X-Prize - Beyond Space (Part 2)

In the conclusion of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview with Peter Diamandis, we explore how the X-Prize Foundation inspires out-of-the-box solutions to the world’s greatest problems. Read more and listen to the full show: http://www.startalkradio.net/show/x-prize-beyond-space/

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director at New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. My co-host today, Chuck. Nice!

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Hey Neil.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you practically have a fan club out there, you know.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Practically.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  I'm almost there.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  We are almost at fan club status.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great having you on the show. Thanks for agreeing to do this. We're doing part two of my interview with Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We spent a whole hour talking about the X Prize getting us into space, but the X Prize is more than space. The X Prize is anything that's just beyond our reach today.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That needs to be invented and no one is trying to invent it yet. I'm just saying.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need somebody to lead that charge.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peter Diamandis is your man. And let's find out just about the general X Prize concept and what else he's doing with this thing.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  We ended up calling that specific prize the Ansari X Prize. The X stuck around because we had taken so long to find the Ansari family and that enabled us to do further X Prizes. X Prize has got a brand of being a prize for a bold, audacious thing you actually had to build and demonstrate.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You branded the phrase X Prize by what you've done with it, right?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so going into space is a natural extension of the aviation industry in terms of prize money to boldly go.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, but from the homework I've done on you, this X Prize is no longer just space. Which is very intriguing to me. So where else have you taken it?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  So on the heels of the X Prize being won, the question was where could this model work in addition? And the thinking was any place that there was a market failure, any place that stuff was stuck. It was a stigma, people didn't think it was possible, the commercial markets weren't doing it.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like that phrase, they're stuck.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  There's something in place. It could be regulations in place preventing it. There could be people's belief. You know, they had a bad experience with something. I've always wanted to do, for example, an X Prize for like cold fusion. No scientist will touch cold fusion because of the stigma that it had gotten.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just tabletop fusion without a nuclear reactor.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and whether or not it's possible, sometimes putting out an incentive gets people to think about a problem in a brand new dimension and brings new players into the field that would not otherwise. If I can digress, one of the stories I love is the longitude prize. So the year is 1714. The British Admiralty are ruling the seas. And they are able to tell latitude for navigation, but not longitude. And what's happening is that they're losing lots of their navy at sea because ships are crashing on the rocks. And so they offer up this king's fortune for the team, for the investigator, for the scientist

• 3:23Speaker 02

  that can be able to tell longitude. And they were absolutely sure it was going to be done by an astronomer. Because astronomers were the smartest dudes in the universe back then. And so they create-

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You still are, Quinny, back then.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Okay, well, they actually stack the judging board, the longitude board, with astronomers to evaluate the winning approach. Because they're sure it's going to be an astronomer who's competing for this. And this guy, John Harrison, who is a watchmaker, he's a tinkerer. He builds small watches in his lab, if you would, in his shop, comes up with this watch, the H1, as he calls it, that is able to tell time accurate in a rocking boat. He basically shows how to do the longitude. But they're so sure it's going to be won by an astronomer, they refuse to recognize this guy's approach. And so sometimes, you know, I define the expert as a person who can tell you exactly how it can't be done. And it isn't many times the expert who's going to win these competitions.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  It's someone with a crazy idea. Because the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. If it wasn't a crazy idea, it'd be an incremental improvement. And so these competitions, these X prizes, really encourage people to come out of right field with a audacious crazy idea that the traditional thinkers would discount out of hand. And that's where the breakthrough comes from.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you gotta break the box.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rebuild the box.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take the stuff in the box, dump it out, throw away the box, make another box, or make a bigger box.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A box with no walls.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Or maybe, maybe a cylinder. Why does it have to be a box? Why can't it be like a can of Pringles? What? Potato chips? Not in a bag? That's revolutionary!

