Extended Classic: MythBusters (Part 1)

In Part 1 of this classic podcast, now extended with 10 minutes of new Cosmic Queries, Neil Tyson sits down with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to discuss experiments, physics, and urban legends.

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, your personal astrophysicist. Actually, you might have other personal astrophysicists. I pretend I'm your personal astrophysicist. I also serve as director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And those chuckles on the other side was none other than Chuck Nice. That's right. Welcome back as co-host. Thank you. Today's show is on the Mythbusters. We all know and love the Mythbusters. Who doesn't love the Mythbusters? They both came through town and I had them in my office and we chatted about like the genesis of their show and what were they thinking? Do you still have an office? Did they blow it up? Did they blow up your office? Because they blow up everything.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they touch stuff and break it and, you know, it's been a staple on the Discovery Channel for like 10 years. Yeah, very successful show. Wow, you know, how many shows last 10 years? Very few. Very few, very few. None of the shows I'm a part of. Sorry about that Chuck. Exactly. Oh, my pain! So, as you may know, they use the scientific method, basically, to test or validate or debunk myths, rumors, urban legends, certain scenes in movies that you say, "Could that have happened?" You know, internet videos that go viral, news stories. This is what they do. It's a brilliant show. A brilliant show. Let's find out just how it all began. Let's check it out.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What were you guys thinking when you started this show? Actually, we were hired talent at the beginning. We had nothing to do with the pitch for Mythbusters. I won't say that we had nothing to do with the creation. So you were pretty faces, is what you're saying?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Well, it was just a job, you know, we gotta pay the rent.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Somebody contacted Jamie, said, "Do you want to do this show called Mythbusters?"

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And I'm like, "Like, that's ever gonna happen." But just as a matter of principle, I went ahead and tried it because you gotta try things, or you're never gonna-

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tried me in screen test, or you tried it?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Well, actually, yeah, so he called me up and said, "Listen, I got this call from Discovery about this thing. I don't think I can do it on my own, but you're a ham, so you wanna shoot a demo reel together?"

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I had to think of who's a ham that I know, but also somebody that's good at doing what we do, because it wasn't just about talking, it was about replicating urban legends. And the fact that we were guys that build things was part of this premise, that we would actually replicate these things.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you become a participant in the test, not just an observer of something?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. And in terms of, you know, being freelancers, where we're always trying to look at what the next avenue is, I had actually just bought a laptop, the first power book that you could edit digital video on, and I was teaching myself-

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Way back in the day.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Way back, the Pismo, and I was teaching myself digital video editing. And so when Jamie called, I had all the equipment necessary, and we shot what ended up being a 14-minute demo reel, and they ended up kind of building the backbone of the show off of that demo.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got to shape the profile of the show based on how you expressed your talents?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  No one told us that we had done that for several years.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and you also have to understand a little bit of the background. Adam and I, we're not exactly friends, but in fact, we don't get along very well at all.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  In 21 years, we've never had dinner alone together.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  But we have common interests, and I would call Adam up and, "Come down and check this out." I'm tinkering in the shop on the weekend.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  We're professionally interested in what each other was doing.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and one of those cases prior to this, for example, was I had gotten these cordless drills. At that time, they were new, they were really powerful.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA technology, you might add.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, 24-volt, heavy-duty cordless drills.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  High torque.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I did what anyone would do.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Well, wait, wait, wait, he calls me up, and he goes, "What are you doing?" I haven't heard from him in like, four months. And I said, "I'm having breakfast with my kids." And he goes, "Well, I'm down at the shop, and I just built something, and I'm about to strap it on. You wanna come check it out?"

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I strapped them on to some roller blades with a little bevel gear, kind of a reduction going right into- To one of the wheels and it had triggers and I was riding around in the shop with powered skates.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were being the kid.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Well, I got this shop where I can build anything, so I call Adam up and he comes down and I'm like jerking all out, trying to not get killed on these things.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like an early Tony Stark.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trying to get the bugs out of the Iron Man suit.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  I'm convinced that that sequence in Iron Man is actually semi-inspired by us.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was in the habit of doing these things periodically, but I call Adam up when we got this call from a production company and he comes down and we filmed this thing.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  We actually lit something on fire and ran away from it.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it turned out to be what the show was.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're being kids who haven't grown up. You're setting stuff on fire, you're putting rockets on your skateboards.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And it was somewhere in the, like, the second season, we realized, wow, actually, the structure of this show works best when we are having the most fun.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  We don't see any reason to make that line between kids and adults and play, just because you look at a kid playing and you figure they're just doing it because they're having fun, but they're understanding their world through these little adventures that they're having, these little experiments. It's often very nonlinear, but they're building a foundation of understanding of the world. And there's not really that much difference as far as adults. A lot of scientists go in this linear direction and there are times that that's the way to do things and that's very productive, but a lot of the most important discoveries that have been made have been off to the side on some tangent.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  We say this at the end of our touring show, that someone once said that the phrase that typifies real discovery is not eureka, but, oh, that's funny.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was Isaac Asimov, who said,

• 5:46Speaker 02

  That's funny.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should really pay attention to when a scientist says, "That's odd."

