Cosmic Queries - New Mysteries of the Universe

Alien megastructures? Gravitational waves? Time travel via wormhole? Crack open the latest cosmic conundrums when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan submitted questions, thrown at him by our co-host Eugene Mirman.

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.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. As always for StarTalk, my co-host is a professional comedian. Today we have with us Eugene Mirman. Eugene, thanks for being back.

• 0:40Eugene Mirman?

  Very glad to be here.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, but what you been doing lately?

• 0:43Eugene Mirman?

  Um, I've been touring. I have an album that came out.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've toured and albuming?

• 0:47Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool.

• 0:47Eugene Mirman?

  That's largely what I've been doing.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what stand-up comedians do.

• 0:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, they release an album and they tour. Well, everybody does that, where they're like, tell people about their album. Sometimes you can do it on the radio.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except I read this is not an album. This is like nine...

• 0:59Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. It's nine volumes. It took a few years to make. It's full of a lot of ridiculous things, a meditation, sound effects.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 1:06Eugene Mirman?

  Forty-five minutes of crying. That's one of the volumes.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So people lined up to buy this?

• 1:12Eugene Mirman?

  Well, you don't have to line up anymore. You can use the internet.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I got you, got you. Oh, good. Gone is that expression.

• 1:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly. Hopefully two people stood in line. I mean, there's also stand-up. It's a normal album, and it's not like, anyway.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, this edition of StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. We've solicited questions from our fanbase and all the different social media platforms, and you're gonna read them to me. I've not seen them before. And the, what is the theme today?

• 1:37Eugene Mirman?

  The theme is new discoveries and new mysteries of the universe.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:41Eugene Mirman?

  So I hope you're up on your new mysteries.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know if I'm up on this.

• 1:45Eugene Mirman?

  We'll find out.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find out. Because I'm classically trained, and so I know, yeah, so I know stuff.

• 1:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if I'm like, turning the page of the very latest discoveries, I'm maybe not. So I want you to know if that's the case. Okay, bring it on.

• 1:57Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. Nicole Brooks from Patreon asks, "Based on the expanding knowledge of wormholes and tippler cylinders, do you think it is theoretically possible to travel through the past or the future using one of the following devices? Only wormholes, only tippler cylinders, or wormholes for present/future travel and tippler cylinders for the past?"

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is yes. It's theoretically possible, because you can show how moving through a wormhole can put you back in the timeframe from which you... Left.

• 2:30Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can show that. But we don't know how to make a wormhole. It's not a realistic thing yet.

• 2:36Eugene Mirman?

  That we was but theoretically, once we figure out how to make them.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Equations tell us we can do it unless having made the wormhole, we then make discoveries that tell us that we can't.

• 2:47Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's been hypothesized by Hawking, among others.

• 2:51Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That there might be a universal law of physics that prevents you from traveling backwards in time. Because suppose you did this and you prevented your parents from meeting one another, then they you would have never been conceived enough to go back in time to prevent them from meeting one another.

• 3:06Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be it's a parrot a temporal paradox.

• 3:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe the laws of physics, when we get there, will tell us about this paradox and therefore, uh, prevent it.

• 3:18Eugene Mirman?

  Right, or create another you could get another universe.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The many worlds hypothesis. Yeah, it's like at any point where a where a a past event is changed, then a new universe spawns off. That was just a way to not have to really answer the question.

• 3:33Eugene Mirman?

  Right, that is okay.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was it was given serious theoretical and physical thought.

• 3:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Behind the new world's interpretation that was invoked for quantum physics.

• 3:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back in the nineteen twenties, the weird things were happening and maybe all things were happening and we were just choosing which path through reality accounted for what we saw.

• 3:53Eugene Mirman?

  So you're not convinced that Back to the Future trilogy is possible?

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Certainly not the Cubs winning the World Series, apparently, as they should have done this October two thousand fifteen.

• 4:04Eugene Mirman?

  All right, well.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 4:05Eugene Mirman?

  Good, okay, so, uh, from Facebook, a, uh, a doist in here asks, what if there is an alien megastructure? What would that mean for humanity?

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So probably this questioner is referring to one of the. The suspected exoplanets that Kepler, the telescope discovered.

• 4:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And normally, what Kepler is looking for is a slight dip in the light of the host star as the planet eclipses in front of it.

• 4:36Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the planet will, will drop it by maybe one percent and we can measure intensity of light accurately enough to, and with enough precision to say how big the planet is, what its orbital period is and all the like. But it has found something that is some structure that has no resemblance to planet, to, to the signature of a planet.

• 4:56Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's been suggested, maybe they were building a, a, a, one of these Dyson spheres where if you want to, way to think about it is, if you, what are we doing to get energy? We're like fighting wars.

• 5:09Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Digging.

• 5:10Eugene Mirman?

  Stuff out of the ground.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fossil fuels out of the ground, alright. That's pretty primitive.

• 5:13Eugene Mirman?

  Our plants eat our sunlight.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they do, they.

• 5:16Eugene Mirman?

  That's not how they describe it, but I'm not wrong.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are levels of civilization that you can reference depending on how sophisticated they are in obtaining energy. So one of them would be, you can tap energy from Earth. So volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, cyclones.

• 5:35Eugene Mirman?

  We should start, start charging our phones with tornadoes.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. If you can do that, then Earth is supplying all the energy you need. Or it's a source of energy unlike anything you might have had before. Well, can you go more than that? Yes. You could tap all the energy that your host star can give you. Well, how would you do that? Well, you can put up solar panels, where you can only put that on the surface of the Earth. But it's sending energy out in every direction in space.

• 6:01Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why not put up solar panels all around the star? So all the energy that leaves the star hits the solar panels and you take every ounce of energy that star has to give you. That's another level of civilization.

