Cosmic Queries: Star Trek

Join Neil deGrasse Tyson and Leighann Lord as they boldly go where no one has gone before: answering fan questions about “Star Trek,” from transporter beams and warp drives to Klingons and the Borg.

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 your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. My day job is as Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Come on by sometime. Just come to the front door and say, "You know Neil deGrasse Tyson?" And they'll still charge you.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I've done that and they still want money.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that voice is Leanne Lord. Leanne, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Thank you. Can I just say, I love that you say "your day job"? Like, your night job is being a science superhero.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, my night job is astrophysics. We work at night. Yes, yes. So, you're a geek tris, as I understand.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I am a geek tris.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've demonstrated this a few times in the past, but let's see if you've really got what it takes to be "She Who Delivers To Me: The Cosmic Queries". This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Hour.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it. You've got some really, really interesting questions.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We get questions from our Facebook page, which is just, you can find us there at, like us at StarTalk Radio. And sometimes we get questions on Twitter, on our Twitter streams, StarTalk Radio there. And so...

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Sometimes I get questions and I'm like, "Oh, I'm not Neil. I'm just on the show sometimes."

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pocket those and bring them.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring them to Cosmic Queries. So what do you got for me?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  All right, I've got a bunch of stuff, so I'm gonna...

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I just let, so people know, I've not seen these questions yet, so this is all off the cuff.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  No, there's no advanced knowledge of these questions, which will be evidenced on how badly I say some of them. All right, we're gonna start with an easy one, and that's more for me than for you.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how do you know the answer's easy? You have no idea.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't mean the answer. I mean just the question. This one's short. All right. Which would you rather have? A medical tri-quarter, a universal translator, or a mobile holometer? And why?

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a tri-quarter, uh, universal translator or mobile holometer.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are people who are huge Star Trek, the science fiction fans.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I should have prefaced with, this is purely from the Star Trek universe.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so these are cosmic queries from the Star Trek universe.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yes, from a Star Trek fan. And it's from Facebook and it's Emily Camille who asked this question.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. I kinda like the universal translator.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what gets me though, is on Earth, when we say something is universal, they're really only talking about Earth.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, like, you know, Miss Universe, you know, or Mr. Universe. That's, that's Earth.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we don't have any Bajoran women, no Kardashians, nobody trying to challenge us, no.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly. And so a universal translator, if it's truly universal, would translate all languages on Earth, as well as all languages from alien, communicating alien species anywhere else. But you know, the first species I would listen to with my universal translator?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Who?

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whales.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. So it's really universal, universal.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, don't be, don't be humanoid centric on this.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Sorry, didn't mean to be speciesist.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't you want, yeah, your speech.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  That's word.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just invent.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  We invented a word.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let the record show.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  That is the magic of English.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leanne Lord, who in her Twitter stream, Leanne Lord, gives a word of the day.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  I do, I give a word of the day every day.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an, occasionally, now you have the right to make up a word.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Now, that's what I've crossed over to.

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so speciesist.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Speciesist.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speciesist. That means you care only about, uh,

• 3:53Speaker 01

  About humans.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  bipedal, walking, uh,

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm not sure that's compatible with being a native New Yorker.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  I really have to do some soul searching on that.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wonder what the whales will say if they're like doing high level math in their heads. They have huge fricking brains.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  You do.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, their brain is like, is the biggest brains on Earth that there ever was on Earth. And so.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I didn't actually know that.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, whose brain do you think would be bigger than that of a whale?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Uh, are we factoring in ego to size?

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did not, excuse me.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Are you going with actual maths?

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah, maybe they're doing calculus. Maybe they're wondering if the humans can survive themselves, you know.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Right, or maybe they're trying to build the spaceships and get out of here. Our stewardship of the planet isn't working out.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. And that was, of course, the theme to Star Trek IV, the movie.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The subtitle was Save the Whales, right, on that one. So you got another question?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I do. I have tons of questions. Okay, let's see if I can get this one. Okay, this is from Scott, Scott Harkness. Oh, he says, as a kid watching Star Trek: Next Generation, I was often amazed not only by the peaceful nature of mankind in the future, but also by the level of technology. Do you think a Star Trek-like technological level could be a reality in a few hundred years?

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I think anyone a couple of hundred years ago, looking at our technology today, would be as mind-blown as we looking today at the technology of Star Trek centuries to come.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I don't even think you need to go back a hundred years. I think you can go back a decade.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've often said that, you know, you don't have to go back that far. If you whipped out a smartphone, they would resurrect the witch-burning laws.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the power that you wielded in the palm of your hand.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think, first pause and reflect on what technology has done for the present. All right, I try never to lose sight of that and to take none of it for granted. So, but that was a two-part question.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yes, it was.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone's peaceful. Humans are peaceful, and...

