Cosmic Queries: Grab Bag

Tune in for the most eclectic Cosmic Queries ever, when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan questions about everything from quasars and dead astronauts to Doctor Who and missions to Mars.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. Co-hosting with me today, the one, the only Chuck Nice Comic.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Hey, what's happening Neil?

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you're still doing your TV thing, Strange Home?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, Home Strange Home. It's a show on Home and Garden Television.

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't believe you're on Home and Garden Television Network.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  That would make two of us.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I told you it's my sister's favorite show. I'm waiting for her to just call me.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  What the hell?

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you just go into people's shows?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I go to people's homes, I invade their homes.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And talk about it.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  And, uh...

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a crazy concept.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  And then I talk about their house. It's cool.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get a full report from my sister and I'll let you know.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Tell her I said hi.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we are on the Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And normally we will theme them, but occasionally we get questions that don't fit any previously organized theme. And so we create a grab bag.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is gonna be our Grab Bag Cosmic Queries. And you collected these from where?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  These are collected from the internet, from, of course, the internet, but from Google Plus, from Twitter, from Facebook.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From our identity.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Our identity.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  On Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and the like.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have not seen them before, but that's just, so the answer's fresh. It's not, it was not, we're just trying to stump me.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  No, no, that's not the point.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, okay.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  But it gives us, uh, it gives us a great perspective and spontaneous reaction from you, and it makes it a lot more fun.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, give them to me.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Let's jump on in there. Uh, this is from, um, the subject of our solar system.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, also, let me know where the question came from, as well as the name. I like knowing where they come from, if you have it.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go for it.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Sure. So this is on the subject of our solar system. This is from Facebook. This is Gus Centron. And Gus wants to know, "Why do planets revolve around the sun along the same plane? So why aren't the planets lined up differently, as in perpendicularly, or, or in some other strange formation? Why do we seem to follow the same pattern on the same plane?"

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you embellished his question. Well, that's, that's what he was asking. Okay. All right. He didn't say it like that, but those were, that's what. Right. So that's, that question has plagued philosophers and scientists for centuries. Really? Yeah. And it was, well, up until the 1700s, right? Up until then, people didn't really know. And there was a great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, uh, K A N T. Right. Doesn't mean he's unable, right? C A N, apostrophe T. Exactly. He's a brilliant philosopher. And there's another guy, mathematician physicist named Laplace. And each of them came up with the idea that in the formation of the solar system, you have this huge gas cloud and everything in the, in the universe rotates, right? So you have this rotating gas cloud and it wants to collapse under its own gravity.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as it collapses, it pancakes and out of that rotating material, it makes objects. Uh huh. And so if you make planets out of that rotating material, the planets all orbit the sun in the same direction in a plane. In the same rotation. Exactly. And we have comets, which are sort of everywhere scattered around the borders of the solar system. Uh huh. They can come in at every which way. Those orbits, we are pretty sure were scattered there by encounters with planets over the billions of years of the solar system. And so when you have scattered, when you scatter gravitationally, you'll slingshot, you can end up in any which way kind of orbit.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you have comets coming in from above and below and around and retrograde around the sun as well. Ah. Yeah. So you can get comets from every which way, uh, uh, and planets all in one direction around the sun. Interesting, interesting. Yeah. So, so, uh, and. But back then it was called the nebular hypothesis, but we, we've worn it out in computer simulations. This is surely. So this is surely how it happens. Yeah, yeah. And you get it all for free. You get, everything's in a plane and they're going in the same direction together. Nice. Right. Sweet, sweet. Oh, by the way, it's so powerful is that idea that if you come upon a solar system and a planet is orbiting some other funky way, you can bet your bottom dollar. What a classic expression that is.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. You just went, uh, Don Cornelius on me.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you, you can bet your electrons that, or bet your orbital parameters that that other planet was captured from another place in the solar system, right? From another place outside of your solar system.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  So it was a rogue planet?

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rogue planet got nabbed.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  That, that joined another gang.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and it would not know that you're in a plane. It's just feeling all the gravity of everybody.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, sweet. All right. Yeah, fascinating, fascinating stuff. Let's move on. Um, okay, uh, still, still on the subject of our solar system. This is from Jason and this is from Twitter. How fast must I throw a baseball on the moon to have it orbit back around to me?