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think outside the cylinder.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Think outside the cylinder. You know, let's do that.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, think outside the dodecahedron.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So now, you know, here's the thing, though. When he talks about cold fusion.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If anything's got a stigma in this world, it's cold fusion. Because the dudes, we were around when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman got together and had a press conference saying that they created sustainable fusion on a laboratory table without requiring a thermonuclear reactor. And it was page one story, and everyone said, well, where's your research paper? What does your experiment look like? Because in science, you have to duplicate

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the result before it is an emergent truth. The press doesn't seem to care about that fact. Any research result they will put forth is truth.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there needs to be some kind of experimental observational consensus, which was not achieved by Pons and Fleischman. And so their work was considered, I don't know if it was fraudulent, but it was certainly wrong.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Junk.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was, and they required palladium, and the futures price for palladium skyrocketed over that time.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the world was reacting to this one scientific result that was put forth that turned out to be false. So I don't think he literally means cold fusion, but he's our guy here. I think what he's referring to is Wouldn't it be cool if we had fusion that didn't require a nuclear fusion reactor?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  So now, let me ask you this.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Let's look at, in your sphere of expertise, which is...

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My dodecahedron.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Your particular dodecahedron, which is the cosmos.

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cosmos.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so now, all of that fusion that's happening up there.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, out there.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Out there.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Not up there, but out there.

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. It's also happening below your feet.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  So true.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up for the Aussies, okay.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Uh, that all has heat as a byproduct, doesn't it?

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the energy liberated by thermonuclear fusion.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  So, my point is, if nature does it this way...

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Easily, all the time.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Then why, is, is, is, isn't there a reason for that? Is it, isn't this heat the byproduct?

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, but we can do that too. When we do what the center of the sun does.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called a bomb.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we have no problems engaging in uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what a bomb is.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you want to do is, control it and sustain it, and that's what we are helpless at this moment.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of accomplishing, that's all.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But yeah, but fusion is like, easy as pie.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It's easy.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the, in space, I mean, in, in the universe, got that down.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of my interview with Peter Diamandis and the X-Brav.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Startalk Radio, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Find us on the net, startalkradio.net. Find us on Facebook, Startalk Radio. On Twitter, at, guess what? Startalk Radio. There you go, Chuck. I got Chuck with me here. We've got my interview with X Prize founder, Peter Diamandis. The guy's a dreamer.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  The guy is a dreamer.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't say that in that he's-

• 8:37Speaker 02

  In a great way.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a great way, thank you. Not in a, the guy's out of touch way.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the guy's, the guy's there and he's, he's on it. And, uh, we were at a conference together, uh, at, at this huge conference hotel and I, and we're friends. We, I've known him from way back. And I wanted to make sure I got a StarTalk interview with him. So, we got a quiet place over in the corner. I pulled out the microphone and we've got these interviews. You heard the first part earlier with, uh, the X Prize going into space. And now it's X Prize for everything else.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  For everything.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything that we need, the X Prize has.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's find out all the kinds of X Prizes that he has in mind.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  At the X Prize Foundation today, we think about X Prizes in five different areas. Exploration prizes, which is space and oceans and- Right, cause land is done. Well, land as well. And it is. We've been to the top of Mount Everest. We've been to the peaks. We've been to the poles, you know, what's left, right? Well, there may be subterranean- Sporking. Why not? As you well know, we've discovered a new essentially form of life, archaeobacteria, which represent the overwhelming mass of all life forms, all life mass. The biomass. The biomass of the earth is below the land. It's not in the oceans. It's not on the land. It's actually in the deep crevice of the earth. Maybe it's powered by heat, maybe sulfur-based life forms.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  You know, there's still a lot of exploring to be done there. That's exploration, that's one. Life sciences, in which we include robotic X Prizes and life sciences. Energy and the environment is the third. Uh, education is the fourth and then global development is the fifth area. What is global development? Global development is how do we use incentive competitions to address the needs of the rising billion of the poorest people on earth? We've just launched with Robinhood. Robinhood's one of the large organizations here in New York City that raises money to fight poverty. And they raised nineteen million dollars to launch a series of poverty alleviation X Prizes. So that's in our global development space. So if you're really successful, you will supplant half the mission statement of the United Nations today.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of politicians with a lot of hot air trying to solve a lot of problems.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Well, ultimately, we're genetically bred to compete as humans. We do it in sport. We do it in finding our spouse. We do it in business. And my goal is to try and sort of drive that human nature into solving the world's biggest problems. But they have to be described. So not all things are great X-prize. You need to have something that's measurable.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me an example of a bad X-prize and a good X-prize.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  So every time I speak, people say, hey, can you use an X-prize to reinvent the government?

