Cosmic Queries: More Space and Science with Bill Nye

Get schooled on space and science by guest host Bill Nye and Chuck Nice when they answer your Cosmic Queries about everything from evolution and carbon dating to gravity and the Doppler effect.

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.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, kids of all ages to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye here, sitting in for Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm here today with none other than Chuck Nice.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Bill.

• 0:35Bill Nye?

  And we are going to have Cosmic Queries.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are.

• 0:39Bill Nye?

  Questions from the cosmos submitted by you to Chuck. And Chuck, you not only have the questions, you have what they want to look like.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right, I do, what they want to look like, because these are their avatars from Facebook and Twitter and what have you, and we have questions from all over the internet, wherever we find a home, and...

• 1:01Bill Nye?

  Before you go any further, I just want to point out that we are excited to have GE as a partner for this inaugural video Cosmic Queries. Head over to their YouTube page to check out videos of how they are bringing imagination to life. I'm talking about www.youtube.com/GE.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:20Bill Nye?

  We have a query.

• 1:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do, let's jump right into this and go to Justin Connors, who's coming to us via Facebook, and Justin says this. "Since Mars core cooled off much faster than Earth because of its higher surface area, wouldn't it have had a much earlier start than that of Earth? That is to say, how much sooner could Mars have been habitable than Earth? Also, what kind of period of time could Mars have had to develop and sustain life, and could you compare that to Earth?"

• 1:56Bill Nye?

  First of all, this is a fabulous question.

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  It is a great question.

• 1:59Bill Nye?

  And let me say, he worded it as best as he could, but it's that, it's not just that Mars has, it's not that Mars has more surface area, it has more surface area relative to its mass.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Got it.

• 2:10Bill Nye?

  Smaller thing, it has about as much surface area as the land of the earth, the dry land of the earth.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:16Bill Nye?

  And so the number that I hear people work with quite a bit for Mars is four billion years ago. It would have cooled off enough to have liquid water running around on Mars.

• 2:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:28Bill Nye?

  So that would be, pick a number, ha- a billion or half a billion years before the earth. So maybe it is just not, it's not crazy, but it's extraordinary to say that life started on Mars. Mars was hit with an impactor about three billion years ago, stuff got tossed off into space.

• 2:50Bill Nye?

  Through home in orbits, a little mathematical fabulous thing. Uh, these rocks with living things in them landed on earth and you and I are descendants.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  From those particular microbes, so we are really Martians.

• 3:03Bill Nye?

  It could be, but I'll tell you what, tell you what it is. It is worth finding out. It is worth mounting a human mission to Mars to go look for signs of water and life.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 3:13Bill Nye?

  If we were to discover evidence of life on Mars, on that other world. It would utterly change this one. In the same way astronomy has humbled us through the ages.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:24Bill Nye?

  We found out that we go around the sun, not the other way around.

• 3:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:28Bill Nye?

  We find out that planets are, if I may, a dime a dozen, maybe even cheaper than that.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Maybe.

• 3:34Bill Nye?

  And so we're no big deal. Our star is no, our sun is no big deal starwise and maybe. Life happens all the time and it'd be worth knowing.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  As they say, your world is getting smaller and smaller and you didn't even know it.

• 3:47Bill Nye?

  Uh, I didn't write this joke, it's a good one.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 3:49Bill Nye?

  It may be a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  So, uh, okay, that's really actually a great question and, uh, pretty fascinating stuff. Let me ask you about the Mars rover though. As an addendum to this question.

• 4:03Bill Nye?

  The Curiosity rover.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  The Curiosity.

• 4:05Bill Nye?

  Cause there's Opportunity Spirit and Sojourner, but right now we've got Opportunity running and Curiosity, take it.

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so have they been able, uh, to determine whether or not there's been any, not life of course, but. Uh, rivers, streams, things of that nature.

• 4:23Bill Nye?

  What place used to be very wet.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:26Bill Nye?

  And, uh, the Curiosity rover landed in essentially a stream bed. It's crazy. You see these rocks embedded in what was ancient mud that's solidified into rock. And uh, and then Opportunity stumbled or rolled up to a layer of gypsum. This is the rock that looks, that you make wallboard out of.

• 4:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:45Bill Nye?

  And it is a mineral that only shows up when things are really wet, like clays.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:51Bill Nye?

  And so geologists, you know, they just can't get enough.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  They're going crazy.

• 4:53Bill Nye?

  Out of their minds. But what we want to do is go to someplace, if I may, even more interesting. But to get to such an interesting place, you have to be able to land more accurately. The places we land, these rovers are wide open spaces.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, of course.