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so moon's orbital speed.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Right, basically.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I have to figure that one out in my head. So Earth's, uh, uh, the moon's surface gravity is one-sixth that of Earth's gravity. And escape velocity, I mean, orbital velocity on Earth is, is 18,000 miles an hour. And I'm just trying to think, but the moon is small. I have to do the, I have to.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  But you'd have to.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to calculate this.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Calculate the mass of the moon.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I can do that during the commercial break, uh, or during the break we take, whether or not it has a commercial. Uh, but I can do it, but it'll be less than 18,000 miles an hour.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I assure you, it'll still be faster than you can throw.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Okay. And there is your real answer.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the actual answer we're looking for.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Your real answer is you need to do some more curls and pull-ups. You need to do a few more pull-ups before you attempt this.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  18,000 miles an hour is about five miles per second on Earth. So some smaller fraction of that, but still pretty fast.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Right. And I think the really, really wants to know is if you throw a rock on the moon or a baseball on the moon.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's coming back down.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  It's coming back down.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you can awesomely throw it, but it's still coming back down.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  It's still coming back down, right. Cause, okay, that makes sense.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  All right, all right.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else you got?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Let's go to, uh, Alex Douglas. Long one, long one. I'm gonna read it though. You mentioned in a recent StarTalk radio that one hundreds of tons of meteors collide with the Earth every day.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every day.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And obviously they're rarely.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there's some uncertainty there, but a nice round number is 100 tons.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's still bad.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  It's still a lot.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Obviously, they never make it to the ground. I don't know the average size, but I assume they're small, and thus, there are many, many of them. So when we send something into space, be it a satellite manned mission, do we just rely on low probability of these colliding into our spacecraft? Have you done any calculations regarding the probability of being hit by a meteor while in a space suit? Or considering the satellites are in orbit for many years, how much time needs to pass before we should expect to see one of these collide with a meteor and blow the hell up? I put that last part in.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so stuff gets hit all the time.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, these, what's the size of these meteoroid? They're like the size of a, a, a blueberry.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or pebble, a pea kind of size. That's what you're, that's your average shooting star.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the bulk of that 100 tons a day. And yeah, it hits spacecraft. In fact, Hubble has a safe mode when we have a meteor shower, where the probability will go up, we close that puppy up. We just, you know, put the electronics in safe mode, close the, the opening.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, because you want to protect the mirror.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But yes, uh, the, the space station is hit all the time. Um, and they, they have some repair kits, you know, you can go out, well, sorry, they did in the movie. Actually, well, we'll pick this up after the break. You're listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. The grab bag.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, we get questions and we collect the ones that relate to one another and, and we put them in for special shows, but now there's just like the bottom of the barrel here.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, well, yeah.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or maybe it's the top of the barrel.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, it could be the cream that rose to the top.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is, but it's just stuff that didn't group with anything else, and that, and that's great. And we left off, someone wanted to know how fast he'd have to throw.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  A baseball. To have it orbit back to him. On the move.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he can catch it.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  So he could catch, so throw it in one direction, turn around, wait for it, pop.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I did the calculation, I think I did it right here.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  I, I saw you actually make these calculations.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  During the commercial.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  By hand, on a piece of paper. I must say, I am terribly impressed.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called the Brain App.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  And tell me about it.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Try to get one.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Where can I get one of those?

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, alright, so I did the calculation, and I get, uh, basically, it's two ninths of our own speed, where you can throw it and catch it coming back the other direction. And so, two ninths of eighteen thousand miles an hour is two thousand miles an hour.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  So you'd have to throw the ball at two thousand miles an hour.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And then you can turn around and wait for it to bean yourself.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And kill you.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a ball going at that speed will explode your head to smithereens.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you seen the, uh, uh, who's that pitcher who threw a ball and it hit a pigeon that flew by?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yes, I've seen that video.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's like, there was nothing.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Nothing left of the doggone bird.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the, of the bird.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And that was only ninety-two miles an hour.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so, so, yeah, if that, something at that speed hit his head, if he's not a good enough catcher, yeah, that would be a bad day, yeah, he'd be headless body there, right. Yeah, talk about getting beaned. Yeah, so that's, uh, just to close out that question about how fast you'd have to throw it. Okay, what else you got?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Alright, let's move on to Dave Caolo. Dave Caolo, and this one comes to us from Facebook, and Dave wants to know this. There's a lovely romantic song called Fly Me to the Moon. Fly me to the moon, written by Bart Howard in nineteen fifty-four.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I imagine you've heard it. One line is, "Let me know what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars."

