's really the only thing that can hurt him, but I understand what you mean.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, did you know I was in a Superman comic?

• 11:39Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, no, but I believe it. Oh wait, I think I did know that.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was Action Comics 140 or 142, just a few months ago, back in, uh, and I was chilling with Superman came to visit me at the Hayden-

• 11:48Eugene Mirman?

  And did you tell him all these terrible things where you're like, "I don't think your skin's as powerful as you think it is."

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 11:53Eugene Mirman?

  Did you just tease him?

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I praised him for all the good work he's done in Gotham, because-

• 11:58Eugene Mirman?

  You mean Metropolis?

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm so, sorry, am I mixing Batman, no, sorry, Metropolis, yes.

• 12:02Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, it's almost as if those worlds aren't real to you.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I mean, I, I've been a lifelong resident of Metropolis, resident of Metropolis, and so he wanted some help finding krypton on the sky, and so I pointed out a star-

• 12:15Eugene Mirman?

  That you think would be is where it'd be.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With, with a planet that, and we showed it to him in the planetarium dome, so it was kinda cool, chilling with Superman, yeah.

• 12:22Eugene Mirman?

  All right, are you ready?

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what else you got? Go.

• 12:24Eugene Mirman?

  Edwin A. Crespo asks, could Captain James T. Kirk, the Starship,

• 12:30Eugene Mirman?

  could Captain James T. Kirk, the Starship Enterprise and its original crew defeat Superman if it came to a fight in Sol system space?

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sol is the Latin word for the sun, just in case people are wondering.

• 12:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, what we're also wondering is what does Sol system space mean in the world of Star Trek? Where is that?

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, no, if, well, if it means something other than what I know, then I don't know.

• 12:51Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Sol is, is what we call the sun in Latin. Then the counterpart to that, to Earth, would be Terra, and then the moon is Luna. So that way, everybody has a one family of Latin words. We have Sol, Mercury, because these are Roman gods, and Romans spoke Latin. So, so Mercury, Venus, Earth is not Latin, so it's Terra, Luna, and then you go all the way out.

• 13:12Eugene Mirman?

  Are you trying to avoid whether Superman or Captain Kirk would win in a fight? It's what it sounds like. So what?

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, here's the thing. There's a reason why he's called Superman.

• 13:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I have no doubt that Superman could take the Starship Enterprise and the entire crew.

• 13:28Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they call him Superman.

• 13:31Eugene Mirman?

  It's true.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not just sort of strong man. He's not sort of kind of Superman. He's Superman.

• 13:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen, the dude flew backwards around the Earth, stopped its, reversed its rotation.

• 13:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turned time backwards.

• 13:45Eugene Mirman?

  That's not something, James Kirk also flew around the sun and then saved the whales, so let's not, let's not be like he's the only one who can go back in time.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He flew past the sun in a spaceship.

• 13:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Superman flew around the sun, donning a cape and blue pantyhose.

• 14:00Eugene Mirman?

  That's true.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's way more powerful.

• 14:02Eugene Mirman?

  But Captain Kirk is very good under pressure.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is, but if Superman goes to the tail of the Enterprise and punches it, swings it around, Lasso style, that's the end.

• 14:12Eugene Mirman?

  All right, you win. Uh, no, you're right. Aliens would defeat Earthlings. That's, that's what it always comes down to.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because Superman's an alien.

• 14:19Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, don't let him forget it.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 14:23Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, here we go. Here's another question.

• 14:26Eugene Mirman?

  Virgilio Jonathan asks, in the movie Prometheus.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe it's Jonathan Virgilio, and you put his name, first name first.

• 14:33Eugene Mirman?

  I agree that I think the other way sounds better to me, but I will not tell this young man that his name is wrong. But I agree that that's how I would do it if I was him.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've never met a person whose last name was Jonathan, that's my point.

• 14:44Eugene Mirman?