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And that wasn't really his question.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it wasn't. But I don't know that I guarantee that. Why should we think that, you know, there are all these peace treaties for the, for space, the peaceful use of space.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we go to space, let us be kind to one another. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, but pause. If you can't be kind to each other on Earth,

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, what confidence are you giving me that space is gonna make you kind?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, there's no, why, and if you succeed in being kind in space... Then do the same damn thing on Earth.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm screaming at you here.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you're preaching to the choir. Because I love that that wasn't even his question. He didn't even pose that we could be peaceful to each other in the future. He just was all about the technology. Like, I've given up on that. It's peaceful, that's a fantasy, that's science fiction. What about the technology?

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Technology. So I think a lot of it is there. One of my favorite bits going from the Next Generation series that he's referring to, because that's what influenced him as a kid. I love the multi-spectrum visor that, you know, that Geordi wore.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Geordi's banana clip.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because as an astrophysicist, one of our greatest challenges over the centuries was how many ways can we look at the universe? The universe is not speaking to us only with visible light that our biological retinas happen to detect.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our biology is not the be all and end all of what the universe is up to.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Can we say that again?

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe is talking to us in X-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, ultraviolet, infrared. These are bands of light that the eye cannot see, but we can, with the methods and tools of science, invent ways to make that happen. And so this is how we discovered black holes and the beginning signature of the Big Bang in the universe, the cosmic microwave background. So we are so there. And so, yes, technology can totally transform life as it has done thus far. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries, and I've got you here because in this hour, we're talking Star Trek queries.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  And I love it, I love it.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you've got some Star Trek street cred.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  I do, well, you know, I try.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The girl gets her, can do that, you're saying.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  It's the spent youth watching Star Trek.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you got?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Well, I actually had a question based on our last question. You know, you were talking about how the human body is built, that we're not perfect and we're not seeing everything the universe has to offer.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only are we not perfect, we interfere with the actual information that is out there, creating a world that is not objectively true.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, so this is why, for example, you know, I'm sure at home you can rummage through your books and you'll find one on optical illusions. Who doesn't love a good optical illusions?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Who doesn't?

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you-

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Usually when one is dating and out at the bar, woo, he looks great. That's an optical illusion, everybody.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. And so what actually is happening is what we don't, what we should really call those books are brain failures, but we don't.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Ooh, that wouldn't sell well.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't sell well. So we celebrate occasions when our brain fools us and we chuckle. We're entertained by it and we chuckle, but in fact, these are simple line drawings that your brain eye system cannot interpret unambiguously.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's an example of our sensory system failing to interpret an actual reality that's out there. And science did not advance until we figured out how to remove our senses from the act of discovering the universe. So, yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  But now, here's my question, and I'm gonna bring it back to Star Trek.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'll allow you to ask a question, even though we got a whole list of them here, but go-

• 9:39Speaker 01

  But it's based on this thing-

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go ahead.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  It's based on something you said.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said I'm out.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Okay. Geordi's visor.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Geordi's visor from Star Trek: Next Generation.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yes, then allowed him, because he was blind, to then see a fuller spectrum.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore, he wasn't blind.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Therefore, he wasn't blind.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He saw not only visible light as the rest of us do, but all the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  So he then, in essence, is seeing better than everyone else. So then, why wouldn't everyone on Star Trek have a visor?

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I can't answer that.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, where they just sold a Kmart at the checkout line?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll take a visor, please. Thank you. All right, let's get back to our-

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, if it's the visor that did it, then why give everybody a visor?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I don't know, a flaw in the Star Trek universe?

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, you know, I like Star Trek. I wasn't like crazy geek Star Trek, but so, but just so you know.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  That that's

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's stare me down with silent piercing glare.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  This is the hell of a time to tell me I can't work under these conditions.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, who else you got?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Okay, I have a question from, oh, I think it's Manu or Manu, I'm not sure, Patrice is the last name. And the question is, it seems to me that the most implausible thing in Star Trek, even harder to think of as a transportation or warp technology, is the fact that the Klingons have become a space traveling civilization without having themselves destroyed before. Uh, your stand on this, sir?

