Extended Classic – Cosmic Queries: A Powerful Potpourri

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice tackle an eclectic mix of your questions that take us from the boiling surface of the Sun to the dark side of the moon. Now extended with more questions on aliens, Isaac Newton as a dinner guest, Panspermia, and the James Webb Space Telescope. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/extended-classic-cosmic-queries-a-powerful-potpourri/ Image Credit & Copyright: Bob Franke.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. My day job, I'm the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. This is the Cosmic Queries edition, which I do not do alone. I need help. I've got Chuck Nice.

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice, comic, right here with me in studio.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calling from the internet. Questions, this is not a themed Cosmic Queries.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  This is our potpourri!

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Potpourri, I don't even know how to spell that.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  A veritable grab bag.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag, a smelly grab, potpourri smells, right?

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is whatever was left over in the bag after we pulled out the questions.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  A smelly grab bag of StarTalk radio.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be themed. Let's get right into it.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I haven't seen these questions, so if I don't know something, I'm gonna tell you.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go, and guess what? That's one of the best things, is that you're kinda shooting from the hip on this one, but you never really shoot from the hip, you know? Cause you know what you're talking about.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 1:24Chuck Nice?

  So here we go, this is from Harry Dassori. Alright, subject matter? Dark matter.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark matter, sure.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Alright, get ready for this one.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there was a chapter of my memoir called Dark Matters.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes, there's a chapter of my life called Dark Matters.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, we each have some dark matters.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Everybody's got some dark matters going on. Alright, here we go. Let me finish before you freak out, okay? "I've witnessed ghosts and several experiences that have made me a believer in the supernatural, or what some would call spiritual existence."

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's question?

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  This is from Harry Dassori.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Harry Dassori, okay.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  "My question to you Neil is, can the expansion of dark matter in the universe be the accumulation of souls of all the planets in the cosmos? Some speculate that soul has weight, or a value of weight."

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  Impossible to prove.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, so where shall we begin?

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I don't know.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He wants to connect his personal experiences with ghosts.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the dark matter in the universe.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, so what he's saying is these apparitions that he has experienced. Clearly, they must have some type of mass or weight. Could dark matter actually be the accumulation of all such apparitions as the ones that he's experienced?

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the souls, okay.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  All the souls.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a couple of things, let's tackle souls for the moment.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, back when X-rays were invented, were discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen, who's a German physicist. He, in fact, he won the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1900 for his discovery of X-rays. Uh, people, soulful people of the day said, if X-rays can see through matter and through the human body, maybe if we X-rayed a body that was dying, we'd be able to see the soul leave the body.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. There you go. And so, they attempted these experiments and nothing, they didn't see nothing.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  Right. Thank God the person was already dying.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Exposing them to all those X-rays like that.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in a rare moment, we're thanking God for someone dying. Right, okay. Alright, so, so first there was that, alright. Second, the instant you die, which is, has a fuzzy, we don't really. I tweeted recently, uh, the next person who, who is brought back to life after being pronounced clinically dead. It seems like we need to start redefining what dead is. If you keep coming back because you were clinically dead.

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe clinically dead really isn't dead, alright?

• 4:03Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, uh, the point is, there was some movie called Twenty Three, whatever, remember this movie?

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I know what you're talking about, Twenty Three Ounces or some crazy stuff like that.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twenty Three Grams, Twenty One.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  Twenty One Grams.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twenty One Grams, right. It's just BS. If you, if, if you're alive and then you're dead and you're on a scale, your weight doesn't change.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you evacuate your bowels and it spills off the scale onto the floor.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, plus, most people don't know how much Twenty One Grams actually is. Do you know how much that, it's like the weight of a nickel, I mean, it's not very much.

• 4:34Chuck Nice?

  No, it's not a lot at all.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a lot at all.

• 4:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 4:37Chuck Nice?

  I know because of my past use of cocaine.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because drug dealers were metric long before any American got involved. How many grams?

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Whenever I meet somebody who knows the metric system, I'm like, you've done a lot of drugs, haven't you? Always sold them.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, the point is when you die, you have way more than that of just leftover, leftover urine and bowel contents. So, uh, and your, your sphincters relax and it all comes out of you. Right. But if you're not careful about how you make those measurements, you could be led to think that you weigh less at death than you did it alive. But so anyhow, so if it's soul in terms of the mass of the soul, if you want to believe there is one, there's no evidence that it has mass.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Right. That's number one.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know approximately how many people there have been ever born. It's about a hundred billion plus or minus.

• 5:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, a hundred billion times any number is really, no matter what number you're multiplying it by, it's going to be small compared with the mass equivalent of the dark matter of the universe. Now he's saying the souls of all the planets. So he's going to have to believe that there's life on other planets.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That has souls.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's the sum of all the souls. And I'm just, there's no evidence for that. Now, one of the things science does that nothing before science did was establish something that is objectively true. So if I say, I saw it, it's real. Well, was it in your head or was it actually real?

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. What are the qualifiers of seeing?

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Science allows us to distinguish something that's happening in your head from something that is objectively true that everybody can agree with as well as apparatus that we have built to make the measurement.