  Well, you've never met Vugliglio, so that's, that's part of it. In the movie Prometheus, when, uh, when we're exploring the structures, they got to a part where there was breathable atmosphere, but it seemed that it was naturally created and not by a machine. The air didn't diffuse out into the atmosphere outside the structure. Is this possible? How would it work and would this work on, say, like, I don't know, Mars?

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, completely. So it's not, the, the oxygen was created by life inside the cave. So, yeah, when they lifted off their, their, their, their helmets and they could breathe, life was inside the cave. Now, that cave, it does not receive sunlight and everything we know about the production of oxygen via photosynthesis requires sunlight. So I don't know how they worked that one out, but ignoring that complication, that's where the oxygen would have been. Now, since they walked in a big gaping hole in the cave, um, it seems to me right, it would sort of spill out. But if the oxygen is made at a high enough rate, you could still breathe the oxygen made by the extensive plant life, uh, oxygen-producing life that was within the cave itself.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in Prometheus, the coolest thing were those little buzz, uh, birdy things that they flew into the, they tossed into the cave and it mapped by laser the three-dimensional structure of the cavernous contents. That was great.

• 15:59Eugene Mirman?

  And does that seem realistic?

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, completely. I mean, I love, I, Prometheus, I think, got panned by too many, given what it did and how good it was for what it did. I, I thought it was pretty good. Yeah.

• 16:09Eugene Mirman?

  And you thought it was, it had elements that were accurate and interesting.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within reach. They had this, this pod where you can dial up how it would operate on you.

• 16:18Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you need a doctor for? Right?

• 16:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, so I'd like a hysterectomy. I'd like a tooth extracted. I'd like, you dial it in, you get in the pod. It, it, it, it scans your body, knows how, what you look like, goes in, takes the organ out, sews you back up. And I won't tell you what happened in that scene if you hadn't seen it, but it's.

• 16:35Eugene Mirman?

  I haven't seen the movie, but it doesn't sound like it worked out if you're leaving out, you're making it, you're like, everything's great, but I won't tell you the end of this operation.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, but don't get me started. Since we're on Prometheus, I gotta get this off my chest. There's a point where Charlize Theron, who's the, uh, the corporate representative onboard the ship, because the corporation paid for the voyage to this outer distant, uh, star system. She-

• 16:57Eugene Mirman?

  They knew where the money is.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a frustrated, sexually tense moment with the captain of the ship, says something like, "I didn't come a billion miles into space just to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I'm thinking, a billion miles, that's like to Saturn. You know, it's like, excuse me Charlize, you know, you got that one wrong.

• 17:13Eugene Mirman?

  You, I didn't come over a thousand billion.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly. And so I, I, I tweeted this, and so there was a nerd sort of reaction saying, "What?" Well, the anti-nerd reaction saying, "What? You're paying attention to what she said and not her body?"

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because she was really hot in this, in this movie. But go on.

• 17:30Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, Christopher Lloyd asks, and who knows, maybe it is the one, "Uh, the abyss in the ocean vast and deep enough to hold..." Oh, sorry, the abyss. "Is the ocean vast and deep enough to hold an alien spaceship that we wouldn't know about by now?"

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, it depends on how vast. You can easily hide something smaller, but if it's really, really vast, I don't think so.

• 17:54Eugene Mirman?

  Say it's the size of, uh, Connecticut.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I don't, I don't think so.

• 17:57Eugene Mirman?

  What if it's the size of a Burger King in Connecticut?

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Burger King-sized spaceship for sure. And, uh, and, and, and I'll tell you why. Oh, ooh, we're running out of time.

• 18:07Eugene Mirman?

  All right, tell me after the break. Tell me after the break.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break, uh, and make some money. This is StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries Edition, part two of science fiction. We'll be back in a moment.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. We're talking about science fiction, and this is Science Fiction, the sequel. We did this once before, Eugene, and we only got halfway through the questions. Questions called from the internet, from fans of StarTalk. Great having you guys out there. And, uh- Forgive me, did we leave off?