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eee.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of frustrated people out there. So that one is a really a fuzzy X-prize. You need a concrete objective. Flying three people to 100 kilometers and bringing them back safely.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Need metrics.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you need metrics. It has to be clear, concrete, and ultimately, it should be something that a small team of people can do. And so it works really well around technology. We are looking at behavioral prizes. So can we, in fact, use an X-prize to reinvent how we think about childhood incentives and food and exercise? Because as you well know, childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions and it's driving a lot of healthcare disease, heart disease in kids, diabetes in kids, and it's terrible.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there's a social consciousness going on here because otherwise, if you just say people can go 100 kilometers, it's not necessarily a socially driven mission statement.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  We're looking really to drive breakthroughs. So in exploration, in addition to spaceflight, we're working with Shell to look at mapping the ocean floor.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it non-map?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Less than 1% of the ocean floor really is mapped at high resolution.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  And we don't know what's down there. And so we're looking at can teams build technologies that would allow us to rapidly robotically map the ocean floor.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh wait, that's not an X-prize. That's just, no one's done it yet. That's different from people think it can't be done.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  But the challenge is no one is doing it.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I'm thinking X-prize, I'm thinking people are naysayers out there. They're saying, we don't know how to do it. We don't know what the technology is required. It is beyond our reach. Nobody's saying that about the bottom of the ocean.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  But no one's saying that about spaceflight. They were saying the government's done it and, you know, it's just not, it's just expensive. So it depends on the perspective. Our goal is to accelerate the future and bring about capabilities that are going to benefit humanity. Our mission statement is-

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so, sorry then. So, in the, with your original X Prize, it wasn't that it couldn't be done technologically, it's that no one knew how to do it cheaply. That's-

• 13:26Speaker 02

  And it was not-

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was an economic X Prize in a sense.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  So there was economics and also no one thought it could be done by the private sector. So I was trying to change people's belief of what was possible. And our mission statement is driving radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. And being able to understand, you know, and map the ocean floor, which has resources, which has life forms, which has environmental implications, is important for us. You know, we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the ocean floor. And so, in exploration, we're doing that. In energy and the environment, I'm very interested in driving battery technology, accelerating battery technology.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that one of the X Prizes?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Right now-

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm tired of using 19th century technology to run everything in my house.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I blame you.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  (laughing)

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta blame somebody.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  So yesterday-

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's so, like, two centuries ago. My gosh. It seems like it's the great Achilles heel of modern technology.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  It is. And liberating us from how we store energy today would change everything, right? I mean, we have 5,000 times more energy that hits your Earth's surface than we consume as a species in sunlight. It's just not stored, it's not usable. And imagine having 10 times more energy on Earth than we could possibly use. It would liberate society in an unknown-

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'd finally get jet packs.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Is that all you really want?

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want the X Prize jet pack. Chuck, he's got five categories here. What do you want? You're, you're a man about town. I am. What are we missing that you think we should have? Personally, I would like to see, um, sex bots.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, but I'm just gonna be honest. Sex bots.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, okay.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just being honest.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I'm being honest here. I mean, just think about what you would do for humanity if you were able to create a fully functional sex bot. That would be awesome. I'm sorry. I mean, you know, first of all, are you cheating if you were the sex bot? You could be married to your wife. It's not, baby, she's not even human. She's not even human, baby. What you talking about? You know, I'm not cheating on you. This is my sex bot. But you gotta make a sex bot who is also-

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll call Peter Diamandis now.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Please, dude. Let's get to something important here. Mapping the ocean floor.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you come up with a sex bot that no one will go to work in the morning, right?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll send my sex bot. I can't make it today.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's worn out. Okay, okay, so you got that out of the way?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yes, I got that.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, anything like, anything else?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  You know what I would love to see is, uh, is advancements in brain disorders? Because I got a feeling I suffer from several.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean advancements in cures of brain-

