Cosmic Queries: Exploration

In this Cosmic Queries episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan questions about exploration, from the depths of the ocean to the outer reaches of the galaxy and even to other dimensions.

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?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And I also serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium. Come visit us sometime. And you can tell the front desk that you know me and you listen to StarTalk and they'll still charge you to come in. But one and all are welcome. And I'm here with my co-host for the day, Leanne Lord. Leanne, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Thank you. Hey Neil, how are you?

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh, you should move in.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I really should. I love it here.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Leanne is a professional comedian? That's what you like pay your rent off of this?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Rent? I'm stealing cable, I'm stealing lodging, what? I'm bootlegging everything I got.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I brought her on because we're in the cosmic queries part of StarTalk Radio. Sometimes I think of it as StarTalk after hours, or after hour. So it's where your questions come to us and we solicit them in advance. They come to us from all manner of social media. Sometimes Twitter, sometimes we have a phone and number, you can lay down your question. Also on Facebook. So let's get right in. And the topic today is exploration.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exploration of land, sea, air, and space.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yes. It covers the gamut.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's also perhaps exploration of the mine, but maybe that's another show.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  That's another show.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will do that. And so you've got the questions. I haven't seen them before?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I can't answer them, I'll say next.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Well, hopefully none of these will completely stump you.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's go. Because it's not a stump session. It's really just what do I know and how can I share it with our listeners? This is a give back hour. Yes.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  And well, we will start the give back with Dave Matthews Scott. And he wants to know-

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another three named person.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Another three named person.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hi, Dave Matthews Scott. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Well, in that case, I'm Leanne Sherry Lord.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have sherry?

• 2:17Speaker 01

  I do.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sherry like Sherry, Sherry baby.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Already regretting the share, already regretting it.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Alright, uh, well, Dave Matthew Scott wants to know if humans were to travel frequently into space, in your opinion, what is the most practical way to achieve this? For example, does a space elevator have real merit or are we stuck with chemical rockets?

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, there's a lot in that.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yes, there is.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it all comes down to how cheaply can you do it? Right now, you wanna, you wanna get your butt into space, it's 20 million dollars, and the Russians will sell you a seat. NASA was not into selling seats, cuz I, I think it was between you and me, don't tell anybody, but between, I know we're in front of microphones.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Stop listening, everybody.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think NASA wanted to retain that right stuff image, you know?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the astronauts are the right stuff, and if you can just fork up 20 million and go, are you the right stuff? Well, you're right stuff cuz you have the money, not because you had the moral fiber or physical fortitude. So I think there was some protecting of the astronaut iconography going on there. And in Russia, they just simply didn't care. You got, we got the money, you do it. So 20 million.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  So he's the real capitalist here, everybody?

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, there you go, there you go. Our sworn enemy of the Cold War, communist, is now charging us to get up into space. So that price has to come down.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Just a bit, or at least a coupon.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what you could do? You can have a lottery, and the winner gets to fly in space. I'd certainly, I'd buy a bunch of lottery tickets for that opportunity.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd put my name in the hat.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. And so it's a way to still afford something that's expensive before it becomes really inexpensive and common and doable. There was a day where if you, to fly in an airplane was, was reserved for only the most privileged people in the world, cuz there weren't many airplanes, and it was expensive, and plus there was a risk, some risk involved. So I can foresee a day where our access to space is so routine and so, that the price has dropped, where it's an optional vacation destination.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  So you're saying there's going to be a coach class? And they're going to be monitoring your carry-ons?

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know that in Florida, there's an active spaceport organization that wants to make sure that Florida becomes the vacation destination for space tourism, just as it is the number one destination for tourism in the country, primarily through all of the theme parks in Orlando? So they have the infrastructure for it.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Right, of course.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For handling high crowds on vacation. So they want to do this for traveling back and forth to space as well. A space elevator would be cool. That's a space platform suspended above the equator, twenty-three thousand miles up. Above, you know, from, from Earth's center and it orbits at just the same rate that Earth turns. So it appears to hover over Earth's surface, even though you're both moving, you plus it. But if you're both moving at the same sort of angular rate, then it's, it's as though it hovers right there. And then you lower, lower down a cable, hoist yourself up and you get into orbit for the cost of an elevator ride. Rather than the chemical rockets that we now use. That is, would probably be the first cheap way to do it.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I hope that we just, it gets, it becomes a competitive with going to the Bahamas, because then I'd still be going into space.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Building up my frequent flyer miles.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that would be awesome.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it?