• 6:21Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what he needs to do is find the ghosts, grab, you know, put them in a net or something, bring them to the lab or, or get more than himself as witness to these ghosts.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we can start making measurements. Until then, we kind of have to sort of, I'm going, I'm left saying that it's all going on in his head and therefore we don't have to explain cosmic forces that affect the, the birth of the universe based on what he sees out of his own head.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  Right. So basically, uh, in the corporeal world, Harry, you are out of your mind.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, in other words, just to be fair to his question, he may have surely been seeing ghosts.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't mean the ghosts are objectively real. That's all I'm saying.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The human mind is a complex place. We still don't understand.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  We still don't understand.

• 7:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole new field called neuroscience is being born as we speak.

• 7:14Chuck Nice?

  To determine why we see these things.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To try to handle these things.

• 7:16Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm not saying he's not telling the truth about what he believes he saw.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But whether it's an objectively true thing is a whole other thing.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  It could be true. It could just be his truth based upon his drinking of mushroom tea.

• 7:35Chuck Nice?

  The LSD is what made it true.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or if he hasn't, and he does, that would take it a whole other notch.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to the Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk Radio. I'm here with Chuck Nice Comic tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  That's correct, sir.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. Uh, StarTalk Radio. We tweet as well at StarTalk Radio, and find us on the web. Uh, starTalkRadio.net. We'll be back in a moment.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Radio, Cosmic Queries edition. Chuck, you just reached to the bottom of the barrel and you just got whatever was left over.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, should we call this the potpourri?

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  The potpourri.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Potpourri. Alright, let's potpourri this.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  Or as you put it so eloquently, the smelly grab bag of StarTalk Radio.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I think of potpourri, it's the stuff that smells nice and you put it in the bathroom where stuff otherwise doesn't smell nice.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  That's true. That's true.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't put potpourri in a rose garden.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, okay.

• 8:43Chuck Nice?

  Now you sound like a philosopher, not a astrophysicist.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is. You'd never put potpourri in a rose-

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  No one puts potpourri in a rose garden. Then I hear like Chinese chimes, you know what I mean? Just like, ah, snatched a pepper from my hand, grasshopper. But, yo, that's awesome.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Um, Adida, Adida Patil is, uh...

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to say, you're the worst pronouncer of names I've ever had opposite me on a table.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  I am awful. I am, um, listen, Neil, I am not going...

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody has to call your stuff out.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I'm glad you're doing it, cuz I am awful. I gotta admit, I'm terrible at this, all right? But, uh, I, uh, I did ya. Okay, whatever. Uh, Adida Patil says, by the way, she wants you to know that she is sixteen years old.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  And she also wants you to know that she is from India. So we are worldwide, buddy. We are worldwide.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 9:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Where does all the energy go when it's all over is her subject matter. You've said, Mr. Tyson, uh, Dr. Tyson, in many episodes, that the universe is going from chaos to order, and would finally reach a state of zero Kelvin. My question is, where does all the energy go? All the kinetic energy that is present now, what happens to it?

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I don't think I've ever said we're going from chaos to order. I don't, I don't think I've ever...

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  I don't believe you've ever said that either. I think you've always said that the universe is in a state of, uh, extreme disorder.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disorder and becoming more disorder. But she knows that where temperatures dropping in the universe to an approaching, uh, uh, there's the mathematical term for it, asymptotically approaching absolute zero. When you're asymptote to something, it means you get ever closer to it, but will never actually reach it until you reach infinity.

• 10:26Chuck Nice?

  Kinda like fractals.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, oh yeah, there's always detail all the way down through and it's never gonna stop.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  Never gonna stop.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, uh, so it's not exactly like fractals, but the idea that you're hitting some infinity point.

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it stops.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's the only thing I could relate it to in my tiny little mind.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, so you say, where does the energy? The energy's still there, it's just more and more and more diluted, until it's so diluted that it, it's, it's effectively zero energy density in the universe.

• 10:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're talking about energy density. Nor, normally we use the word density, we think of matter density. So, so lead is more dense than paper, right? So it's it it makes good paperweights, although we don't use lead anymore and nor do we even have paperweights. You know why we don't have paperweights?

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we don't have fans inside of offices because we have central air conditioning.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes, which is exactly why the uh register above my desk keeps blowing the papers off my desk. Sorry.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it seriously?

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, whatever it is, it's less than what a fan would have done back in the day. Uh so so here we have the universe expands, temperature drops, asymptoli approaches absolute zero. It's the density of the energy that continues to drop.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  So the energy doesn't go anywhere.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the total energy is the same.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  It's the same, it's just diluted to the place where it is effectively zero energy.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is so dilute, just go home.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's what's going on there.

• 11:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that makes.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, the opposite would be true in a in a in a collapsing universe, the energy density would be going up. And the universe would be getting hotter and hotter and hotter over time.

• 11:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that'd be a bad.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  A bad thing, though, right?

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd I'd rather end in ice than in fire.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool. Well, there you go. There you go. That's a great, great, great answer. Good question. All right, this is from Mark Fenimore, calls himself the chemistry nerd.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here it is. Dr. Tyson, in a freshly brewed cup of coffee, if, I'm sorry, if a freshly brewed cup of coffee was placed into a pressurized. Help me out here. Adiabatic?