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So. What is spring like on Jupiter and Mars?

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so Jupiter doesn't have a surface for you to stand on. So it's not an interesting place to visit for that in that respect.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can walk around on its moons. That's kinda cool.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Has plenty of those.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plenty of those, and they're all hard surfaces and that light gravity that still holds you down.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and we don't know that Jupiter goes through seasons. Seasons come about when your axis is tipped.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either towards or away from the sun and the heating on the surface gets higher or lower and so there's a thermal fluctuations.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Over the year that you took to get around the sun and that's what happens with us. On Mars, Mars' axis is tipped.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About 24 degrees. Almost the same as ours.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  That was good.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  So that means Mars has distinct seasons?

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it rotates once a day, a Martian day, but that's slightly longer than our day. So Mars has very close parameters to that of Earth. Mars has seasons. It has winter, spring, summer, and fall.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but without plants with leaves to drop, we can't think of a fall. There are places on Earth where there's not much of a fall.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the equator, right?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The equator is like the same amount of sun every day of the year.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, you can use something called the mean value theorem. Very cool, a variant of the mean value theorem to prove that that has to be the case. Because if, if in, you know, June, July, August, it's summer. In the northern hemisphere.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Winter in the southern hemisphere.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is it on the equator? It's something in between those two extremes, right? Swap them back, it still has to be in between.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in between everything that ever happens.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's sort of constant and the same and kind of, you know, climatically boring in that regard.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, that's why they have the saying in Hawaii, just another crappy day in paradise.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  It's every day is basically the same.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're on the equator, you can't have cyclones. You can't have storms, they know hurricanes. The hurricane won't know which way to turn.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because hurricanes go turn counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the southern hemisphere. On the equator, hey, guys, which way do I, which way do I turn?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  You know, I had an uncle who had that same problem.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I forgot I distracted myself from the thrust of the question. Did I get, did I answer?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  No, you answered the question and, and pretty doggone cool too.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Oh, so by the way.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Jupiter, no, no.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Mars, definitely.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Definitely. And you can tell winter and summer because the ice caps grow and shrink on Mars. Is that cool?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Ah, that is cool.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So summer, the ice caps shrinks in that hemisphere and it grows in the opposite hemisphere.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  So definitely distinct seasons on Mars.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Distinct seasons on Mars.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Oh dear, I'd love to summer on Mars. That's awesome. All right, let's move on. Um, this is, this is a little morbid.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so here we go. This is from Charles Araho, uh, no Araho, okay?

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles Araho.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Araho, Charles Araho.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roll the Mars. Okay, go.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  If one of the astronauts dies in space during a mission, what are the procedures that the others have to do? Does NASA have a contingency plan? I know this may seem morbid. Yes, yes, Charles, it does. But I think it's very interesting to explore. If humans are going to be traveling in space sooner or later, inevitably someone's going to die in space.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And so you want to send up healthy people to minimize that risk.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But on the possibility that someone dies, the, you're going to want to bring back the body. Okay? That's just what we do as humans. However, if you are on some mission where you, let's say it's a colony on Mars that ain't coming back, one of those one-way colonies, you bury them on Mars.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem. If you're in a planet where there's no microbes and you bury the body, the body just forever never decompose. You die on the moon, your body's just hanging out there, you know, looking like your, your grandfather asleep in the bed, right? With eyes open, whatever. It's nothing will happen to the body. We take it for granted that burying garbage will decompose it.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's active microbes doing this.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not the only one on this planet. So, yeah, you, you would, you would bring them back if you could. If you can't, then it's the space version of Davy Jones's locker.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Right. So basically you put them in the It's like Spock, you put him in a torpedo tube and you shoot him out in the space.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I had to be buried, space is so the place I want to go.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of cool, actually.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're buried in the the vacuum plus starlight.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That permeates all of the cosmos.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instead of being eaten by worms.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Right. So do you think there's any astronaut that would opt to actually come back to Earth instead of what you just very romantically said, be left amongst the cosmos for eternity?

