Cosmic Queries: Art and Science

Explore the intersection of art and science when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice discuss van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Escher, da Vinci, Giotto, computer generated art and more.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. And we are here in studio in New York City. I got a co-host here, Chuck.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, you're not just a co-host.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that, Neil. I kind of think of myself as your favorite co-host.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep telling yourself that.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what do we do on StarTalk? I always have a comedic co-host and we talk about the universe and all the ways that it impacts your life. And with folks like Chuck in the room, you're probably gonna smile, at least smile. And if you're not rib-split by the end, we're switching him out next time.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. If you haven't peed your pants, I get fired, basically. And I will commit Harry Carey, so.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, today, we have one of our StarTalk After Hours sessions.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Cosmic Queries. And we're gonna spend this whole session just with you culling questions drawn from the internet.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  That's correct.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all of our internet presence, which is wide and varied. We got Twitter and Facebook and Google+. So, we got, the stuff is where it needs to be.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we found the ones related to the intersection, the collision, the blending of art and science.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Two great tastes that taste great together. They're like the Reese's Cup of the universe. Art and science.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got science in my art.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  You got art in my science.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that stupid commercial.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I haven't liked Reese's cups, but I'm one of the last people not allergic to peanut butter. Right. Who's left?

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  It's so funny that it's true. I never.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back in our day.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  I remember growing up. Nobody was allergic to anything.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything.

• 2:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Now I have a son. He's allergic to peanuts and to the point, Neil, that I'm such an idiot that I didn't believe the doctors who told me that my son was allergic to peanuts because I forgot that there's another genetic code that he shares, not just my strong stock.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, you didn't just birth him out of your rib like, like an amoeba, right?

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But anyway, amoeba walks around and say, hey, I want another one of myself.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Right. So of course, you know what I did? I took a little piece of little teeny bit of peanut butter.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You experimented on your son.

• 2:38Chuck Nice?

  Experimented. I was like, yeah, I bet you this kid isn't all that.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's my kid. He's not, he's not a wimp.

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  Right. So I took a little peanut butter, I put the tip of my finger, I put it in his mouth and my son went into anaphylactic shock. I'm not joking either. I almost killed my son. So.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was for the sake of science.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  It was for the sake of science. Son, you did not die in vain.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you got for me?

• 3:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh man, let's get right into this.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, coming from Google plus, this is Marcos D eight thirty one.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marcos D eight, that's his code name.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  That's his code name.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 3:15Chuck Nice?

  So, uh, what do you think of computer generated art examples, genetic algorithm based images, music, et cetera?

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm cool with it.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really, really. In fact, when it first came out, it was striking, you know, because it was different and it had a different kind of sound. But personally, I think that the computer doesn't yet know how to feel emotion.

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  Yet.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is art without emotion? That's my line. May I say that cleanly, please?

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is art without emotion? Okay. Now you can butt in.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, I mean, think about it. You know, I love me some Escher, right? The first MC.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  MC Escher.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  MC Escher?

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  I don't even think I'm familiar with MC Escher.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't hear him at the club the other night? Yeah, so, so the artist MC Escher, his drawings are like perfect illustrations of geometric forms, basically.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they're fun to look at, they're fun to get lost in, but at the end of the day, you don't take emotional ownership of it.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think the greatest art allows you to walk up to it and say, that means something to me, regardless of what the artist thought or felt.

• 4:41Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it's a communion between you and the creative energies of the artist. If it's a computer just punching out notes.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  According to some algorithm, I don't know that it can reach those same heights.

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  But now with.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe we need a computer that's like can cop an attitude.

• 5:00Chuck Nice?

  That's us, yeah.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it composes music while it's under a disturbed mental state.

• 5:05Chuck Nice?

  You need a computer that can have a broken heart. That's it. You need a computer to get dumped by a girl.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A computer that, that means the computer's a guy. Excuse me, don't you know that all computers that announce the end of the world are female?