• 6:14Eugene Mirman?

  And then how do you get that to your planet?

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you'd wire it up or whatever. I mean, you have to.

• 6:18Eugene Mirman?

  You'd have a very long cable?

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 6:19Eugene Mirman?

  Or if you can do that, you might have a, some solution.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. You figure that out. And the next level of civilization is you command all the energy of all the stars in your galaxy. And the highest level would be commanding all the energy of all the galaxies in the universe. So, we would have to be a higher level civilization to be able to maneuver and manipulate wormholes. And, so, we're not there yet. We are so far from it. Yeah. So, uh, so there you have it.

• 6:46Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. What's next?

• 6:48Eugene Mirman?

  Next is, uh, James from Facebook. He asks, "What is New Horizons' mission now? Or is it just drifting towards the Kuiper Belt?"

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, the New Horizons' mission, that's the mission that went to find Pluto. And did a flyby, got awesome data from Pluto, close-up, high-resolution images that are still coming in. The spacecraft was pared down in weight so that it could get to its destination as fast as possible. Because the number-one rule in science is what?

• 7:15Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, go very quickly.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to finish your experiment before you die. Yeah, so going quickly would matter.

• 7:22Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you have the light-

• 7:23Eugene Mirman?

  So, I'm not totally wrong.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're not totally wrong. So, you want the lightest spacecraft and the most powerful boosters to get you there, and that's a potent combination for getting there quickly. So, we got to Pluto in, in ten years.

• 7:33Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, and we, we passed the moon's orbit in nine hours. We, I mean, the spacecraft.

• 7:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In nine hours.

• 7:39Eugene Mirman?

  Humanity.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Took the, it took the astronauts three days to cover that distance. So, this thing's booking out of the solar system. So, it passed Pluto in a flyby, and now it is not adrift in the Kuiper Belt. They're selecting targets for it. It still has fuel, so it can maneuver in, in, uh, a certain, by a certain angle. And that angle is enough to have it come close to other frozen bodies in the outer solar system whose properties resemble that of the moon.

• 8:04Eugene Mirman?

  And it's sending that info back to us as well?

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will when, when it gets there. That's correct. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:08Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, great.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 8:09Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, Jared, uh, on Facebook asks, "To build megastructures in space, wouldn't you need something, say, the size of a mineral-rich asteroid belt or a moon mine for the same?"

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what they're saying is, if you're gonna build a huge structure in space that uses more mineral resources than your planet can supply, yeah, you'd have to get this stuff from, from space.

• 8:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, that's not a problem, because we know the asteroids are an unlimited suppo- essentially limited, the supply of all the ingredients that would otherwise be rare on Earth. So, the rare Earth elements- They're only rare on Earth.

• 8:43Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right. They're not, they're not rare in asteroids.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In particular, uh, handpicked asteroids. So, yeah, you'd, you would need resources from beyond your home planet, but we, people are well aware of that.

• 8:52Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, and I think if you're building this megastructure, you'd, that's what you'd do.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 8:57Eugene Mirman?

  That's how I would do it.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, Dave Massey on Facebook asks, "What needs to be improved in carbon nanotube technology to build large space structures?"

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, uh, so first of all, the, uh, some years ago, I forgot what year it was. Was it nineteen eighty-nine or ninety, when they discovered the, a new molecule, carbon sixty?

• 9:18Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is sixty carbon atoms, that, the, the way to make sixty carbon atoms into one molecule is you can connect them in a, in a particular way, where they end up making a sphere. And that sphere was the, the vertices of, uh, the geodesic dome.

• 9:35Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was advanced by Buckminster Fuller. And so, these, these spheres came to be known as buckyballs. And I think they are the same seams and nodes that you find on a stitched soccer ball. The older soccer ball that has hexagons and, and pentagons. So, so there it is. Now, if you cut it in the middle, and spread it, and then put carbon fibers connecting one side to another, you go from a carbon buckyball to a carbon nanotube. So it's the same scale of chemistry. And so, this would be way stronger than steel, way lighter than steel. It would completely transform constru-, the construction industry. Cause you want things that are strong, but light.

• 10:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is kinda how that works.

• 10:19Eugene Mirman?

  Sounds like transparent aluminum from Star Trek IV.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. I remember that.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Save the Whales episode.

• 10:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yep, exactly.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the question now is, if you can build long tubes, these would replace steel cables for, for all of your needs, and make things lighter, cheaper, faster, better. The problem is, last I checked, the longest nanotube that they've been able to make has been maybe a centimeter long. And, cause we don't have tools to plant, to, to, to, to position molecules. We have to coax them into these configurations based on the apparatus and the temperature and the pressure and, and the mixture of other chemicals.

• 10:56Eugene Mirman?

  Once they're made, do they, can they live out in the world?

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't see why not, given their strength. And so, so once, now, the, the space elevator, where you take an elevator to orbit.

• 11:07Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is something that would basically require carbon nanotubes, but we have to go from a centimeter length to twenty-three thousand miles of length.

• 11:16Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is, we're not there yet.

• 11:17Eugene Mirman?

  No, that sounds, yeah, it sounds like it's gonna take time.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 11:20Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, uh, Martin Holden asks on Facebook, what are the books that a budding cosmologist should have in their library?

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, a budding cosmologist? It depends on what level, uh, but I would say a fun book, just cause it's big and audacious, big hairy and audacious, is a book called Gravitation.

• 11:40Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's written by, uh, three authors, Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. Wheeler was the guy who first coined the term black hole. Thorne was the guy who was the science advisor to the movie Interstellar.