• 16:03Speaker 01

  In cures of brain disorders.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not advancements in brain disorders.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Because that would be kinda counterintuitive, right? Let's advance brain disorders and you'll get a brain disorder and you'll get a brain disorder.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be cool. Some device where you don't, perhaps where you don't have to cut open the skull.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Right, well you don't-

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you repair it. They did this on a Star Trek movie, Star Trek IV. Okay, I think it was Zulu had brain damage from falling on his head and they're ready to cut open his skull. This is, he goes back in time, so it's 1984.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which was the present day of the film. And they're ready to cut open the dude's skull and Bones comes back and he's like, he's freaking out.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  I'm a doctor, not a butcher. Look how they butcher.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so he puts something on this head and it goes whee whee whee whee whee. And it's rebuilding the neurosynaptic, uh, the broken neural synapse.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'd love to see something like that happen.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could do that, then you can make someone smarter.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Oh, God, would I love to see that happen.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, that'd be cool.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Because we live in a world of idiots. I'm sorry. I'm, you know, listen.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just line up the idiots first.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, line up the idiots and get that little brain device on them and maybe people will start believing in climate change. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. If you don't believe in climate change, you're an idiot. I'm sorry.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he talks about, uh, energy liberating society. There's a whole like episode of Cosmos where we address that very theme.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You know, uh, you did a great thing online where you were talking about how, uh, we basically don't have the political will to use the most available resource that we have, which is the sun. I mean, seriously, the answer is there, people. We look at it every day.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, well, I joke about it in my Twitter stream. I'd say if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell the alien, "Look, you know, we're getting energy out from under the ground after we fight a war to gain access to it."

• 17:55Speaker 01

  They'd be laughing, slapping their knee.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  If they had a knee.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, that big yellow thing in the sky.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  I'm about to use that.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. When we come back, more StarTalk interview with XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice. Hey, hey. Thanks for being here.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Always good to be here, man.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, what do you, what do you take Barry White lessons overnight?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Always good. And I was drinking Scotch last night. And this, this is my residual Scotch, boys.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scotch, the day after.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we, we've been, I've, we're catching up with my interview with Peter Diamandis, uh, founder of the XPRIZE, originally conceived for going into space. He said, "Let's just break it up, break it open and just get an XPRIZE for everything."

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything you need. And I, I wondered what, if there are any XPRIZES that had been awarded so far?

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because maybe all the goals are a little bit out of everybody's reach and people are just ascending a mountain that has no top. And he said, "No, no, there have been a couple that, that came through." So let's find out. Let's find out about one.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Really quickly, what are the four that got awarded? Ansiar X Prize for Spaceflight, the Progressive Automotive X Prize for 100 mile per gallon cars, the Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge for vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicles, and the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Prize. Oil Cleanup X Prize, whoa. So on the heels of the BP oil spill, when that spill was going on and on and on, James Cameron had just joined our board, he's a big oceanographer as you know, and he said, "You gotta do something about this oil spill." And when we looked at what we could do, we realized that the technology for cleaning up oil spills had not changed in 21 years since the Exxon Valdez. And we said, "Let's ask teams to compete on how you clean them up,

• 20:09Speaker 02

  and if you have to, if you at least double the oil spill cleanup rate of 1,100 gallons per minute, which had been the standard, you can qualify to win, whoever did the most." So 350 teams entered. 350? 350 teams around the world entered. We had 10 finalists go head to head in the world's largest oil spill cleanup facility located here in New Jersey. Of course, New Jersey.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  I wasn't gonna go there.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  And the seven of the 10 teams actually doubled the oil spill cleanup rate. Seven, and these are all small teams, under 100 person in size. The winning team did a six-fold increase. Whoa. And one of the teams that doubled the oil spill cleanup rate, I kid you not, was a team that met in a Las Vegas tattoo parlor. The tattoo artist was the designer, one of his customers. This is like you're saying, it's people who are not the folks you'd otherwise look to. These are people way outside the field with a crazy idea, who say, "I'm gonna give it a shot." They built a scale model in the guy's swimming pool.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And the first time the full scale model saw, you know, oil and water was in the test facility and they still doubled the oil cleanup rate. Now, you would have never backed the team that met in Las Vegas at two parlor. And so the beautiful thing about X prizes and these incentive competitions are they really crowdsource innovative approaches and you automatically back the winner, no matter how crazy the idea might have sounded.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I have an issue. I must take issue.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You're put out an X prize for oil cleanup. That's like putting on an X prize for an acid rain proof umbrella. Shouldn't you put out an X prize for tankers that don't spill oil in the first place? Isn't that really the goal here?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or independence from oil entirely?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  So let's think about that because it informs us on what a great X prize is. You know, I'm looking for something that a team of 20, 30 guys, gals could do that could be funded by themselves. So reinventing and building an oil tanker. Well, that should be what the oil industry does with the shipping industry. But there's lots of platforms out there, lots of tankers out there that are going to have accidents. And we just said, you know, the cleanup industry, that's something that we can attack.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, at least he's doing something practical on the spot.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. But what I want to know is this, why is it that honestly, when you see an oil spill on the news, they're like using Bounty paper towels?