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's funny. Nice. Crazy dudes. That was Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the two Mythbusters.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Mythbusters. You know what I found really strange is that these guys are living in a real-world Acme Labs. They're like Wile E. Coyote, making rocket skates and blowing stuff up.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know if they ever used an anvil for anything.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, they, you know, their background is in special effects, preparing special effects for movies. You know what I just learned recently? There's a difference between special effects and visual effects.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I know the difference. I'm still a newbie in this.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  All right.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But special effects are mechanical models that you film in a way they look real. And visual effects, you do it all on a computer.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  On a computer.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So they're old school.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, make something.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Make something.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Go, go in the lab and make that happen. And what, what intrigues me is they know and they understand that if you play, you're doing science. If you play without rules.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just break something, try something. And kids do this all the time.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you got, how many?

• 6:55Speaker 03

  I have three.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Six kids?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  It feels like six.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you allow them to do experiments in your house?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Believe it or not, yes, I do.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  As a matter of fact, my son and I, uh...

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old?

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Uh, my son is eight.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  And the last...

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good age, good age.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Good age. The last experiment we did was, uh, we grew crystals. And, uh, he kept a log...

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crystal meth for crystals? Starting them early, Chuck.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Breaking Bad, Kenny style.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Nickelodeon.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  The Nickelodeon version of Breaking Bad.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, crystals are great. What kind of crystals did you grow?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Um, I'm gonna be honest, I don't know.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what? I'll hook you up later. I'll tell you.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  You'll tell me.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least grow, grow sugar crystals, for goodness sake. Then you could eat it, eat your, eat your experiment.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  That would have been, uh, but no, uh, it comes in a little package, but the idea was to get him, uh, to, to keep a log and to chart the progress.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think one of the great takeaways of Mythbusters is that it's trained you to think more deeply about things that happen in front of you.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And take good data. When we come back, more of StarTalk's interview with the Mythbusters.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Co-host today Chuck Nice.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir. Yes, I am.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I follow you, by the way. And I don't follow that many people. I just want you to know.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Well, I feel honored.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on the list.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, today we're talking about The Mythbusters. They're practically legendary at this point.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The two of them together. And they visited New York. They got them in my office and we just talked for like an hour.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Chopped it up for a while.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chopped. So let's find out what their background is and how they got into this and what... It's all about special effects, which triggered their interest in this entire career that they've had for themselves. Adam, how many films have you worked on?

• 8:55Speaker 02

  I guess about a dozen.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your most known film among that dozen?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Star Wars, Episodes 1 and 2, A.I.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The original 1 and 2.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. That was 10 when those came out.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were 10.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  No, I worked on Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Space Cowboys, I helped build the space shuttle for that movie.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have some trivia for you for Space Cowboys.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What STS shuttle mission did they fly on?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Oh, God, I don't know.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  200.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Oh, that's really late.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was very late and very wishful thinking of how long the shuttle was last. Because where did it go? It went to only like 134, I think.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  And considering that the Gravity Shuttle mission was 158.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right, in the film Gravity.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they all take the shuttles beyond reality. That's how you know how unreal they could be.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  NASA supplied us with all these binders of shuttle mission payload bay setups. And the payload bay was my personal job. And so every piece of equipment in the Space Cowboys shuttle bay is from a real shuttle mission. It's just from like 30 all at once, which astronauts look at that and they laugh.

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because the asynchrony of it gives it away.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And here's a secret about film space stuff, which is that we looked all over and did tons of camera tests to find proper gold foil that exposed and looked right to the gold foil they use on NASA missions. It turns out it's a Rolo wrapper.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yep. So ILM, when we did it and later on at Mythbusters...

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Industrial Light and Magic?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And later on, when we did our Moon Landing Hoax episode on Mythbusters, we bought cases of Rolos and took off the wrappers and used those for our gold foil.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jamie, how about you?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Somewhere's around 800 commercials and a couple dozen feature films.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Commercials?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  And the feature films, arachnophobia, Naked Lunch, and Robocop.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the era of mechanical models. We're not talking about CGI here.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it almost doesn't exist.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that you're the last wave of who could do that.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even through the course of our experience with them, they started out with stuff like arachnophobia were cable driven. Those spiders and arachnophobia had an organ grinder kind of a device that had a stack of cams and levers, each one pulled on a specific cable that went into a spider.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  And Jamie designed that, right?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, each of those spiders would have maybe 30 little axes of movement in its legs and so on.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The funny thing, when you design special effects like that, the movie then has a portfolio of artifacts left over from it. Nowadays, there's nothing.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  And it's funny, when you tour through Industrial Light and Magic now, that's all they have is all those practical models, but they're growing more and more distant.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What commercials?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  You name it, any kind of soft drink or car.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Or beer.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Cereal.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Jamie did all the little penny commercials for Nike.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  For Nike.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Anthony Hardaway.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah, they might be as simple as whore shots, you know, if you're pouring beer or soda.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Oh, here's a classic that Jamie worked on. Do you remember the York Peppermint Patty commercial where the peppermint patty goes, "Get the sensation," and you see it break? Jamie built that and he's got it on his desk.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  It's about eight inches in diameter.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  All the Hershey's Kiss ads where they're dancing around, and that was the kind of thing that we would do, all the way up to the more advanced puppets. And towards the end of that run, the puppets had gone from cable controlled things to very sophisticated robotic kinds of things. One of my favorites that I think actually it was done while Mythbusters was happening was the, a 7-Up commercial where I had to take a 7-Up machine and put tank treads on it, and it had to fire soda cans out the slot where you normally pick them up, so.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  The idea was 7-Up's bringing the soda to you.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this machine had electric car motors in it and these big tank treads, and it was all radio controlled, and it would hold a...