• 11:53Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And his first name is Kip, and one of the robots in Interstellar was called Kip, by the way. In case you're scoring along with this. Yes, a- as Bill Nye is fond of saying. And also, uh, he wrote a companion book to the movie Interstellar called The Science of Interstellar. So, he's one of the authors, and the third is a, is a professor from the University of Maryland, and Charles Misner. And that, it's a huge book, it's called, just called Gravitation. And there are two tracks.

• 12:21Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wimp track and the advanced track.

• 12:23Eugene Mirman?

  In the book?

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the book.

• 12:24Eugene Mirman?

  So, meaning you, or maybe the layman?

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're color-coded, and so if you want the easier track, you read the pages with the black corners, and you want the harder one, you read the ones with the white corners.

• 12:34Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, maybe I'll try it.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that one, if you're, if you're kind of advanced, that's the one I'd recommend.

• 12:39Eugene Mirman?

  You can do either one.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if not, then there's so many excellent, popular level books. Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos, and, and Lisa Randall has three books all about cosmology and our understanding of our place in the universe. So you can start with those popular level accounts, and then ascend from there.

• 12:56Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Eugene Mirman?

  Um, Amy Danger on Facebook asks.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great name.

• 13:01Eugene Mirman?

  I know, a very good name. My nine-year-old daughter wants to know why our moon doesn't have a name. I'm with her, why doesn't our moon have a name?

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our moon does have a name.

• 13:10Eugene Mirman?

  What, Jeff?

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Freddy.

• 13:12Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. What's our moon's name?

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 13:15Eugene Mirman?

  Mr. Moon.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all the planets are named for Latin gods.

• 13:19Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you would expect any name for Earth or the moon to be Latin. And so.

• 13:26Eugene Mirman?

  You would expect.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would expect. So, the Earth, Moon, and Sun combo have Latin cor- corresponding names.

• 13:34Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we can use them in my field. Everyone will know what you're talking about.

• 13:37Eugene Mirman?

  What's the name of the moon?

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the name of Earth is Terra.

• 13:40Eugene Mirman?

  Terra.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The name of the moon is Luna.

• 13:42Eugene Mirman?

  Luna, oh.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And the name of the sun is Sol.

• 13:46Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, not like S O U L, which would be really cool, but S O L. And so, those Latin words have all been lifted to become the roots of other words. So, Sol is the root of solar system.

• 13:58Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Luna, like lunatic and lunar month and this sort of thing. So, of course, a lunatic is someone who acts crazy after they see the full moon. But they don't tend to act crazy when it's cloudy out.

• 14:08Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't even know that it's full.

• 14:10Eugene Mirman?

  I didn't know that lunatics specifically was someone who was crazy.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From moonlight.

• 14:13Eugene Mirman?

  From moonlight?

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why else would you call it lunatic?

• 14:15Eugene Mirman?

  Well, no one uses it that way now. That's why. Sorry. That's the reason I thought that is, because.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Wow, that's great to know. So, Amy, the moon does have a name and it's Luna.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Sol, uh, Sol, Terra, and Luna.

• 14:29Eugene Mirman?

  Nice.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:30Eugene Mirman?

  Martin Holden asks on Facebook, is space continuous or granular?

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All evidence points to that it's granular in quantum physics, which has been trumping every other field that it has touched.

• 14:45Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the most accurate theory of the universe we have ever put forth. Tells us that space is granular, that there's a.

• 14:52Eugene Mirman?

  So, what does it mean for it to be continuous?

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the smallest possible length that you can measure in space. There's the smallest possible unit of time that can exist in space. And this granulation of space and time would tell us that, in fact, space is not continuous. By the way, general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, requires that space be smoothly continuous.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a, there's a shotgun war going on there about who's gonna be right in the end. And if you're a betting person, you put your money on quantum physics.

• 15:26Eugene Mirman?

  Really? Wait, so that means that if you were to get to the edge of the universe, then what would be?

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It says nothing about the edge of the universe.

• 15:33Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, it says nothing about that.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has to do with how small you can divide the fabric of space and time.

• 15:37Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, I see.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this is not a weird concept.

• 15:39Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take a sheet and you say, okay, give me a section of the sheet.

• 15:44Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, and you cut a section, oh, fine, and I give you a one foot square, let's say. And now you say, I want a smaller section. I give you one inch square. I want an even smaller section. One millimeter square. Now suppose you're asking me for a section of the sheet that is smaller than the fibers are tracking within the sheet.

• 16:01Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that still sheet?

• 16:04Eugene Mirman?

  Ooh. Uh, yeah.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Your fibers, and then now you're in a zone within the stitches of the fiber where there's no sheet at all. So pieces of the sheet are no longer heterogenously represented.

• 16:17Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your sizing is smaller than the stuff that's constructing it in the first place.

• 16:21Eugene Mirman?

  So now you're going to the, it's building blocks, is what you're saying?

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So, so right now, everything looks continuous because we're not, we're not dealing with these very small sizes.

• 16:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when you do get there and you try to measure time, you'll find that you won't be able to.

• 16:36Eugene Mirman?

  And it's granular.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 16:37Eugene Mirman?

  All right. Now I understand.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I just learned recently? It just freaked me out, and I have to like read up on it because it's not where it... So I learned that some ideas of the expanding universe will have the universe in some places where the spacetime fabric itself melts.

• 16:56Eugene Mirman?

  What does that mean?

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 16:58Eugene Mirman?

  You don't know what it means?

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I tried to, I'll, I'll come back to you on this.

• 17:02Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, because I'm very curious.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's...

• 17:03Eugene Mirman?

  What it means for spacetime to melt.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that spacetime might have corresponding states of matter going on within them. And, uh, and you might be able to melt space. And I just...

• 17:16Eugene Mirman?

  Oh my god, and then you could, you could drink it.

• 17:20Eugene Mirman?

  I can't wait to tell people I've drunk one liter of molten space.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you've got questions from our fanbase?