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  What's up with that?

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And dishwashing liquid to clean the ducks.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  It's Dawn and Bounty. Stuff you can find at the supermarket. Why aren't we using these advancement that he has actually made?

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, and actually, when I was in college, I took a, sorry, graduate school, I took a couple of walks along the Galveston Beach and, and you get tar on the bottom of your feet. There's oil just there.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, and it doesn't come off. You need like, like turpentine or something to get it off.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which takes off your skin.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how you get the oil off.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Well, that's one way to clean it off.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Remove your outer layers of skin. Um, so what's, what's weird is that the, that oil spill went for long enough to like, set up a prize and then have someone win the prize and then use the, if I understood this story correctly, I hope I'm wrong, but I mean, that's how long that oil spill lasted.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, come on now.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  That people could actually come up and compete to clean it up. Ridiculous.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, apparently the government concluded that only 3% of the 5 million barrels of oil was actually retrieved by the skimmers. So that's not even very much, but at least we wonder where the hell the rest of it went.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I know where it is.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's it?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's in the fish you're eating right now. That's where it is.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why I didn't have to add butter to the pan? It's just fried right up.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  No oil necessary.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the self-basting fish.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, all right. So when, when we come back, more of my interview with the X Prize founder, Peter Diamandis. The guy's, the guy's crazy. Been a really good.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Crazy and a great one.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, good crazy.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  They're crazy.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good dreamer. Good guy.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be right back.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. You're back. We're back. I got Chuck Nice with me here in studio. Chuck, you just.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're eating oily fish.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  I'm still laughing about.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're just joining us.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  The self-oiling fish.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Self-basting. That's why I was eating shrimp the other day. Just slipped out of my hands.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Popped into the next person's bowl.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good Gulf shrimp there, baby.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gulf.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, all right. So we were interviewed, my, my interview with Peter Diamandis and you know, what an interesting, I'm an astrophysicist. So one of the X prizes that intrigued me was not only the one going into sort of the above the atmosphere. That was the Ansari X Prize. He also has an X Prize to land on the moon.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lunar X Prize.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Since we haven't been back there since God knows when.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I know. We ain't been back since 1972.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's insane. So let's find out what that next X Prize is going to do.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  The other competition we have going that is a big space prize is the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. We have 25 teams building private lunar lander vehicles. And to win this $30 million that Google put up, all you have to do is build a robot, land on the surface of the moon, take photos and videos, row 500 meters and take more photos and videos.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And send them back to Earth?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  No, it does not have to come back to Earth. It's a one-way mission.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, but the photos have to come back.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  The photos have to come back.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Need evidence that it actually got there. So you're saying all you have to do is land on the moon? This is, that's an extraordinary...

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Well, it is extraordinary, and...

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe you need 100 million.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Maybe. At the end of the day, the $30 million prize that Google has put up is being matched with $30 million of contracts from NASA. NASA stepped up because ultimately, if you think about it, who's the biggest beneficiary to really low-cost, reliable lunar lander capability?

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA, of course. This one's, this one's $30 million. Hell, I'm, you want to do...