• 18:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, we left off talking about the ocean. And we were talking about how it's so vast that it could potentially hide an alien spacecraft.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in the abyss.

• 18:46Eugene Mirman?

  Like in the abyss. And then the question is, so...

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a question asked by Christopher Lloyd.

• 18:50Eugene Mirman?

  Well, by someone named Christopher Lloyd, which I hope is the real Christopher Lloyd, asking through Facebook a question about the movie The Abyss. That's my fantasy. It might be just a guy in Baghdad.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Christopher Lloyd, if that's really the Christopher Lloyd we think it is.

• 19:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I loved you on Cyberchase.

• 19:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. Well, so, so a spaceship the size of Connecticut could not hide from us underwater, but a spaceship the size of Burger King could.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, here's the thing. A spaceship, a large spaceship would need an energy source if it's doing anything, okay?

• 19:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle, it could tap the energy of the magma that gurgles beneath the Earth's crust.

• 19:26Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the Marianas Trench off of the Philippines.

• 19:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the deepest part of Earth's crust, the closest you can get to that churning liquefied...

• 19:35Eugene Mirman?

  Without drilling into...

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without drilling, yeah, to get the closest you can get for free.

• 19:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without drilling up the bottom of the ocean.

• 19:42Eugene Mirman?

  Aliens are very concerned of the cost of drilling into our planet. That's their, like, we can't spend all our money on this drill.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it would be funny if they had, like, the same economic problems we did.

• 19:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here's what, here's what might happen. We, you know, we know ocean currents, we know how they move. We have the capacity to monitor the ocean depths.

• 20:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have submarines out there. The, the structure, the open depth is of very high interest to the military.

• 20:09Eugene Mirman?

  We can still break the Germans' codes. So, watch out, Germany.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, the knowledge that in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the continental plates were separating.

• 20:23Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was first derived by the mapping of the ocean bottom by the military.

• 20:28Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, that fact is what enabled everyone to then believe you, um, uh, uh, Wegner.

• 20:37Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, I forgot his first name, uh...

• 20:39Eugene Mirman?

  Johnny.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Johnny boy Wegner.

• 20:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wegner was a scientist who proposed that the continents shift. Around on earth's surface and fit together like a puzzle at one time in their past. And he was laughed at, basically. How could this possibly happen? It's a solid thing. It's not solid. These things are moving around. Mid-Atlantic Ridge showed that. And that allowed you to fit South America to Africa, which any child knows looks like they fit together on a globe. So, um, we, we, we've mapped the ocean surface. So unless this thing is, is swimming around behind the submarine. Behind the surface.

• 21:17Eugene Mirman?

  But it took so long to find giant squids. So you think?

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, well, this is what I'm saying. Well, the giant squids are not the size of Connecticut.

• 21:24Eugene Mirman?

  Right. So what in between? So what's the biggest thing you think you could have? Like, could it be the size of UMass Boston?

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's intelligent, if it's intelligent, it just doesn't go where they're doing the, the, the, the. Tomography. Right. Right. You can just sort of follow around. I joke about this with the, the, the rover on Mars.

• 21:41Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they're cool aliens hanging out up there, but they just want to mess with us, they just keep running behind the, the stereo camera. And then, you know, we, so it's desolate. No, they're having a party on a, on a, on a lazy Susan dancing around the camera. So, yeah, you could in principle hide it, but if it was stationary, I don't think you could.

• 21:59Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Eugene Mirman?

  Good answer. All right. Tim Bailey has a question. The Tim Bailey. I don't know. Neil, what is your favorite science fiction book, TV series or film? The correct answer is BBC's Red Dwarf, by the way. That's what he wrote. Uh, but no, what is? Yeah. What's your favorite sci-fi?

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Favorite science fiction for TV has to be the original Star Trek series.

• 22:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And because of, it was nothing, it was like nothing that came before. Yes, there was science fiction. But this one.