• 17:57Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's just about new discoveries in the universe. And if I don't know it, I'll just say, "I don't know."

• 18:03Eugene Mirman?

  I'll answer it anyway.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 18:04Eugene Mirman?

  Some misleading... Okay, here we go.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 18:07Eugene Mirman?

  William on Twitter asks, "What are your thoughts on the mysterious structure orbiting a star 1,500 light-years away?"

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's related to the earlier question about alien megastructures.

• 18:19Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't know what that structure is. By the way, I didn't... I don't think I detailed earlier. These structures that pass between the telescope and the host star, we know it's not a planet.

• 18:32Eugene Mirman?

  So, what are some of the options and what...

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's dimming the light in odd, significant, and unusual ways.

• 18:38Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the host star.

• 18:40Eugene Mirman?

  That we've never seen before?

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never seen.

• 18:41Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never seen. And that's why people think they're building structures to grab the sunlight, the starlight, and beam it back to the home planet.

• 18:48Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I tend to be very conservative in my...

• 18:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ...in my scientific...

• 18:54Eugene Mirman?

  Advanced alien civilization guesses?

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the subject of advanced alien civilization. And I would say, just because we do not know what it is, it does not then mean it's alien megastructures.

• 19:06Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just admitted...

• 19:08Eugene Mirman?

  It's just something we don't know.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's so... And I said, "It's probably something more mundane accounting for it."

• 19:14Eugene Mirman?

  Like a super-thick cloud of space debris?

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly. I don't know.

• 19:18Eugene Mirman?

  What are... What kinds of... So, alien megastructure is one theory, and the other...

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The hypothesis, yeah.

• 19:24Eugene Mirman?

  One hypothesis, sorry. Right, yeah.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Eugene Mirman?

  So, what are some other hypotheses?

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because there's the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity.

• 19:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And...

• 19:31Eugene Mirman?

  The hypothesis.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Eugene's hypothesis.

• 19:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not Eugene's theory.

• 19:36Eugene Mirman?

  Theory is one... It's been agreed on and...

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, and it's very powerful and deeply...

• 19:39Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, and a hypothesis is like, "This is a very good guess."

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you just came up with it on the spot.

• 19:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. So, what are some other hypotheses? So, alien megastructure is one.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe a cloud of comets that had broken apart but were still traveling together as a gang.

• 19:50Eugene Mirman?

  That's a pretty good guess of mine.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you have a huge comet and you break it apart into multiple pieces, all those pieces still travel together.

• 19:55Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And orbit around the sun, kind of like in a...

• 19:57Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a pack of cars, like in NASCAR.

• 19:59Eugene Mirman?

  Like a bunch of, uh...

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:01Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, birds.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they'll slowly separate, flocking, yeah. They'll slowly separate, but not until you get some good...

• 20:06Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ...movement there. And so the, uh, where was I?

• 20:14Eugene Mirman?

  Well, it was the comet broken apart.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So if you have a start with a huge comet and it breaks apart into a hundred pieces, now you have more blockage of your host star. But it still was not repeating periodically, which any orbiting object would do. So it's a tremendously fascinating mystery. And I'm content in knowing it's a mystery. I don't require of the mystery that it yield a solution on the spot.

• 20:39Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, we'll wait and see.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Eugene Mirman?

  But you're not jumping to alien civilization yet.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not yet, yeah.

• 20:45Eugene Mirman?

  John on Twitter asks, "As the universe expands, will the Higgs field expand and thus weaken to the point of matter degradation?" Oh, just sorry, degeneration. Sorry, let me ask it again. John on Twitter asks, "As the universe expands, will the Higgs field expand and thus weaken to the point of matter degeneration? Same with EMF."

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't know if, what effect the expansion of the universe has on the Higgs field.

• 21:16Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm guessing it might dilute it in some way. And the question is, how does that then affect the mass that it grants to particles within that field? So I, I, I do not know the answer to that.

• 21:28Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you want me to make up an answer?

• 21:31Eugene Mirman?

  No, I appreciate your honesty more.

• 21:35Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, David on Twitter asks-

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait, wait, no, let me make up an answer.

• 21:38Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, make up an answer. Sure, sorry, wrong answer on my part. Make up an answer.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it did weaken and that somehow interfered with the ability of the Higgs field to grant mass to particles,

• 21:47Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that would be completely destabilizing on the universe.

• 21:51Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be awesome.

• 21:52Eugene Mirman?

  And what would happen then?

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I don't know. If, if particles have less mass than we thought they did or that-

• 21:57Eugene Mirman?

  Can I fly? Could I be able to fly?

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, just because you'd have less mass doesn't mean you can fly, no.

• 22:03Eugene Mirman?

  How, so, but what's, would there be a point at which though that would be the case?

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd need strength in- Wing clapping.

• 22:11Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, or become super magnetic? What if I could control magnets?

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, then you're not like, like, you know, yeah, but then you're not really.

• 22:18Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, I see.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, yeah, you, you, you're, you need magnets, magnets wherever you need to do your, your.

• 22:24Eugene Mirman?

  Flying, right, right. Okay, fair enough. I'm just trying to figure out how I could fly, but I don't think that's what he was trying to do. Okay, David asks on Twitter, uh, will the presence of water on Mars affect how we manufacture fuel for the return trip?

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, not for the, uh, well, in the future, possi-, oh, most certainly.

• 22:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because fuel, the, uh, what is water made of, the chemically?

• 22:47Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, H2O, I'm guessing.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice, very nice. And H2O, it turns out, is rocket fuel. Not in the form of water, but if you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen, and you bring them together to make a molecule, the water molecule, then, uh, they, it is hugely exothermic.