• 26:42Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm down.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  I'm all about it. I say we get a Volkswagen and modify it.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Strap on, get some strap-ons.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Strap some rockets on a Volkswagen and shoot that sucker up there, man.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except I live in an apartment. Do you, do you live in Jersey? You got a garage? You live in a house, right?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I live in a house.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a garage?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  I do not have a garage, though.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know. I have a basement, does that count?

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but he gotta get this sucker out of the basement.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But $30 million, that's something I could, now, you know, the Chinese landed something on, landed on, on the moon.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jade Rabbit.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  The Jade Rabbit.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that cool?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell you, that sounds, uh, like a vibrator if I heard what. I'm sorry, it does. The Jade Rabbit. It's something you find in the nightstand of a lonely woman's bedside drawer.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, who knows what it otherwise is in China, but I know what Jade means and I know what Rabbit means and I don't have the dirty mind you do. Very clean to me. But that couldn't, they couldn't win the 30 million because that's a government.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the whole point of the X Prize is to get private enterprise engaged so that it becomes a

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Competition.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A competition and ultimately possibly a marketable product that becomes business. And so, but I can tell you going to the moon, because we hadn't been in a long time, it's a nice nearby target. Because you know how long it takes to get, it takes three days to get to the moon.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We did the math on that. And so you can actually track it. You know, it's not one of these, oh, we'll get there in four years, chill out until then. All missions to the moon happened like within a news cycle. That's why they're good and that's why they're fun. And so, send me, hell, I'll go.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm, listen, I'm, I would go with you. Now that's a trip. That'd be, that would be a good trip. That's a good road trip.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and Google's getting in on it. You know, Google, it's about time. I said, I, I remember when Google began, it was like, will they ever be anything more than a search engine?

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Google be something more to me, come on. And yes, they are. They're getting into all the rest of, you know, and they had the car that drives itself, you know?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're way past due for those, you know?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  But still now, if you can make a car that drives itself, why can't you make a car or not, a vehicle that drives itself to the moon? I mean, it shouldn't, it's not too far off course.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we got that. No, what are you saying?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  I'm saying like, you know,

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most things in space don't have drivers.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Right. So 60 million dollars that we're talking about, 30 million from Google, 30 million from NASA.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the matched money, right, right?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So it shouldn't be that hard.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's what you're saying.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  We've already been to the moon.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not for 30, not for 60 million dollars. We've been for billions of dollars. That's the problem here.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Okay, I get it now.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Okay, it's really about cost.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you could, we know you can do it for a billion dollars.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh, right.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  See, that's why that,

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we know it's worse than that. Today, we can't even do it for billions of dollars because we don't, we don't have the spacecraft to do it. It's multiple billions of dollars to get to the moon.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, well, sorry, sorry. For people to get to the moon.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  For people.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you, no, for, for, how much would it take NASA to put a, a bot on the moon? I don't know, but it surely would take more than 60 million dollars.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so this would be truly revolutionary.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the Hubble telescope is billions of dollars and that didn't even go to the moon. Okay, so.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Okay, alright, I got it now.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, when we come back on StarTalk Radio, more of my interview with XPRIZE founder, Peter Diamandis. Stay with us.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, across the table from me.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are in studio in New York City. Thanks for being here, Chuck.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  It's a pleasure.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More of my interview with XPRIZE founder, Peter Diamandis. You know, the Lunar XPRIZE, they're, the prize is gonna go, not if you just go to the moon, but there's like, a bag of tricks they want you to perform when you get there.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, as he said in the clip, you photograph the lunar surface, but there's, there's another interesting one. So, one of the extra little tricks you had to do, if you can land close enough, or rove close enough to one of the Apollo landing sites.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And take pictures of it, and send it back.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  So, you get extra money?

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you get some cash for that.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  A little extra cash.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, what worries me is, I think they're only doing that because they still think there are people who don't believe we land there. I said, "Don't feed the trolls, leave..."

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it would still be kinda cool to see, to see the landing.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  I just love the fact that, uh, this is how, uh, much selfies have invaded our culture, is that even in something like this, you send a robot to the moon, it's like, "Oh yeah, take a selfie with the Apollo."