• 22:27Eugene Mirman?

  But it was unrealistic, like Buck Rogers.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The difference was this told stories that really should have been told in real earth situations, but no one would have allowed that to happen. Because they were offensive, they were this, or they, they, they probed our, our odd social mores because social statements were being made.

• 22:45Eugene Mirman?

  You could finally have a race of purple people or green people and be like, why are you so mean to the green people?

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So you can transpose it into space and have these stories still be told Twilight Zone was an equivalent landscape in which to conduct the storytelling. So I just see that as a really important series. I will also add that the starship Enterprise by my read of the history of this telling of science fiction stories was the first ship of its kind to not be designed only to get from A to B. It was designed to live on.

• 23:16Eugene Mirman?

  And also to explore. Its mission was simply information, science.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was not a destination. I don't know any other ship for which that was the case. In the history of the telling.

• 23:26Eugene Mirman?

  The Magna Carta.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Since then, we've had those ships that just go hang out.

• 23:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ship is spaces, cruise ships, exactly. So, uh, so I would say Star Trek, the original series and, uh, Love That and the Twilight Zone, which had a lot of space themes in that era. We were going to the moon. They, they addressed them. On, on movies, I'd have to put a deep impact when the asteroid hit and hit the ocean rather than having good aim like the asteroids did in Armageddon where one hit the Eiffel Tower and one hit a dam or whatever. So this one hit the ocean, most of the earth's surface is ocean. That got a lot of, so much of the physics right. I let him go on stuff that wasn't right.

• 24:06Eugene Mirman?

  Like the story? I haven't seen it.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I recommend it. It's based on the, uh...

• 24:12Eugene Mirman?

  But what's, so that's the one you find most scientifically accurate? What's the one you find most enjoyable?

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, and I thoroughly enjoyed Carl Sagan's story, uh, brought to film Contact.

• 24:22Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was an interesting treatment of how humans would react to information that we found a species of intel, aliens more intelligent than we are. Humans just freaked out and I enjoyed watching the attempt to capture that. When we come back, more of StarTalk.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Cas McQuarrie, StarTalk. Eugene, thanks for being here with me. We left off with what my favorite sort of movie, TV, science fiction. And just a quick recap, Twilight Zone, the first Star Trek were without precedent in their concept and what they portrayed. Deep Impact, an asteroid movie that finally got the physics right. You know, the Bruce Willis one, no, this one, yes. And our Carl Sagan's Contact, People Act Crazy Without Intelligent Aliens Talking To Us. That one, I think, really captured how crazy people would get in the face of that information. And I gotta love The Matrix.

• 25:25Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are my top ones, not including 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's there just as a classic.

• 25:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene, they keep asking me these questions, but it seems to me you might have favorites.

• 25:35Eugene Mirman?

  I do, well, you know, I don't know. I'd love the Star Trek IV, where they go back in time. I love time travel stuff.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that was Save the Whales.

• 25:41Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, Save the Whales. But I mostly, and then...

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star Trek IV: The Movie.

• 25:45Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the last movie that had...

• 25:46Eugene Mirman?

  That's the fourth episode of the series Star Trek.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that was the last one that had the full crew?

• 25:52Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Together, it might have been.

• 25:53Eugene Mirman?

  But I also love the new, the latest Star Trek.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The movies?

• 25:56Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, the movies.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Eugene Mirman?

  I thought that was great. And then, but I did, I loved as a kid, like, Otto Man and Buck Rogers and the Misfits of Science.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, in the latest Star Trek movies, I had an issue with the red matter turning planets into black holes.

• 26:09Eugene Mirman?

  Seemed unrealistic to you somehow?

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, it just seemed to me...

• 26:13Eugene Mirman?

  Are you saying you know more than Spock? I find that unlikely.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you had red matter, I don't see why it has to go to the center to turn it into a black hole. Put it 10 feet underground, it would make a black hole there, too. I don't see why they had to drill. It was a cool drill, don't get me wrong. If I had to drill to get to the center of a planet, that's what it would look like. But, alright.