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adiabatic.

• 12:26Chuck Nice?

  Adiabatic? Adiabatic container and exposed to the vacuum of space while being shielded from the sun or starlight. How long would it take for said coffee to freeze? What is the mechanism for energy transfer in this case?

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if it's not, if it's not exposed to the outdoors.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh well, what you'd have to do is expand the volume. It's in a cavity, and if you expand that cavity, the energy has to now dilute, and there'll be a point where it dilutes so low that you then you freeze what's there. So so that adiabatic is a is a physics term, a chemistry physics term, that refers to whether you keep pressure constant and change the temperature or keep the temperature constant and change the pressure. When you're doing these. Experiments.

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, uh, by the way, if it just had a canister there and if it was completely insulated, the temperature would never change.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's hard, you cannot completely insulate something. Because there's always a molecule of something attached, connect, communicating with one adjacent to it. And either with, with light energy or with vibrational energy. So it's gonna cool down no matter what.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so the, the fact is that even if it were completely insulated, the fact is, you can never completely insulate something. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Dr. Tyson?

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yes, that, as well as, if you want to sort of expand the volume, uh, because there'll be pressure in there because it's a warm cup of coffee.

• 13:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you try to expand the volume, what will ultimately happen is the energy density will drop.

• 13:59Chuck Nice?

  And then at some point, it will actually freeze.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you keep doing that, yeah.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you can drop it so low, but, uh, maybe you'd have to evaporate all of the coffee before that happened, and then it's gaseous, and then the concept of freezing no longer matters. So, so, the, as, as material changes state, it's a fascinating thing, actually.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That we don't spend enough time on in school, I think. Now, just think about it, here's this water, and then you drop the temperature, then it becomes solid.

• 14:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A liquid becomes, imagine if you had never seen ice. Just ima- I mean, there, there were people who grew up in the tropics.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  And they never saw ice.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their life.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you just take water, put it in some vest, some cavity, and you pull it out, and it's solid. They're not even gonna believe you.

• 14:39Chuck Nice?

  He has magic!

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If physicists never told people how we do stuff, we would just be, people, we, we would, uh, we would be the gods of our culture.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we would have powers that they, that they think were divine.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, exactly. You know what? It's so funny, as a quick aside, there is a great show for kids, and it's really trippy, but it's called Adventure Time.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:02Chuck Nice?

  And there's a character, she's a scientist, and she is constantly railing against the people of the kingdom because they believe in magic. It's awesome. That's great. All right, there you go. Let's move on to Jeremy Zucaro. Okay, I got that one right. Jeremy Zucaro.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could at least try to put a little Jeremy Zucaro.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Zucaro.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there.

• 15:25Chuck Nice?

  Zucaro. Okay, there we go.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The most interesting man in the world.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  Jeremy Zucaro.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 15:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, could intelligent life have evolved on Earth in the distant past? There seems to be little evidence to support this idea, but would there be? But would there be? What are the odds that this would be missed in fossil evidence? And is there a physical reason why this could not have happened?

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about this all the time.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Do you really?

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I lay awake at night, I lay awake at night thinking about this question.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I, what I do is I ask if, if civilization ended today, how long would it take, given the earthquakes and volcanoes and other, other geologic forces on Earth, how long would it take for every trace of our civilization?

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  To be just gone.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely gone, of being sucked into the magma of a volcano and coming out as a fresh rock.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, some jump starting the, the geologic record. And I've spoken with some geologists about this. It would, it would be billions of years. It's not,

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's, it's a while, because you have to get every bit, we're everywhere on Earth, not basically. You have to get every bit of landmass deep enough down so that it's completely, completely wiped out.

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and melted down and reshaped into the next.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  Because the Earth is literally remaking itself.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is re.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Over time, right?

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is. And it has to be sort of uniform enough so that there's no trace. So I said, could there have been an intelligent civilization in the past? And I think not, for, for not, I think not. First, because it would take a long time to completely wipe them off the map. Second, uh, complex life is a, is an evolutionary trajectory.

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would not have had single-celled life forms three billion years ago popping into a multicellular intelligent life form.

• 17:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Overnight.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Making a civilization. And then disappearing again.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you have to track it through the growth of complexity in the evolutionary chain. And when you do that, you only get sort of big brained if intelligence derives from big brain. You only start getting big brain mammals after the dinosaurs are taken out of the picture.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was 65 million years ago.

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our mammal ancestors scurrying underfoot, trying to not be hors d'oeuvres for T-Rex. Only when T-Rex got taken away, did our mammal brain start getting big and become anything that we call intelligence today.

• 17:51Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So now, what's, when you look at that trajectory, is what you're saying, that the Earth has not been here long enough for that trajectory to have taken place in the past and then been wiped away record wise, so that we are finding ourself in that place again today.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a combination of not only that, you would not expect complex neurological organ, organisms, organisms with complex neurology, to have been around long enough ago, given the time it would have taken to create such a creature.

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As the evidence of the fossil record shows.

• 18:24Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there you have it.