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I have, I take stands on things such as this.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, so a few things. First, there are, it's been suggested that if you are warlike, let's say, and you're, you're always getting into fights and you're not peaceful. And you are into land grabbing, if you're territorial, that your civilization is, as we say in science, self-limiting.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that, so you'll go out and you'll say, oh, there's a planet I want to conquer. So you go conquer it and then it's your planet. And then your relatives who also want to conquer planets, they conquer. And so you spread out. But then you reach a point where there are no more planets to conquer, then you conquer each other.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the, the culture begins to implode on itself because that which got them off their base planet to begin with, ends up having them kill each other to re-acquire land that had been obtained by others among their own, their own community. And so that would be a self-limiting future for what would be a warring, land-grabbing culture.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like modern humans.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know any species like that at all. But I I

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so the the culture of war and is not inconsistent with the culture of technology. In fact, wars drive science. This it's it's a pain to admit that, but it's true. The urge to survive creates extraordinary creative impulses in people to invent something that will make one person survive better than the other.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And and it's usually in the form of weaponry.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, usually.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when the longbow was invented, the longbow.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the arrow could pierce armor, so it rendered armor completely obsolete. That's why there's no armor anymore.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Although the three hundred, whoo, I'll take an army of that.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the I mean, the movie.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  The movie.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I saw that. Yeah, a lot of buff guys.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Lot of buff guys. Oh, is it warm in here? Okay. But now, you know, but now now I I understand that war, you know, propels technology. But the Klingons, you know, to his question, wouldn't they wouldn't they have killed themselves before they even got off the planet?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  I mean, they didn't, but shouldn't they have?

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, sure, but this is science fiction.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  I forget that. I act as if these are real people that I'm having over to dinner.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it is a little harder to believe. I agree, but once you get off the planet.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Once you're off the planet, yeah.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe is vast and

• 13:51Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they if they're creative and killing each other, they'll find a way to get off the planet for sure.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Wow, note to self.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, you ready for another question?

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  All right. Um, what in the doctor's opinion, and it says doctor here, uh, is the biggest or most egregious scientific era in Star Trek? Like, do they have an equivalent to the Kessel Run in six parsecs?

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the Kessel Run in six parsecs?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Which I I believe is actually twelve, if our in studio fact checkers are correct.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh, okay, so let's back up for a minute.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot in this question that we need to cover.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Kessel Run in six parts, the twelve parsecs, that was uttered by Han Solo.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the original Star, in the original Star Wars film.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where he is boasting of the speed of the Millennium Falcon.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Allegedly, yes.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Falcon Falcon, and he's saying it did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. And when I saw that, I I was like, oh, my God. A parsec is a unit of distance, alright? It's equals three, about three and a quarter light years. How we come up with a parsec is obscure and not even worth retelling. But in astrophysics, we have a unit of distance called the parsec. And it sounds cool.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  It does.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a, it's the stapled together fragments of two different words, parallax and second. So it is the distance, so, so when you observe an object from one side of the sun versus another, as Earth orbits the sun, you have a different angle of view on a star.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you see it in front of a different background as you jiggle to the left and the right of the sun.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like holding your thumb out at arm's distance and you wink left eye to right eye.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your thumb, your thumb will align with a different part of the background. That angle through which your thumb swings by blinking your eyes left and right is called the parallax angle. So, so a parsec.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I'm gonna ask my eye doctor about that.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Parallax is, so anyhow, it's a unit of distance and there he is boasting of the speed of the Millennium Falcon in 12, in 12 parsecs. This is, so this is a completely scientifically illiterate statement. Later on, there'd be this revisionist discussion of that very sentence by Star Wars fans, trying to salvage the illiteracy of that sentence. Asserting that, oh no, what he meant was, the Millennium Falcon went past a warp in spacetime, making the distance shorter, so that in fact, the longer distance that it actually was, he was able to do it in a shorter distance.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have even gone that way.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is, that is the, that is, that's what we, how we say revisionist reworking.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  That's spin.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's spin.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  That is sci-fi spin at its finest.

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in Star Trek, I remembered, I, cause I'm a fan of the original series, what, for me, the most unbelievable thing was that you could walk up to a door and it would open.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Seriously?

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yeah, I confess.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  We have that now.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, but at the time, we didn't.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Are you, are you actually dating yourself?