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One trip, man. How many frequent, yeah, frequent space miles. That'd be, that would work. Yeah. What else you got?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  All right. I have another three named person. Daniel Tank Astles.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Middle name Tank?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Tank, middle name Tank.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Dude, what's your night job? All right. Uh, Tank wants to know, since NASA has been working on the ion propulsion thrusters more frequently. How much longer do you think we will need to wait until they will use one to send us to neighboring planets?

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, so ion propulsion, that's, so what you have is a mini nuclear reactor. That heats up a gas and that gas, it ionizes the gas, which means it rips off electrons from the atom.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  That mean?

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all that ionizing means. You're ripping electrons off of the atom. And then the atom then sort of, the atom and the electron live together in a soup. Normally the atoms grab all their electrons back and you have a regular gas. You heat it up, the electrons get ripped off. Now you have a gas where there's free electrons roaming around, running, running free. And that's a plasma. It's, we have a word, it's called a plasma. An astrophysical plasma. And this kicks out ions, kicks them out. You can set up a cavity so that out one end, a very fast moving ion flies out that end. That's your exhaust.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For your engine and you recoil from the flow of that ion out the back of your spaceship.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you might say, well, how fast can that get you if it's just an atom? The point is, the recoil of your ship from the atom is higher per amount of mass that you're trying to move than any other form that we have. So ion propulsion accelerates you slowly, but very efficiently. And so ion propulsion would be better not to move humans around the solar system, but to send cargo in advance of where you're headed.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because who cares how long it takes the cargo to get there? You know, you've got places to go, people to see, the cargo can take however long.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Well.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You send the cargo ion, we send you chemical and you're good to go. Landing on the beach with the beer ready waiting for you. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We've got to take a break. We'll be right back with Cosmic Queries.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist. It's with me in studio, Leanne Lord. Leanne.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Neil.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a Twitter person.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I love Twitter.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You thrive in the Twitterverse. As do I. I love the Twitterverse.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I really do.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it an interesting place?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  I love it there.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I've met some very interesting people.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what it means to meet someone in the Twitterverse, but okay.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the dating scene that hard in person?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't mean it like that. I actually, a lot of-

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's my Twitter mate, you know?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  A lot of StarTalk fans out there.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, excellent. And so, just to get it right, you're L-E-I-G-H-A-N-N.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leanne Lord.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  L-O-R-D. Yep.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we can follow you with that one word.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One word name. And I follow you, so I like your words of the day especially.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And at StarTalk, we tweet, StarTalkRadio. And also, you can find us on the web at StarTalk, StarTalkRadio.net and on Facebook. Just look for StarTalkRadio. We're there. You can like us. So today, this is our Cosmic Queries After Hours.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  My favorite.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's my favorite, one of my favorites too, and we're talking about exploration. And these are questions sent in by, by the listeners of StarTalk.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they knew the topic was exploration of land, sea, air, and space.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So bring it on. And I haven't seen these questions before, so if I don't know the answer, I'm just gonna say, "Next."

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Well, then, I will give you the next question from James Phillips.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  And James says, "I wonder if Mr. Tyson believes an interstellar probe to Alpha Centauri is feasible with real-world technologies such as fusion or fission propulsion or laser-boosted solar sail."

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in fact, okay, first, yes.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Well, I could've done that one. Can I try it?