• 12:34Speaker 02

  A magazine of about a dozen cans.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  It was like a 12-pack of 7-Up cans that would load in, and you press a button, and they would come out that slot about, I got kind of carried away, they would come out about 400 miles an hour.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  So you just tested it against the side of the building we were working in, and it sounded like we were under mortar fire, and then we realized we were.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's not only the velocity of the can. It's 12 ounces. There's the fact that the can is under pressure.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you explode a can under pressure on impact.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  The beautiful thing was what was left of the can after it hit the wall was like a piece of tin foil. It was perfectly flat.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that thing was lethal.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boys and their toys.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Yes, tell me about it. I just love.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wait, wait. So the can coming out, oh, 100 miles an hour wasn't fast enough.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need more power.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about 400 miles an hour?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. I just love the fact that he turned a 7-Up machine into Tiananmen Square.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's interesting. You never know what your background will bring into a future.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into how you might capitalize on that later because here's all their background that nobody's using anymore. Yet they're still sort of rolled it into their current creativity, how to devise the experiments that they test.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how they, uh, so that I'm, I'm, it's a, it's a happy story.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  It really is. And you know, one of the cool things there is you get to see how many applications, real life applications, science has.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  You know, it's like, who would think that, you know, here you are studying these, uh, laws and properties in school.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In school.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  And then you have a job where they all actually come into play into real life on an everyday basis.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, uh, when I was tweeting during the Super Bowl, I, my opening tweet was, "Football, the greatest expression of the laws of physics in the universe." Spin stabilized projectile. Momentum transfer. Energy. Yeah. So phys- physics is everywhere. We've got another clip of these guys in this segment here. Where we talked about some sort of unexpected limits they came up against when they first started out as Mythbusters.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alligators in the sewers. Is that a Mythbuster-able thing?

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Well, it was on our list at the very beginning, as obvious as it is. One thing was New York wanted no part of us investigating that here.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you might actually find.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Well, and then we started to really look like, well, how would we do it? So the way we'd want to test that is go into New York sewers and assemble the same conditions. That we find down there and see if you can raise an alligator in those

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be

• 15:08Speaker 03

  And that's animal cruelty.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Right? I mean, you're very potentially killing an alligator to do that.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you could be nourishing it with some kind of sewage waste that could turn into a super alligator.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is part of the legend, right?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  A teenage mutant ninja alligator.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, teenage mutant ninja alligator. So animal cruelty.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  That's the thing where, you know, it's like, we're never gonna put a poodle in a microwave. As funny as it is to be threatened to, and actually, on our season one, we were doing promos and we said, we've got to tease this, so we got a poodle and we put it on top of a microwave. And Jamie goes, "Don't you want the treat in there? Go get that treat." And we got all sorts of crap for that.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, people are funny about that stuff. I remember before this, in FX, doing commercials. Some pizza commercial where they had garlic puppet that gets chopped and burned and hacked. And we got hate mail from the public and had canceled it.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was violence and effigy.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Vegetable killers.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a puppet and it's garlic. It's odd that there you are chopping up a garlic puppet and getting mail about it. Yet nations go to war every day and actual human beings get cut up and shot.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're getting mail on a garlic puppet.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. So we're idiots. We are idiots, because that is, what a salient point. People are dying every day at the hands of other people, but you're concerned about a puppet.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Made of garlic.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Made of garlic. You know what I mean? Like, I can see it now. Sarah McLoughlin comes out. "Hi, I'm Sarah McLoughlin. Do you know a puppet that's being abused in the arms of an angel?" "Hi, I'm Jim Henson's ghost. Please stop this carnage against the puppets." It's ridiculous.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, people got their issues. That's what it is.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the point is, the Mythbusters, they collect all these urban legends and see if they can work. What I found interesting is they're smart enough to know that sometimes you can't do the experiment in situ. And the idea, even though they didn't follow through on it, that they might create a sewer environment.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a controlled lab, and then you can actually follow through on how and when and where that would happen.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody wants an alligator in the sewer. I'm certain of it.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  You know what? That's one of my favorite urban legends there is. Is every time I'm waiting for the subway, I'm just... Somewhat hopeful that a giant albino alligator will show up instead of the N train.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An albino alligator. Do you know that the, the, you know why we fear reptiles?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Why?