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't think I'm the one who should say what is the least possible thing in Star Trek.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I got that one really wrong.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have another question, I have many questions here. Uh, this is from Sean Game Brown. If the teleporter, and I'm assuming he means transporter, uh, really worked like it did on the show, wouldn't the process essentially just create a clone of you wherever you were transported to? Or would it still be the same person? This is kind of, this is Star Trek 101 to me.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's excellent. Now, now you're, you're a big Star Trek fan. Have you, have you ever wondered that yourself?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I just get me, just get me there. I'm good.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You trust the technology.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  I'm not bones. I, Jim, I hate the technology, I'm gonna die. That's not me. Like, will we get there quick? Boom, I'm good.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good to go.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I'm good to go.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's the thing. Before this whole discussion of the singularity, not the black hole singularity, but

• 17:52Speaker 01

  The other singularity.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The other singularity, where I'm still angry they took our word. Don't get me started. The singularity proposed where computers become so good, so fast, so effective, that you can completely upload your entire consciousness into them. Because what is your consciousness if not the neurosynaptic, uh, snapshot of your brain at any given moment?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  I also think it's a cute outfit, but that's just me.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright, so, so I, it seems to me, back when the show was created, it was making just replicas of all of your molecules. Okay? Uh, fine. And you reassemble them, fine. You, you're beamed as, as, as this energy beam, and then the energy goes back into matter. Fine. But to be you, yes, it would be a clone if that's all it did. You'd be your twin.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you duplicated every single neurosynaptic impulse in your brain.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not just is the molecule there, not just is the dendrite, the axon, not just the assembled parts of your brain, but all of the neurochemical synaptic phenomenon in your brain, then whatever gets beamed to Earth should have exactly the mind that you had on the spaceship that you started from.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'd have all this, so even if it is a copy of you, even if it is a clone of you, it is a clone with every single one of your thoughts, feelings, memories, and dreams. So, so that's the difference between that copy of you and a twin of you, which is an exact molecular copy, but doesn't have the same neurosynaptic impulses.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  See, so you're coming down on the side that it is a clone, when that's what it was?

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's, it is a perfect clone, where, you, no, I can clone you right now, and that person would behave like your twin. That's why all this talk about, we shouldn't have human cloning, because we'll harvest their organs, well, we already have clones in society, they're called identical twins, they are clones of their siblings, and do we harvest their organ, no. So, why think we'd behave differently if we produce clones in another way? That's all I'm saying, we already have evidence of how we conduct ourselves in the face of clones. That is a clone without an identical neurosynaptic map.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, there you have it. So now we make that map, you don't exist on the ship anymore, you exist on the ground, and it is you, for all intents and purposes.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  See, I never, I, I guess I never thought of it that way, I never thought of it as being cloning, I thought they were just moving you, like you were being deconstructed where you were, and recreated to where you were going.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but, once you become energy, you're, you're not, I mean, it's energy at that point, you could do other things with that energy where it no longer becomes you, you're a packet of energy moving through space. So, I could take that energy, heat my hot dog, and that's the end, the end.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  You know, I would, I would hope to be used for at least a piece of steak, not a, don't waste me on a hot dog.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, if I focus your energy in a different way, I got, you know, that's my, you know, heat up a can of beans, so, so, it's got, you gotta reassemble it, and in the way that matters, and so, so, yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Okay, but it would still be the same person.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, only if you, if you have the, the proper

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, electrical impulses of the brain. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries on StarTalk Radio continuing.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm with LeAnn Lord. So, this is Cosmic Queries. I kind of think the Cosmic Queries part of StarTalk is StarTalk after hours. I think about it that way. So, you've got questions that called from our Facebook page.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  From our Facebook page.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what do you got?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  I have a question.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are Star Trek-related questions?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, most of these. Well, we had one that was Star Wars. Thanks for chiming in there. But it seems to be mostly Star Trek, which warms the cockles, whatever those scientifically are.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I never knew what cockles are.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  I don't either. I don't either. More discoveries to be done. I have a question from Nick Westendorf. And Nick, I apologize in advance because I'm going to mess this up, so I'm going to need a little help. He says here, "So, Star Trek's warp drive is pretty awesome, no doubt."

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That phrase doesn't need the word "pretty."

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Sorry. I'm reading it as Nick sent it to us.

• 22:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pretty awesome is like, it is totally awesome, not like partially awesome.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  It doesn't add to the awesomeness of awesome.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Thank you. You don't have to qualify it awesome in that phrase. We're going.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Okay. "And something along those lines will probably be a necessity if we want to leave the solar system. What are some of the most promising warp-like technologies? And is the, and here's where I'm going to mess this up, Alcubierre or Alcubieri drive realistic? I'm regretting not taking French in high school. I don't even know how to say that. Alcubierre?

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's recent discussion about NASA devoting some funds to a warp drive. First, it's true. We ain't going anywhere unless we figure out how to warp space. Because even at the speed of light, if I send your behind on a spaceship to go to the nearest star...