• 18:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go, man. That's a great answer.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries Potpourri Edition. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition Potpourri.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what? You're the one who dug, dug all these questions out of the bottom of the barrel, because they didn't fit any other category.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, there's a question about whether there was past life on Earth. I want to add something to that.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, there's a lot of science fiction storytelling that has sort of aliens helping out our civilization.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, like Stargate, for example.

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  Stargate.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, the pyramids came from some...

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, aliens who came down, helped us build it, and then left.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then left.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  For some strange reason. Just like, hey, uh, we need to go build some pyramids on Earth.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Earth, in that spot.

• 19:28Chuck Nice?

  In that spot, and then we're out of here.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  That's their sole purpose of coming here. These humans look like they need pyramids.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and they're not mechanical or anything.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  No, not at all. Just stone buildings that we are going to, because we're that technologically advanced. Let's give these people some stone triangles to drop in the middle of a desert and then we're out of here. Okay.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that, that I couldn't, that's what I was gonna say. No, so the urge to think that ancient peoples could not have actually done these great uh, uh, structures, I mean, the fact is they have the same brain that we do.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  We do, right.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and so they have less technology, but they're not any less smart.

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, some could argue that they're smarter.

• 20:08Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm always upset when we want to credit some intelligent aliens for stuff that our own species did here on Earth.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give us some credit, man.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  It's funny because, you know, my son, who's seven years old.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  And he said, "Well, how come, you know, if they didn't have anything technical back in the day, they could actually create these great buildings and things, but yet we don't seem to be as smart as they are?" And I went, "Because they didn't have cable television, son."

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 20:36Chuck Nice?

  That's why.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they had a hundred years to build it.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's none of this, oh, look, we gotta, we gotta get this done by October.

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, pyramids is like, take it, whatever, however long it takes.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  Right, lifetimes, and nobody cared.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Right, we got number top. That's great.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well, she got.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Um, this is from our very own, uh, somebody here in New York City, and, uh, Andrew Wood. Andrew Wood.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you pronounce his name correctly.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I did. Thank you, Andrew, for having a very easily, easy to pronounce name.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  All right, we have several impact craters on Earth from meteorites. My question is this: we have, we have the big holes, but where did the big freaking rock disappear to?

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  I will not be able to sleep until I know.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I like people who can't sleep because science keeps them awake. That is good. So a couple of things, probably the most famous hole in the ground is, is in, meteor hole in the ground is in Arizona.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Near Winslow, Arizona. In fact, I was just there filming for Cosmos.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cool. Okay, you can't not go to the.

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, you have to, right.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's almost a mile across, and you can.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  Now, is this the crater that they say may have wiped out everything? Is this the big?

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, no, this one, it was a bad day in Arizona when this thing hit.

• 21:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or whatever it was called back then, fifty thousand years ago. Then there's another crater that was found submerged under the Gulf. Found primarily by the efforts of oil drillers trying to find out with gravity anomalies. Cause if it's oil or is it sand, is it sediment? And they found this ridge and this ridge is the rim of a crater. And that's the one we trace to the dead dinosaurs. Gotcha. And that hit near Yucatan Peninsula, near what is now Mexico. And I once gave a talk and I said, but I said, near what is now Mexico. I said, but that's not what the dinosaurs called it. And someone in the front row said, yeah, they called it Mexico.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's actually funny. Spanish fluent dinosaurs. So yes, we do have these craters in the Chesapeake Bay area. We now know from space is a meteor impact. So meteor impact created Chesapeake Bay. Look at that. Yeah, right there in Maryland. All right. So, so there you have it. So what happened to the rock? What happened to the rock? That if the speed of the asteroid, which is true in every case, is higher. So you have a speed and you can calculate how much energy it has for motion. We call it kinetic energy, kinetic is motion. So write down that number. Okay, you can calculate that. Right. Now you say, what's this thing made of? Is it rock? Is it metal? What's holding it together? Is there bonds, there are chemical bonds from one atom to another. There's a crystal lattice.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some forces holding the thing together. Right. Right, add that up, write down that number. If the kinetic energy number is bigger than the number that's holding it together. Poof, and the thing hits. Where did all the kinetic energy go? Back into the object and it explodes, vaporizes, goes to smithereens. And so, in fact, most of it essentially vaporizes. Gotcha. And that's called a high speed collision. And that's what happens. That's why you have fragments scattered, but the most, the bulk mass of the asteroid is gone. Now, if the thing came in slowly, it would just hit and bounce and then you could get the whole. And the rock would be sitting around. In fact, meteor crater was purchased by a.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By a metal speculator because he presumed that the huge object that made the crater is still buried beneath. Yeah, so we had metal that he bought the land, brought out his metal detectors, drilled bore holes, didn't find a damn thing.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, poor guy.

• 24:20Chuck Nice?

  Because he didn't have your formula. All he needed was your formula. It would have saved him a lot of money. Now this dude is just like every dude you see with black socks and sandals on the beach. With his little.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With his little metal detector. So it's the it's the Baringer family and they actually still own the land. And so now it's a tourist attraction and they're making money off of tourists.