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, wouldn't they though? Seriously.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is two minutes left before self-destruction.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not like, yo, get the hell out of there.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  And see, that's why they don't make it a man's voice, because they would actually add some urgency to it, you know what I mean? Self-destruct in ten seconds.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, the world will end.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  What they should have is a brother, a real brother, just like, yo, man, you gonna die. Get the hell out of here, what's your problem? Are you crazy? You still here?

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll, that'll work.

• 5:53Chuck Nice?

  That'll work.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll be the, the brother computer.

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  Brother computer. Oh, damn, man, you dead.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think for, if a computer were to compose the blues, it would need to know sadness.

• 6:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'd simp, I, I just don't know how that, maybe that they will come, you can program that in, but right now, no. So, yes, I, I'd be, I'm happy to call it art, but it's not the highest levels of. That members of our own species have achieved.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  So, computers can make art. It's just art that sucks.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  I'll accept that. I'll accept that.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. By the way, these look, there's like, StarTalkRadio.net, and we tweet at StarTalkRadio. And so, with our website or Facebook, just, just find us. We're StarTalkRadio. It'd be easy to find. Okay, what else you got?

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  Sounds good, man.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  This is from Nathan Giardina, which is, what, if any, influenced?

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means Little Garden.

• 6:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I think it's proper. Giardina. So, what, if any, influenced it art have on your personal desire to be an astrophysicist? What are your favorite current artists that explore science in their art? Ooh. So, those are two, you know?

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, those are two questions. I mean, we're short on time this segment. Let me take the first one, which was...

• 7:15Chuck Nice?

  What, if any, influenced it art have on your personal desire to be an astrophysicist?

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, it had no effect on my desire to be an astrophysicist, but it enhances my capacity to appreciate all the splendor and beauty of the images that derive from it.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you look at the portfolio of images from the Hubble telescope, I mean, if you, you feel it all the way. And I look at those images not solely as a scientist, but as one who is not an artist myself, but one who appreciates the art of the cosmos. We'll come back in just a moment to StarTalkRadio, the theme, art and science. Is it a collision or is it a blend? See you in a moment.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm your personal astrophysicist.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By night, but by day I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City, which is a part of the American Museum of Natural History, known to some of you for its dinosaur bones, but we also present the universe. And I got in studio Chuck Nice.

• 8:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm your private dancer by night.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not, no, not, you're telling me that? No. So Chuck, you tweet.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I do.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twitter dude. Chuck Nice Comic.

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  At Chuck Nice Comic.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, nice, nice, nice. And I like the daily dose, you know, of just humorous observations of the natural world.

• 9:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you provide.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And I want you to bring some of that to this. You're reading questions that we have culled from our various portals on the internet, the various StarTalk radio portals, and the theme is art and science.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The merging, the cross-pollination, the collision, what is it? And I think a lot about this topic, and I was overjoyed when my producers told me that we were gonna spend some time on this.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I haven't seen these questions in advance because they're your choices that came out of the compilation. And before the break, there was a two-part question, and what was the second part to that? And remind me who asked it?

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  Nathan Giardina, who says, what are your favorite current artists that explore science through their art?

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great question. Now, I don't claim artist, I don't claim to be name fluent among artists, but I can just tell you the kinds of art that I've enjoyed. For example, the big public sculptures that appear in front of buildings, you know, many cities have a budget for that.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those that tap the sky for their themes, I love them.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love, they want to invent a new kind of sundial, or they, their sort of constellation patterns. In New York City, for example, in front of the Time Life Building on Sixth Avenue, across the street from...

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  Give me a second. Time Life Building, Sixth Avenue, across the street from Thirty Rock.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Thirty Rock. Oh, he's nice.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes, look at that.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His urban geography.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  Ahah.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a huge sculpture in front of that building, and it's a big triangle.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a triangle. And people eat hamburgers on it and have no clue what it is. It is a sun triangle. Do you know that on the first day of the principal seasonal points of the calendar, at twelve noon, the sun aligns with each of those legs of the triangle?