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I watch you do that's four years to the nearest star Alpha Centauri system. Which where, by the way, we just recently, we might, I have planetary brethren who discover these things. The the planet hunters among my colleagues found a planet in orbit in the Alpha Centauri system.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Bonus?

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That that's bonus. Very good, very good. So it's four years there, four years, it's an eight year mission. So that's a major fraction of the life expectancy of the human species, of the of a human organism, right? So you want to be able to get around faster than that. And the diameter of the galaxy itself is a hundred thousand light years. So even at the speed of light, we would watch you take a hundred thousand years to cross the galaxy and come back. Relativity would have time dilation within your craft. And so you wouldn't age a hundred thousand years, but we would. And so by the time you came back, we would have long forgotten about you.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in order to cross the galaxy, you got to have to warp space. And you take the galaxy, warp the space between where you are and where you're going. And in so doing, then you take a little bridge between those warped edges. And then you unwarp it and there you got to where you're going fast.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fast, without dying en route.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Or running out of oil of old age, absolutely.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oil of old age, yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Just saying.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's, and I don't see the the energy it takes to warp space. Because gravity and energy are both create a, sorry, mass and energy can create a force that will, it's a gravitational force that will curve the fabric of space and time. So a warp drive would have to harness the energy necessary to accomplish this. And back of the envelope calculations, that's what we say in science. If it's a quick, it's the, it's the scientific version of a quickie.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Wow, is that the version of a quickie thing? How sad is that?

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, some calculations need like reams of paper. But you say, well, let me just do a quickie on this. You flip over an envelope, you jot down some quick equations and some quick.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Young people going, what's an envelope?

• 25:41Speaker 01

  We'll roll with it.

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stick with me, trust me on this one.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  There's something called an envelope, children.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you do that and you have to wield the energy of like a billion stars. Okay, that that amount of energy just to pack into one space to curve the fabric of space and time to create a wormhole, which is essentially the consequence of invoking a warp drive. So I think until that happens, we are basically hopelessly stuck here on Earth or to jet around the solar system.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  So you're saying the problem isn't theoretically folding space. It's what we would create in order to fold space that would cause the problem.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. The act of folding space, we can, that's what I can do that.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  On a random Tuesday, Neil Tyson is folding space, everybody.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there is no law of physics that prevents folding space. That's the point.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So we can.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we, we know how to.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  We know how, okay.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we know how to, the physics of folding space is straightforward.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The technology of folding space is so far beyond anything that is even.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Oh, you gotcha. That was eloquently said, sir. We've baffled you, so then.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, I'm just saying, I, there's not even, so I, there's been some talk about working on a warp drive, and I think it's more fantasy than than fact.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not gonna stop it, keep people dreaming it.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  You know, I, I, I think they're even more practical questions. Um, uh, what about the toll structure? Who's collecting those? Where's the revenue for the planet?

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the thing, here, here's the thing. Tolls are basically two dimensional barriers. You're on a surface and you're driving and you're stuck on that surface and they put a barrier in front of you. It's really hard to create a three dimensional toll. Think about it, you put up a gate, I just go around you. There are nine, 92 ways I can get around you if you put up a barrier in space. So, Leanne, what's next?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Uh, what's next is I have a great question for you. This is from Eloise and Prime. Is it theoretically possible?

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eloise, that's, the only Eloise we know is the columnist, right?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Uh, yes. I don't, actually, I don't know any Eloises. This is my first Eloise.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, me too. Okay, go on.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Uh, is it theoretically possible to have a cloaking device as the Klingons and Romulans use?

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally. Completely.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  I kinda, I missed that on Amazon. What, what?

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm disappointed by the Federation that they didn't have a cloaking device. They got smart people working for the Federation.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Okay, well, first of all, the Federation didn't invest in its shields because two hits and it's down.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right? That ain't right.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  So, no, they don't have good cloaking.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I just don't understand. Why, why do the Klingons have clo- and we don't? I, I, I've never felt good about that, just between you and me.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Um, maybe the Klingons cornered the technology, maybe they held the patents, maybe it was copyrighted, whatever that is to make a product exclusive, the Klingons beat the Federation to it.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So, we've actually, the military has actually been working on cloaking devices.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Really?

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I cannot speak any further. Next question.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait. So, I'll, I'll give you some-

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Who's this man from the NSA? What are you doing, sir? I've done nothing wrong.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, that's my microphone.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, uh, I just hit the microphone. I don't know what that sounded like to Elizabeth.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I, I just, the man on the other side of the booth is very angry at us.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, where was I? What was I talking about?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yeah, cloaking devices. Why, is it possible?