• 26:29Eugene Mirman?

  You're right, just throw a little, just throw it near it.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just throw it near it, it would totally take it in. But what else you got?

• 26:34Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, so Matt Ellie wants to know, Neil, what is an astrophysics theme you would like to see tackled in a work of science fiction?

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would like to see an asteroid come while the whole world is at war, and then people realize that the asteroid could render everyone extinct. And so, the common enemy to everyone

• 26:57Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  forces everyone to then harmonize with each other.

• 27:02Eugene Mirman?

  You should check out the movie Watchmen, then.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Yeah, that's a

• 27:07Eugene Mirman?

  It's an element of it.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They touched there, it's an element of it. And so, I don't think, they've attempted that in the past, but I don't think they did it very well.

• 27:14Eugene Mirman?

  They normally do it with aliens.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that one is not just about science, it's about geopolitics and how humans treat each other and what we fight over. And it may be, we figure out a way to harvest the resources of that asteroid, put it into orbit around Earth, and then we stop fighting each other over our, over the resources that sit beneath our feet.

• 27:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right, and then we also put, uh, things that it can absorb sunlight on it, turn it into a Dyson sphere and power the Earth.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we could do that too.

• 27:37Eugene Mirman?

  Good, just making sure it's possible.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that would be the end of all wars, and it would take the threat of extinction of the species to reach that point. The ultimate in death becomes the savior of our lives.

• 27:48Eugene Mirman?

  You've just created a madman out there listening to this who's gonna try to develop an asteroid to bring here. Uh, okay, here's another, Dan Owens has a question. They are currently remaking Disney's The Black Hole, the movie that you claim was the least accurate sci-fi movie you've ever seen.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, I've seen, uh, okay, uh, there's nothing accurate about the Star Wars series scientifically, except the double star system that sits in the, in the desert, so.

• 28:13Eugene Mirman?

  Not even the Force?

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not even, so I don't judge movies by whether they're inaccurate. I'm just saying, the original Disney movie Black Hole was awful.

• 28:21Eugene Mirman?

  It was awful and inaccurate.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And inaccurate, right. Right, they go into a black, and they go into the black hole, and it's like, it's like this, it's this like reddened scene from, from

• 28:31Eugene Mirman?

  Like a beach party blanket.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arizona, you know, with, with vents spewing fire, what are you doing? I could have, I was in high school at the time, and I could have said, look, I could have been your science advisor, and we could have done a kick butt movie on black holes.

• 28:44Eugene Mirman?

  I bet you in high school still knew a lot of science.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I, yeah, I taught a seminar on black holes, actually, at the time.

• 28:49Eugene Mirman?

  Well, there you go. It's the, it's not the best example of someone unknowledgeable about black holes, but I understand what you mean.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they make it, I wanna make sure they had some advisors, you know, it didn't have to be me.

• 28:59Eugene Mirman?

  You want the black hole to just be people turned into spaghetti and then the movie's done, it's about 35 seconds long.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but you can have the drama and the love.

• 29:07Eugene Mirman?

  Entering the event horizon, maybe that for 45 minutes.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relationships and someone pull, gets pulled from them with the extended outreach hands as they get spaghetti. Getified.

• 29:16Eugene Mirman?

  You want it to be a better story.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Eugene Mirman?

  That's what you really want.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. Don't. Oh, just, just. Yeah, I hope. And Disney's got good movies, good, good money today. And science matters now in movies. So just, just to clarify, I think Disney has the resources and they have the science. If it's not literacy, let me call it science sensitivity.

• 29:36Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To think about how to make a really cool movie using black holes.

• 29:40Eugene Mirman?

  There's no way, based on what you've told me about the black hole, that they could do anything but have a fun world in there. Like, like, meaning of the story, but they could make it a better story.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there are black hole spacetime structures where you go through, and if you survived it, you see the entire future of the universe play out in front of you.