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  I did not.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the more vertical leg of the triangle, on June twenty first, first day of summer, twelve noon, sun time, it lines up with that leg. On the shallowest leg, it lines up there on December twenty first. On the middle leg, it lines up both on March twenty first and September twenty first. It is a sun tracking device. And people just lose.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  It's pretty brilliant.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. I love it. And forgive me for not remembering that fellow's name. But sculptors, that's their artists, of course, who are inspired by the universe. I love them. I love it when, when writers, that's a form of art, they think to cast a scientist as one of their characters, instead of the cop, the lawyer, the doctor, whatever. Because there's other themes they can draw upon.

• 11:55Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm still waiting for the sitcom where there's a woman who's an entomologist, who studies bug, and she falls in love with an exterminator. That's funny. So, these are untapped themes, and I want, I want science to show up in the everyday storytelling of novelists and poets and, and all the people who, who are responsible for bringing.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Culture and the joys and the and the pains of culture into our daily lives. And do you know what the number one sitcom today is? I just learned this.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  I would have, I would guess, since you're asking.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  That it would be, um.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Taken Too Long.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with La Vernon Shirley.

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In reruns. Yeah, that's the number one. No, of course, it's The Big Bang Theory.

• 12:48Chuck Nice?

  The Big Bang, yeah.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, of course.

• 12:49Chuck Nice?

  CBS is Big Bang.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so, no, it's not high art, but it's art. They're clever writers, clever, they've got a good science advisor. And it's a science advisor being brought in to the community of writers, who are artists in their own right.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Helping to tell very fun stories about how, uh, they're caricatures, of course, but they're, they're fun caricatures about, uh, what it's like to just hang out with people who are scientifically fluent.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientifically literate. And so, I like the writers who do this. I like the sculptors who do it. I like the, anybody who has taken themes of the universe and blended it in with their art. You know what I'm less impressed by?

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People who look at a Hubble photo and say, "I'm gonna paint that."

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need you to pa- I got the Hubble photo.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Right, I already have the photo.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the photo.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  However.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take me to a new place.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  But would you not say that, uh, it's possible to take you to that new place by giving you an interpretation of what they see when they look at that photo?

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but the interpretations are just sort of color variance on what it is. Here's what you do. Take me to a vista that's inside the cloud looking back out. Take me to the surface of, t- t- take me to.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, then I'll ask you this. What do you think about, what do you think about James Cameron's, uh, Avatar, the movie? Now, there was a, he took us to a different world.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  And, uh.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As they say in Texas.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Uh, you know, and so we had different vegetation, we had different animal life, we had different, you know.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was completely informed by the vegetation on Earth and by planets in orbit around stars. And he had this background foundation of scientific information. And he said, "Now I wanna take it to another place."

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  Now, when you say.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Literally and figuratively.

• 14:30Chuck Nice?

  When you say he was informed by vegetation on Earth, do you mean that he was smoking weed when he came up with that stuff?

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Precisely. No, because, uh.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Earth, we have, you know, plants and animals that have bioluminescence.

• 14:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he took that to an extreme.

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  He did.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was cool. He thought about it.

• 14:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't just, he didn't just invent that out of, out of the ether. For everything he showed, there's some kind of physical, intellectual, artistic link back to what's go, what goes on here on Earth, except for the unobtanium.

• 15:04Chuck Nice?

  Unobtanium.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stuff that made the clouds.

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Float. That he, he pulled that one out of where the sun don't shine.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But everything else, sure. And nine foot tall blue people, I'm okay with that.

• 15:14Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except they had the USB ponytail, you know, that one with it, they just plug it in wherever they are.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  Wherever they want. Yes, yes. I know Captain Kirk would have done very well on that planet.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, he's, he gets his stuff wherever it is.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got it.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on to a Facebook question.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be Captain Kirk of the original Star Trek, uh, the original Star Trek television series.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those who were born after 1969.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's right. I forget. There's a lot of people who may not know about the original Star Trek.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or they know the later one.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  And the fact that the captain of the starch of, of the USS Enterprise was a poon hound.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Intergalactic.