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so here it is.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Is that theoretically possible to have a cloaking device?

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let us, let us, uh, open up to the concept of cloaking in ways you might not have thought of before.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, we're surrounded by walls in this recording studio.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You cannot see through the walls, can you?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you had eyesight in radio waves, these walls would be completely transparent to you. In fact, they'd be invisible. In fact, to radio waves, radio waves are in effect cloaking vision to these walls. So, in other, what's the point of a cloaking device? It's so that you don't even know it's there and you end up seeing through it.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all you have to do is find one of many ways to cloak something is to find the kind of light that passes through something rather than gets blocked by it.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, the object is cloaked.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's there, you just don't know it's there. That's what windows are. Windows are transparent to visible light. They have cloaked themselves so that when you look out a window, you don't say to yourself, I'm looking at a window. You say, I'm looking at the park and the trees and the, and the clouds and the buildings.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  That is a different way of looking at it.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Different way of looking at it.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Or not looking at it.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So it's all about, does your means of detection of this object pass through it or not? Or does it not reflect off of it? So that you have no information that it's even there. So stealth technology takes the light that you beam to it and never sends it back to you. So as far as you're concerned, the light kept going through, came out the other side and never returned.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no, this is, this is cool. This is subtle. Cool. Right? So the B two bomber and the other cloaking, the, the other stealth uh airplanes that are made by the military, if you send radio waves to it in the normal sort of radar, you know, to how far away is it? Let's beam a radar signal to it. That signal will either get absorbed by the skin, never come back to you, or reflect off the wing pattern in such a way that the reflection never comes back in your direction and goes off in a different direction. So as far as you're concerned, it's not even there.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So an entire airplane can have like the, the cross section of a bumblebee. That's how much radio waves come back to you and you have no idea that's an airplane ready to come bomb you. That is stealth technology.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a Klingon vessel, I, I, I don't know the exact way that they cloak their vessel, but if we were to do it today, they would take whatever beams of light you were sending to it and just not send it back to you. However, you might be able to see an outline where there are no stars behind it. Because it's being blocked.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you need to have other light from behind you pass through so that the person, it's not only that you can't see them, it's that you can't even see their shadow.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so these are different ways you might cloak and I'm still disappointed. They're in the 25th fricking, fourth century, whenever, 23rd century and they don't have, the federations have a cloaking device. I, I got one in my garage.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Well.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't even have a garage.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Maybe they feel.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's cloaked.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  And there's a dragon in there too? There's a dragon in your garage? Well, maybe they feel that that's being transparent. They want to be, the Federation wants to be transparent. They want to be open. They want to be honest. So maybe that's why they didn't invest.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, I'm sure, that's exactly why. That's another way to do it. They want to make a, a, a car that disappears. And this was a feature in a recent James Bond film. So what you can have is you have light that from you hits the car. And the car says, I know what that light is. I'm going to send it around to the other side of the car, pass it out in the direction you're looking. So if there's a tree behind a car, the, the, the skin of the car takes the image of that tree, brings it to the other side of the car where you're standing, and then it sends it on to you. So you think the tree is just still there and the car is not even in the way. That's another way. So this is a skin that transmits light around its borders and projects it off to the other side.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  And we can do that. Well, that's what, isn't that Wonder Woman's jet? Her invisible jet?

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I don't know that they put that much thought behind her jet. Yeah, I don't know.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, she had all of this before everybody else. Of course it was a woman.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Had to do a plug for women.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More Cosmic Queries when we come back.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk's Cosmic Queries. And I've got Leanne Lord. So you're reading me questions? I haven't seen these, though what you got? Another one? And these are inspired by Star Trek.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  These are inspired by Star Trek. And I had, yeah, let me do this one.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what do you got?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Let me see. Okay, this is, this is a sweet one, I think. Um, this is from Kevin Ziegler on Facebook. And it's regarding, of course, the science of Star Trek. And he says, considering the vast distance between stars, the speed limits implemented by the laws of physics, and the rarity of intelligent life, do you think multi-alien species communities will ever exist? Or, and, and/or could currently exist in other parts of the universe?