• 5:09Bill Nye?

  So that we can not crash very much.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, because those are some expensive stuff.

• 5:14Bill Nye?

  And let me tell you something, okay? Opportunity, Curiosity, together, about three and a half billion dollars.

• 5:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:20Bill Nye?

  Spirit, they're not even locked. Okay, anybody could just walk up to those rovers. It's weird. You think somebody's up there with the club.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  The keys are in them. They're just sitting there with the key.

• 5:32Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yes.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  They're virtually bait cars, is what they are.

• 5:35Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 5:36Chuck Nice?

  They're like virtually bait cars.

• 5:37Bill Nye?

  I'm surprised the wheels are still on them after all this time.

• 5:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on. I'm doing Doug McKenzie.

• 5:44Bill Nye?

  Doug.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  And Doug wants to know this. I understand Doppler effect with sound. But give light speed properties. How does it catch up or pull away from itself to create red and blue shifts?

• 5:58Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's fabulous. So here's the cool thing.

• 6:00Chuck Nice?

  Another good question?

• 6:00Bill Nye?

  It's a fabulous question. This is the great thing to grasp about the Doppler effect. And by the way, full disclosure, my brother still dreams of starting a band called Christian Doppler and the Effects. But his first name's not Christian, so.

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well.

• 6:16Bill Nye?

  Anyway, that aside.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  It's like Hootie and the Blowfish.

• 6:19Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 6:20Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Darius Rucker is actually Hootie. So tell your brother he could do that. Yeah, he's, it's totally fine.

• 6:26Bill Nye?

  It is crazy. Okay, with this said, here's the thing to grasp. Is the frequency is what changes, not the speed.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 6:34Bill Nye?

  So i- i- it's a fabulous subtle thing. When we do experiments on light to observe waves, we observe waves.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:41Bill Nye?

  And when, uh, if you can show or accept that sound travels in waves, then you can, uh, by perfect analogy, you'll have light travel in waves and get the right answer. So as an object like a star moves away from us at extraordinary speeds, uh, dozens and hundreds of kilometers a second, it stretches the waves of light. And so they go to lower frequencies. And if you have trouble remembering this, I strongly encourage you just to do a little Latin. Ultra means beyond. Ultraviolet is beyond violet. Infrar means below. Infrar is below red. So the red is the longer wavelength and blue and violet are the shorter wavelength.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:24Bill Nye?

  So when you go faster and faster away, your wavelength is stretched out. The speed of light's the same, the wavelength is stretched out.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Stretched out.

• 7:32Bill Nye?

  And so the color, as we perceive it, the color changes. Fabulous question.

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  That is really fantastic. So that's, I suppose that's where we get, well, Ultraman.

• 7:41Bill Nye?

  That's right. Ultraman was beyond man.

• 7:43Chuck Nice?

  Was beyond man.

• 7:44Bill Nye?

  If the blinking light stops.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 7:45Bill Nye?

  I remind you, Ultraman may never rise again.

• 7:49Chuck Nice?

  Ha ha.

• 7:50Bill Nye?

  Hiata and the Science Patrol. Chuck and I will be back right after this.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Ha ha.

• 8:14Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye, guest hosting for our beloved Neil deGrasse Tyson. I am here with Chuck Nice.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 8:23Bill Nye?

  And you know what's cool, Chuck?

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 8:25Bill Nye?

  Slow mo. Even cooler, super slow mo. Head over to GE's YouTube channel and get a look at what GE's up to with their super hydrophobic materials and watch what it looks like when a T-1000 gets built. That's right. www.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  Youtube dot com slash GE.

• 8:43Bill Nye?

  That's it, ladies and gentlemen, that's it. With that said, before the break, Chuck and I got off on a little Ultraman tangent.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 8:50Bill Nye?

  Ultraman, for those of you unfamiliar, is a Japanese superhero.

• 8:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he is.

• 8:55Bill Nye?

  And that he was Japanese was a big part of it.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it was.

• 8:57Bill Nye?

  Cause he was fluent in karate. He was a giant guy.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  He was a giant guy.

• 9:02Bill Nye?

  He was from the Science Patrol. He would, well, hyata was his civilian name, like our Clark Kent.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 9:08Bill Nye?

  Takes out his beta capsule.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 9:11Bill Nye?

  He would become Ultraman and for some reason Ultraman had a light that flashed on his chest. And uh,

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  It was pretty.

• 9:18Bill Nye?

  Every week, Chuck, there's a monster.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  Every week there was a monster.

• 9:22Bill Nye?

  And just shows you.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  From somewhere.

• 9:24Bill Nye?

  From some, from the sea, yes.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Somewhere, a monster would appear.