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. All right.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. What else you got?

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, Facebook, and this is, uh, Heather Redding, uh, meth, wow. Meth foil, meth, uh, metholi. That's it.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather M. Okay.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Heather M. Here you go, Heather. What is your scientific reaction to Starry Night? Love it, or does it make your eyes burn?

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you mean Starry Night as painted by Vincent Van Gogh?

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  Van Gogh, Starry Night.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the Starry Night painted in 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh. And it is one of my favorite works of art of all time.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. In fact, I have an oil reproduction of it in my office.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's actually the original, but don't tell anybody.

• 16:40Chuck Nice?

  Right now, there, right now, there are, there are a ton of people breaking into Neil's office right now.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, if you look at online on YouTube and type cosmic office, there's a tour of my office and it's in the background. I don't actually point to it or mention it, but it's there.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  It's there.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I have it there. It was the, I chose it as the cover of my second book. That title of that book was Universe Down to Earth.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, no, it does not make my eyes bleed. It would if I were a scientific purist, not allowing anybody to interpret anything. But in there, no, the moon is weird, alright? The moon doesn't look that sickle shaped. No. And stars are not like that vibrato. No. And they're not that bright. No. Alright, I'm with you on that. However, I will allow that to be how the sky made him feel.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  Ah, so you're looking at this more as a representation of emotion?

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  Than an actual depiction of the sky or the cosmos?

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was, we only got a couple of seconds left here. I think it was the first picture work of art ever to be named for that which was in the background, not the foreground. The foreground, there's a, there's a cypress bush, there's a village, there's a church steeple. He didn't call it sleepy village. He didn't call it cypress tree. He didn't call it church steeple. He called it starry night. The stuff in the backdrop that framed the village is the name and the subject of that painting.

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go, background dancers. Vincent Van Gogh is your man.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're coming back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio and we're back. This is the Cosmic Queries part of our show. I like to think of it as StarTalk after hours. Chuck Nice, I got you in studio. Thanks for being here.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're helping us go through some questions that is viewer mail, no, listener mail.

• 18:59Chuck Nice?

  Listener mail.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all about the collision between art and science. And we ran out of time that last segment, but I was on a roll.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  You were Starry Night obsessed there, man, in a good way. But that brings up a question for me personally. Okay, because I heard that Vincent Van Gogh actually created more than one Starry Night.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, he did. And just before the break, I was describing the most famous of them, which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on West 53rd Street. By the way, just a couple of blocks from the Sun Triangle we described earlier in our conversation. But yes, he actually has other paintings. He has many paintings that were of the night or in twilight that showed moon crescents and stars and this sort of thing. Another, he had two other Starry Night paintings. One of them was at a cafe. It's a cafe scene and you see it's a narrow, one of these narrow European streets. And there's a little cafe and you look down the street

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and there's a sky that reveals itself flanked by the silhouette of buildings to its left and right. And that is a kind of funky looking version of... Well, what it looks, it is a recognizable constellation. That's my point. And so that unlike the famous Starry Night where nothing matches anything, he has a real constellation there. And there's another one where he's on the water's edge and you see a river. I forgot which river it is. But there you see, in fact, the Big Dipper. Not exactly a mapping of the real Big Dipper, but again, close representation of the Big Dipper. So those are a little closer to a reality. than the original one that's most famous.

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, who's the artist who composed the song?

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  Starry, starry night.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the guy, McLean?

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I always confused him with a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers in 1967. Dennis McLean?