• 23:07Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of energy gets released and it makes an ideal rocket fuel. So, if you go to Mars and you want to use resources in situ,

• 23:15Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then converting the water under the soils into rocket fuel is an ideal usage, usage case of the future of that expedition.

• 23:24Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah.

• 23:25Eugene Mirman?

  Um, great. James asks, what question would you like to have answered before you die, regardless of if you think it will, or even can be, and why?

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I've got a cop-out answer to that.

• 23:39Eugene Mirman?

  Uh-huh.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the questions that no one have thought of yet, have, have thought of yet, because they only emerge from having made a discovery that you're after in that moment.

• 23:48Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are the questions I, so, so I would not have even known to ask a hundred years ago, how many asteroids could render humans on Earth extinct?

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the asteroids were not thought, not known to cross the orbit of the earth. So, so now I'm asking a question that was unforeseeable.

• 24:08Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I- in a day.

• 24:10Eugene Mirman?

  So, so it'd be something like, how do we control wormholes to go back in time to kill all our grandparents? But we can't conceive of that quite yet.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I, I think this is my challenge in coming up with the question because I love the questions that have not even been thought up yet. So therefore I can't even share them with you.

• 24:27Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when they do arise, it's like, wow, that was good. That was a good one.

• 24:31Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Eugene Mirman?

  Um, all right. Uh, Louis asks, um, theoretically, if a man is sent to Mars for a year, would he be awake and asleep for the same amount of time as a earthling?

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, you can set a schedule that's slightly different from earth. Maybe a twenty, maybe a twenty-five hour day or a twenty-three hour day. And people that tend to stay up later, in the, you know, they're morning people and they're nighttime people.

• 24:58Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could probably take a boatload of nighttime people, put them on a ship and have them go to Mars, and have them live in a twenty-six or twenty-seven, maybe even a twenty-eight hour day. Cause they're always staying up late pushing.

• 25:11Eugene Mirman?

  How, what's the day of Mars? How long is it?

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about twenty-four hours.

• 25:14Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. Oh.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's very cool.

• 25:16Eugene Mirman?

  So you wouldn't even need to?

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you wouldn't even, no, yeah, it's ma- it might be different by twenty minutes or something.

• 25:19Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But by the way, people who work on Mars, or rather scientists, colleagues of mine who study rovers that work, uh, work on Mars, they have a watch that's made so that the, a twenty-four hours on that watch matches the exact rotation rate of Mars, so that they can live on a Mars time as well as human time.

• 25:38Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 25:40Eugene Mirman?

  I wonder if they go like, oh, okay, well, I'll see you at dinner at seven. Mars time.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the reason why they have to do that is they need to know when mo- many of the rovers have solar panels and things. And all of them have solar panels. And so you need to know, when is it exposed to the sun, recharging its batteries? When is it not?

• 25:59Eugene Mirman?

  Right. All right, good answer.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:02Eugene Mirman?

  All right, um, Jared, uh, has a question, and his question is, "Would it be plausible to find gravity waves by observing the resonant frequency of, say, a mile-long piano string?"

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 26:18Eugene Mirman?

  Mm.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 26:20Eugene Mirman?

  What do you think?

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the mass and energy in a piano string is insufficient to generate a detectable gravity wave.

• 26:27Eugene Mirman?

  So it would be-

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need, you need a major gravitational disturbance in the fabric of space and time.

• 26:33Eugene Mirman?

  What would that entail?

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, a collision of two black holes.

• 26:36Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Co- collision of two-

• 26:37Eugene Mirman?

  A piano string is not, is not enough then.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, it's not measuring up to the, to-

• 26:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, sorry about that. But, but, he's thinking that, that this vibration would somehow vibrate the fabric of the universe, and no, it would vibrate any kind of air molecules-

• 26:54Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -that it touched on doing so, and in space, there's no air molecules, so it'll just swing back and forth, but it won't generate sound.

• 27:02Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the vibration of the air molecules is what we sense as sound.

• 27:05Eugene Mirman?

  The saddest thing is a piano in space.

• 27:10Eugene Mirman?

  Um, all right, uh-

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any musical instrument in space.

• 27:13Eugene Mirman?

  No, just pianos, a trumpet, well, yeah, because it just feels like, well, because of the cost to put a piano up there.

• 27:20Eugene Mirman?

  Um, uh, Denard on Google Plus asks, "With slowing investments in space-based science across the board in multiple countries, what effect does this have on limiting human discoveries of our place in the universe?"

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's, that's a great question, and if you're gonna cut back on science, which is the current, which, which constitute the current roads of discovery, then just move back into the cave.

• 27:46Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you doing? Now, you can vote for that kind of country, but that's not the kind of country I grew up in.

• 27:50Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had investments in science and technology, you did not need special programs to convince kids that they should be interested in science.

• 27:58Eugene Mirman?

  Well, doesn't-

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Built into the fabric of the media cycles.

• 28:01Eugene Mirman?

  Well, NASA, for every dollar put into NASA, it returns something like seven or eight dollars into-

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I hardly ever cite that calculation, because there's a lot of-

• 28:11Eugene Mirman?

  Or is it somewhat accurate?

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it can be accurate, but it's a matter of what you value that goes into the equation that gets that number. So that, that's the kind of same calculation you do when you say, well, let's put an opera in town.

• 28:22Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, how are we going to support the opera? Well, we don't know, but if you put an opera there, then these stores will open up around the entrance to that opera.

• 28:29Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's a seeding effect.

• 28:32Eugene Mirman?

  Right, right.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That many people talk about, but, um.

• 28:35Eugene Mirman?

  But it's, it's hard to actually say.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard to anchor that in a way that if five different people did the same analysis, would they get the same answer? And the answer is no.

• 28:44Eugene Mirman?