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's worse than that.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  And send it back.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't take a picture of the moon, take a picture of other robot stuff we left there.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Other robot stuff that we left up there. That's great.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my favorite recent XPRIZE that they're talking about is inspired by Star Trek.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As so much of our culture is.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  In Star Trek, of course, the medical tricorder is that device that Bones McCoy used to use that you'd hold over a person and you'd know everything about them, what they had, what was going on. Person's gotta make the cool sounds. It's gotta make the cool sounds. But ultimately, today, the healthcare industry is way broken. All right, by 2020, we are going to be short 91,000 doctors in the United States. We can't train enough doctors, and that's good compared to the rest of the world. Africa has 25% of the disease burden and 1.3% of the healthcare workers. 25% of the world's disease burden. A lot of it due to unclean water, by the way, but different subject. So, the question is, could you create a device that could diagnose people accurately,

• 32:43Speaker 02

  rapidly, cheaply? Portably, presumably. And portably. Another factoid is that Rand Corporation did an analysis a few years back and said that 45% of the time you go to the doctor, you get the wrong diagnosis or the wrong course of treatment. It's a coin flip, that's crazy. And the fact of the matter is, when you go to a physician today, there's so much data that's collected from your blood work, your CAT scan, perhaps that these days, your genomic analysis. There's no way for a human doctor to be able to look at all that data, understand it, and give you accurate diagnostics. So, we had been at our X Prize Visioneering, our annual board get-together, in which we debate and we discuss what we should create as an X Prize. We had been thinking about the idea of an AI physician, artificial intelligence physician.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I'm sure the American Medical Association was perfectly happy about this. You guys are idiots, we're putting my guy in there, my AI dude. Yep, I'm sure they've just endorsed this completely. Go on. Remember, we're going to be short 91,000 doctors. All right, so we gotta get them to embrace this. We have to get them to utilize this technology, to leverage themselves, to make more efficient use of themselves, where physicians, where human, carbon-based life doctors can be of greater use than an artificial intelligence. So, anyway, we've been discussing and debating this, and we come up with this idea of a tricorder, which conceptually would integrate a number of technologies, artificial intelligence, which might be on the cloud. Cloud, the internet cloud. Internet cloud.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Total access.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  A lab on a chip technology, small chips that have microfluidics, the ability to move very small amounts of fluid and do an RNA or DNA analysis of a bacterium, a pathogen, if you would, or do your blood chemistries, digital imagery that could look at your skin and say, that's a melanoma or something along those lines. So you could imagine technology being integrated together to be able to analyze what's going on with a person. So I had a chance to meet Paul Jacobs, the chairman, CEO of Qualcomm Foundation, and over lunch, pitched him on the idea and he said, let's do it. And less than four months later, he and I were onstage at the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, the largest show in Las Vegas, announcing the $10 million Qualcomm Tri Quarter X Prize.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's bigger than the porn show that they have there?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I don't know about that, but it does take place at the same time.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have the triple X prize.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  So the Qualcomm Foundation put up 10 million bucks and this Qualcomm Tri Quarter X Prize is challenging teams to build a device that an average consumer can use, that you can cough on, that you can talk to, that you can do a finger blood prick to, and it can diagnose you better than a team of board certified doctors. And here's the cool thing, six months after we announced this in Las Vegas at CES, we have 230 teams from 30 countries around the world. It's extraordinary how many people have come to this.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star Trek is now.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got everything but the Klingons.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  I love it and I can't wait for them to show up and whip us in the shape.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think they should give a special prize for which device has the coolest sound.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Exactly, because it's got to make that whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's got to, otherwise it's not working.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  It's not working.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the light, little light and everything.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Light and everything.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, tell me about it. So yeah, I'm loving this X Prize stuff and I'm going to try to, you know, maybe get Peter back on and find out what the latest stuff is on this because it's going daily and it could transform how we live.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  He is very visionary, I have to say. Like, you know, it's, it is really to take competition and make it work for good. Like you said, we're all, we're all competition based.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And at the end of the day, it's capitalist. I mean, that's what, that'll work right here in America.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, somebody's going to be making money on it.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let, let that be the case. Cool. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. We gotta bring this one to a close. Chuck, thanks for being here with me as always. Always a pleasure. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.