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  I don't know Dennis McLean.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get them mixed up, forgive me. Um, I'm not doing this from notes. Uh, but anyway, so he, he was compelled to compose an entire song based on artwork, based on the universe. That's awesome. And so talk about a collision, intersection, cross pollination. You can't get more incestuous than that.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  No, you can't. I mean, serious. I had no idea it's Don, Don McLean.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don, thank you, Don McLean.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  I, uh, I had no idea that, uh, Starry Night was that far reaching and its influences. That's, that's pretty cool.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. And, uh, I was on a tour of the Museum of Modern Art and they didn't know it was me like, uh, cause that I'm an astro dude. And it's, oh, here's one he painted and here's the location and here was the period. Onto the next painting. It's like, no, no, excuse me. Get, get your ass back here in front of this painting. Cause I got more, just, just.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  Just let me tell you, let me school you on Starry Night. Wouldn't you just hate to be the tour guide that gets Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is Starry Night, let's move on. You know, by the way, I'm an idiot.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what else you got?

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, this is from, uh, Don, uh, Cancio. And I would definitely like to hear Neil's thoughts on the golden ratio and the role of mathematics in aesthetics in general.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks. That's an awesome question. Oh my gosh.

• 22:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it has been suggested since antiquity that certain proportions are pleasing to the eye.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No matter what your upbringing is, perhaps none, no matter even, uh, no matter your upbringing within a culture and perhaps no matter even what culture you derive from. And one of them is the golden ratio. Yeah. And I think it's one plus the square root of five over two. So it's some, uh, I'll, I'll look it up over the break. Um, but. I don't carry it in my head, but what it does is it tells you how wide something should be for how tall it is. Right. And that's why certain paintings, certain pictures in their frame just feel a little awkward. Mm-hmm. They don't feel pleasing and you can't even put your finger on it. It's kind of an emotional force operating on you and a hidden intellectual force that's

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  telling you, I like this picture better than that. And you might not even know why. I know why, because I'm looking at porn at that point. For me personally, I'm just saying. So you have other ratios that apply to porn. There's the porn ratio.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to check out that one. Oh, my God.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where my mind just went. Go ahead. So I like geometry. Geometry, in fact, literally means earth measurement. Geometry. And it was applied to measuring distances and along earth's surface. And earth is curved, so you get some interesting mathematical discussions when you bring mathematics to bear on earth measurement. But math, I think, is overvalued as a force in art. Because in math, there is no room for emotion. True. There just isn't.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the question is, is there something that's mathematically pure that is also emotionally rich or satisfying? And by the way, people have been thinking about this since forever. And it started with the music of the spheres. They saw planets in orbit around the sun. Well, that's a, there's a rhythm to that and the different orbits of different times. Is there a ratio of those that means something mathematically that, out of which you can make music? And it was imagined that music, you can make awesome music from the universe. And for all the music I've heard that came from the universe, it's not. I'm sorry. We've got to take a break. We'll be back with StarTalk Cosmic Equities.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your resident astrophysicist, and I'm with Chuck Nice.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice Comic.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  @ChuckNiceComic on Twitter, please.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your Twitter handle.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  That's my Twitter handle.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a handle on Chuck Nice Comic. We left off with a question about the role of geometry and geometric shapes and forms.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As informing art, because you get geometry from math. So that's math informing art. And I think a lot of it is overrated in its role. There's that golden ratio. We looked it up over the break. It is 1 plus square root of 5 over 2. So the ratio is 1 to that.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And the ratio of 1 to that, if you did the math, it's about 1 to 1.6. So something would be, of height 1, would be 1.6 wide.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very pleasing.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  And that becomes a soothing, pleasing visual effect for some reason, even though you're looking at a block of cement.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. But it's elegant cement.

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  Elegant block of cement. So now, what about my man Leonardo da Vinci?

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  And the Vitruvian Man?

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the dude inside the circle.

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  The dude inside the circle and his arms and, you know, what?

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. That was really wishful thinking, because he's, because, once again, he was imagining that, by the way, there's sort of spiritual, religious implications here, that human being is a pinnacle of God's creation, and that if math is perfect, and we are of God, then we ought to be perfect at some level as well. If not our behavior, certainly our biological form. And so he imagined that the perfect human would have these proportions, and you put the guy inside the circle, and the center of the circle would exactly line up with the belly button, and the arms would then reach out and extend to the edges of the circle. Now, it's true for most people, your reach is approximately equal to your height.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But are you going to say that that is most pleasing? Because that is not true for most people in the NBA, and they're very highly paid people. I happen to have very long arms compared with my height. In fact, they're a foot longer. Than my height.