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet if there are dangerous missions where they were at such a risk, I I I wouldn't be surprised if they had an option. Do you want to be buried in space or not?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  That that's a question they ask. Which is where I say I'm no longer going on the trip?

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, there's some of his remains that were launched on a rocket that went and crash landed on the moon. That way, when you look up to the moon, you'll always know he's there. Because if you get buried on Earth, people forget where your your behind is buried, right? I mean.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  But I can never look at the moon the same way. You just did it for me.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. Okay. So our next question is from Mary Ann Landers. She says, do you think it's a good idea for NASA or any space agency to consider a manned mission to Mars? I don't. I think we don't have the technology yet. Such a project would be a burden on the taxpayers, a PR disaster for NASA, and the suicide for the astronauts. What do you say?

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Check the way you read that. You had your finger up and you were like cop in an attitude.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  All I could tell you is I picked up a very distinct tone from Mary Ann Landers.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So first, you're right, we don't have the technology. That's why you do things that are never been done before. It stimulates the growth of technology.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  True.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, Mars is not farther away from us technologically than the moon was in 1961, when President Kennedy said, let's go to the moon before my my watch is out. Okay?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so not having technology doesn't count?

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, because it's we got rockets. We've been to Mars with crafts that don't have people.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the challenge is not as great as it sounds.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's radiation. We haven't figured out how to shield yet, but these are challenges that engineers love. It's like, bring it on. We'll make this happen. So that's not, that's a non-issue. And that's how society advances.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the next one was a burden on the taxpayer.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now NASA's a half a penny on your tax dollar. Is that a burden?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would go with a no.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I would go with a no on that. And let's quadruple NASA's budget. Now it's two cents on your tax dollar. Is that a burden? I mean, look at all the rest of what the country's spending money on, and then look to NASA and ask yourself, is NASA a burden?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Especially when you look at the benefits that you glean from the space station. I mean, that thing you're talking on to your mom.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Yeah. And when you consider that the military in one year spend the entire 50-year running budget of NASA.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want, you talk, but you know, think twice about when you say one thing is a burden relative to something else.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's actually really cheap. And I would ask you, how much is the universe worth to you? We'll be right back. You're listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. We're doing grab bag edition questions that came in through all of our media outlets. And they're all to me, not to stump me, but just, we're just gonna have fun with this.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Just have fun getting your reaction to the, uh, the questions that plague the minds of our viewers.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tangled mental roadways that sometimes plague our curiosity.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  You know, before we go forward.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I don't think we gave Mary Ann Landers.

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Angry woman.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Uh, her complete answer.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What'd I leave out? Aren't I done? No?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  No, because there was one thing she, she talked about the PR disaster of dead astronauts on a suicide mission.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we would not send them up knowing that it's a suicide mission, even if it is dangerous first. Second. Deaths on extraordinary missions of high risk have never in the past created a PR problem.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  No, the what they created are heroes.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They create heroes that are remembered forever and others that want to carry on that mission.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it happens even on Earth. The deadliest year in the history of Mount Everest with mountain climbers. The year after that had more applicants to climate than any year before. So dying in the

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Did they not hear about the people that came before? What happened?