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's been interestingly hypothesized.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Why?

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because back before the dinosaurs went extinct, our mammal ancestors were running underfoot, trying to avoid becoming their, their lunch or their hors d'oeuvres. And so they were reptiles.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, deep within our DNA, we fear reptiles. And all the old B movie aliens, they were reptiles.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  And here, all this time, I thought it was because they were icky.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of StarTalk Radio's interview with the Mythbusters.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Radio. Your astrophysicist here, Neil Tyson. Jack, Jack Nice with me.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we're talking about the Mythbusters.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Talking about the Myth, you know, but before we get back into it, you were talking about, and I was thinking about this, how reptiles, and I was thinking, wow, that is fascinating, because everyone has a visceral fear of reptiles.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we think it dates all the way back to when we were running away from T-Rex, basically, 65 million years ago. Our mammal ancestors, deep within our DNA code, is a fear of reptiles.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and look at all the B movies that, and even in Star Trek.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Even in Star Trek.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The famous Gorn.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a reptile, if there ever was one.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, it's just fun to think about that.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  That is.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know who checks a lot of this is Snopes.com. Have you ever gone there?

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just go and hang out, you know, tell other people about it. They report on whether any of these urban legends are true or not.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the poodle in the oven, that's the classicest case of an urban legend. And they say, no, of course, it's not true, but it tells us that people fear technology that they don't understand.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  That makes sense.

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I got another clip with the Mythbusters, and we talk about how special effects that they had worked on creates the illusion of reality, but the Mythbusters do the opposite. Let's find out.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  The thing about special effects is that you're allowed to make something look like it is doing that without actually doing that.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  With midbusters, we have to do the opposite.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be, everything's gotta be real. Otherwise, we'll call you out on it.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  You know, in television, sometimes you have to shoot things out of order. And occasionally with a location or some sort of scheduling problem, we'll have to shoot a sequence that's gonna happen before a sequence that we're shooting subsequently. And in those cases, we'll only do that if we're really sure about what the result of an experiment's gonna be. And every time we do that, we get screwed. The experiment doesn't turn out the way we expect. And so, we have learned, never put our eggs in one basket like that. Never count on a specific result.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a shadow-length checker. I know if you filmed something before that should've been after.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your shadows don't lie. And usually, you're not thinking of your shadow.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw a documentary once. It showed scenes in Africa, and there was a thunderstorm in the background. And I noticed that the thunder and the lightning were happening simultaneously. So, I said, "What made you decide to do that?" I wasn't criticizing it, I just wanted to know, at what point do you say, "I'm gonna fake this?"

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, it looked like he was a little embarrassed. "Oh, Dr. Tyson, you got me on that one." They showed the actual footage, and it was dissonant, you know?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Right, it actually put your attention on the wrong thing.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was distracting.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  We had this with one of our first giant explosions. We blew up a cement truck with 800 pounds of...

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You blew up a cement truck?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Because we could.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  The myth is that you could clean out a dirty cement truck with a stick of dynamite. And it actually turns out that that's true. You actually can more easily remove cement from the inside of a cement truck with dynamite.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a crusty thing that is on the inside, and it's brittle, and it falls off from the...

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it basically cracks it, and then it comes, and it's like a self-cleaning oven.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. So, we decided to take this to the nth degree, and we filled a cement truck full of dried cement, and then we blew it up with Amfo. And we were a mile and a half across a body of water from the explosion. And the explosion took eight seconds to actually reach us. We could watch the pressure wave coming across the water towards us, and... Hit us in the chest and the cameraman who had been instructed. The show's about Adam and Jamie. We have other cameras covering the explosion. Focus on them. He did not turn around and get us. So the shot that you see in the show of us jumping. Totally fake.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, but you knew it did happen.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we were there and we did jump. We just, the cameraman didn't get us. So we actually. It took so long. They asked us to do it again.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Blow up another.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  We can't blow up another.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do over. By the way, people forget to notice that at rocket launches. Because the nearest location at Cape Canaveral is about three miles away.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But this is Florida, so there's a lot of marshy, wet areas. So you see the shuttle launch. You don't hear anything.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as the sound moves, you see birds starting to rise up. Out of the marsh and then you see the ripple along the thing and then you hear. But people are just looking up like that. You have to know to look around.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to catch the rest of that.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  And it's a lovely thing, that delay.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is why a thousand people got injured in Chelyabinsk, Russia. That's why. Because the asteroid that blew up over that town was brighter than the sun.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In early morning during their breakfast. It was an air blast. And so light is beaming through their breakfast window. You know, Steven Spielberg alien style, right?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they say, hmm, what is that? And they all walk up to the window.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Note to self.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bam!