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to the Sun. It is not itself a star. Most people don't know that. It is a triple star system. And the nearest, so two stars orbit each other and a third orbits those two. And the nearest star in that system is called Proxima Centauri, aptly named, if you know your Latin. Is that Latin or Greek? Proxima.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  I think it's Latin.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You think it's Latin?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  I do.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Which means I'm probably wrong.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well, we'll take it. And Proxima Centauri is 4.1 light-years away. So if you were sat on a beam of light and we watched you take this journey, it would, we would sit around for 4.1 years, 4 and 1/10 years before you arrived, if you got there by the speed of light. But the question was, with our technology, what could work? The fastest spaceship we have ever launched is the mission to Pluto, the New Horizons ship. Why was it the fastest we've ever launched? Because the first rule of scientific experiments, you want to be able to conduct the experiment before you die. All right?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Note to self.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they, so they, they created a relatively small, low-mass probe and put it on the biggest rockets we have to get it out there as fast as possible. It took the astronauts three days to reach the moon. It took this, it took New Horizons, upon being launched from Earth, took about six hours to cross the orbit of the moon. That's how this thing's booking, all right? So if I put you on that spaceship and didn't aim it to Pluto, and I said, "Let's send it to Alpha Centauri," it would take about 75,000 years.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so if the question is.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna need a really big suitcase.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, can you get there? Or you have to go with a set of very fertile people. So that multiple generations down the line, they will arrive and they will be your distant descendants.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so all of these methods, yeah, so ion drive and nuclear drives that can speed that up a bit, maybe you'll get there in 10,000 years. You're not getting there in a year. We don't, we don't have the power to do this yet.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got, really gotta wait for warp drives and wormholes and things that right now live only in science fiction.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Right. And don't forget Fold Space from, uh, from Dune.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fold Space, well, that's kind of like a warp drive.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  That's like warp drive, yeah.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  I'm not sure which predates which, but, uh, I'm just.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dune, well, the movie was 1980s, but the book's 1950s, I think.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  So that's predating the Star Trek universe.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would predate Star Trek, that's right.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  All right. Uh, are you ready for another question, sir?

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  All right, this is from, uh, Rob.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1950s or 1960s? We need a fact checker in this, in this room.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  For Dune?

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. The novel, I think, but, but we'll get a fact checker next time.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  It couldn't be 50s, it couldn't be.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  All right. The next question is from Rob Stuhler, and, uh, one is now, has anyone ever tried launching a craft out of our galaxy? And how would you figure out the exact speed and best point to leave our galaxy?

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, it's an interesting question.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Stage left.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First, first, our galaxy is huge. It's got 100 billion stars in it. Homage to Carl Sagan there. Billions and billions of stars.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You like that?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I do.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me do it again?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I do.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billions and billions of stars. And it was, it was a word tailor-made for Carl Sagan and the universe, right? That all, it's a threesome there. So, our galaxy, if you want to leave our galaxy, presumably you want to go somewhere. There, there are interesting destinations outside of our galaxy.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Really?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The two nearest galaxies were first written down and described by Magellan, and he thought they were just clouds in the sky that was sort of permanently affixed to the, the sky, and to this day, they're called the Magellanic Clouds.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of them is large and one of them is small, so we call the large one, the Large Magellanic Cloud. And the small one, the small Magellanic Cloud. And if you want to be in the lingo and you want to impress an amateur astronomer, you say, uh, have you seen the LMC or the SMC? See, that's what they are in their abbreviated form.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  That actually sounds better.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, these are nearby dwarf galaxies where aw- awesome star formation is going on in them. They're very gaseous and you make stars out of gas clouds.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're cranking. And so that'd be a good place to visit.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, but if you want to go to the nearest sort of full red-blooded galaxy, it'd be the Andromeda Galaxy. That's two million light-years away. And it sounds far, but it's the closest big old spiral galaxy like us. It's a little more muscled than we are, but it's otherwise our twin.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Well, what do you mean by that? More muscled?

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More muscled. It's more mass, it's a little bigger, but it has the same shape, the same morphology as we do. It's a spiral galaxy.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With spiral arms and a nucleus and a supermassive black hole in its center as we have a supermassive. But ours is much lower mass. So some people have black hole envy, you know, when they hear, oh, their black hole's bigger than our black hole. But if you want to go places.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I, who are the people who say this?

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Who, where are you hanging out, Neil? I'm, now I'm a little worried about your social life.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black hole envious people. So, so, so there you have it. Those are destinations, but of course, again, we need ways to get there. And, oh, which way would you go? I would go along, you would, you would, why not take advantage of the rotation rate of the galaxy and launch yourself in the direction that the solar system is already headed? Then you get the boost of the speed of the solar system, which is a couple of hundred kilometers per second. Um, that's approximately what our speed is.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so then you head whatever gets you in that direction. That's, that's, that's why we try to launch close to the equator, because Earth's rotation is faster at the equator than at higher latitude. You're going about a thousand miles an hour at the equator. Uh, where we are here, it's about eight hundred miles an hour due east. You're going slower. I don't know if you knew that.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Did, did the complete blank look of shock on my face?