• 24:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, at least he got his money back somehow.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some somehow. So, yeah, so that's what happens in a in a high speed impact. And if it's if those two numbers were different, the object would basically stay in one piece.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. So there's your answer, Mr. Wood. Look for the rock in the land of smithereens.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, Cosmic Queries, Potpourri Edition. We'll be right back.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Potpourri Edition. Chuck Nice. Hey. You're reading me these questions? I haven't seen or heard any of them.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  That's right. That's right. You have not seen them or heard them, but I have them right here.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's go to John Reitzka. Reitzka. Okay, you know it's John, I'm sorry, John. So. Okay, subject of the tides, and this is kind of something that we've touched on.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, me and tides go way back.

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you and tides.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, me, just back up.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  You are the veritable prince of tides. See what I did there? Did you see what I did there? Okay.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I was the king of tides, but okay.

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  Fine. Okay, uh, I've heard Neil mention in multiple episodes that the gravitational forces of both the moon and the sun combined during a full moon to create the highest tides on Earth. It seems to me that they should cancel each other out, being that the masses are on opposite sides of the Earth. It also seems that the highest tide should be during the new moon, because the moon and the sun are both on the same side of the Earth. Hmm. I could look up the answer, but I just love hearing Chuck Nice's take on the questions.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he really say that?

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  He did really say that.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so, listen, uh, basically what he's saying is, uh, when the moon and the sun are on the same side, is there a greater pull?

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so here we go. You ready?

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead, please.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, let's forget the sun for the moment.

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's just have Earth and the moon. The moon raises tides on Earth.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there are only two things that affect that. The mass of the moon, which isn't changing.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the distance the moon is from Earth.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are the only two things that can affect the tides that the moon raises on Earth.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, the moon's orbit is not an exact circle. It's like a flattened circle, an ellipse, is the official term. You can think of it as an oval. And so occasionally the moon is closer to the Earth, it'll raise slightly higher tides. Occasionally the moon is farther, it raises slightly lower tides. And that has nothing to do with what phase the moon is. The moon's tides on Earth are the same for every phase, from new moon crescent, first quarter gibbous, everybody-

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  Because the moon is the same size.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moon is the same damn thing in the damn sky.

• 27:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so now, now, bring in the sun.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun is trying to raise tides too. And it's a function of how far are we from the sun and how much mass the sun is. It's trying to do this on us too. But it turns out its strength of tides is only about a third as strong as that of the moon, turns out. Because it's so far away.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  So far away.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Distance makes a big deal with, it makes a big difference with tides.

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the tidal strength varies as the cube of the- Distance.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're math fluent, you got that.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  I know what you're saying.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  So it is directly and proportionally tied to the distance.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 28:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the third power.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  Third power.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So if you're far away, it's way less than if you're nearby.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now watch. If the moon's tides align with the sun's tides, you have high tide. Higher than at any other time.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the moon's tide is at right angles to the sun's tides, they're each trying to bulge at right angles to one another. They, that's where they cancel out.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That at right angles, and I think call it the neap tide. All right. You'll still get a slightly high tide, but it's not as high as at full moon or at new moon. And here's how the tide works. You ready? Okay. So you have the moon and you have earth.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon is pulling harder on the side of the earth closer to the moon than it is at the middle of the earth. And it is pulling harder at the middle of the earth than it is pulling at the far side of the earth.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Cause it's farther away.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  Farther away. Cause it's like we said, this is, it's distance.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a distance.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  It's a distance thing.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. And so now you are a squishy pool of water. The side of you closest to the moon is being pulled most. And the side of you farthest from the moon is being pulled least. So all this gets stretched out. That's all it is. It's a big stretching game.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, the solid earth has tides as well. But you know, it, we don't, that doesn't manifest as, because it's, it's a solid thing that's changing. We, but we see, and tides are never come in and out. The bulge is always there in space and it's earth turning inside the bulge. So in fact, when you see.

• 29:51Chuck Nice?

  That sounds so dirty. Oh my God.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you, if you're on the beach, you say, here comes the tide. No, the tide was there in space and you are on earth being turned into it.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Into it.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the bulge of the tide.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know, I know. So now watch. So now, so the, the, the moon stretches out the water, near side, far side.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun stretches out the water, near side, far side. So on new moon or full moon, everybody's lined up, everybody's stretching it out. There you have it. It's all just stretching.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  It's all just, it's basically a love triangle between the sun, the moon and the water.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, when the triangle is at its finest.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It makes a straight line.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's where you want your highest triangle.

• 30:38Chuck Nice?

  That's the highest.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, the highest bolt is the straight line triangle. That's right.

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  Yo, that's hot.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. You're still listening to StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries. I'm here with Chuck Nice. We'll be right back.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Potpourri Edition. But we're in the final segment, which means what?

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Lightning round.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lightning round, because I take so long answering the questions that we got to pile them all, the ones I didn't get to in the last segment, and I'll blow through them soundbite style.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Are you ready? Let's do it.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  And that's the sound you'll hear at the end of the question. And the answer, end of the answer.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Amputees in space from Jeff Lowe wants to know, "Hey, just curious to hear your thoughts about whether amputees in space would do well since there's less muscles to atrophy. I'm also curious to hear if there would be effects from 0G on organs. You know, after all, the heart is a muscle, but it's constantly working even in space."