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, which means I can punch you out.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  So your wingspan is a foot longer than your height?

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a foot, it's eighty-four inch, eighty-four inch wingspan and I'm.

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you'd have been a great boxer.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's ten inches longer, I'm six-two and my wingspan is eighty-four inches, so it's ten inches longer.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, seventy-four inches to eighty-four inches. Yeah, or I could hold your head while you swing under my arm, you know, never reaching me. Um, yeah, the classic, yeah, just give that one up, go home right after that. So I think, plus there were these metrics of beauty that people had presumed and established. The, the measures of western beauty, you know, what is the width of the cheekbone to the height of the face? And the nose to the mouth. Yes, you can measure anything and you can say that certain measurements repeat. That doesn't make them important geometric forms. It's just a geometric form that applies to that, to that standard of beauty, right?

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I'm not prepared to go and say, let's go look at geometric math to derive what is beautiful. What people are doing is finding a who everybody says is beautiful, measuring that.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  Applying the geometry to that.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, then they measure it and say, here are the beautiful numbers.

• 28:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, okay, I'm fine with that. But what I find interesting, it has been said that the most intriguing characters are not the ones who are most symmetric, but the ones that have a slight.

• 28:38Chuck Nice?

  Imperfection.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slight imperfection.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like Meryl Streep.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or Marilyn Monroe with the mole on one side.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  On one side.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and Harrison Ford, who is clearly the standout in the Star Wars series. His face is not symmetric, he has like a scar on one side of his face compared to the other. I have a scar on one side of my face, but no one says that's beautiful though. It applies to actors and not anybody else. So, so you can measure this stuff, but in the end, I, I don't know that that's how I want to decide who's beautiful. I'd rather really just take a look.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, what do you, what do you think about ratios when it comes to size and weight ratios? Like for instance, uh, certain, it's been, I don't know if it's proven, but asserted that certain hip to waist ratios, say fertility and causes a certain kind of desire in a man when he looks at a woman. Breast to waist to butt ratio.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a family show.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it's not.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  But I mean, you know, so.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you say breast to butt ratio? That's the first of those I've heard.

• 29:39Chuck Nice?

  What can I say? That's just me personally.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, well, we gotta check the, check the journals on that one.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  There may be no empirical medical evidence whatsoever about that one, but...

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, consider this, that any two numbers, any two measurements, has a ratio.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's true.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And although I look through time and I see the depictions of women in art, them ratios are all over the place, you know?

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  You're right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those Rubenesque women, and then you go to the 1920s, or the, uh, the roaring 20s, and flat-chested women was the thing, the flappers.

• 30:16Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, they were certainly not Rubenesque, and so I, I'm not here to say that math is defining what we should be, but nothing will stop you from making those measurements in the first place.

• 30:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I've already made my measurements.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna take a quick break, and Chuck, when you come back, I want to spend a minute, tell me about, you got some crazy show on, on...

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  HGTV?

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Home and Garden Television, you know, I laugh every time I think about it. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, we'll be right back.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. We're in our last segment, Chuck, this went fast, oh my gosh.

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  Just flew by.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we're talking about the intersection, the blending, the cross-pollination, the collision of art and science, a subject about which I've thought quite a bit. And you got the questions from the internet, and keep them coming.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  All right, so you know, we don't have a lot of time left, like you said, the show's kind of flown by, so why don't we enter our lightning round?

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we don't, oh, there's a lot left, is what you're saying.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I got a lot left.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I haven't seen these, you picked them, you found them.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, so there's quite a few questions left, so we're gonna kind of breeze through them.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, so this is the lightning round, and I will soundbite the answers, get through as many as we can.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  As many as we can, okay. Uh, this is from Lee, off of Facebook. Lee asks, "Are we born scientists and become artists, or vice versa? Which comes first, chicken or the egg?"