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was, it was a blank look of shock. So you want to take advantage of the speeds that the cosmos gives you. And so, uh, so launch sites want to be near the equator.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Is, i- am I revealing my ignorance and about to get fired if I ask such a basic question like, why are we faster at the equator?

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. So, uh, so, um.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Uh-oh.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whole, the whole Earth is rotating as a solid object.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, sorry. So, so watch what happens. The equator. Goes once around the Earth, once a day, right? You're standing on the equator. Mm-hmm. And how far is that? So you take out the tape measure, measure the waistline of the Earth. It's about 25,000 miles. Right? Yep. You did that in one day, didn't you? Mm-hmm. And how many hours in a day? 24. So round it out, it's about 1,000 miles an hour. Okay. Okay? Just rounding it. Round it. 1,000 miles an hour. Got it. Now, where are we? We're in New York City. We're not at the equator. The circle that New York City makes around Earth's axis is not as big as the circle you make if you're at the equator. Right. Because we are closer to the pole and we're like on a round object. Right.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so our circle is littler. Yet we still go around the Earth in 24 hours. Yes. So we're going slower. We have to be. Oh. If you go close, if you go to where Santa is, he's just sitting there saying, he's sitting in his chair, turning once a day. He's moving the slowest. Wow. He's not going 1,000 miles an hour because his circle around the North Pole is small. Or not a circle at all because he's on the North Pole. Okay. If I take you a foot away from the North Pole, how big is that circle? Let's do the pi R squared, carry the 2. That, that circle is pi times 2 feet in circumference. Okay.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I put you 1 foot away from the North Pole, pi times 2 feet. That's how far that is. Okay? That's like 6 and 1/2, 6, a little bit more than 6 feet. No, 6 pi, 6, 6 feet. You do 6 feet in 24 hours. Can't move much slower than that. No. So if you're going to launch something into space, you want to exploit the rotation speed of the Earth. You launch it from the equator is your best bet. Why do you think we launch from Florida and not from Maine? I thought the rent was cheaper. That could have been the case. Sorry. But that's why. Thinking like a New Yorker. You got it. Thank you. You know, I spent so long answering that question, we don't have time for a second one in this segment, but we got to, we have more. More segments coming. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries part. We'll be back in a moment.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, the after-hours edition. Cosmic Queries it is. It's where your questions came to us and we answer them. Well, I answer them, but opposed to me by Leanne Lord, our in-house comedian of the day.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leanne, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  No, thank you for having me, Ed.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you tweet, you know, I tweet.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I know you tweet.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tweet too.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And I retweet you.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do retweet me, but only if I earn it. Don't do it just wantin'.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  You do good, quality tweets.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're brain droppings mostly. They're just thoughts I always used to have anyway, and now I get a place to put them.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Now you have a platform.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a, here.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  And we are lucky for it.

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sharing them with all who want to give it attention. But from your tweets, I learned where you are in the country, where you do your routines.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that's great to follow you that way. So you got more questions for me?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I do.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I haven't seen these. You're picking them yourself, reaching into the question box. What do you got?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  I am. And next up is from Keith Clinton. And Keith says, do you ever think we'll have enough energy to explore the higher dimensions? And is that pursuit translatable to our explorations in space? Like, for example, could the LHC become the engine for a thousand-year ship?

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Next question. No, actually, we don't know how to get out of our own dimensions. We just have no clue. Assuming there are higher dimensions and modern physics suggests that that's likely.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we only have access to the three spatial dimensions, and we are prisoners in the fourth of those dimensions. That would be time.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are prisoners of time because we are forever locked in the present, transitioning from the past into the future. We don't have access to the past. We don't have access to the future. Whereas in our other three coordinates, X, Y, and Z, height, width, and depth, you can move to the left and to the right. You can move up. You can move down. You can move forward. You can move back. You can move within the coordinate system of space.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But not in the coordinate system of time. And modern physics suggests that there are more dimensions than just these four, that there's another six, possibly another seven dimensions.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Really?