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dare. So dying in the act of doing great things has a way of stimulating further effort to do great things.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like when the during the Columbia disaster where the the space shuttle, we lost it burning up on reentry.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To a person, you go one by one, the spouses and their loved ones of those who died. Should we stop this carnage? You know, I'm paraphrasing.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this to a person, they would say, we must continue this mission. We must continue to honor the memory of those who have died before us. So it it never is. Yes, it's bad, but it doesn't it has never in the past stopped the advance of human of human curiosity and human discovery.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Well, there you have it, Mary Ann Landers, point by point, an answer to why it's a good idea. Okay? All right.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, next question.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  All right, here we go.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, give it to me.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  This is from Ben Reish. Ben wants to know, I'm confused about what exactly quasars are? And could you break down what a quasar is believed to be? Is there one quasar around every black hole that is in the center of the galaxy? Or multiple quasars for one black hole? I researched around the internet. Yeah, let's tell us how that went. And for answers, I couldn't find anything that completely made sense. Kind of like his question.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, quasar is a

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It's a brand of television. Yeah. And pulsar is a brand of watch, right? Nice. So, uh, the fact he doesn't know what a quasar was, you know, joined the club in the community of astrophysicists up until the 1970s. We did not know what quasars were. We devoted scads of telescope time to solve that question. And what, as we came to learn the conduct of black holes in the presence of matter, we said we had a ready-made solution for what a quasar is. So what we have come to learn is that black holes, which lurk in the centers of galaxies, these are super massive black holes, in some cases, millions, and in other cases, billions of times the mass of the sun.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These aren't ordinary black holes, these are hungry monsters. And so they lurk in the centers of galaxies, and when galaxies are forming in the early universe, there's material everywhere. And if you happen to be material too close to the black hole, the black hole will dine upon you. Right. And the act of dining will force all this material to, to spiral down into the small volume. And it's when, as that happens, there's friction in the material as it descends, and it renders that material hot. Just as rubbing your hands together makes your hands warm, this happens on a, on an awesome scale. And it makes so hot that it radiates X-rays. Wow. X-rays, okay? Now that's hot. That's hot.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you radiate X-rays, how does that energy get out? It punches out through the top and the bottom of this disk of material that's trying to feed its way into the black hole. And these are jets, it is highly energetic, and this is the quasar phenomenon lurking in the center of a, in the center of a galaxy. Now, how do you turn off a quasar? How would you do it? I hope that there's a switch. That's right. So if the quasar runs out of stuff to eat,

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in its vicinity, the quasar turns off. And then it's done.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody else is orbiting at a safe distance. Black holes aren't these things that just gobble up anything it sees. You gotta wander too close. So you would expect quasar phenomena to be more common in early galaxies, galaxies long ago than in modern galaxies. And in fact, that's what we see. And we got, we explained everything. So it's the black hole model for quasars. It's no longer in contention. There's some details about the behavior of the matter, but that's on the edges of the basic understanding of this phenomenon. And so they're extremely bright in a small volume. And they primarily from galaxies that are young. And we see black holes in the center of every galaxy. We've had the power to look into. And you can say, I bet you were a quasar back in your youth.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  And you used to be a fine little quasar back in the day, girl. Now you're just an old black hole.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're gonna come back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson here with Chuck Nice. By the way, on the internet, you can find us at star talk radio.net. And it's also on Twitter at StarTalkRadio. We'll see you in a moment.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries Edition. And we're reaching into the grab bag. All those questions that didn't fit into other categories that we had previously called. Chuck Nice, you're reading them out to me. I haven't heard these before.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  No, you have not, my friend.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So give them to me.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  But you're about to hear them now. Let's, uh, let's go to Daniel. Daniel Mahelde. Now, Daniel says, hi. I was told that gravity wouldn't exist if mass wasn't in motion. As in, if we weren't moving away from the point of where the big bang happened, there would be no gravity. The person who told me this said that this was a part of a tested scientific theory, but didn't name the theory. And I can't find it on Google. Is it true?

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's been walking ever since, you know, he's afraid if he stops moving.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He would float into the air. No, gravity is uncorrelated with motion.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Look at that. See there, Daniel, you were lied to.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were lied to, and that's probably not the first time folks been doing some lying.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know you're lying to when you couldn't even verify it on the internet.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  On the internet, nothing.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even the internet said, "We lie all the time. We are not siding with that."

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Well, there you go. But Daniel, if it makes you feel any better, when you put your tooth under your pillow, there is a fairy that leaves you money.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That came out of Chuck Nice. Okay.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Okay, let's go to Walter, okay? Little, little astrophysics question from Walter.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Walter has a last name or he's going anonymous?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Just went by Walter, man.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He don't want people to know.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, Walter is in the witness protection program and wants to keep his, keep it that way. Walter says, "If a giant, huge, powerful magnet appeared one..."