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the shockwave hits and all the glass in the entire city shatters into people's faces.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a good note. If the sun comes out at night, don't look out the window.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And find out what it was.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Open the door. The door is perfectly fine.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  See now, if that had been Compton, nobody would have gone to the window. Cause when you see a bright light shining in your window in Compton, you know it's the police.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that where you live? I don't know.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so they, again, Pete, they like blowing stuff up. And who would have thought this about cement trucks? My goodness.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seems to me you could just tap it on the outside to crack it or something.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  How about that?

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then do you still have a truck when it's done? And therefore, of what use is this activity to clean out the truck? If you don't have a truck?

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't even understand.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, when we come back with my interview with the Mythbusters, we just find out more about specific tests that they've done. What's the most expensive one, for example? I want to find out.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  I can't, if the cement truck isn't up there, I can't even imagine.

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice with me.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mythbusters are crazy guys.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  I love these guys.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mythbusters are Adam Savage and Jamie Hyman. I had them in my office. So there. But I had to cordon off all the stuff in my office because no telling what they'd be grabbing stuff.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  And breaking things and blowing things up and putting dynamite in your desk.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at all, at all times, they're testing an idea that someone had put out there. This isn't, they're not just wanton, crazy people, right? There's, someone thinks this is true, let's test it. The art of the test. And what, in my office, I asked them, what's the most expensive episode of Mythbusters that they ever conducted?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  The third time we revisited the rocket car. It's an original Darwin Award myth where a guy strapped a military genesis to take off rocket to his Impala and supposedly flew a mile through the air and bedded into a mountain and they pulled his teeth out of the wreckage to identify him. That was actually our very first episode.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you wanted to redo that?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Well, we did it first 10 years ago.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's something I want to do.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Then we did it a second time where we got these really powerful rockets that blew up on the stand. So we spent 20 grand on these rockets. Everything we did worked perfectly, the rockets blew up. Took us another five years to give us discovery, to fork over enough dough to do it for real. And this time we did two launches last summer in the Mojave Desert. One with a car hitting a bump in the road and the other with a real straight up ramp.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why is that interesting? Sure, I put rockets on my car, I fly.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Ah, well, there's two things to this. The first-

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the car's version of a jetpack.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Essentially, except that rockets aren't shaped like cars for a very good reason. And so the first time we did it, we put the normal J-DO amount of power on the car and it only accelerated the car to 150 miles an hour. And traditionally on Mythbusters, when we get to a place like that, we want to find out what would it take to replicate the behavior that is stated in the myth? To get the car to accelerate to 350 miles an hour and fly perhaps roughly a mile through the air.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  350 miles an hour, you go backwards in time.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  With the red shifting.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marty!

• 26:36Speaker 02

  So then we-

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the flux capacitor.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  The math said to get the car up to that speed, and we attempted to balance correctly using, you know, model rocketry formulas to get the rockets in the right place. The question is, is if you have the car balanced and the rockets in the right place and they have enough power, will they actually make the car fly straight and true? And that was the answer we hadn't fully come to as the second part of the story.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was half of the design concern in the Apollo era. Have you have a straight rocket, how do you point it? How do you aim it?

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Well, we of course could have gone to a place where we start to add fins and do other things to this car.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  We get people that say, "Why don't you just put fins on the thing or aimings?" And we say, "That's a car-shaped rocket. We want a rocket car."

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  For us, there's an ethical difference.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your formula said that you'd be able to fly at 350 miles an hour?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yes, according to the amount of rocket power.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did it?

• 27:30Speaker 02

  It never really got the chance to be-

• 27:33Speaker 01

  They were so unstable that they-

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the answer is no.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  The answer is no.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Say no. Let me hear you say it. Did it work?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  The scientist in me wants to say, "I guess on an infinitely straight track, maybe, but with us going off a bump in the road, it's too unstable and they bounced after about 350."

• 27:47Speaker 01

  They did what I was talking about, which is they interact with the ground rather quickly.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys have a whole euphemistic vocabulary.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  The other favorite term is catastrophic failure.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  That is my favorite engineering term.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we use that all the time on the show.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or in rocket propulsion lore, there are rocket launches that succeed and others that are rich in learning opportunities.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that one cost them, you know, when all was said and done, like tens of thousands of dollars just for the rockets and cars. So they made a brief mention of the Darwin Awards at the beginning. It was rumored that the person who did that originally, who died of course, was eligible and possibly won the Darwin. It turns out he didn't win the Darwin Awards, whether or not that even happened. You know about the Darwin Awards?

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Yes, for the dumbest ideas ever.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  That's not the Darwin's?