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so amputees in space, you're not walking anywhere. So in fact, the space walk, you're not walking, it's called space floating.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  It's space floating.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in a way, you don't really need your legs. So amputees, I think, would do very well spacewalking. Your organs are sort of suspended in your body. They're not loose to float around and get out of alignment if you go into 0G. Plus, when you lay down horizontally, your heart does not work against gravity. It pumps blood horizontally, and that's like it not working against gravity. So your heart would be just fine in space.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was not obvious. In the early days, we didn't know whether you could swallow in space. Does your saliva know to go down your throat? Turns out, your body does a good job pushing liquids wherever they gotta go. Next.

• 32:36Chuck Nice?

  Go. Here's one. How about Adam Caspi? Your biggest fan in Israel. That's what he said.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  From my limited understanding, nothing can travel above the speed of light. Why does light travel at exactly that speed? I understand that it can't travel faster, but why not slower? Even a small amount, like two meters per second.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Light does travel slower when it goes through anything other than a vacuum.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Oh snap. So Adam.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Light goes slower when it enters our atmosphere, which is why when you see sunrise, it's not actually risen yet. It is still below the horizon because when it changes medium, this light slows down and it refracts, showing you the sun before it has actually risen. Light is at its slowest through diamond. It only goes 40% as fast as its speed in a vacuum through diamond. That's why there's all this internal reflection in your ring and it looks radiant because the light internally reflected multiple times before it came out, looking like the diamond itself is giving you light. Oh.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go. Yo, that was, that was hot. That was hot.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, this one from Luke Schlonigan.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Luke. Yes, go.

• 33:49Chuck Nice?

  Luke. Aliens. On your aliens episode, you said aliens the size of a solar system couldn't exist because it would take too long for a signal to travel from one point of the brain to another and for the alien to react. But what if it did not have a centralized brain? What if the decision-making capabilities were spread throughout? In other words, couple little brains around that alien head.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I, okay, I didn't say life could not exist. I just thought it would be really clumsy form of life.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it stubs its toe, its toe, it would take 10 hours to respond to that fact. Or if it's, if something starts eating it, it won't know until it's way too late. It's just not an effective size to be life. If you're competing against the, the speed of light for you to communicate signals across your body. If it has regionally controlled centers, brain centers.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then is it one organism?

• 34:42Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, snap!

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I question whether it is in fact one organism. Luke, there's your answer. Okay, all right, next.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  Cody in Iowa wants to know, in an extremely unlikely scenario, if you were to be touching or right next to a micro black hole at the moment of its formation, what would happen?

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bad for you, good for the black hole. Yeah, if any part of you starts to enter the black hole, the black hole will just eat whatever part of you it touches. That's all. Eventually, you are gone.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  You're gone.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the black hole burps. No, doesn't even burp.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, black hole one, human zero.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  All right, Cody, you are delicious to black holes. All right, this is from Matt Hoesley. The sun, how loud would the sun be from the earth if there was a way to transmit the sound through space? I don't know what the hell that means.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  That's why I couldn't read the question.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you ever heard a pot of water boiling on the stove?

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I have.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's water, and it's, okay, the sun is boiling as well.

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's roiling, boiling, convecting. Convection is the scientific word for boiling.

• 35:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun is boiling like it's nobody's business on its surface. It would be the loudest boiling pot of water you ever heard if somehow you can, you can, you can deliver that sound through the vacuum of space to us.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that'd be kind of cool to listen to what the sun was. It would sound like boiling oatmeal.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Boiling oatmeal.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But really, really loud.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Answer, thank God we can't hear that.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, real quick, 10 seconds.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay, we've got 10 seconds, and, oh my God, here it is. If there were a civilization that lived only on the far side of the moon, how hard would it be for it to detect the existence of the earth?

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they would, they would never see earth because earth is never in their sky. But they would know somebody was up to something because we've sent spacecraft in orbit around the moon, and the most famous photo ever, Earthrise, was a spaceship coming around the backside of the moon. They would have said, uh-oh, we are not alone in the universe.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So would the far side moon dwellers say. You've been listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We are in extended Cosmic Aquarius edition. Chuck.

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil, that's right. Alright, let's um, you know what, since this is an extension, why don't we start off as we normally do?

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is this themed, or is it Galactic Gumbo?

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  I don't know.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it Gumbo?

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  I think we're gonna do the Gumbo.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna do the Gumbo.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  Guarantee. Alright, what do you got? Maybe we'll have a little Etouffee with that.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Etouffee, I love Etouffee Cosmos. Alright, what do you have?

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. This is a Patreon patron, Kyle Yocum, who says...

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again, because they paid money to be first in the question list.

• 37:59Chuck Nice?

  That is correct, because...

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How crass of us.

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:04Chuck Nice?

  We are not above being whores. Alright, here we go. Kyle says this, "Dr. Tyson, if Isaac Newton, your man, was to see us today and all the science that we have discovered since his passing with discoveries, might he be most interested in? And what specific areas of study would you guess he would want to continue working on?"

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Believe it or not, I think about this all the time.

• 38:28Chuck Nice?

  Get out!

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the time. At least weekly. At least weekly.

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow, Kyle, look at you!