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, first of all, I have the answer to which came first, chicken or the egg, it's the egg.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laid by a bird that was not a chicken.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the answer to that question.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Dag, gone.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it? Okay, second.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you thought you were slick slipping that in there.

• 32:11Chuck Nice?

  I did, it was good.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Personally, I could be biased, but I think all kids are born scientists and learn to do and appreciate art. Because what does a scientist do? They turn over rocks and pluck petals off of roses and jump two feet into petals and each of these is an experiment on the physical laws that operate around them. They do that without being told. But what happens when they get into the classroom, then they're said, well, here's the pasta and here's the glue, you're making a pasta collage. Right? So the art projects are kind of installed there, but you send them out into the yard. When they're not running and chasing each other, they're actually exploring nature.

• 32:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my opinion, based on my observation of children and just the human species, is that we're actually born artists, but I'm sorry, we're born scientists and then adults beat it out of them later. And then, and then we're taught how to then be creative.

• 33:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, whatever. Alright, moving along, here we go.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, that was, I can do it faster than that.

• 33:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dragged on there, go.

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Do you think artistic ability could ever be learned or created through artificial intelligence? So can a computer learn to be an artist, a true artist?

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that what it will have to do is be good enough to fool an expert, whether or not it has the right motive, the same motivation that an artist does. So I think the answer is yes.

• 33:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay. What are your thoughts on sacred geometry? Is there any art or design, this is from Randy Huff, that does give healing properties? So there's the real caveat there.

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, if you see some form or geometry that heals you, that surely lives in the realm of the placebo. It is an effect that we still don't understand, a medicinal effect where if you're given a pill that has no, has no, no medical effects on you, but we tell you that it does and you then get healed? There's some percentage of people get healed. It is a not well-understood phenomenon. If it is your god who you appeal to, or your belief in the power of the doctor, or whatever it is, and it works, it's the placebo.

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. What else?

• 34:20Chuck Nice?

  So, I just, I-

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I love to have said placebo.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Placebo.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are the cool words and that is like polka dot.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on.

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, this is from Barney Atkinson. And I just have to get to this question. If art influences science, how come the International Space Station is so ugly?

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because art does-

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because art does not influence science. Art influences design of architecture and hardware. But it does not influence science. So those were engineers that had an opportunity to make the baddest looking thing there ever was orbiting the earth. And out came something that looked like some, you know, a rector set. Uh, and so, yeah, I'm a little disappointed now that you mention it. Uh, but I, I, we want to bring in some art, art and designers for when we go to Mars. Cause I want that to be the badass looking thing that's ever come off the earth.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Here's a great question. Was there ever, this is from, uh, Cesar Avila. Was there ever a painting or sculpture during the Renaissance? Or any other historical time that captured an accurate depiction of the cosmos at that time?

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, there is Giacomo's painting of the Birth of Jesus. A very famous painting in which he puts a comet.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't put comets to signify good things? The whole history of our, of civilization, where people have looked up and seen a comet. If you look at how they reacted, they said, oh, something bad is about to happen. And so he took a leap and said, well, the birth of Jesus is a good thing to Christians. And a comet is just something in the sky. And that comet is likely Halley's comet that he had seen in the sky at the time that he painted it. Because if you date back the appearance of Halley's comet every 76 years, it lines up with when he made that painting.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that is real science in a real painting. Not only that, 1066, the Bayou Tapestry. There is a dude pointing up at a comet. The comet came in 1066, and it coincided with William the Conqueror.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. That's all we got. That's all the time we've got. Chuck, thanks for being on StarTalk Radio.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  It's a pleasure.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we find you on HGTV, busting into people's homes, talking about him.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Home, strange home. I show up to white people's homes unannounced, and they say, "Come on in."

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you know the world has changed. That's happened. StarTalk Radio is brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm your host and personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.