• 29:57Eugene Mirman?

  That's a movie.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you enter your own brand new fabric of spacetime.

• 30:02Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Freshly created for you through the center of the black hole. If they don't know that, I'm tweeting about it. Okay?

• 30:08Eugene Mirman?

  Well, hopefully they're listening.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they know I'm ready to bite at their ankles.

• 30:11Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got to take a break? We'll be right back with Cosmic Queries.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries edition. The sequel to.

• 30:26Eugene Mirman?

  Science fiction.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fiction in every way it's cut. So we went through a bunch of questions, but there's still so many more. We're in the last segment of this hour, and so it's going to be the lightning round.

• 30:38Eugene Mirman?

  Let's do it. Ready?

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got my trusty bell. We'll test it.

• 30:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yep.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Engineer, you hear the bell? We're good. All right.

• 30:43Eugene Mirman?

  All right. Ian Kobe asks, alien movies. Ripley opens up an airlock in space on two separate occasions. Wouldn't opening the airlock kill her pretty quickly?

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So what you mean is you're in a vacuum and no, it won't. You just hold your breath and you're not there long enough.

• 30:59Eugene Mirman?

  You won't explode or freeze or anything?

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's, it's some tension on your skin because there is pressure inside of you. Air will come out of your lungs because the pressure balance wants to equalize. So your cheeks will puff out and you gotta let some air out. But if you're just trying to open an airlock and spend a little bit of time in there to get your suit, to put on your boots, to, to close another door, plenty of time to do that.

• 31:19Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, really? Like, how long? Like, five, 10 minutes or like 35 minutes?

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, because you can't hold your breath for 10 minutes, even in regular air.

• 31:26Eugene Mirman?

  I mean, I would die.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, as long as you can hold your breath. You're, you're good to go.

• 31:29Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, yeah, so it's, it's been overplayed. Right? Okay?

• 31:33Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether you explode inside of it. Right? Go.

• 31:36Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, David Pilland asks, "Physics limitations in the Iron Man movies. Is there a theoretical power supply that would be small enough to carry and still provide adequate power output?"

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, certainly. Uh, matter/anti-matter drive in his chest would do almost essentially everything he wants.

• 31:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, except what would the antimatter touch to contain it in his chest? That's the big problem.

• 31:56Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, Alexandre La Chapelle asks, "Will the artificial intelligence we create ever reach the same level we see in sci-fi?"

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't see why not. Look, already our artificial intelligence beats us in chess. It runs faster than us in jeopardy. So, sure. I mean, why not?

• 32:14Eugene Mirman?

  Sure. It doesn't sound dangerous to me.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the tricky part is will it one day ever become diabolical?

• 32:20Eugene Mirman?

  Or enslave us or use us as food?

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 32:23Eugene Mirman?

  And the answer is maybe, but probably not.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm skeptical.

• 32:26Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Hayden Jurees asks, "Could robots really be programmed to follow Asimov's Law of Robotics? And if they could, do you predict lifelike artificial intelligence in the near future?"

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can program computers to do anything we want.

• 32:40Eugene Mirman?

  Even speak Spanish?

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period. Period. And so, this whole thing about Asimov's three rules, and one of them is the robot cannot kill the creator of the robot.

• 32:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, the point is you can program it to do anything.

• 32:53Eugene Mirman?

  Like, name one robot we have that kills people and call it a drone.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly. And a robot doesn't have to look like people. It just has to respond to...

• 33:02Eugene Mirman?

  It just has to kill.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, uh, you know, planes today are robots.

• 33:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The monorail in airports are robots. There's nobody driving the damn thing.

• 33:11Eugene Mirman?

  Not even a bunch of kids?

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not... nobody. So, so, yeah, yeah. Uh, I don't see why...

• 33:18Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They do anything we want. And here's the thing, whether they take, whether they achieve consciousness on their own?