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think of Isaac Newton as a dinner guest. And then, but, but then it gets real, and then it's like, okay, that was a bad idea. Okay? Okay, so Isaac Newton walks in. I say, "Isaac, would you like to bathe right now?" Okay, first of all. Back then, there was no... Okay, I'm saying, okay, so we get that out of the way.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then, I say, "Would you like to go for a drive?" A drive in what? I said a car. He said, "What's a car?"

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then I say, "It's a horse-drawn carriage..."

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Without the horse.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he'd say, "Well, how does it operate? What operates on..." On energy, well, what's energy? Energy was not formally defined at the time of Isaac Newton. That would take another hundred years before we understood energy. Uh, where do you get the energy? We get it from liquids. How, how kind of energy is in that? Chemical energy. How do you get, what is chemical energy? Well, it's bound in the molecules. What's a molecule? This, this would just go on and on and on and on and on and on. There's energy bound up in the molecular state. What is, and, and, and it would take. Well, he's a fast study, don't get me wrong, but you can't just. Ask him a modern question, cause then I would show him my, my iPhone and his head would explode, okay?

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I would show him the calculator on the iPhone where he could have then spent seconds. Doing what he took years calculating, okay, in his life. And that's just one app on the iPhone. And so, so. Poor Isaac, we'd need, I'd need a psychiatrist with me, just to help the guy out.

• 40:14Chuck Nice?

  And wait till you sell him, sell him porn on your phone. Oh my god.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, he was, uh, he, he never married and as far as we know, had no. Meaningful, amorous relationships and was mostly misanthropic. Yeah.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he was probably asexual.

• 40:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, most likely asexual.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, no one, yeah.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no one. When he had energy.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  No wonder he discovered all this stuff. Oh my god, it was just, it was just built up sexual frustration.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotta discover calculus.

• 40:48Chuck Nice?

  I need to calculate a way to get laid.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. He never married, never had any close, uh, male or female friends.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were some letters he wrote, some people might think he might have been gay, um, but. Nonetheless, even if he was gay, he still was not, he was not, you know, the man of the night.

• 41:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so anyhow, so there's that, but let's catch him up to speed. I would say, uh, I would hand him the dark matter and dark energy problem.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say, look dude, we've been at this for 50 years. Fix it.

• 41:19Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead and write, knock it out, buddy.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Knock this one out. Here's a pen. So here's a paper, here's a computer when you figure out how to use a computer.

• 41:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go have at it, okay?

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  That's super cool, man. Hey, what a great question, Kyle. That was really cool. And the answer is, uh, in modern times, Isaac Newton is a dumbass. Okay. Of course. Wow, that's a, I like the dark matter idea.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, dark matter and dark energy.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  All right, uh, let's go to Stephen Humphrey on Facebook who says, what does that crazy looking globe on Neil's table depict?

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, I have a, this globe that might be sitting behind me where I'm seated right now.

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this is a brass globe.

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is sculpted by Paul Manship, who is the same guy who sculpted Prometheus, who oversees the skating rink.

• 42:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, and in fact, if you look at the base of this globe, there is a recumbent figure which evokes the recumbent Prometheus, uh, at Rockefeller Center. So this globe is a, a perfectly spinning, functioning globe, and it has all eighty-eight constellations in Art Deco relief.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Etched onto them.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there are two, as I understand it, there are two in the world. One is owned by, uh, was it Acres? I forgot his first name, the former, uh, CEO of IBM.

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who paid for an exhibit where this, uh, where this appeared.

• 42:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was on the exhibit floor of the Hayden Planetarium forty years ago. In fact, I remember it when I came here as a kid.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But now we don't, we don't, uh, we're not about constellations anymore, so, but it's still a, a brilliant work of art, and I get to put it in my office.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Wow, what a cool, hey, Stephen, thank you for that. Man, there's only two of those globes in the world and you have one of them.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have one of them. Well, I mean, the museum, I'm, I don't.

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it's in your office, it's yours.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, I can tip this, the, the, this tips on angle.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's, it's a, it's a mechanically functioning sphere.

• 43:20Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to be clear.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, this is nineteen thirty-four, so Art Deco was a very.

• 43:26Chuck Nice?

  Well, big deal.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prevailing thing at the time.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Very much so, especially here in New York. When you look at the, all the architects are here in this city. Chrysler Building, yes, great, great many.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rockefeller Center itself.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, the whole place, very cool. So Chava Bello on Instagram wants to know this. Do you foresee space hotels with green hookers? Really? Come on.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Green, greener, so this would be, uh, not just.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interspecies sex, we're talking about inter life form.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sex.

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, I, I don't know. I mean, people. Usually the first thing that happens with a new invention is people try to figure out how to have sex with it.

• 44:07Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I will not preclude this as a, as a thing that could one day happen.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And clearly this derives from Captain Kirk.

• 44:19Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say Kirk.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Captain Kirk.

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  Kirk beat to it.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is in the nineteen sixties, somehow it was okay.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For Captain Kirk to be banging green aliens.

• 44:27Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and it's always, it was always, um.

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is kiss? Oh, that's an old earth emotion that we show when we have affection. Oh, let's do that again.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they kiss again and then it fade to black and they go to the next scene.