  And that also isn't necessarily the, the scientific discovery is partially its own end, not the fact that.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 28:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Even though some people want you to do it for some purpose, it's really for its own end, and later on you find out how it really applies.

• 28:56Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Eugene Mirman?

  All right. Um, Jorg, Jorgen, Jorgen Nyberg asks, uh, he's writing from the west coast of Sweden on Google Plus.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jorgen?

• 29:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jorgen?

• 29:08Eugene Mirman?

  Jorgen Nyberg.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:10Eugene Mirman?

  Any news read K I C eight four six two eight five two? If not, do you know what the period, uh, periodocity of the dimming has been?

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so this is again that.

• 29:22Eugene Mirman?

  Ah. Oh my god, this is more alien megastructure. But he's, he's like, I.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, as you read it, you sounded like a second grader reading, uh.

• 29:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, I mean, well, this, I also, you know, without knowing the, uh, the actual number of the planet or whatever, it sounds like maybe it's also a veiled death threat. It's like, any news read, like, is, he's like a code?

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, code, yeah, exactly. What do you know about?

• 29:47Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so no.

• 29:48Eugene Mirman?

  Any word I'm asking on the radio?

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's no, no updates, and, and it's, it's got people, uh, it's got people thinking long and hard and deep about what it could be, but for me, like I said, I don't know what it is, and I reserve comment.

• 30:02Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Eugene Mirman?

  We have one last question.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:05Eugene Mirman?

  Um, Mark Miller, Patreon, he asks.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Patreon is, that's our

• 30:13Eugene Mirman?

  Funding.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a, it's a, it's you can be a funding friend

• 30:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of StarTalk.

• 30:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, and you get certain perks.

• 30:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, we'll bring your question to the top of the list.

• 30:23Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, well, I had asked one Patreon question and we have one more.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One more, yeah, you'll just get to the list.

• 30:29Eugene Mirman?

  Well, Mark already got to ask one on another episode, so Mark's getting a real ton of questions.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's getting it in there.

• 30:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there, depending on your participation level, you want to promote the innovations that we're trying to bring to.

• 30:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, for one million dollars, I'll carry you nine feet.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:44Eugene Mirman?

  That's just one, one thing I'll offer.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we can do better than that, Eugene.

• 30:48Eugene Mirman?

  Well, if you really love StarTalk, I don't need to do better than that.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very happy to have our Patreon supporters, so thanks for being out there.

• 30:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Folks, so go ahead, go ahead.

• 30:57Eugene Mirman?

  Let me ask Mark's question. Uh, with the discovery of a black hole expelling some of the matter it had consumed, what forces may be responsible for this unusual behavior?

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's not unusual because it's not coming from within the event horizon. Once you cross over the event horizon, just, you know, kiss your ass goodbye. So what's actually happening is all this matter is spiraling towards the black hole center. And it can't all get there all at once. And it forms this disk on which all this material accretes. And the disk feeds the black hole on the very inner edge of it. But until, until it gets to that point, you still have this, this, um, this assembly of matter. And as it spirals down, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, and it begins to radiate. It radiates so ferociously, it punches out above and below the disk itself.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you get these jets, these, these, these long spewed forth uh, sig- signatures of moving matter. And so, so, yes, this happens because all this matter's trying to get down into the same place at the same time, and it's going to fail in doing so. And once you heat up a gas, it's got to radiate somewhere and it'll do it. It'll do it.

• 32:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, oh, it will. That's the promise I make to you.

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah, so most of the exotic galactic center phenomenon we've seen with powerful jets emanating from above and below a galaxy and very intense in all bands of light, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet, X-rays. So we have, um, we have established over the decades that the thing that's causing all that violence in the galaxies are black holes with matter trying to get in there too fast, creating these explosive accretion bits. That's how it comes out of a black hole.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio continues now.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now we're going straight to grab bag.

• 33:27Eugene Mirman?

  All right.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Potpourri.

• 33:28Eugene Mirman?

  Let's see what it is.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do this.

• 33:30Eugene Mirman?

  Andrew asks, uh, is it possible that the long-term collection of matter, space mining, may cause a change in the way the Earth orbits the Sun or the Moon orbits the Earth? Is there a tipping point of the Earth collecting changing mass from a large asteroid that can change its gravitational pull on the Moon or the Sun's pull on the Earth?

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 33:51Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah?

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question. No, it's not as bad as you think, however, because if you take all of the asteroids in the asteroid belt.

• 34:00Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And collected it together back into one solid mass.

• 34:05Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can ask, how much is that?

• 34:08Eugene Mirman?

  Florida.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's about...

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five percent of the mass of our moon.

• 34:15Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one twentieth of the moon. And so we could accumulate all mass of all the asteroids. And we would barely notice it in terms of our own weight.

• 34:25Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the moon's orbit would adjust a little, but not by, not much.

• 34:29Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's really not, not an issue.

• 34:32Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, nothing to lose.

• 34:33Eugene Mirman?

  Not scared of that.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, anything large enough that we did bring to earth that would badly disrupt our orbit would be bad enough on earth to render us extinct. So it would not be the kind of question you'd be asking.

• 34:44Eugene Mirman?

  Like Mars, if we brought Mars to earth, that would be bad?

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very bad. Yes, that's the end of both Mars and earth.

• 34:49Eugene Mirman?

  What's the most you could move Mars without it being a problem?

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can put it wherever you want, but, and it'll affect our orbit around the sun, but not in any bad way. But if you want to combine them.

• 34:58Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's bad for both.

• 35:00Eugene Mirman?

  Superplanet.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Super, that's bad for both.

• 35:02Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. Um, Adrian asks, uh, hello, Dr. Tyson. Would it be possible within our lifetime to extend people's natural life synthetically through either bios, cybernetics, or bioengineering to such an extent that while they may not live forever, they might certainly be around for the next one hundred to two hundred years or more?