• 9:27Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  And Ultraman had to be called.

• 9:29Bill Nye?

  It's very stressful.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Bill Nye?

  And it shows you uh, something about our deepest fears.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:35Bill Nye?

  That the unknown and monsters are trouble. And I gotta think it's related to the Japanese islands tendency to have earthquakes.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  I thought it was the fact that we dropped a bomb on them that was a hundred million megatons.

• 9:52Bill Nye?

  Well, it was about thirty kilotons.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Thirty kilotons.

• 9:55Bill Nye?

  And so I think this, the monster thing goes back in Japanese culture way before that.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Way before it, way before us.

• 10:00Bill Nye?

  And uh, can I name the artist you dropped a bomb on me? Was it um, you dropped a bomb on me and then you'd hear the bombing?

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  Uh.

• 10:09Bill Nye?

  I wanna say Cool in the Gang.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no. Oh my god.

• 10:12Bill Nye?

  We have work to do. We've got work to do.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  It's on the tip of my tongue. Gap Band.

• 10:16Bill Nye?

  Gap Band. You dropped a bomb on me. Okay.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 10:20Bill Nye?

  With that, another question. A cosmic query, actually.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 10:24Bill Nye?

  And just think what it was like, uh, conducting warfare without aircraft. Now we can't imagine it. And the whole world, as of this broadcast, the whole world is fascinated with whatever became of Malaysia Flight 370.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 10:38Bill Nye?

  Our fascination with flying is deep within us. And spaceflight is perhaps the ultimate expression of flying.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  I would agree. Alright, let's uh, let's um, take one from Said, uh, who wants to know this. Alright.

• 10:56Bill Nye?

  Said.

• 10:56Chuck Nice?

  Said, eh, at his last, last name is Rashan. Said Rashan wants to know this. Will the Earth ever increase or decrease in its size over life?

• 11:08Bill Nye?

  Over its life.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Over its life, not our life.

• 11:10Bill Nye?

  Well, I gotta think, yeah. Now, geologists, I'm sure, have pondered this question deeply. It's a question of ti- ti- timing, ti- timing. Will the sun expand and heat the earth before the earth has a chance to cool off? See, when you cool the metal of the inside of the earth, your nickel, your iron, your molten earth core.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:31Bill Nye?

  Are you going to, uh, you're gonna shrink? But will the sun, uh, come out here and hook and cook things up before that hap-? I think the sun's gonna beat us. As far as, uh, cooling the earth off, I wouldn't worry about it. And let me remind you, one of the tremendous insights, uh, into the nature of geology, the nature of our place in space. People wondered, quite reasonably, how could you have evolution happen over three billion years? How could the earth stay hot as it seems to have, uh, all this time? And you can tell the earth's hot inside when you have a volcano.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 12:05Bill Nye?

  Which we have now and then.

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  That and the way Venus looks at us lets us know we're hot. I'm sorry.

• 12:12Bill Nye?

  Uh, I'm, I'm sure you're right, Chuck. I, I'm sure you're right. I've always kinda had a thing for Venus myself.

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  I don't blame you.

• 12:20Bill Nye?

  But that said, uh, Venus stays really hot for other reasons. Anyway, the inside of the earth has fission going on, nuclear fission, and that keeps it really hot. But eventually, you would think hypothetically, theoretically, things would cool off. But I think the sun's gonna heat up and cook us before then. Venus stays hot because of all its carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has run away with the greenhouse effect.

• 12:42Chuck Nice?

  So Venus, please, could, could that be our future? Is, would, would you talk about the greenhouse effect? It's, could it be?

• 12:53Bill Nye?

  No, I don't think so. Venus is so hot.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  How hot is it?

• 12:58Bill Nye?

  Thank you. It's so hot that, uh, the, uh, ground, you would melt lead on the ground. You take your fishing weights.

• 13:05Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 13:06Bill Nye?

  They would melt. Your stainless steel cutlery would just, boom, just bend, uh, yield. And so furthermore.

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  Salvador Dali painting.

• 13:14Bill Nye?

  It would be.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 13:15Bill Nye?

  Uh, but you'd be dead to, before you could appreciate it. I mean instantly and then furthermore it not only the wait wait there's more it rains acid rain.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow. This sounds like an environmental disaster this place.

• 13:29Bill Nye?

  Is like hell and the guys who did the first in the modern era not the people from the seventeen hundreds in the early eighteen early nineteen hundreds.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:37Bill Nye?

  In the modern era, the people who discovered climate change on earth, James Hansen.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:42Bill Nye?

  June of nineteen eighty-three.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 13:44Bill Nye?