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No! Well, yes, that's an element of the Darwin Award. It has to be an idea that you execute that is so dumb that you end up dying from it.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know that that was a prerequisite.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that takes your genes out of the gene pool.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Purifying those who remain.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Making sure that you can't breed.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, actually, or the act of you performing this stupid thing, if it doesn't kill you, it at least sterilizes you, which as far from a Darwinian perspective is the same thing.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Same thing, because you're no longer going to add, so forget it, you're done.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and so you don't actually want to win a Darwin Award.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  No, I've got a great trick, but I can only do it once.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first person to fall into a black hole would win a Darwin Award. So, so once again, I mean, I don't want to misrepresent the portfolio of their activities. Yes, people love blowing stuff up, but a lot of it is not blowing up. It's simple things and thoughts that people had and they wanted to test it.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Now, here's the thing, and I'm not disparaging these guys at all, however, if you...

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold your however. We're going to go to break. Chuck has a however. We're going to go to break, we'll come back and we'll find out why you're not disparaging them. All right, check it out.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, with Chuck Nice.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Your personal stand-up comic.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone should have a personal stand-up comic, just to change how things look, you know? "Well, I had a bad day." "No, you didn't." This one happened. So, we're interviewing the Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyman. Professionally, they're like special effects prop builders, you know, in the old days, and they just converted all that talent to building experiments to test popular lore. And before we broke, you had some comment about the Darwin Awards?

• 30:52Speaker 03

  Well, here's my point. Okay, if you're starting with something called "The Darwin Awards," which presupposes that you are the biggest dumb butt on the face of the earth, why do you have to replicate that? Like, you know what I mean? Like, seriously, you're starting off with people whose last words are, you know, "How y'all watch this?" That's what you're starting with.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's their last words.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  That's their last words. Why do you have to replicate that to see whether or not it's viable? I mean, that's my only point.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I'm told, although I don't remember this, someone told me that in one of Kurt Vonnegut's novels, they, he hypothesized, "What are the last words ever spoken by anyone in the human species?"

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one scientist saying to the other, "I wonder what happens if we do it this way."

• 31:44Speaker 03

  And that's how civilization came to an end.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in our next and final clip, talk about unexpected outcomes from their experiments. Could you think it's gonna go one way?

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know, you do the experiment and you find out. Let's check it out. Every idea you have, you have some expected outcome.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happens if nothing goes right? Not because you didn't design the experiment, right? But because the outcome was not anything you expected.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  That happens all the time, actually, and it's arguably...

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it refreshing or is it frustrating?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  It's arguably our favorite part of this whole job.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's one of the biggest surprises that we had when we got into doing this. Starting out as not scientists by training. We, over time of doing this show, realized that when you fail, you can't help but learn something if you pay attention. If we go through an experiment and everything turns out the way we expected and the way that we wanted it to...

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not even interesting, no.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  And we just went through the motions. You know, you would think, okay, well, you pat yourself on the back for doing a good job, but...

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not in a new place.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  You're not in a new place, and you didn't grow from that. And for us, that's where the real value is, and it's counterintuitive. But when we go into something and we totally screw up and things didn't turn out the way that we wanted to or expected them to, we're overjoyed because we get right into it and ask questions, why?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  And as long as we feel like our methodology is sound, what we've got is good data. And good data that doesn't match what we expected is really good data.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's interesting, good data.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is. One of the things that we've been able to do over the past 10 years in San Francisco is build a set of relationships with different types of locations that give us different latitudes of what we can do there. Set stuff on fire, blow stuff up, drive cars around. And because of those relationships, we are able, when we come to a result we didn't expect, to call back to the office and say, "Tomorrow's location is off. I need you to find me a totally different location to do this totally different set of experiments." And thus, the narratives that you end up seeing edited on the show are genuinely driven by the narrative itself. We don't write down what's going to happen. We do write down an outline of what we expect to happen. We almost never follow it.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what does happen shapes what does happen.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What gets filmed.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and we really feel like that has a freshness to it that the audience can smell.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  And this is what I find so profound about what we've done here with this show, is that we're not looking at this like, "Let's do science." We're looking at this just totally naturally, like, "We want to do a good job at this." And we're realizing that when we fail...

• 34:18Speaker 02

  We learn things and so we're okay with that. We like that. It's not something that's artificial.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, it's not in our culture, the value of a failure.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get blamed for failing.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  You totally do.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and that's got to change.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book about NASA being, you know, in movies, something goes beep and an astronaut in the movie goes, "What's that?" And that would never happen at NASA because they've gone over every beep that could ever happen. They've gone over every worst-case scenario they could do, and that's what makes them so good at what they do when they actually get out into space. And that kind of culture is a brilliant way to do problem solving.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know Chuck, I think that in America, I don't know about the rest of the world, but in America, we are so quick to blame you for failure.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I think if our brain were wired so that we viewed the world as a laboratory.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then failure would be viewed, failure would be viewed completely differently.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be, "Tell me what you learned."

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "What happened there?"

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Yeah, let's add that to the data set," rather than, "You idiot, you, you know."

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Right, "You screwed up, you did this," right.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  "You're fired."