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a brilliant question. Because if I could rephrase that, what he's saying is that... Intelligent species, as we've come to define it, can't be all that common. Because if it were, there'd be plenty of other intelligent species in our own tree of life here on Earth.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at how vast and how diverse life forms are on Earth.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we define ourselves as essentially the only ones that were intelligent, given the diversity of life that has come along. And of course, that is a debatable point.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yes, you see me chomping at the bit here.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if we look at other planets and there's life, if Earth is any indication, if it has life, it won't likely have intelligent life. Microbial life, most of the billions of years of life on Earth, had, it's, Earth was populated by microbial life. All this stuff with life that has limbs and eyeballs and, and hair and fur and legs, that's in the last half a billion years, since the Cambrian explosion of life, half a billion years ago. Before then, life was not interesting, well, by, by our standards, not interesting on Earth.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was not interesting. It was pun scum, okay?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  They didn't have Netflix.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so if you, so the notion that there could be a planet with alien species cohabitating, I agree. That sounds like a really rare thing. If you, if most planets that have life don't have intelligent life at all, what does it mean to find a planet where all the aliens get together, like at the, at the, the Galactic Bar, you know?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Like in Star Wars, the Cantina Bar.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that can't, that bar scene where the aliens come to hang out. And, and if bars are that cool, you wouldn't need one so far away from wherever their homes are. You just have one back at the home base.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true. You don't have to go to the corner of the galaxy just to get a drink. So.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Import beer, me had to take a whole different meaning there.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beer, that's exactly. So, uh, so yeah, it's a fascinating point that, with which I agree.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Wow, so you don't think it's possible then?

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, I don't think it's likely.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Likely?

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. The motivation, I don't think is there.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. You got another question for me?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I do, I do. It's, okay, here we go. This is from Marcel, oh Marcel, I apologize, Dwellstra? I don't know. Do you think the knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligent life will lead to harmonious and prosperous life as Star Trek? I'm not even sure that's English. And it's not Marcel, it's me, it's my reading of it.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so, so do I think that alien life, intelligent alien life that we discover would have some positive?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Right, will lead to, we'll be able to take their knowledge and have it lead to a harmonious and prosperous life. Oh, that's so Star Trekey.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, because Star Trek had very hopeful futures.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  It did.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That were portrayed, hopeful moral futures of, of life, not only earth-based life, but life elsewhere. So, if the alien species is more advanced than we are technologically, presumably, we would use that for good. But of course, we know, as history demonstrates, that every advance of technology comes along with the flip side of that. You know, every knife that can cut food can kill a person.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every, the dynamite stick that can, that can level a mountain can also blow up a village. So, all of, and Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Thanks, Al.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was concerned about the evil uses of it, and he, and he left his estate to fund the Nobel Prize for science, to advance the good causes of, of technology.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Write that down, kids.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's very Star Trekey in, in, in principle. So, if the technology's ahead of us, I don't know that we'd be able to wield it in ways that are responsible, given my read of the history of human conduct. Now, if they're not as advanced as we are, then we would just, of course, dominate them and make them our pets.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  We wouldn't do that.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a quick question here.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, I do have a quick question. Uh, I like this one, this is from Don Rim, uh, or Rhyme, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. In Star Trek, the Borg are detected as, uh, depicted as evil. But what do you see as the pros and cons of a collective consciousness? Also, do you see the internet as the precursor to this, given that it's a global collection of knowledge?

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Thank you, Tom.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think anyone who is opposite your sense of morality, you will say is evil. But do the Borg's, does the Borg think of itself as evil?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  People never think of themselves as evil.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so evil is what side of the fence you're on.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In any given war, in every, in any given, and usually the people who win declare that they were right. And that's just how that is.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  That we do.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's how humans have behaved forever.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that is interesting that the internet might be our entire consciousness. Uh, the internet, yes, I have to go with that. The internet is the Borg.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Nice. I have a great question from Matt Ruffo. Uh, which ship is better? Is it the USS Enterprise or the ship of the imagination?

• 40:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  I know, it's so unfair.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, ooh. I am so biased here.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Of course you are. What are the odds?

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I mean, uh, if anyone who is listening doesn't know the ship of the imagination, it's, it's what I got around in, around the cosmos, in space and in time. During cosmos. And that's, uh, that's, that's the spaceship of the imagination version two. The original one Carl Sagan wrote around the universe in, back in 1980. So I would say, you have to ask, is there anything the Enterprise can do that the spaceship of the imagination can't do? No, spaceship of the imagination does not have photon torpedoes or, or phasers or anything like that because it doesn't need it.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wherever it arrives, there is peace and love.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  You know, I thought the answer for that would be really easy, but it's not.