  Testified in front of congress, it was studying Venus, the atmosphere of Venus with telescopes that people discovered the real, the real effect.

• 13:51Chuck Nice?

  Effects of of greenhouse gases.

• 13:53Bill Nye?

  Too much carbon dioxide.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow, wow.

• 13:55Bill Nye?

  And by too much, we're talking about just a little bit too much.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  Just a little.

• 13:59Bill Nye?

  Just a little bit.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  And that's all we need here is just a little bit too much.

• 14:02Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 14:02Chuck Nice?

  And that's game over.

• 14:03Bill Nye?

  Yes, but I think it's gonna happen even if I whisper about it.

• 14:09Bill Nye?

  Chuck, we have another query.

• 14:16Chuck Nice?

  You know, I'm laughing because we do have a tendency to do that when something's bad.

• 14:21Bill Nye?

  We whisper about it.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  The whisper like that.

• 14:24Bill Nye?

  That's gonna make it okay, but I remind you, the earth can still hear you.

• 14:30Bill Nye?

  We're now over four hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere.

• 14:35Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 14:35Bill Nye?

  Even if you whisper about it.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  It's still gonna happen. All right, let's, let's move on to Matt Milligan and this is what Matt wants to know. Why does the light from stars go on for billions of light years, but the light from my flashlight will only go two feet?

• 14:55Bill Nye?

  Oh, no, oh, it does go.

• 14:56Chuck Nice?

  What's up with that?

• 14:58Bill Nye?

  Good question. But first of all, let's remind us the light year is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:05Bill Nye?

  It's time, it's speed of light times time and just if you want to do.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  And that gets you the distance.

• 15:10Bill Nye?

  If you, and by the way, everybody, if you're out there having trouble with your distance equals rate times time problems, just relax, just look at the units.

• 15:19Bill Nye?

  If you're going meters per second times seconds, you're gonna get meters. If you're going miles per hour times hours, you're gonna get miles. Cheer, it's happy. Speed of light times years, you get a long way.

• 15:31Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 15:31Bill Nye?

  A light year.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:32Bill Nye?

  Alright, now your flashlight. It, I used to sit on the beach particularly, and sometimes the forest, and shoot the light straight up, the flashlight straight up, and wonder if there was somebody else out there on another planet, pick one, Rigel 12.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  Rigel 12.

• 15:49Bill Nye?

  Uh, who's doing the same thing.

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  Here, it's lovely in the spring, by the way.

• 15:52Bill Nye?

  Uh, on Ri- it could be, with the Rigelians. And, uh, is there so- a Rigelian out there shooting her or his flashlight back at me? And yes, the photons do go on forever, it's just they get so dim, your eyes can't detect them. Now, in a room, where you shine your light around, that light will get absorbed by your quilt.

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 16:12Bill Nye?

  In your bedroom.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 16:13Bill Nye?

  Even the paint of your walls, uh, is absorbed. What if you set up mirrors everywhere, on all the walls, and you turn on a light, would it bounce around forever? No, even at ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent, at the speed of light, things bounce around very quickly and it's all absorbed.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  And it's all absorbed.

• 16:29Bill Nye?

  Turned into heat.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:31Bill Nye?

  Sorry, man. Re-radiated in another form of light, but, uh, uh, in general, um...

• 16:36Chuck Nice?

  So it's still there, it's just kind of, uh...

• 16:38Bill Nye?

  Energy doesn't go away, man.

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  Energy doesn't go away. It's just, it's still there, it's just like, hey, baby, this is what I am now. Gotcha.

• 16:44Bill Nye?

  Uh, in those terms.

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  (laughing) I'm very scientific, Bill.

• 16:49Bill Nye?

  That might have been how the Gap man would have expressed it.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 16:54Bill Nye?

  Or people from that era.

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  From that era. Hey, baby, I'm just something else now.

• 16:58Bill Nye?

  I'm just, I'm just an energy man.

• 17:00Chuck Nice?

  Alright, let's move on.

• 17:02Bill Nye?

  Why?

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  You know, we really don't have to. Okay, um, oh wow, this is a question directly for you. Okay, let me see, okay, I think we might have enough time. Hey, Bill, Matt here, student at Sacramento State University, California.

• 17:16Bill Nye?

  Sac State.

• 17:17Chuck Nice?

  There you go. When we see an object of light away from us, we are seeing it in a year in the past.

• 17:24Bill Nye?

  An object a light year from us, we're seeing it a year in the past, okay?

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:28Bill Nye?