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not an ordinary powerful magnet, but a giant, huge, powerful magnet.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Huge, all right, powerful magnet, appeared one light year away, out of nowhere.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Then, would it take exactly one year for magnets on Earth to feel its pull, however small it may be?

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, so, uh, magnetic force.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, if it appeared out of nowhere, a light year away.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  A light year away.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the things related to it that move at the speed of light, including light from it, its gravitational field that we would then feel, uh, any sort of electromagnetic forces, it would take a year.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It'd take one year?

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  All right, well, look at you, Walter. I got a feeling Walter already knew the answer to that question. Something just tells me he was, he was showing off.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, you know, I think he wanted to know if, if maybe, maybe magnetism moved a little faster than anything else in the universe.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  You know what? I think that might have been it too. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Cause he does specifically say magnetic force.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  So that's what, okay, look at you, look at you. All right, let's go to Derek Ho. Derek Ho, all right. "I'm just wondering why neutron stars or pulsars would have magnetic fields, given they are made of neutrons. Looking forward to hearing the answer in the next cosmic query." Well, hey, Derek, you're about to do so, my friend.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, there you go.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we call them neutron stars because most of their mass is neutron. Okay. But towards the outer edge, it's not all neutron. You have other kinds of matter that was matter before what was inside became neutrons. In other words, protons and electrons. Yes. Are the primary ingredients of matter as we know it. Correct. And you find them in, in white dwarf stars, which are also dense states of matter. Right. And they're held up by some, an interesting property in physics called electron degeneracy. But we don't have to get into that, but just know that that's what holds them up. If the power of gravity is greater than the electron repulsive force, then the electrons will get crushed into the protons. And what happens when you mix them positive charge and a negative charge?

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it. They cancel. Cancel each other out. And you get neutrons. So that's what gives you neutrons, but that's only where the pressure is greatest. And that's down in the center. Yes. In the outer regions, you get protons and associated electrons that are free to roam. And we have a spinning neutron star. You have electrons moving and you create what's called a dynamo and that gives you a magnetic field and that will accelerate particles and you get the magnetic pulsar. Wow. The neutron star, yeah. So, so the whole star is not pure neutron. So that's the, that's the base, that's getting to the heart of his question. Yeah, that, right, there's, there's. The outer edges were not enough. Outer edges are not. Not enough high enough pressure for that to happen. Gotcha. Yeah, and I calculated, because I thought in Thor, I thought the dude said in the movie, the Thor's hammer is made of the material of a dying star.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then I calculated how massive his hammer would be. And I tweeted that and I said it would be, it would have the massive of a herd of 300 billion elephants. Whoa. And that's why even the Hulk couldn't lift it, right? Right, right. So that made perfect sense. And then some guy, some like Thor geek, science guy, professor somewhere, said, no, it's not made of the material of a dying star. It's made in the material of a dying star, of some magical material in Thor's world. And he got the density of that and he said that the, the hammer weighs something like a pillow of feathers. Ah. And I, but it's, therefore it's, it's, it's spiritual forces, God's forces. I like your answer better. I so like my answer better. But I, I concede to the expert.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, our final segment coming up of Cosmic Queries Star Talk.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Grab-bag questions that came to us from all over the internet.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  All over the internet.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All, and this is the final segment.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yes, so of course, being this final segment, this has to be our lightning round.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is the lightning round. We're gonna pack in as many answers as I can.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Here we go. Let's, uh, let's start off with Steve Kramer, this one from Facebook. "In space, no one can hear you scream, but you can hear yourself. A friend and I have actually conflicting views on this. We know that there is no air to allow your voice to reach your ears, but he brought up bone conduction that might be able to get a hum of scream, okay? I told him a change of pressure would force all the air out so you wouldn't happen. What do you think?"

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not what I think, it's just what the laws of physics are.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Okay, what are those laws of physics?