• 44:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know he's getting some alien.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  You know it.

• 44:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alien booty.

• 44:46Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, um, I don't see why not. I mean, if we have a fully, uh. If all life forms are visiting at the local bar like in Star Wars.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  Star Wars?

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in Star Wars bar, why, why wouldn't it be?

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, um, I'm not going anywhere, anything green, okay? I'm going nowhere. If it's green, I'm staying way away from it. That's all there is to it.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be that it undergoes photosynthesis. It never has to eat.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's a, that'd be really, yeah.

• 45:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about it. Just think about this, Chuck.

• 45:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:17Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm thinking about it.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you are not a plant on this earth.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you have to kill something for your own nourishment.

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Other than that, you gotta eat something else, right?

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you have to kill something.

• 45:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For your own nourishment. If you're an alien where everybody's getting their energy from their local star and they come to earth, how barbaric we would look to them.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about that.

• 45:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, uh, and if they're green, I'm not having sex with them.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Regardless, okay.

• 45:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, Juan Garcia from Facebook says.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Juan Garcia.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  Juan Garcia, what a great name. Uh, did the meteor that killed the dinosaurs hit hard enough to spread life around our solar system? Wow, so could, it, it, would the debris or the detritus have escape velocity?

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  Get out.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  Is that real?

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 46:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you call it detritus?

• 46:10Chuck Nice?

  Detritus, yes.

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. I think more of flotsam and jetsam.

• 46:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at you.

• 46:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's cool.

• 46:16Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, uh, if you only know flotsam and jetsam from the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid. Uh, flotsam is stuff left over after your ship was torpedoed.

• 46:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That floats and jetsam is stuff that you threw overboard so that you tried to not have that fate.

• 46:33Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, uh, uh, yeah, so that asteroid could would have easily thrust earth rocks with enough velocity to achieve, uh, to escape earth.

• 46:44Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so here, here's the thing.

• 46:46Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the thing.

• 46:47Chuck Nice?

  I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm listening.

• 46:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon doesn't have weather, it doesn't have plate tectonics.

• 46:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon is a record of anything that once hit it.

• 46:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There may be earth fossils.

• 46:57Chuck Nice?

  On the moon.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From before we had good fossils to get a record of what was happening here.

• 47:03Chuck Nice?

  Ah. That is super cool.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 47:06Chuck Nice?

  That is super cool.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, so it's called panspermia and so life may be more similar than we might otherwise think.

• 47:13Chuck Nice?

  Interesting, so and then, and well, then that begs the question, is it very possible that the life here on earth was seeded from, uh, some other cosmic entity?

• 47:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we were, it would likely have been Mars, which means all humans are descendants of Martians.

• 47:27Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 47:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Chuck Nice?

  I like that.

• 47:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause Mars was wet and fertile before earth was and, don't go there, Charlie. Okay, so, before earth was, I saw your facial expression. Okay, so if there was any life transfer or panspermia, it would have been from Mars to earth.

• 47:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Initially.

• 47:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's cool, man. That is super cool.

• 47:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars had running water.

• 47:49Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. Wow, hey, uh, Juan Garcia, what a great question. All right, let's go to Liam.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last question, last question.

• 47:57Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 47:58Chuck Nice?

  This is, uh, Liam Chromatic World Leverford.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a name, okay.

• 48:03Chuck Nice?

  What a name, Liam Chromatic World Leverford from Facebook says, I've heard that with the James Webb Telescope that is supposed to be up, uh, be the next step up from the Hubble, that we could potentially see the Big Bang, but I haven't been able to explain this to anyone because I really don't understand it.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's a good reason.

• 48:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For not being able to explain something.

• 48:24Chuck Nice?

  So, how, how would you see the Big Bang?

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not with this telescope. You would see, uh, what this will enable us to do is specifically tuned to detect galaxies being born. Just after the Big Bang.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, our telescopes aren't sensitive enough or tuned enough, tuned properly to see those, uh, that, that phenomenon. So those galaxies are emitting copious amounts of blue and ultraviolet light.

• 48:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that light is coming from such a distance that the expansion of the universe has redshifted that light deep in the red and infrared part of the spectrum.

• 49:00Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the James Webb Telescope is tuned to the infrared.

• 49:04Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To see light that started out as ultraviolet.

• 49:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the formation of galaxies. We are ahead of, we, we, isn't that?

• 49:12Chuck Nice?

  That is phenomenal.

• 49:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are there.

• 49:15Chuck Nice?

  That's genius.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, you can also see things that just happen to be giving infrared light.

• 49:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like star forming regions of the galaxy and this sort of thing.

• 49:22Chuck Nice?

  Nurseries.

• 49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nurseries, exactly.

• 49:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Newly born, um, hatcheries. But yeah, so, but it's not, it's not, it's not designed to see the Big Bang itself.

• 49:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool. Oh, man, that's fascinating. All right. Well, thank you for that question.

• 49:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we ran out of time.

• 49:36Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man.

• 49:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Are we going, well, I gotta call it, but that was good. Active gumbo edition.

• 49:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, oh, that's right. There you go. That's right. Get on to you right now.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get on to you. Uh, you, I, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I've been with Chuck Nice. As always, we bid you to keep looking up.