  A reasonable way of reckoning.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  That's a reasonable way of reckoning. Theoretically, if we are able to grow a tree, say, five light years tall, with the aid of a telescope, would we be able to see the different ages of the tree as we look at its farthest branches? Say, for example, the tree begins to die near the ground, uh, blah, blah, blah.

• 17:48Bill Nye?

  The short answer is no.

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:51Bill Nye?

  Because you can only see it at the speed of light. In other words, you can't detect that it's dying out there on the end of its five light year away branch.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:58Bill Nye?

  Unless you're looking at the light bouncing off the branch. So along this line, another interesting thing to interestingly think about. You say you're looking at light on distant stars, whatever happened there has already happened.

• 18:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:11Bill Nye?

  Be that as it may, it hasn't happened here yet.

• 18:14Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 18:15Bill Nye?

  Until the light gets here.

• 18:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:16Bill Nye?

  And this gets into this thing of information theory, like, although the thing landed on Mars 11 minutes ago, it hasn't landed on Mars here until the light gets here. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. We will discuss this further, right after this.

• 18:49Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye here, guest hosting, if I can use that verb for Neil deGrasse Tyson. And people, check me out, because I'm with Chuck Nice.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:01Bill Nye?

  And it is fabulous. I don't think he's gonna change his name.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Not gonna change my name.

• 19:05Bill Nye?

  To fabulous.

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Not to fabulous.

• 19:07Bill Nye?

  But he could, that's what I'm saying.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  No, that sounds too much like a rapper, as you know.

• 19:11Bill Nye?

  Chuck, Chuck fabulous. What does Chuck Nice sound like?

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  You know what?

• 19:16Bill Nye?

  A wimp. That's what it sounds like, young man.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Certainly.

• 19:19Bill Nye?

  He's nice.

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  No one is afraid of Chuck Nice, that is for sure.

• 19:22Bill Nye?

  And they should be. This guy will cut you.

• 19:27Bill Nye?

  It's good, though. It's good.

• 19:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's great.

• 19:29Bill Nye?

  Chuck, Cosmic Queries, your queries

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:31Bill Nye?

  From the Electric Inner Web that the kids are using.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:34Bill Nye?

  Very happy that you all took the time to write to us. And your questions, this show especially, have been just outstanding.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  We really have had some great questions.

• 19:42Bill Nye?

  We have another one, I take it.

• 19:42Chuck Nice?

  You know, before we go on to the next question, very quickly, um, I just, because we were, you didn't finish this because we had to come back for the break. But we were talking in the break very quickly about, uh, I said, I think that we're so science averse in our country because there's certain people who benefit from that because they have, it gives them power.

• 20:00Bill Nye?

  Some power.

• 20:00Chuck Nice?

  It gives them power. I mean, that's just my own personal opinion.

• 20:03Bill Nye?

  And so this is especially true of military hardware.

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:07Bill Nye?

  Historically, this, these scientists have been pressed into service. You know, Galileo, uh, I guess Fraunhofer was pressed into service in science, uh, in the military, using science in the military, making these extraordinary lenses and stuff. With that said, science democratizes knowledge. Chuck, this may mean this more to me than it should, but it doesn't matter who shows you the Earth goes around the Sun. The man does not control what makes the Earth go around the Sun. Science is true for everybody.

• 20:40Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 20:41Bill Nye?

  Science is knowledge outside of us. What we hope to find in science are rules or laws, or thing, or ways of looking at things that are true everywhere in the universe. Doesn't matter where you're from, your ethnic background, how much money your ancestors made. The man does not control the facts of science.

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 20:59Bill Nye?

  And that is an elegant, beautiful thing. So you and I, and, uh, the regular host Neil deGrasse Tyson are working to change the world. So everybody listening to the broadcast right now, turn it up loud as we take another Cosmic Query.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic. That was outstanding, sir. Let's move on. Uh, Jerry Yitzhak Sandberg wants to know this. Uh, if you could bore to the center of the Earth and not get burned to a cinder.

• 21:31Bill Nye?

  A trick.

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  Let's suspense, let's suspense of disbelief here, and hollow out a sphere in the, in the geometric center of the Earth.

• 21:40Bill Nye?

  How would gravity affect you then? Oh, it's cool. There'd be no gravity. So you'd be zero G? Zero G. So what we recommend to you all is Get yourself a drill. Well, take physics. And a classic physics problem, which is every bit as much fun as what you just described. Yeah. Is drilling a hole, a hypothetically imaginary hole, through the center of the earth. And then you'd, uh, big enough for, pick an enchanting object, a bowling ball. Okay. And drop it through the hole in the center of the earth. What happens? As the ball goes all the way through? And then comes out the other side. The other side. What happens? Does it shoot off into space? No. It falls back through? It falls back through. Over and over and over again.