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People are not interpreting failure as learning experiences, and I think that's a problem.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to change that.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  If failure is a learning experience, then my life is brilliant.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  My life is an exercise in genius.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, here's the thing, you know, the difference is, you don't want to fail in the same way a second time.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Oh, there's the problem. So therein lies the rub.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. You, you don't want to make mistakes twice.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Right, okay.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to make new mistakes.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and so this was, uh, one of the heads of NASA a few years ago, uh, tried to make the point, "Yeah, if you, if you're going where no one has gone before, stuff is going to happen, stuff will break, people will die."

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to die for reasons that you could have foreseen.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  There you go. You want to be the guy who beams down to the planet and you know you're not coming back because you're an Ensign who's never been in an episode before.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just never wear a red shirt.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Learn from that experience.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right Chuck, we're going to take a break, and, and when we come back, we're going to reach into the grab bag of cosmic curiosity.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got a lot of people out there who just, who have questions and they just want them answered.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm figuring, let's, let's save the last segment for that. So we'll be back in a moment, stay tuned.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, this is the Q and A part.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this themed this time, or is it?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Well, no, these are just general questions, general inquiries from our listeners.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  General, uh, so it's a grab bag?

• 37:03Speaker 03

  It's a grab bag.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I have, I have not seen these questions before.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  That's what makes this exciting, is the fact that you do not know what you are going to be asked. We're not trying to stump you.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you do, I'll just say I'm stumped, go on to the next question.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  See, and that's how you know that you're actually smart. Only smart people do that. Like, hey, man, I don't know.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Right, it's the dummies that are just like, well, you see, the reason why that is.

• 37:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Is.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  Alright, so you ready?

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Okay, here's our first question, this is from, uh, Trayvon Thomas. Hmm, I wonder what color he is. Um, I'm sorry, Neil. I'm sorry, that was wrong.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  I know, that was rough. Uh, this is from Trayvon Thomas. If the multiverse theory is true, is it possible to travel to other universes? How would it be possible for us to exist in those universes if they have different laws of physics?

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Oh, that is cool.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, evidence suggest, well, not evidence, cogent theoretical analysis of quantum physics and general relativity suggests that there may in fact be a multiverse. We have no data on this right now, so these are ideas at the frontier of, of the exploration of physics. And if there is a multiverse, it means we are just one of many other universes, all with different bubbles.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  There's an evil Chuck Nice somewhere on another universe.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was gonna say that Chuck Nice had a mustache and beard, but you got one in this universe.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  So mine does not.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the good Chuck Nice, you are the evil one.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever think of that one?

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Did not think of that, okay. But now it makes so much sense.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause we all think we are good, don't we?

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Exactly, it makes so much sense.

• 38:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hitler saying, "I'm good, I'm a good man, yeah."

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Wow, that's funny. You just gave me a picture of like, really nice Hitler. You know what I mean? In another multiverse.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In another multiverse. And then the bad people don't like him because he's nice.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so each of these universes would have a, it's likely that they would have a slightly different laws of physics.

• 39:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Perhaps a different charge on the electron, a different gravitational constant. The gravitational constant is a, is a, is a, is a, it's a term in the equations of gravity that Isaac Newton first wrote down.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it tells you, it's a measure of how strong gravity is relative to other forces in the universe. If those are slightly different, and you got a ticket to that universe?

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, sorry for you.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, right. Things aren't gonna work out very well for you.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They will not end well.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  They will not end well.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that universe. So you really do need a universe with the same laws of physics. Because the very forces that bond the molecules and atoms in your body would rely on the values of the laws of physics that are in our universe.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, you don't, you send something else into that universe to check it out first.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Right. Like, uh, what, uh, you know, what's his face? Uh, the, the little robot, I forget now. I'll forget it. What was the little robot?

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which robot?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  You know, another Steven Spielberg robot and the world had been destroyed.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, Wally.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Wally. We're gonna send Wally.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Send Wally.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Send Wally.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I have a better idea. Send one of the crash test dummies.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  That'll work.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're cool with it, they're down with this, that kind of thing.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  They die every day.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every day.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, thanks for that question, Trevon.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Alright, Trevon, way to go. Uh, this one is from, oh, I love it, James Brown.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  That's all, I just had.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me hear that again. So that was, as Eddie Murphy said, that's a whole James Brown lyric.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  Right there. So this is from James Brown. To quote Dr. Tyson, he's quoting you, "Heavy elements are forged in the cubicles of dying stars."

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crucibles.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Crucibles of dying stars.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you misread that or did he miswrite it?

• 40:46Speaker 03

  I misread that.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do we have you for? Aren't you college educated?

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Indeed, I am. But I'm only here because I'm charming. In other words, to get protons to stick together, they need high heat and pressures. So why wasn't there enough pressure to create anything heavier than hydrogen and helium in whatever started the big bang?

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, snap!

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, this guy has done some thinking here.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh!