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's, it's, uh, I think, and, and because it emanates from my thoughts.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ship, there, there's a cool scene where I'm, I'm on there talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs. And I just walk to the side of the ship. The ship dissolves and I'm in a primordial forest because that's what I needed the ship to do for me. So if the ship emanates from my thoughts and my thoughts are eternally peaceful.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Fingers crossed.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need photon torpedoes.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need a transporter.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  As, as I'm, you know, remembering when Sagan introduced the concept, it, it seems a little bit more democratic and universal. Not everybody gets to be on the Enterprise, but anybody can be on the ship of the imagination.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, that's perceptive of you to notice because originally when we had this whole, you wouldn't know, we spent days discussing, what am I going to wear on this ship of the imagination?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should I have some little emblem on my, on my breast pocket?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should there be some epaulets? Should there be some chevrons? And Andruyan said flat out, if you wore anything indicating that you are a ship captain.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It means no one else is.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's not the point of this journey.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I had no rebuttal to that. And so I just, just dressed in a black, sort of, just a, a black suit.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  You look snappy.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not, not even a tie, just because a tie is, well, I'm doing something more formal than I'd otherwise do if I took off the tie.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're really all in this together. So there was, well, thank you, Snappy. I haven't heard that expression since 1968. You look snappy.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry. Oh, dear. Did I just date myself from an era I'm not from? All right, do that. Moving on.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else you have?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  I have a question from Lars Olsen.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Uh, in the

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we know where any of these people are from?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  No, Lars doesn't say.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  I can make assumptions, but I won't.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  He's from

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're allowed to. You're a stand-up comedian. You can make any assumptions you want.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  He is from, uh, Walnut Grove, Little House on the Prairie, Lars Olsen. Uh, in the series Star Trek Voyager, they claim to go, uh, they claim that to travel at warp 10 would be to travel at infinite velocity, meaning that a spacecraft would exist simultaneously at every point in the universe. Does any scientific evidence support this?

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Uh-oh.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's, here's an interesting fact about light. All right, we all know that sort of warp one is the speed of light. Okay. Here's something interesting about light. Do you remember your relativity from Einstein?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's just that easy reference.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the relativity 101 is as you go faster, your time ticks more slowly.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yes.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative to people who are looking at you. So it's called time dilation. That you learn that like the first three days of relativity.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  And I dropped second day, so that explains that.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all right, so if time slows down for you, and it continues to slow down as you approach the speed of light, then you can ask a legitimate question, what happens at the speed of light? You do run out the equations and you find out that time stops.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so we conclude that photons, which are the very manifestation of light, since they exist at the speed of light, they have no internal clock. And if you don't have an internal clock, it means whenever you are emitted anywhere in the universe, in that very same instant, you are absorbed by whatever else in the universe you hit. So you can send a photon of light from the edge of the universe, and it travels as far as you're concerned for billions of years. And it ends up in my detector in a telescope. And I measured and I conclude that there's a star born at the edge of the universe. But if you're that photon, no time elapsed for you.

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are absorbed in my detector the very instant you were emitted. So as far as you're concerned, you're going infinitely fast because your time is going infinitely slow. And what is speed if not distance divided by time? So I would assert.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  You're looking at me like, okay, I gotta bring this around. She's still looking really confused.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, she's got a little puzzle, puzzle. There's a little befuddlement in you.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  A little.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a warp factor 10.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be infinitely fast, I don't know that that's different to you than it would be by traveling at the speed of light, to you. I don't know that that would be different.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but that being said, if you want to travel infinitely fast, well, so if you travel infinitely fast, that is tantamount to having no time elapsed on your clock, no matter where you're going. So in fact, you don't need to go warp 10 to have no time elapsed between where you left and where you arrived. You can just travel at the speed of light yourself.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  So they got sold a feature on a starship they didn't need?

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think so.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  That was an extra thing.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I'm-

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Like the sunroof, they didn't need the sunroof, they didn't need warp 10. Is that what I'm hearing? The salesmen just made extra commission on that?

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's a moonroof, if you're-

• 46:21Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, moonroof. Heated seats.

• 46:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, uh, to me, it's a moonroof. To everyone else, it's a sunroof. To me, it's a moonroof.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Of course it would be.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, yeah, yeah. So that's intriguing, but, uh, you don't, you didn't, I don't think you needed it.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. We've got to wrap it up. Oh, my gosh, thanks for, thanks for being here.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Cosmic Queries.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  I'd love it.

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Portion of StarTalk Radio. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You can find us on the web, starTalkRadio.net, or we tweet, StarTalkRadio. Leanne, you tweet?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I do tweet.

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Leanne Lord.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  At Leanne Lord.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just spell Leanne right.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  L E I G H A N N.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got them there too, at Neil Tyson, if you want to follow my cosmic brain droppings. As always, I sign off from StarTalk, bidding you to keep looking up.