• 33:24Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know how that can happen unless we program them to achieve consciousness on their own.

• 33:28Eugene Mirman?

  Still, that'd be nice of us.

• 33:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you program it to just to perform tasks, okay. Then that's, I think, all we should let computers do. Next.

• 33:35Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oops. There.

• 33:38Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, uh, Larissa J. Levy asks, "Is there any possible way to make a radio out of coconuts?"

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 33:47Eugene Mirman?

  Noel.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But great question, and you gotta love the professor.

• 33:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Gilligan's Island.

• 33:51Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, now switching to questions from Twitter.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, you need some metal to make a, you need some conductors.

• 33:56Eugene Mirman?

  You need something to conduct in. Coconuts barely conduct.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 34:00Eugene Mirman?

  But you can make a, what, an alarm clock out of a potato?

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh.

• 34:03Eugene Mirman?

  Or power it?

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but.

• 34:04Eugene Mirman?

  Power it.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you, there are wires sticking into it. You need metal.

• 34:07Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Conductors for that. Next.

• 34:09Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. So Rachel Fender asks, in line with Futurama's predictions of the future, is alcohol a viable substance for a robot fuel?

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Brazil.

• 34:18Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has, most don't know, the third largest aerospace industry in the world.

• 34:22Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a $20 billion industry. It employs 18,000 people, and they invented an airplane that runs on alcohol.

• 34:30Eugene Mirman?

  Unlike cognac or?

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pure alcohol. So here we are drinking alcohol on our airplanes, and they're making airplanes that can run on alcohol, which is essentially solar powered, because alcohol is derived from plant products. Plant products get their energy from the sun.

• 34:44Eugene Mirman?

  Nice. Okay, in Wally, after 700 years in space, humans lost bone mass.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Wally is asking this, or Wally?

• 34:52Eugene Mirman?

  No, you're right. Uh, sorry, Ben Affleck in the movie.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wally, thank you.

• 34:58Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry. After 700 years in space, humans lost bone mass and gained fat. Would their bodies really wo- work back on Earth?

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 35:06Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you, you, you, look, our bodies don't work on Earth when all you do is sit and watch TV.

• 35:12Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You die.

• 35:13Eugene Mirman?

  Let alone be in space.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you go in space, and then you gain, you get fatter. If you don't exercise.

• 35:18Eugene Mirman?

  So if we sent, uh, enemies to outer space and brought them back in like 20 years, we could beat the crap out of them.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beat the crap out of them. What you do is you spin up the space station, you spin up the craft so that you have artificial gravity, and it solves the problem entirely.

• 35:30Eugene Mirman?

  If we had them in supergravity rooms, we could make them very powerful.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even stronger, correct.

• 35:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, but that's no different from just increasing the weight on, in the gym. Right, it's no different.

• 35:39Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next.

• 35:40Eugene Mirman?

  It sounds more fun.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll run it quick.

• 35:41Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last one.

• 35:42Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, Jeff Deloitte asks, in Dune, energy shields allow slow-moving objects to pass through but prevent fast-moving objects. Is this possible?

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, uh. I'd never figure that one out. So I'm not gonna say-

• 35:56Eugene Mirman?

  Because it's made up. So that's fine.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me not say that it's not possible. I will say-

• 36:01Eugene Mirman?

  Unlikely.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are things that you can move slower through faster than trying to move fast through. That's true.

• 36:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like really viscous liquids.

• 36:09Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you try to go fast through, there's a partial vacuum that picks up behind you and slows you down.

• 36:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the muck of mud and... But move slowly, it just goes around. We gotta go. Eugene, thanks for coming.

• 36:23Eugene Mirman?

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Cosmic Queries Sci-Fi. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. We'll see you next time. As always, keep looking up.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The.

• 42:24Eugene Mirman?

  The.

• 44:34Eugene Mirman?

  The.

• 48:12Eugene Mirman?

  To keep looking up.