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I, we got people working on this now. This is, this is not science fiction. It's science fact. And, and it, people are thinking, oh, the engineering of it, we, we hybridize uh, biology with, with material science perhaps. And maybe that's not even necessary. Maybe we just find the gene for aging and snip it, cut it, alter it.

• 35:44Eugene Mirman?

  What would happen, so how would aging work if theoretically you didn't age the way that things currently age? Because you'd still get older, like you'd still have things.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would be older.

• 35:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To, to get older, we make synonymous with becoming more frail or weak.

• 35:57Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would be an older entity, yes.

• 36:00Eugene Mirman?

  Right, so there would be a different, a new type of frailty would develop. Where just from simply being two hundred years old, you might have a frailty that you didn't have? Is that what you're saying?

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm saying if you, if you live, if you live a long time beyond any current actuarial tables.

• 36:14Eugene Mirman?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It may be that the decline we see in our bodies from age like fifty to eighty. Maybe that would happen between age hu- a hundred and a hundred and, uh, between a hundred and fifty and two hundred, for example. Right, but you you have a more, a bigger chunk of your time being alive, would you would be physically fit and healthy?

• 36:34Eugene Mirman?

  Right, you could play a lot more soccer.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has huge consequences, because that means the population of the earth would go up.

• 36:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let the human population, unless you made fewer babies, because the equilibrium of people and new jobs and all, it it has built in the fact that people die.

• 36:51Eugene Mirman?

  Well, what if we just let only rich people live forever? Would that be something people would like?

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what happened in, what's the movie?

• 36:58Eugene Mirman?

  I don't know.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where time was a commodity. The time was a commodity.

• 37:01Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, yeah, then there's where the

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't money.

• 37:03Eugene Mirman?

  Where like they built the space station.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's a different movie.

• 37:07Eugene Mirman?

  But there's a lot of movies where the rich people get to live for a long time. Um, all right. Well, that's good to know that people are working on this terrible thing that will destroy mankind. Uh, but also be kind of fun.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I think it to to live forever, I I I've spoken on this before, I I think that's misguided. It suppose you actually live forever.

• 37:28Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then what is the value of tomorrow to you?

• 37:32Eugene Mirman?

  Well, maybe if you just live for two hundred years, then you still have like a little fear, but not as much.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not as much, yeah. I just wonder, I knowing that I'm going to die.

• 37:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a fundamental part of what creates meaning for any moment I'm alive.

• 37:46Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if a day goes by where I didn't like discover something or learn something, or or play with my kids, or go on a playdate with my wife, or or or or contribute to this world in some fundamental way, I wasted that day. And if I live forever, I would not have the state of mind that I could waste any time at all.

• 38:04Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't know what that would mean for people's creativity.

• 38:07Eugene Mirman?

  You could you could still be blown up in a war if that makes you feel any better. You mean not die naturally?

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 38:14Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think it's living forever might be overrated.

• 38:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but living for two hundred years underrated. So it's a middle ground. All right, Aaron asks, uh, how are those fashionable, easily worn space suits coming along? Read the Mars episode of Nova Science now.

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I don't I don't have the latest on that, but, uh, they, you know, part of the challenge, of course, is the spacesuit needs to be pressurized. Because typically you're bounding around in someplace that doesn't have normal atmospheric pressure. And it's got to keep you, your temperature regulated.

• 38:49Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Warm when it's cold out and cool when it's warm out, and that can change on a dime.

• 38:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depending on what side of you is facing the sun, for example. And so, and you want it to be flexible so you can still bound around a planetary surface and maybe do science experiments, or, or just do sports, right?

• 39:06Eugene Mirman?

  Right, it's true, maybe you want to play space tennis.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, or something. And when you do that, you want to have the mobility that a, that a, a flexible spacesuit would, would give you. So I don't know the latest on that, and I should check up on that.

• 39:19Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, if anyone is going to spend meaningful time on Mars, I'm thinking they're going to want one of these spacesuits.

• 39:24Eugene Mirman?

  For sure. Cause they're gonna want to do Mars Tai Chi. They're gonna do Mars cooking classes.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly.

• 39:31Eugene Mirman?

  Um, okay, Tyler wants to know, would a somewhat self-sustaining moon base drastically improve the likelihood of a manned Mars mission?

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, however, I, I think so. However, I don't know what it means to be a self-sustaining moon base, because where are you getting your food?

• 39:47Eugene Mirman?

  Well, I'm sure you'd bring a cow and you'd eat just a little bit of the cow. You'd keep it alive, like in that horrifying movie, The Road.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, yeah, you, it would give us a lot of training, just to moving stuff to another location, pitching tent.

• 40:02Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but we shouldn't think of that as a stepping stone to Mars. It's way better just to go straight to Mars if you're going to explore space. But, just to, I happen to like the moon as a target for this.

• 40:14Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's within a media cycle away. It's like three days away.

• 40:18Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, when you launch from Earth. So you can check up on the astronauts, how you're doing.

• 40:22Eugene Mirman?

  You could build like a sort of French Quarter, like in New Orleans, but you could put it on the moon and you could have some jazz.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Eugene Mirman?

  You could make it fun.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make it, it'll be a place, an outpost.

• 40:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A human outpost. So I think we'd, there'd be a lot of training, uh, for what it is to do that.

• 40:36Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, what kind of supply chain of food you would need and other resources, and do you send up a doctor who can then, you know, surgeon? You know, we, we get to think about how to make that happen.

• 40:47Eugene Mirman?

  How, if you had no training and you went into space, how sick, like, would you die or would you just be very upset?

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what would be weird is if you have a group of people that go to space, and then a virus mutates, and then it affects just that group of people because you're all breathing the same air.