• 41:14Speaker 03

  I like it.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh! Okay, so, good, good one. So at the beginning of the universe, he knows that the conditions were just right to not only forge matter out of energy, this is where you get your protons that are the nuclei of hydrogen. Hydrogen is the simplest element. That's the one that was up in the corner of the periodic table.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whole periodic table begins there.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, right there.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right there. One proton.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  The first step.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first step. And helium has two protons and lithium has three protons and, and, and this goes on and on and on. Carbon has six protons. Everybody's got a unique number of protons and that's the identity of the element. So here we start with hydrogen. We take protons, slam them together, we make helium. Okay, so, why don't we keep making other elements in the early universe? We do a little bit of lithium is made. Trace amounts.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  And that's because the universe at that time was a little depressing. And so, need a little lithium.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need to, let's, let's make some of that.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  Make some lithium.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of that, right. So, watch what happens. While the universe, under high temperatures, could have been making heavier elements, it is also expanding.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Becoming less dense. And as your density drops...

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The likelihood of particles colliding goes down.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's the difference between living in New York City and living in rural Kansas. Your chances of having an accident go way down when you're in rural Kansas.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, uh, uh, the chances of walking into someone by accident.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  That's what I mean. Right. Colliding. A collision accident.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A collision of any kind in principle. But yeah, so, so, yes. And so while the universe is expanding, matter is not only becoming less dense, it's also cooling. And so the speeds of these particles drop.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so in fact, you can look at how much hydrogen and, and helium is in the universe, in parts of the universe that have not been altered severely, and go back and deduce what those conditions must have been.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the same time, you can go back and derive these from first principles and those two, those two calculations match up.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that's why we have very high confidence in what was going on in the early universe.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And whereas in a star, you make your hydrogen, you have your helium, and you just keep going up the chain and you are hot, you are dense. The stuff doesn't get less dense down there. It gets even more dense.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good. Good to go.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  See, so, okay, that's great.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I said it gets more, it doesn't, it just gets, it's, it's there contained. Whereas the universe is expanding and cooling.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference. Great question.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  That is a great, way to go, James Brad.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  James Brad.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  All right, here we go. Um, uh, this is from, uh, Brian Kearney. Okay, he says Alan Turnings' early work.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turing. Did you misread that as well?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Nope, that is now, that's misspelled.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Okay, it's Alan Turing.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turing.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  Turing. Early work, uh, was on self-organization, uh, organizing systems. Uh, given a cosmic perspective, would entropy give way to equilibrium? And then begin self-organization? Or is the elegant order we see in the universe just Newtonian? So is it all gravity's fault?

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These people are doing their homework.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, some people are doing their homework right now, man.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Man. Yeah, check it out. I gotta tell you, man. Uh, Brian. Man, you're making me work here. Brian, you got deep, Brian. You got deep. So let me, let me, let me sort of unpack that. Yes, please do. All right, so the universe as we expand is cooling. Right. The entropy is increasing. This is the disorder in the universe. Correct. All right, and so, so you can ask, if you have disorder, how do you have, if disorder is increasing, how do you ever have order? You get disorder if there's no source of energy pumping into the system. Gotcha. It's that simple. So why is there order on Earth? Why is there life? Why is there complex life rather than complete disorder? Because we are in orbit around a sun that is providing energy. Right.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the big picture, the sun will ultimately die. Correct. And it will not regenerate, and anything on Earth would then also. Die along with it. Die along with it. Right. All right, because that was our source of energy, propping up the complexity of our systems against the disorder that would otherwise ensue. Right. So, so it's, it's only about where did you, what is your source of energy and what is not? That's all it comes down to. Gotcha. Stars are a great source of energy. They last a long time. They're very efficient. Right. And so that's why you can have pockets of complex stuff going on. They're the LED light bulbs of the universe. They, they keep on going. They just keep on going. Yeah. Right. So that was a stretch there, but, but I'm helping you. I'm saying, okay. I'm trying to make it relatable, you know?

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, on the subject of LEDs. Yes. The Nobel Prize in Physics. Yes. For nineteen, for two thousand and fourteen, was on the discovery of blue LEDs. Right, which gave us white light? Is that what it is? Uh. It gave us, it allows us to have white light? Yes, because we had red LEDs. Right. And green. And green LEDs. That's R, R, R G. R G. We need to be. We need that be. There's the B. There you go. RGB gives you white and every other color in the spectrum. Sweet. Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize. That's all it was to it. Just one little color got you a Nobel Prize. If I had known that. You could have done that long ago. Please. Are you kidding me? That's all it took was one little color? Are you kidding me?

• 46:46Speaker 03

  All right, well, there you have it.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we got like 30, I don't, do we, I don't, yeah, I, we, we're gonna have to save these questions for another time.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Ah, man, we're out of time already.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, I gotta talk faster next time.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  No, you don't. This was good.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You liking it?

• 46:59Speaker 03

  This was great.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  I learned some stuff.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, some stuff.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  I learned some stuff.

• 47:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got to hear James Brown. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, thanks for being with me as always.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Always my pleasure.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as always, keep looking out.