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know how to access those dimensions. And if you want to go to a dimension that is not even...

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A part of our world, what would that even mean? There was a book written about this. I forget, late 1800s, it was called Flatland by Edwin Abbott. We need a fact checker to get the right year that this was. I think 18, late 1880s, 1890s. We'll find out. Flatland by Edwin Abbott.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it described a world where you had people who were shapes. So you were a triangle and I'd be a square and someone else would be a pentagon. Well, in fact, your status in society was measured by how many corners you had, how many edges you had.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  So circles got no dap.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a circle, you ain't got no side, you got one side that goes completely around. So our in-house fact checkers are Edwin Abbott, 1884.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that pretty good, right?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yes, that was excellent.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1884. In fact, I've just been recently been asked to write a guest forward to a new edition, a sort of a, a, um, a new printing of that book. It's still in print and it's, it explores what this community of shapes do when one of them pops out of their world and sees three dimensions.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't see a triangle anymore, they see a pyramid. The square doesn't see a square anymore, it sees a cube. And it's, it's mind blowing when you think about it because there's a whole other way of seeing information about what's sitting there right in front of you. And so I, it could be mind blowing if any of us popped out of our domain and saw a higher dimension, what that would even mean, what that would feel like.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Right. And, and given how limited our senses are, could we really perceive that properly?

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our senses have no way to, to embrace what that is.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might be that we have no way to even describe it.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because our brains are forged on the, you know, the planes of the Serengeti distinguishing that which will eat us from that which we can eat ourselves. And that is the structure of our brain. And so to embrace a higher dimension, I wouldn't know how to get there. And if we did, I wouldn't know how, you might have to bring a poet with you. A line that resembles some, a comment made in the movie Contact when Jodie Foster's character went and visited the alien. And she couldn't describe it. She said, "We should have brought a poet."

• 23:24Speaker 01

  That was, oh, that's beautiful.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that you, when you run out of words, you need a poet at arm's reach who can take over for you.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Finally, a job.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  So we don't know how to get there, and if we did, we don't know how to act.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. That's the answer to that great question.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  All right. Uh, next question is from Matt Valdez, Valdez.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, I'm sorry. By the way, if you could access another spatial dimension,

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you could never be contained within a prison.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  True.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd have to have a dimensionality of the prison matching your access to those dimensions. So in other words,

• 23:58Speaker 01

  So you're already thinking about incarceration, so we're gonna get there and act the fool. So we're gonna need to incarcerate somebody. All right.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I put you, surround you by six walls, I mean, just ceiling, floor, four walls around you, six sides, and you're in prison. Do you know what that's like? That's like taking an ant that's sort of only knows the page on which it walks and drawing a square around it. So you're in prison.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  No, I'm not.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, okay, so what can an ant do? It can step out of the page and go over the square and come back out the other side. But they had to access a higher dimension to do that, the third dimension. I lock you in a prison cell. If you have access to the fourth dimension, just step into it, go out of the cube, and then step back into your, step out of your three dimensions into higher dimensions, then step back in outside of the cell that previously kept you imprisoned.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Hmm, this is almost feeling like the, the premise of the Gunslinger series that Stephen King does.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I don't, I'm sorry, I'm not that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I'm incredibly geeky.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We gotta finish up this segment, but more cosmic queries when StarTalk Radio returns.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries portion. So, Leanne, you tweet, you know I tweet too.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  I know you tweet.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tweet at Neil Tyson.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  I love your tweets.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I retweet you.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're mostly cosmic brain droppings, you know, I mean, there's no point to most of them, but they're just the thoughts I have anyway, and now I have a place to just put them, so.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  And we're lucky for it.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you, thank you. But your tweets I follow because you not only tweet cool stuff, but I've learned where you are in the world.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's great. And occasionally, you're in the Middle East.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Occasionally.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Talking to troops.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I'm in the Middle East.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is awesome.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Talking to troops, which I love.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a legacy that is. So congratulations on that.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got another question. These are questions left to us on Facebook, and these are on explorations. What do you got?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I have a question from Matt Valdez, and he wants to know, he says, Neil, what's your outlook on the future of space travel, especially the prospect of manned Mars missions, following this year's election, and what do you think the future of NASA is if it stays on the course it is now?