• 41:02Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eating the same food and touching each other's bodies. And so, so then you have some weird virus that you didn't have. Uh, vaccine against because it just arose in that moment. And so that, so maybe this is the kind of thing you, you need confidence that you have way better control over the spread of viruses under those situations than what anybody is exhibiting today.

• 41:26Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:28Eugene Mirman?

  Um, okay, so here's a question, uh, Ramblin Scott asks, oh, never mind. Yes, how much can you bench? But I'm gonna, I meant to ask.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't you ask me? Why, why?

• 41:38Eugene Mirman?

  Sure, okay. Ramblin Scott wants to know, how much can you bench?

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much can I bench? Uh, so.

• 41:45Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, he didn't ask me on what planetary surface.

• 41:49Eugene Mirman?

  No, but I think it's implied, uh, that it's Venus.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Venus has approximately the same gravity as does Earth. And so, uh, I'd be benching about the same. Mars, however, if you saw The Martian, there's the obligatory image of, of Matt Damon with his chest sticking out and his six pack abs. Cause every movie I think has to have a guy with six pack abs.

• 42:14Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that we can completely delude the entire heterosexual female population into thinking that this is just a common thing on guys, right?

• 42:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, people talk a lot about how, uh, men are subjected to these terrible standards. And it's so exhausting for us.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't live up to those standards.

• 42:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, and, and where have they heard that before? Right?

• 42:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so he's buff.

• 42:40Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, and there he is, you see him lifting these huge canisters up and down this, on, on the Carrie basin of the rover. And you say, well, he's buff, so that's why he's doing it. No, he was doing it because he's on Mars.

• 42:52Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if it weighs 300 pounds on Earth, it weighs 120 pounds on Mars. And so you can pick it up and put it, uh, put it where he wants. So they did this in the movie, they understood this.

• 43:05Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yes, it does help to be strong, but he doesn't have to be as strong as you thought he was.

• 43:09Eugene Mirman?

  Right. So then that would be a fun, so then boxing would be, or like ultimate fighting would be much more fun to watch on Mars, cause everybody would be so powerful.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, no, you're not more powerful. Your punch doesn't have any more punch to it.

• 43:20Eugene Mirman?

  You could just lift a bigger thing. You could throw a bigger person.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you can throw people, yes.

• 43:24Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, sorry. It would be fun to watch a throwing contest of people.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A judo match.

• 43:29Eugene Mirman?

  Exactly.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, yeah, you can flip people, uh, all over. So, so I would, I, I would bench on Mars, um.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, you, so what you, you take how much I bench on Earth, divide by point four.

• 43:42Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you get a bigger number when you're done, and that's how much more I can bench.

• 43:45Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 43:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bench on Mars. But you notice I didn't say how much I can actually bench.

• 43:48Eugene Mirman?

  I'm, I'm sure on Mars, it's between three and 700.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, actually, that's a very, very good estimate.

• 43:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, let's go to a lightning round.

• 43:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:56Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bell works?

• 43:57Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, let's do it. Uh, Higgs wants to know, how fast is the speed of dark? If dark matter emitted light, would it be the same speed?

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, everything that is electromagnetic energy goes at exactly the same speed. So if your dark matter emitted any kind of light, which we know it doesn't, but if, if it did, and it had any kind of species association with light at all, even if it's a new, uh, uh, band of light, because the light we know and love, microwaves, radio waves, gamma rays, these all bands of light, all travels at the speed of light. So do gravity waves, for example. So if it's gonna send out energy through space, we're pretty sure it's gonna be moving at the speed of light.

• 44:33Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:34Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, go.

• 44:35Eugene Mirman?

  Um, what and why does it, uh, what and why does it glow at the center of galaxies?

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the center of galaxies, most, anytime we've had enough data to look in the center of a galaxy with precision, we find a supermassive black hole flaying and dining upon stars that come too close. And in the act of doing so, they become highly radiant just outside of their event horizon.

• 44:59Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yeah, so watch every center of every galaxy, including our own.

• 45:03Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, I'll watch it.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 45:05Eugene Mirman?

  Do he-

• 45:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watch out for it.

• 45:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah. Do heavier elements get produced in black holes, like a star with nuclear fusion?

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If heavy elements get produced in the centers of black holes, I'd, I wouldn't know, maybe, because matter is so dense and under, we know what matter does under very dense situations.

• 45:24Eugene Mirman?

  And what is that, in your opinion?

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you can merge nuclei and make heavier elements. This is what goes on in the centers of stars. So I, I do not know what the matter is doing at the center of the black hole after it has passed through.

• 45:36Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I, I ha- I do not know. Yeah.

• 45:39Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. Uh, when will New Horizons overtake the two Voyager spacecraft as the furthest man-made object from Earth?

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it turns out, turns out, the Voyager, and I did, I ran the numbers on this. Voyager 1, which is the farthest spacecraft from Earth, will actually never be overtaken by-

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By New Horizons, the New Horizons missions, mission to Pluto. Because the Voyager missions got gravity boosts upon going out and moving past Saturn.

• 46:12Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Past Jupiter, got a huge gravity boost. And at that point, it had more energy to leave the solar system than the New Horizons mission ever did. And so, the New Horizons mission, we wanted there to get quickly, so we didn't have time to chase planets to borrow some of their orbital energy to speed us up, not borrow, take. So with their orbital energy to speed up, they went basically straight to Pluto. But if you're not going straight, you can meander, and as you meander, then you can steal orbital energy from planets and go out real fast. It'll never overtake it. Voyager is the, is the crown winner of that contest.

• 46:49Eugene Mirman?

  For now.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eugene, yeah, I think you gotta call it quits, like, right there. That went fast.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guests, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.