• 22:24Bill Nye?

  With no aerodynamic drag and not bring burn to a cinder. Right. And this is a fabulous problem. And wait, wait, there's more. I'm a mechanical engineer and one of my, uh, really satisfying technical jobs is working on this navigation system for drill bits. This would be the technology that is the ancestor of modern fracking drills, no kidding. Where you can guide the drill. Mm-hmm. Uh, steer it underground. Okay. With extraordinary precision. Like when they had this oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Right, right. And it'd come in sideways. You can guide drill bits very accurately. And the moment you start going down inside the earth, there's less gravity. Wow. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

• 23:08Bill Nye?

  And these were detected by our accelerometers. This was at a company called Sunstrand Data Control, which is now a part of Honeywell. And these accelerometers, or excels, because we're so cool, these excels would detect micro Gs, millions of a G. Millions of a G. And so when you have a shell of material, this is a mathematical shell of material above you. Right. It all cancels out. Wow. And so to those of you listening who have not taken physics and have not tried this math problem. Right. I encourage you to do it. It's a, these are both just outstanding, cool, insightful math, math problems that would come to us really from the discoveries made by Isaac Newton.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  Where, where, where were you when I was taking physics in school?

• 23:52Bill Nye?

  I don't know, man.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Man.

• 23:54Bill Nye?

  Physics, it is all, it is all science is either physics or stamp collecting. But that turns out, that's from a different era. It turns out now, life science is so fantastically complicated that it kind of overwhelms physics, much as I love my physics. Take it. Oh, sorry. I digress.

• 24:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you know what? We have a minute left in this segment, so I got Derek Wilson here, who has a really cool question. I think I know why he's asking this. How accurate is carbon dating really?

• 24:21Bill Nye?

  Very accurate. The least long time ago where it was, the better, more accurately it is. This is to say-

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  That's what I was about to say. I think he's asking this.

• 24:29Bill Nye?

  So here's how it works. Is carbon 14 is formed in the air when you are a living thing and you stop breathing, or stop transpiring, if you're a plant.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:39Bill Nye?

  Carbon 14 changes to nitrogen, and then, uh, took back then down to carbon 12. And so the moment you die, or stop breathing, this process happens. The carbon 14 doesn't get refreshed.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:52Bill Nye?

  And so it's extraordinarily accurate. But do not confuse carbon 14 dating with how we've determined the age of the ancient dinosaurs.

• 24:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 25:00Bill Nye?

  That's potassium, argon, and uranium uranium.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  And rubidium strontium. We'll be back after this.

• 25:24Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye here, guest hosting for Neil deGrasse Tyson. And wait, wait, there's more, everybody. I'm not here by myself. No, no, I'm here with Chuck Nice.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 25:36Bill Nye?

  And it's-

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  Good to be here, too.

• 25:37Bill Nye?

  It's all that.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  It is.

• 25:39Bill Nye?

  It's so good to have you here, Chuck.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, we're having a blast. I'm having a good time.

• 25:42Bill Nye?

  What are we doing today? We are taking what?

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic queries.

• 25:45Bill Nye?

  These are queries.

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

  From the internet.

• 25:47Bill Nye?

  Well, from the cosmos, Chuck.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  They are from the cosmos via the internet.

• 25:51Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  They are.

• 25:52Bill Nye?

  Precisely.

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, we have quite a few people who've actually, um, written in to, uh, ask specific questions of you, Bill. Uh, I know that-

• 26:01Bill Nye?

  Wow, people got a lot of free time out there.

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  I know because they're saying, hey, Bill, you know, like Will Burke, who wants to know this, are there any locations in the solar system that you think we should focus more on sending a mission? What benefit would we gain from doing so?

• 26:19Bill Nye?

  Well, we at the Planetary Society, the world's largest non-governmental space interest organization advancing space science and exploration for the betterment of humankind, where we want everyone on Earth to know the cosmos and our place within it. That Planetary Society encourages missions to all these worlds, Enceladus, moon of Saturn, that seems to have an ocean, and Europa, which has got an ocean. We want to go to Titan, where there are tides of methane and ethane, these, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, natural gas kind of liquids. They're liquid because it's so crazy cold.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  Smells like a fragrant trip.

• 26:56Bill Nye?

  Uh, and we would put sniffers on them, by the way. Just keep in mind, if we were to discover evidence of life on one of these worlds, like Europa, or Enceladus, or Mars, it would change this world, utterly change this world. It would change the way everybody felt about what it is to be alive in the universe, alive in the cosmos. It would change us. And you know what else we'd discover?