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need air to move sound from you to the other person.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But air is just a thing that vibrates. Your body is a vibratory medium, and especially the rigid objects such as your teeth and your bones. So definitely you can hear your own body, uh, digestive, uh, and mouth functions in space.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Sweet, sweet. Alright, let's move on. This is from Michael Shambow. Michael says, "I just finished reading Space Chronicles and it was an absolute delight." Thank you, Neil. You can say you're welcome.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  My question is, if birds or any other animal capable of flight never existed on planet Earth, but the rest of the world didn't change as we know it, would humans have ever developed a need or a want to fly? Or would it have just taken us more time to have that need?

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As it was, it took us a long time to fly. We didn't fly until 110 years ago. So, and we've been around for thousands of years. So the existence of birds apparently didn't speed up that process.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So I think we still would have flown. We have really clever folks out there. We would have seen paper flutter to the ground. We probably would have invented a glider. Might have taken a little longer, but I so think we would have been up there flying and been on the moon.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Nice. Nice. Okay. Here we go. This is from Anthony Combs. What implications does the recent discovery of recorded temperatures lower than absolute zero have on science? Most particular, the implication that I'm seeing on the interwebs about how it exhibits properties of dark matter. This is a fascinating question.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. I read the research paper that talked about temperatures below absolute zero and I didn't understand a word. So I cannot answer that. But if you, but generally speaking, when you go to, when you take matter to a state it's never been in, when you explore the universe on energies never reached, new things rise up and new explanations for previously held longstanding points of ignorance are sometimes solved. So yeah, we can all be hopeful that people are finding new ways to take matter. So let's go.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Sweet. I like the answer. Caroline Kello. This is what she says. On an episode of Doctor Who, parts of the universe exploded due to a very complicated string of events and the stars exploded. That got me thinking. How would this affect us? If there were suddenly no more stars excluding the sun, there still was a sun in the episode. What would the consequences be?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. What would the consequences?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  What's the consequences of nothing but our solar system?

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. There'd be no consequences whatsoever. Next question. Okay.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'd be missing songs.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the repertoire, alright? Stardust memories, they don't.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Pretty much a lot of art would go away.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of art would go away. It would be, I think, a little bit culturally impoverished, but we'd still be here.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  We'd still be fine. Nice. Boom.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Derek, I've recently started watching Doctor Who, another Doctor Who question, and every now and then, or more to be, to be more accurate, every episode, they have some freaky science phenomenon, which makes me scoff at the television. Without spoiling anything, in one episode, Doctor Who's spaceship, which is a police box, tugs the planet Earth back into its regular place in the solar system after it was stolen and dumped in a void in the universe. This leads me to my question. Thank God. What would happen to a planet that somehow was being tugged throughout the universe? And is it possible to calculate how much force would be necessary to pull that planet?

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yes, and by the way, the Doctor's police box can tow a planet because, of course, the police box is bigger on the inside.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're that, then it can have any mass it wants and any power, just let the man have his day.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Cause it's interdimensional.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And let the man have his day.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But otherwise, we will surely have to learn how to start towing planets when the sun becomes a red giant, because it will expand, and if we don't move our behind farther away from the sun, we will incinerate as the oceans come to a rolling boil and evaporates into the atmosphere, and the apparate, atmosphere evaporates into space, and we are a charred ember burning deep within the gaseous envelope of the sun. We will want to live farther away from the sun. When that happens, we better figure out how to tow.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Happy thoughts. Okay.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happy thoughts. Real quick, go.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Terry Taylor.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  I know nothing about astronomy, but it, but it doesn't make sense. The most distant galaxy that we say we're looking back 13 million ti- years at the beginning of the Big Bang. Basically, how can we say that?

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How can we say that? First is 13 billion, like, 13 billion years ago, because it's taken light that long to reach us, that's how far away the damn thing is. Chuck, I don't see you as you are, but as you once were, three bil- three billionths of a second ago.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  I've changed.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the past. So the farther away you are, the more you see into its past. It's that simple.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Boom!

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, actually, I missed a bell from the previous one. There you go. We have ended StarTalk, the lightning round, Quas McCreary's edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Knights, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure. We're brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, keep looking up.