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, you know, I wrote a whole book on this, you know.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Well, if you could just chunk it down.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'd be lazy, say, go buy the damn book, all right?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Well, not lazy, but a nice plug.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A nice plug. Cheap plug. Yeah, the book is Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. So it's really all about that. But you don't have to read the book. You can saw a talk that I gave, you can see a talk that I gave for C-SPAN, Book TV. Go on my website, look for Book TV, and then you don't have to buy the book. You just listen to me talk about it. It's the only book talk I gave on that book. But I can summarize, because for the benefit of this listening audience, in the light of the recent election results, Obama gets reelected. Obama has a plan for NASA. He's been accused of not having a plan, or killing NASA. He's been accused of ruining NASA, right?

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not the only thing that he's been accused of ruining.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  I was about to say, yeah, there's a lot on that list.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's not on that list. Let's get to the NASA item on that list.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Okay, page eighty-seven.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so he's been accused of, for example, killing NASA because he ended the space shuttle program. He didn't end the space shuttle program. It was preordained by a board that was set up to analyze the Columbia disaster, the space shuttle that broke up on re-entering the atmosphere.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And why did that happen? What is the cause? How can we make sure it doesn't happen again? A board was set up. This is under the watch of George Bush. And what did we find out? They call for the ending, the phasing out of the space shuttle. Because deeming it too dangerous and the aging fleet will not allow access to low earth orbit with the safety record that we want and require it to have. So Obama inherits this. And so we end the space shuttle under his watch.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Technicalities.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he gets blamed for that. All right, fine. Rational people understand that he had nothing to do with this. However, what he does have something to do with is his own space plan going forward. And I was there when he announced it, all right, in Kennedy Space Center. He comes in, swagger's, you know, man.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  He does have swagger.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He comes off of Air Force One, you know, struts down the steps, and he had Buzz Alden with him, all right. So they come in, and he describes his plan. What is it? He said something interesting that received applause at the time. He said, you know, we're planning to go back to the moon now, but really, because that's what's in play, that's what's in place out of the Bush administration. And so it was like, all right, we're planning on the moon, but wait a minute, we've been there, done that. I paraphrase.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I felt that.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You felt the paraphrase.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I did.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been to the moon, so why not put our sights farther? Let's think about Mars, asteroids, deep space. So I want to rearrange NASA so that.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Its next place it goes is not the moon, but Mars and beyond. And that was an ovation, okay?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  It sounds great.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First time I, first time I'd ever heard a president talk about visiting asteroids and going into deep space. So that sounded good. And, and so, but then I thought to myself, wait a minute, you know, afterwards, I said, wait, there are people now designing rockets to get us to the moon. Now we're not going to go to the moon? What happens to these engineers? And the, the whole workforce that was tooled to make this happen to lose their jobs?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I really can't believe that.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what happened.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Couldn't they just be reassigned?

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just NASA jobs, it's jobs within the industry that supports NASA. With Lockheed Martin and Boeing and, you know, all these, the aerospace infrastructure of the country. Okay? That's right. And so, so, so what is the future? Obama's plan will have astronauts going to Mars, but when? In the 2020s, the 2030s?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm thinking, that's a president to be named later on a budget not yet established, leaving me very low confidence that his plan will work.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want NASA's budget to be high enough so that we don't have to stretch out this research to going into the new propulsion that'll get us to Mars. Give me a real budget. Let's make it happen now so we can go to Mars on a time scale that we can all talk about and energize society. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries. We'll be right back.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back at StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, here with Comedienne Leanne Lord.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you prefer comedienne or comedian?

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I will take either.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With, with whatever feels.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Whatever feels right to you.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or smart babe.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  I like that one too.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funny babe.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Smart funny babe.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. You got it. So you are reading to me, uh, questions, Cosmic Queries, because it's the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk Radio. Talking all about exploration of land, sea, air, and space. So give me one. I haven't seen these questions before ever.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Nope. Nope. And this is from Tim Kuzniar. And he says, recently, director James Cameron, your buddy.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had him run in with this nice guy over the sinking Titanic.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he got a little pissed off, but he fixed the sky for the 3D release. After I told him he had the wrong sky.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  And that is the power of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's the power of publicly being embarrassed to find out that he put the wrong sky above the thing. But anyway, that's, that's, that's another old show. Go on.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  All right. So recently, director James Cameron made news doing a deep dive in the Marianas Trench. And, uh, and a

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marianas Trench, the deepest part of Earth's crust.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know where that is?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just off the coast of the Philippines.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  I thought it was Brooklyn.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  [laughing]

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Uh, now, uh, and an event that had not taken place for decades. Why? Apparently, people haven't been there for decades. I had no idea. Uh, now, the ocean is easier to explore than space because it's right here. Why haven't we explored more of it?