• 27:17Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 27:18Bill Nye?

  Nobody knows. That's why we're gonna go send missions to find stuff. If we send missions out there, we will make discoveries and we will have an adventure. An adventure shared by all humankind. If you talk to kids, what do they, and you say, what's your favorite planet? They often, not so much as they used to, thanks to Neil, they'll say Pluto.

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 27:39Bill Nye?

  Pluto.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Thanks to Neil.

• 27:41Bill Nye?

  Well, I'll tell you what, 2015, there is a mission going by Pluto, New Horizons. It left in 2006, I was there at Cape Canaveral. It's the fastest rocket anybody's ever built, and will get to Pluto nine years later in 2015, and we will make discoveries that will change things. Furthermore, when you invest in these missions, Chuck.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:02Bill Nye?

  You solve problems that have never been solved before.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 28:05Bill Nye?

  So planetary science is what NASA does best right now.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Bill Nye?

  And NASA's the world's largest space agency by a factor of three. So that is planetary science, the line item within NASA, which is in turn a line item within the federal budget, which is in turn a economic entity in the world. That's where we invest to innovate and keep the United States in the economic game.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  Next question. Awesome answer, sir. All right.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  JD Prepost wants to know this. If a planet had a slower axis rotation allowing the star in its orbiting, that it's orbiting, to heat the planet over a longer day, could a planet be further out of what we consider the habitable zone and still sustain life at similar temperatures as Earth? So, bigger planet, farther out, longer day. Do all those things factor into?

• 29:05Bill Nye?

  Let's back up. The Earth day used to be, before we had clocks, as far as it used to be 18 hours in the ancient dinosaur days. So, that's a fact, that's like 30%. That the Earth is going a third slower than it used to.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 29:20Bill Nye?

  And we're here, we're alive. So, you gotta figure if you are farther out and turning slowly, if conditions are right, you could be a living thing. You've gotta, why not? Who's to stop you? Wait, wait, there's more. The planet Mercury spends two-thirds of a time for every orbit. And I don't think there are any Mercurians because it's too close to the sun from what we understand.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:41Bill Nye?

  But there's ice in the craters of Mercury. Is there some place on some other world that's turning slowly? That has some slush? And there's living things in it? I don't know.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:56Bill Nye?

  One way to find, to make sure we never find out.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  Is to stay here.

• 30:01Bill Nye?

  Not go looking.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  And not go looking.

• 30:03Bill Nye?

  Exactly.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that is very cool. That is, hey, hey JD, number one, great question. And number two, who knew that the Earth day used to be 18 hours?

• 30:15Bill Nye?

  Well, that's when you talk to the ancient dinosaurs, take a meeting with them. Well, really, they're the fossil ferns that are extant, that are along with their fossils.

• 30:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:24Bill Nye?

  You can infer a lot about ancient environment. And then you look at silts and ice.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:33Bill Nye?

  And things, and you can infer a lot about the, how the Earth is slowing down now caused by tidal friction with the moon. And you can work backwards to how fast it must have been spinning in ancient times. Meanwhile, we've got to spin on out to a break.

• 31:06Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye here, your host, sitting in for Neil deGrasse Tyson. And I am here with none other than Chuck Nice. And tell you what Chuck.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes, Bill.

• 31:16Bill Nye?

  It's time for the lightning round.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 31:20Bill Nye?

  Now, this is pure lightning round. That's all it is. No bells and whistles. Wait, wait, there's bells. There are bells.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  There will be bells.

• 31:28Bill Nye?

  So, take it with the cosmic query and the lightning round Chuck.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  And here we go. Let's jump right into this with Steve Hossid, who wants to know this. "I'm from Heartland, Wisconsin. My question is, when the New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto next year, what is the mission exactly?"

• 31:46Bill Nye?

  Take pictures, take pictures, take pictures.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:49Bill Nye?

  Record some thermal data, radiation, some science instruments aboard, but pictures. Pictures that could, dare I say it.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Change the world. Change the world. Steve, I think the answer might be pictures. Alright.

• 32:05Chuck Nice?

  Jonathan Suto wants to know this. "Bill, why do we give NASA so little money? How did that happen?"

• 32:12Bill Nye?

  If I were king of the forest, we'd give NASA more money. We at the Planetary Society,

• 32:19Bill Nye?

  getting everyone in the cosmos to know our place within it and advancing space science and exploration lobby continually to get more money for NASA, the world's largest space administration, so that we will make discoveries that will not only change the world, but keep the United States in the economic game and lead the way. Not that the United States has to do everything, but space exploration is what the United States is good at.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright, next question from, I'm just gonna say Ms. McNauton, because I can't pronounce her first name, and I'm sorry, Ms. McNauton. Here we go. "Hi, from Binghamton, New York here. My question is, what is your opinion of Stephen Hawking's time travel fourth dimension theory? Do you believe it is accurate?"

• 32:59Bill Nye?

  Don't know.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 33:05Bill Nye?

  It's cool to think about though, isn't it? It's riveting. And the fourth dimension is time, everybody. It's not extraordinary thing. It's X, Y, Z, and time.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  And time. All right, here we go with Jared Reese. And Jared is from Minnesota, wants to know this. Is it possible and/or probable to use gravitational lensing with a Hubble likes telescope on the outer edge of our solar system? What tangible benefits could there be to do this? I've heard that lensing could be enhanced with radio pictures.

• 33:34Bill Nye?

  Radio pictures, maybe. Wherever there's a lot of gravity, out, out, out there in deep space, like when you have a black hole, you can observe light, and in this case, radio waves, being bent by the gravity. And that can give you tremendous insight into the whereabouts of black holes and their nature. The more spacecraft we have out there, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Let's fly them. Fly them all.

• 33:57Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. All right. Philip Brinkman would like to know this. How do the advancements in technology affect our own evolution? Are we still subject to natural selection? Or do humans evolve only artificially now? P.S. Excellent job on the debate.

• 34:14Bill Nye?

  Oh, thank you. Thank you. Uh, for the, for the postscript. Yes, humans are still evolving. The thing is, let's take me, for example. Please. No, I had appendicitis. I'd be dead otherwise. If I run around having kids, that means those kids might have been, not, not come into existence. But wait, that's part of being in a tribe. As your tribe advances culturally, you have the potential for your individuals to advance culturally, and that's evolution. Could it be that if we go back in time and talk to the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids, and they don't get any of our jokes? Wouldn't that be weird? Because we've changed just in those 5,000 years. Whoa.

• 34:56Chuck Nice?

  Nicely done. Uh, here's what Susan Minogue wants to know.

• 34:59Bill Nye?

  Wait, we don't get any of your jokes either, Bill.

• 35:03Bill Nye?

  Take it, Chuck.

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  Susan Minogue wants to know this. What happens to a black hole after it runs out of stuff to eat?

• 35:11Bill Nye?

  Uh, that's, that's very unlikely. So I guess it still remains a very massive star sending, uh, material to other parts of the universe. That's a good question.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Good question.

• 35:19Bill Nye?

  When the source of energy, uh, material stops coming in, people have speculated about what happens. It shrinks. And what I'd like to do is hold that thought, Chuck, till you have Neil deGrasse Tyson here, who's so into his astrophysics. Whoa.

• 35:35Chuck Nice?

  All right. Uh, James Lasperance wants to know this. Is it possible, is it possible to have binary planet systems, much like a binary star system, with the gravitational pull of the star they orbit, as with the pull of each other, make it unfeasible?

• 35:55Bill Nye?

  No, no, it's probably quite feasible. In fact, that's a fun physics problem. The old thing that we're crazy for, what's that? The three-body problem.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:04Bill Nye?

  So the Earth and the Moon, the Moon is like a traditional planet, in a sense. It's a gravitational body orbiting the Earth, and the Earth and the Moon are in turn orbiting the Sun. And it's nothing but fun to consider the Earth and the Moon as a system with a center of mass, a center of gravity somewhere between us, and that center of gravity is in turn orbiting the Sun. So we do it all day. And when you get Jupiter with its four massive Galilean moons, I mean, that's like a whole binary, quaternary, quad, uh, quintenary, a quintenary system. So yes, it's possible. Party on.

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  Nice. All right, here we go. What engineering hurdles, from Chris Knoll, what engineering hurdles prevent us from traveling faster than the speed of light?

• 36:47Bill Nye?

  Well, it's not engineering hurdle so much. As far as we know, the speed of energy is the speed of light, as far as we can tell. You just can't go any faster.

• 36:54Chuck Nice?

  Just can't go faster.

• 36:55Bill Nye?

  You start pumping in more energy, and instead of going faster, you become effectively more massive. That is to say, you increase your momentum without increasing your speed very much. It's a complicated problem, discovered in my father's lifetime, not that long ago.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 37:10Bill Nye?

  Hey, we're almost done.

• 37:11Chuck Nice?

  We are.

• 37:12Bill Nye?

  Thank you for listening to StarTalk. We gotta fly, Chuck.

• 37:15Chuck Nice?

  Ah, baby.

• 37:16Bill Nye?

  Bill and I, the Science Guy, with Chuck Nice.