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I have two answers for it. First, it's not easier to explore than space.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Proximity is not what matters here. What matters is, uh, what happens to you if something goes wrong? Okay. That's, you want to figure this out? So at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, it's five or six miles below water. The pressure outside of the vessel that goes down there, if a crack develops in the vessel,

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are crushed instantly by the water pressure that surrounds you.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Ouch.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instantly. And I have to do a back of the envelope calculation to find out how much pressure it is. But it is dangerous, and it is dark, and it is all of the above. Okay, space? What's the pressure difference between your capsule and space? It's less than one atmosphere. So, you know, you can, you can go in space with just, you know, an oxygen tank and, and a suit and a pressure. Yeah, you want a pressure suit so that you don't, but, but

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And a scarf.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A scarf.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Chili and space.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, so, but, so, the real answer to that is, it's not as easy going to the deep depths of the ocean as it may sound, simply because they're very close. Just because it's close doesn't make, mean it's easy to get to.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's first of all. But there's a better answer to this, a more accurate answer. You know what that answer is?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Uh-uh.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space is cooler.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Seriously?

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space is cool, it's just a cooler place to go. Now, am I biased? I'll tell you why I'm not biased. You ready? You ready for this?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm waiting.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, you're the oceanographer and you stand up in front of eighth graders and you say, "Come with me to the bottom of the ocean, it's awesome. We've never been there before, there might be life forms we've never find, new species, new plant life, it's dark, uh, come, it's awesome." And look, you gotta design this, the, the, the capsule that'll go down, okay? Fine, then I come behind you.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ready? Okay.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On one of the moons of Jupiter, called Europa, there is an ocean of liquid water that's been liquid for billions of years. There might be alien life thriving there, and I wanna go ice fishing on Europa, Jupiter's moon, who's with me? I win. I, I win every time.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're a geologist, you say, "Who wants to study volcanoes? They're cool, they're active, they're hot, and there's an active one over here in Pinatubo, in the Philippines, and there's this, and come with me." And I say, "Mars has the largest volcano in the solar system." There's a volcano on one of the moons of Saturn that hurls chunks of ice. It's an ice volcano that we still don't understand. Who's with me? I win.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I win every time. So, the issue here is, we should really do all the frontiers of science, all of them. Because wherever there is unknown, we ought to be able to have a funded program with scientists exploring it. But if the funding becomes a popularity contest, you're just gonna lose, because space is just cool. Just admit that.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Well, can I say, "I, I, I see your cool space and raise you the Little Mermaid"? Can I do that? No?

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, space, oh, by the way, and space now has sort of geopolitical consequences and strategic consequences. It's the new high ground. No one ever fought for the new low ground. So, space has military drivers that the bottom of the ocean doesn't any longer. It once did, by the way. Did you know that the separation of the, of the, the mid-Atlantic ridge, which birthed the evidence for continental drift? That was mapped and discovered by the Navy to try to understand where you're gonna hide a submarine at the bottom of the ocean? And, and, and it was also when they laid the transatlantic cable for communications, for commercial purposes, you had to understand what the four looked like. They used maps supplied by the Navy.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, back then, the C4 was a strategic commodity. It's not so much, not, not so much today.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 36:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there you have it.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Wow, so coolness wins.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, if it's a, but I don't want science to be a popularity contest, but I am saying, if there's limited funds and you wanna get people interested in being scientists, uh, space, it's, it's got the geology, it's got the astrophysics, it's got the engineering, it's got all the frontiers of science applied to space. Then you can spin that off and do the good stuff, do, do, do the good work down here on Earth. We gotta come to a close with StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries. Leanne, thanks for joining me again.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me again.

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, leading you to keep looking up.